Chapter 2
The rain beat against James Gordon's windshield like a billion like bombs, all exploding at once. He could hear his tires squeal as he made a right turn. Too many potholes in this godforsaken city. Nobody wise enough to fill them all up. Too much water on the streets, that's what it was. It was an accident waiting to happen.
But crappy streets were the least of his worries tonight. The Red Hood gang had pulled another bank job on the east side, and he was stuck patrolling the Narrows past midnight. Every punk and lowlife in Gotham saw his big black-and-white coup as a target. "Kill the police," that was what they always said.
Gordon glanced over at the passenger's seat. Flass was fast asleep, as usual. If he concentrated on the road, maybe he could ignore his partner's intermittent snoring. They couldn't be any more dissimilar, the two f them. Flass didn't care about crime. He cared about money. Just last week he had taken cutbacks from the Falcone family. Well, he wasn't sure he had taken cutbacks, but evidence doesn't get erased from the records every day. Hated kids, too. Beat one up two days ago just because he looked at him funny, or he was black. You never could tell with Flass. He probably didn't need a reason to cream that kid. Just felt like it.
Gordon turned the wheel again, and made the same right turn he had made twenty times that night, into the same narrow back alley. The trash never seemed to get collected in the Narrows. The same dumpsters he had cruised by for weeks were now engorged an overflowing with trash. Even the trash men avoided this dump.
He gently eased the car through the alley, past run-down tenement houses and squalid apartments. Just as he prepared to turn again, the dark figure of a man rushed toward the car, throwing itself against the windshield. Gordon slammed on the brakes, causing Flass to jolt forward with a yelp.
"Wassa? What happened, Jim?"
Gordon ignored him, and quickly opened the door and rushed toward the man's crumpled figure. He looked to be around twenty-five, white, blonde. He was wearing a dirty overcoat and overalls, and a pair of cracked glasses. He was muttering something to himself. Gordon grabbed the man and asked, "What's wrong? Are you all right? Who are you?"
"I'm Ernest Bean. I'm turning myself in," the man gasped as he feebly held out his hands, as if he wanted Gordon to cuff them.
"But you didn't do anything!"
"Robbed—jewelry store—he saw—me."
"Talk slower. What jewelry store, and who saw you?"
"Fifth and Vine—necklace—Batman."
"Batman? What's this Batman?"
"Batman. Batman. Batman."
Gordon turned to Flass and shouted, "Get HQ on radio. We have an injured civilian on McClurken and Tess. Hurry!"
Three weeks had passed since Ernest Bean first saw the Batman, and reports of sightings had been flooding GCPD ever since. Small-time crooks had been found tied up in back alleyways, on rooftops, inside hideouts. This Batman character had been hunting them down like rats.
"It just ain't right," said Flass as he sipped his coffee. Some fruitcake in a costume thinks he can take our jobs? And he ain't even legal-like. We oughta be busting up cooks like him instead of patrolling this crapsack of a neighborhood."
Gordon gripped the wheel of the patrol car as he made yet another sharp right. "He may be a vigilante, but he's a friend to us right now. Any help we could find would be a godsend in this crime wave."
"Well I says he's part of the problem. Everybody coming back home all hunky-dory on account of we won the war and all, and then they all goes crazy-like because they got shell-shock or something. Suppose the Bat guy is one of them? Suppose he goes cuckoo one of these days?"
"It's something that I don't like to think about. But there's a lot to this job I don't like to think about."
Just as the car's headlights beamed down the alleyway, Gordon could see a pair of kids fighting in an alcove. This time of night, that couldn't be good. He stopped the car and instinctively reached for his gun. Leaping out of the driver's seat, he pointed the gun at the mugger. "Stop. This is Gotham City Police. Put your hands in the air."
The mugger froze, but he wasn't looking at Gordon. His eyes were fixed on a shadowy figure positioned on the rooftop just above him. Gordon froze, too. The figure raised its arms up over its head like wings and paused for a moment, before leaping downward and tackling the screaming criminal. The thing rose, and turned to face Gordon. It raised an arm and aimed what looked like a gun at the wall opposite him. Gordon heard a light thwip and felt something whizz over his head.
"All yours, pal," it said, just before rising up over the rooftops again.
