"What have we got so far?" Jim had waited until they were inside the building to begin asking questions. Having just crawled through the snake pit of reporters outside, he watched as they tangled and weaved for better angles through the windows of Gotham City Financial. Had it been a nice day they might have made easier work of it, but the gray tone of the sky matched the color of the slightly tinted windows. This morning, Gotham was one big slab of concrete; cold monochromatic colors, like a black and white movie.
Jim hated this time of year… but by the time December rolled around, you got so used to it that abundances of color became an unwelcome assault on the eye, much like the scene in front of him.
It was impossible to say that he'd been expecting something like this, but after the break-in at MCU it was only a matter of time until something happened. Internal Affairs had estimated that the total street value of the confiscated goods had been nearly three million dollars. "The bazooka alone could pull in ninety large in street value," Marshal Grant had told him, and in his head Jim knew that someone out there would pay it.
"It's not looking good," Chief Carpozo told him as the two men walked though the bank and toward the vaulted area. The place was huge. Gotham Financial was one of the largest investment banks in the city. It housed at any given time between two hundred-fifty and three hundred million dollars.
"How much do they suppose was stolen? Did they clear the vault?" Jim asked. Ahead he could see the crime scene investigation taking pictures; a few of them huddled by the vault entrance, while a couple more crept around inside, careful to not contaminate evidence.
Receiving a confused glance from Brutus, he watched as he stretched out one of his behemoth arms to stop Jim from taking another step. "What did they call you in here for?" he asked him curiously, as the Commissioner turned to offer his own bewildered expression.
"What the hell are you talking about? They told me to get my ass down to GCF on Monroe."
"For a robbery?" Well, now Jim had to think for a moment. When he'd gotten the call, he hadn't been told specifically what the situation would be, but he would admit his mind had automatically jumped to robbery. When his expression communicated this to Brutus, he smiled and shook his head. "You think we'd keep the press across the street for a midnight robbery bust?"
Jim's face dropped. "Homicide?"
"Quintuple homicide," came Carpozo's bleak reply, and before he could continue Jim had pushed his way through the vault to see the damage.
Inside were the bodies of five young men. A couple of them had managed to keep their masks on while a couple seemed to have had them pulled off, their hair askew and ruffled. The last one had his face blown clear off. It was a dismal sight, but Jim had seen it before.
"They say it never gets easier, but it gets easier… doesn't it?" The voice that came up from behind him was unmistakably Marshal Grant, and when Jim turned around to look at him he was shocked to see young Joe Callaghan standing by his side.
Truthfully, he was surprised to see either of them there. "Grant?" he asked and then nodded to his junior detective curiously. "You're bringing your rookie to a homicide beat? What are you even doing here?"
The kid didn't seem that offended, though Jim remembered wanting to blow up on a couple of superiors in his rookie year. He was a man; he could take it… even though he remembered returning home at the end of some nights severely distraught. Joe always seemed to have a smile on his face. That worried Jim more than a sight of a rookie being sick somewhere.
"We're here because Carpozo was keeping us in the loop," Grant said, and when Jim looked over at the oafish military man he wore a guilty expression.
Brow furrowed, he moved to the side while Joe Callaghan slipped a pair of latex gloves over his hands and carefully maneuvered past him into the vault. "Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on around here?" It was rare for Jim to get angry, and even now he tried to keep his tone just this side of firm.
Offering him his own pair of latex gloves, Marshal took the lead. "Well, when the CSI unit came in, they noticed these." Once they had made their way into the vault, he whistled to Callaghan, who instantly tossed him an empty jacket from a very large round. "Remington .223s. There's about fifteen of them. So there couldn't have been only one shooter." Marshal's glum voice echoed in the steel barricaded room. "We're here on the suspicion that these were the guns taken from the MCU."
Jim couldn't help but think that he was jumping to conclusions, but that did make sense. .223s were the second most common rifle caliber found in the United States, but the last person they'd caught with one was one of the Joker's goons. There had been no incidences in Gotham with these bullets - and now, all of a sudden, five people dead.
Something about the scene didn't make sense to him. All five men had been gunned down close to the door, and yet the money appeared to have been touched only by the blood that had been splattered against it. The victims appeared to have escape equipment with them: ropes, magnetized pulleys, lock clippers. They were your run-of-the-mill, fly-by-night bank robbers. The guys that robbed banks by night were usually more sophisticated then the ones who robbed during the day. During the day, robbing a bank is a smash-and-grab job: you get in, you put a gun to the teller's head, you get the money out of the drawer, and you hope to hell you get out of there before the cops show up. Cops get so bored during the day that they all respond to a bank robbery.
But the night guys? They have their tricks, their tools; they're a little older, and a lot smarter. They know how to get in and out of a building in only a few minutes, and take less money than the day guys do. Difference is, if they know what they're doing, they won't get caught, and so they can do it again, and again, and again without the cops figuring out how they've done it. Sometimes even the bank doesn't figure it out for days. They don't need guns, they don't need aggression. They have the cover of night and their wits to protect them.
"Now… they're a little young," Marshal said, pointing down to one of the young men who had his face intact. He crouched down beside the corpse and looked over him. "But he's actually a suspect we have on another heist two years ago in North Gotham. Since there's no sign of a struggle, and the victims barely made it into the vault, we have to assume that they were ambushed."
"You mean you think someone was here waiting for them?" 'Impossible' was the only word that came into Jim's mind. How could this be? This was one of the tightest banks in Gotham and there couldn't have been more then a few people in the city who knew how to break in, and he was sure those people were the ones lying dead on the vault floor.
"Shit, I don't know Jim. The more time I spend thinking about it the weirder it gets." Marshal seemed just as frustrated and stood from his crouched position. "In order for to make any sense the shooters would have had to know that the heist was going to take place, break in before it, lock the vault door from the inside, and then lie in wait for the robbers to show up and then leave without taking a dime."
"Wait…" Jim held up his hand, turning to the junior detective. "Nothing was stolen?"
"Not from what we can tell so far. There's about twenty-thousand dollars ruined, since, y'know, banks won't accept money with blood on it. Other than that, there doesn't look to be anything missing, but we're going to have the manager look through all the lock boxes later."
This was the second time in a row the kid had surprised him: a young cop who was used to working behind a desk and dealing with the shadier cops in interrogation was holding up well in front of a grisly murder scene. "So this wasn't a territory war between two gangs of robbers, this was an assassination?" Jim asked, but he already knew the answer.
Joe didn't even try to answer it. "CSI told me that all of those guns had samples of their striations taken, so if we can match the bullets lodged in the victims to the guns MCU had in storage, we'll know they're the same guns," he told him, holding up a casing and moving past Jim and out of the vault.
Jim thought to himself for a moment, looking over the scene before him. One of the crime scene investigators was covering up a corpse with a sheet; a second investigator taking fingerprints off another. To the commissioner it was all in vain. In the pit of his stomach, he knew the rounds would come back as a match to the stolen guns. Then he'd feel very much the same way Brutus was feeling, because when he turned back to look at the man he was standing just outside the vault, his heavy face looking outside at the group of press that swarmed around them like killer bees. He looked pensive, thoughtful, and doomed.
Jim was doomed too… and that's why he needed to figure this out and soon, before the two of them were on the chopping block.
"Ugh! I don't understand how you can drive stick!" Molly complained as the two of them wheeled through Gotham's downtown streets. "How are you supposed to smoke a cigarette or drink a latte if you're driving stick?"
Harley couldn't help but laugh, and laugh loudly. Once she had told Molly that Arkham had invited her to a black-tie event for his charity, Molly had insisted they go shopping. But, as she was making it perfectly evident, Harley was not a girly girl. She did not wear sexy clothes, she did not buy designer make-up, and she did not drive automatic. Maybe that was the funny bit.
"I dunno…" she confessed, "I used to date this guy in college who drove this custom Mustang. He taught me to drive standard and I never looked back." She chuckled and shrugged. "Besides, I don't smoke and I only drink coffee when I'm tired."
"Well whatever…" Molly groaned, looping one of her dark curls around her index finger as her body bounced slightly in the passenger seat when Harley changed gears. "Okay, let's find some place to park."
But when Harley looked around to see where they'd stopped, she was shocked. All around them was the crème de la crème of designers: Prada, Gucci, Versace, Channel… you name it. St. Clement Boulevard was Gotham's answer to New York's Fifth Avenue, though it did not draw any charity from its namesake. The street was lined with designer stores and expensive condos. Harley had looked at a couple places here when she was moving downtown, but had nearly choked on the complementary glass of champagne they'd given when she had heard the price. She moved a few blocks away, and she did not frequent the area.
Molly, on the other hand, appeared to be a local. "C'mon Harl! Stop the car! Some of these places have the most beautiful ballroom dresses on the planet."
It was clear that she was excited, but Harley was beginning to lose her patience. The last time they'd gone shopping she'd spent an entire paycheck, nearly half of it on clothes. Now she was suggesting that she buy a designer gown? "Okay, Molly, I don't know how much more money doctors make over nurses, but it's not that much!" She pulled over in exasperation to park in front of Sak's Fifth Avenue.
"Relax! Girl, geez! You think I would make you spend a fortune two months in a row?" Molly asked, with the same sense of attitude she got whenever Harley tried to accuse her of something. "You're not going to buy a dress, are you out of your damn mind? Some of these dresses will cost more than a house. You're going to rent it, and bring it back in mint condition. They do this kind of thing all the time. You think Angelina Jolie owns like eight million red carpet dresses?" Almost obediently, Harley shook her head. "Hell no! Girlfriend goes out and rents them like the rest of our broke asses."
Suddenly Harley was far more at ease, and there was almost something exciting about the prospect. Harley would much rather spend the money on a house then a dress, but being able to wear something designer was pretty exciting even to someone who wasn't interested in that kind of thing. "Alright… alright…" she gave up, before sliding out of her car.
Watching Molly shop was like watching a kid in a candy store. She zipped from one side of the store to the other side, pulling clothes off wracks, accepting every complimentary drink they offered her while Harley politely turned down the champagne, espresso, fresh tea with lemon and any other frou-frou nouveau riche beverage. At one point Molly leaned over and whispered, "If you're going to spend thousands of dollars here, the least they can do is offer you a glass of cheap champagne." But Harley felt bad. She didn't plan on spending thousands. She didn't know what she was looking for, but she kept on telling the professional dressers that she'd "know when she saw it."
Well, three hours later, she hadn't seen "it" yet.
"Shopping with you is a chore, not a pleasure. You've tried on what, twenty dresses tonight? You don't like any of them?" Molly was hardly one to lose her patience when it came to shopping, but it was hard to have fun when the person you were shopping with felt fat in everything. "You haven't even started on shoes and jewelry yet!"
Letting out a heavy sigh, Harley began to drag her feet. They'd just stopped in at a Starbucks, where Molly had picked up her usual no-fat-sugarfree-no-foam-extra-hot-double-chai-macchiato monstrosity. Harley trudged along, hoping that her coffee with cream and sugar would kick in right about now. She was exhausted, her feet were killing her, and at this point she just wanted to wear a potato sack to the damn gala. The thought of having to add shoes on top of it all made her shutter.
"Ok, one more place," Molly moaned dramatically before her begrudging counterpart exploded.
"No!" Harley called out, exasperated. "No more! I'm done! I don't know who you think you're shopping with, but I'm the girl who usually spends her money at JC Penny and I'm suddenly getting fashion advice from Anna Wintour." Taking a deep breath, Molly's look went from bitchy to soft in about three seconds. "All this stuff is so… unimportant."
With a smirk on her face Molly pointed just down the street. "There's Versace, and then there's your car. If you still feel like you'd rather buy your dress at JC Penny and look relatively unspectacular, then fine… I'll take you there myself."
"Fine," Harley said, caving under the guilt of wasting so much of Molly's time. "One more…"
"Alright!"
When the two of them stepped in, they were met with the soft sound of techno jazz and what was probably the most attractive man Harley had ever seen in her life. He had a handsome, angular, very European face, with a well-maintained Van Dyke goatee and dark hair that was tied back into a small ponytail. He wore a red silk button-down shirt that was tucked into a set of exceptionally well-tailored black pants with sparkling Italian leather shoes adorning his feet. He had the body of a ballet dancer, and when he opened his mouth to speak...
...well, her blushing face immediately went back to its muted matte peach. Harley's gaydar wasn't very good, but it was good enough.
"Good evening ladies!" he said joyously. "Welcome to Versace." Immediately she felt out of sorts. This place was where people got kicked out of if they weren't up to dress code. "Can I take your coffees from you? Maybe offer you champagne? We just got in a shipment of Cristal 2004, which was an absolutely lovely year.."
Holding up her hand, Harley was about to excuse herself when Molly piped up. "That sounds great, we'll have two."
When he leaned forward to take their coffees, from them he held his arms (and his pinkies) outstretched as if he was disgusted by the thought of commercially propagated coffee. Harley rolled her eyes and Molly nudged her with her elbow. When he returned, it was with two flutes of beautiful bubbly liquid. He handed them over with his delicate little hands, and he clapped them once before holding them to his chest. "And how can we be of service to you today?"
Molly seemed to be well versed in this, because as Harley was about to explain that she was just browsing, the brazen young woman chimed in yet again. "My friend here's been invited to a black-tie gala by her boss, and she needs to be the belle of the ball," Molly said in a refined tone that did not resemble her usual one.
"As well she should!" Harley had never used the word fabulous before, but she could have used it now. "Us girls would do anything to impress a cute boss, huh?" he asked, and winked as the two of them nearly heaved into their champagne.
"No!" Harley blurted out to correct him. "Oh, no-no...no, my boss is a hundred thousand years old. I'm a doctor, I'm trying to make tenure."
Her realism must have brought him off of whatever cloud he was floating on and back down to earth, because he actually started talking like a stylist. "Oh, so you're going to want something professional, something sleek and elegant?"
"Sleek and elegant, yes; professional, no," Molly told him, taking a sip from her champagne. "I've taken this little girl here to all the stores on this strip, and she's pulled the most boring pieces to wear. We're going to jazz it up and make her a little uncomfortable."
He listened to her with one arm tucked under the opposite elbow, and the hand attached to that elbow propping up his pointy chin in the most dignified way imaginable. Turning on his heels, he looked Harley over and suddenly she felt very self-conscious. "You? Miss Skinny-Miney? You probably hit the gym three times a week. I know your type." He pointed at her with a long, spindly finger and nodded.
Harley blushed again and their stylist squealed in delight. "Ugh! Look at you! You're just the cutest little thing." Shaking his head, he tried to get a better look at her. After a few seconds, he grew exasperated and motioned for her to hand him the champagne glass, which he immediately passed off to Molly. "Okay, give me that suit jacket of yours. And never, ever put it on again."
Shocked, Harley slowly moved to pull herself out of her gray blazer, but before she had the chance he'd scooped it up by it's lapel and pulled it off her shoulders as he stepped behind her. For a split second, Harley caught herself imagining that, if had he wanted to, he would probably be able to undress a woman awfully quickly. Once he held her blazer he gave an overdramatic gasp. "What on Earth is wrong with you child?" he asked, and then placed an apologetic hand on her shoulder.
Turning to look at herself in a mirror, she shrugged. Harley saw herself naked every day, and she didn't think there was anything spectacular about the way she looked. She was fit, yeah... but curvy. She had the tiniest bit of jiggle, but she never considered herself attractive. She knew men were dogs, and would knock down their mothers to get in front of a good looking girl. They never did that at the sight of her... at least she didn't think so.
Clearly unwilling to trust a word that fell from Harley's mouth, the man turned back to Molly. "Exactly how long has your friend been hiding this silhouette in frumpy clothing?" he asked, flabbergasted.
Without any sort of hesitation, Molly waved him off. "Forever. Though I got her to wear a cinched-waist blouse and a pencil skirt once. And she just went back to the some old wardrobe malfunction the very next day."
"Hey!" Harley tried to argue, but it fell on deaf ears.
Brushing imaginary sweat from his well manicured brow, the stylist sighed and took hold of Harley by the shoulders, turning her to look at herself in the mirror once more. "Lookit-lookit-lookit" he said, so quickly that it sounded like one long word. "What is this? A size four?" He put his hands on her waist. "And what about this? Hmm? Like a thirty-six?" Harley turned at the waist to look back at him, horrified to see Molly stifling a giggle.
"Madness!" he called out and then took Harley by the hand. "Come with me." While he dragged her behind, Molly just shook her head back and forth, a devilish grin on her face.
It had nearly been nine o'clock when they sauntered in, but for the next hour, the stylist (who had eventually decided to formally introduce himself as Georg) got a closer look at Harley's body then most straight men had since her junior year in college. He took measurements, looked at the sizes in her clothes, calculated the number of champagne flutes she had emptied, and seemed to pour it all into a mathematical equation. The answer emerged was supposed to be the perfect dress... but when he brought it out, Harley was horrified.
"R...red?" she asked as he pulled it from a large garment box.
"Are you kidding?" he asked, in such shock that his jaw might have fallen off had it not been so securely attached. "With your dark hair and your ivory complexion? Oh...Emm...Gee... who couldn't look at you?"
As unsure as she was, she wasn't going to let poor Georg's hard work go to waste and so she humored him and tried it on. There were no mirrors in the dressing room until one was presented to you, and when Harley stepped up on a platform and Georg threw open that folded mirror, she didn't speak. Maybe the surprise factor had something to do with it, and maybe it was the look on Molly's face, but regardless of the color, she loved it.
A delicate bow started at the hip, wrapped around the side and down the back; it had a bit of a train, but the main focal point of the dress was what wasn't there. Her entire back was exposed. Her delicate neck, all the way down to the last vertebra of her spine. It was incredibly feminine, very sexy, probably the most expensive thing Harley would ever wear... and she had to have it.
"How much?" she asked in a flat tone as she turned to gaze at her naked back in the mirror.
"This one? $23,000."
It was a good thing she hadn't been wearing a pair of those towering overpriced high heels in the display window, because she may well have fallen over. She looked at him, stunned. "Twa... twenty..."
"Twenty-three thousand, that's right."
Molly's grip on the two champagne flutes made it seem as though they both my shatter at any moment. "But! If I can say. I've only seen this dress look good on two people...you, and the model who took it down the runway in Milan."
Blushing, she turned to look back in the mirror and sighed. "And..." he started and when she turned back to look at him, he smiled. "I can rent it to you."
Harley squealed in pleasure and stepped down from the pedestal to hug him. "Really, would you?"
Seeming all too pleased to hug her back, Georg laughed at her. "Of course, Darling! How could I not? That dress was made for you!" he said, and when she stepped up onto the platform to view it one last time she spun on the tips of her toes, the train splaying out behind her.
Taking a deep breath, Harley grinned that enormous grin of hers and sighed. "Fabulous."