Another chapter in a story about our favorite villain, on the birthday of the man who crafted one of the most brilliant characters I've ever seen on film. Thank you, Heath Ledger. How deeply you are missed.
Apologies for typos, it's really late and I have to wake up again in 4 hours. Sleep be damned, this story must continue!
* DUCKING FOR COVER *
Chapter 54
. . . . . . .
Maroni sat down and motioned for Dr. Silvi to pour him a glass of Scotch. The doctor furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to speak, but when he saw Maroni's expression, he thought the better of it. He simply nodded and picked up the decanter, pouring a serving larger than was probably wise to offer an already unbalanced man.
While his Hippocratic oath bound him to doing no harm, it didn't say he couldn't use substances to aid in subduing someone. Especially when that someone was a revenge-thirsty Mafia don. Past experience wasn't a clear indication of how the drink would take: Dr. Silvi had witnessed Vinnie Maroni imbibing more than his fair share of hard liquor, and on occasion, he was a happy drunk. On other occasions, he was decidedly… not. Still, he hoped the liquid depressant would calm the man down even a bit.
Any hint of placation would be a small victory. Not so much for Maroni, but for the woman writhing in pain on the floor in the middle of the room, moaning. Maroni's goons Tommy and Chaz had taken a few steps back, making use of the respite from the woman's torture. Tommy yawned and stretched, and Chaz checked his phone. It had been pinging solidly for the last several minutes as message after message poured in.
Maroni waved in an impatient beckoning motion. "Doc, sometime today, alright?"
Dr. Silvi handed the drink to Maroni, who put the pipe wrench down on the armrest of the leather sofa. As the grieving father downed the drink, his personal physician eyed the tool, marveling at the damage it had so effectively wrought. It was nearly unbearable to be a silent witness to the sadistic punishment that Mistress Femke was enduring, so Dr. Silvi sought any avenue he could to stall the inevitable. Yet he knew that any action on his part would be for naught; there was a desk filled with other instruments of torture. Should Maroni somehow tire of his weapons… certainly he would be all too happy to use the blunt force of his meaty fists to continue his work.
It wasn't looking likely that Mistress Femke would leave Flesh For Fantasy without being permanently crippled.
Assuming Maroni allowed her to leave at all.
The doctor looked over at the woman's left foot. It wasn't enough that Maroni had broken every toe, he had made sure that the bones were all but pulverized. Whereas most of the toes were crushed yet curled in the natural position of dormant digits, the fourth toe was bent back and upward toward the top of her foot in a horribly unnatural position, having nearly been twisted clean off. The bottom of the second phalanges had fractured and a shard had pierced clean through the skin, appearing as if a sharp white nail had been shot through her toe.
He hoped never to experience the physical agony she surely was suffering. Her fists were balled at her sides as she lay on her back, her cheeks stained with tears, and the once-violent thrashing of her head from side to side had waned into a slow unconscious undulation, mirroring the slowing of her moaning.
Maroni reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He had dispatched several henchman to guard his house with his wife Diana inside, as he couldn't be there to console her himself. Remote check-ins were all that was possible at this juncture. Maroni made a silent vow that he would not lay eyes on his wife again until he had rendered his own justice for the murder of his daughter Tessa.
"Calling Diana?" Dr. Silvi hoped a phone call would provide distraction enough to set Maroni on an entirely different course altogether. "I can't imagine what she's going through."
Vinnie's lips were pursed. "No." He drew his breath in slowly and closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I can't take the screaming or the crying anymore. I'm sending her a text. I want to let her know I love her and I'm taking care of things." As he slowly typed out a message with thick fingers, he called out to his bodyguards, eyes still glued to his phone's screen.
"Tommy. Perimeter check at my home. I want an update, now. Chaz, perimeter sweep of the building."
Both men nodded their accession, and each made their phone calls. Maroni looked at Dr. Silvi. The pain of the bullet still lodged in his fibula continued to throb, and he gritted his teeth. The doctor could feel Vinnie's eyes boring in to him. "Tell me, Joe." He tilted his head to the side. "How's Vanessa doing?"
The doctor stiffened. He feared this question could eventually come up, and he hadn't worked out what to say without an uncomfortable burden of guilt. "She's uh… thanks for asking—she's doing..." he curled his lips in and looked down toward the side of the room. "…doing well. Vassar agrees with her."
Maroni nodded absently, sadness in his eyes. "What's her major?"
"Political science, with a minor in math." Dr. Silvi looked down at his shoes, not knowing what to say after that.
Maroni kept nodding, and pointed at his old friend. "You must be a very proud father. You keep her safe, Joe. You make sure when she graduates that she never comes back to this rotten fuckin' cesspool of a city."
It was the doctor's turn to nod wordlessly. The awkward silence stretched on.
"All looks good at your home, Mr. Maroni. We've got 10 armed men there, and they're keeping their eyes peeled for any sign of something suspicious."
Maroni looked at Tommy. "Double it."
Tommy hesitated, "Double the men?"
"Are you deaf, dumbfuck? Yes, double the men around my house!" Tommy nodded quickly and phoned back his contact at Maroni's home in the Palisades.
Mistress Femke moaned again, weakly hitting the floor with her fist. "Shut up," Tommy growled.
Chaz's brow was furrowed. "Mr. Maroni? All's clear upstairs, but…" he swallowed and struggled for words.
Maroni turned to him slowly. "But what?"
"How do you want this hand-off of the Joker to go down, if—" Chaz caught himself and quickly changed to a more positive perspective, "—when they catch him?" All through Mistress Femke's torture, Chaz's phone had been blowing up with text messages. It was after her third toe was broken, and after the twenty-seventh message was received, that Chaz realized his boss hadn't quite thought through the logistics of this bounty completely. On Vinnie's orders, Chaz had spread the word that whoever caught the Joker was to bring him to their current location in the fetish club. That was precipitating a problem.
Chaz cleared his throat. "Some of the guys are saying that small groups of bounty hunters are camping outside, and a few fights are breaking out."
Dr. Silvi looked to Maroni, and tried to phrase his question as delicately as possible. "You gave instructions to bring the Joker here?"
Maroni shrugged his shoulders. "Of course I wanted him brought here. I want to personally rip that psycho apart with my own hands." He motioned to his bandaged leg. "And thanks to the resident dominatrix loading me with bullets," he shot Mistress Femke a look of fury, "I'm not exactly able to get around too easily."
Dr. Silvi and Chaz exchanged knowing glances. The doctor nodded. "No, of course not – totally understandable… but there might be a bit of a… delivery issue."
Vinnie's face was blank. "Delivery issue?" Then the dawning comprehension came over him. "Aw, fuck." He pointed up toward the ceiling, up to the ground level entrance of the establishment. "Hyenas, right?"
Chaz and Dr. Silvi both nodded silently. Tommy didn't understand. "Hyenas? What does that mean?"
Chaz hit him in the arm with the back of his hand. "You know, vultures. They're waiting for someone else to bring the Joker here, so they can kill that posse and claim the reward for themselves."
Tommy shrugged. "So? As long as someone gets the Joker here, who cares who actually hands him over? If bounty hunters kill each other to claim the reward, how is that our problem?"
Maroni moved to the edge of his chair to clarify. "It's likely to turn into a free-for-all in the final scramble. When the Joker gets here, every one of those assholes will do whatever it takes to get their hands on him, to be the ones who claim that reward. I don't want the Joker getting killed in whatever crossfire breaks out, just mere feet outside those doors." Maroni started to rock back in forth in his chair with anger. "No one is going to rob me of my chance, my RIGHT—" his sudden shout startled everyone in the room, "—my right to kill that bastard myself. I can't risk someone stealing that from me."
Chaz motioned to his phone. "Mr. Maroni, it's probably gonna get even worse than it is now. I've got about thirty different messages from thirty different guys who all claim they've got the Joker, and say they're on their way over now. Thieves are coming out of the gutters from every direction. How're we gonna manage all these thugs? We don't got that kind of man power here."
Maroni pointed as he gave the directive. "Get an updated word out. Change of plans - new location, further out from GPD headquarters, at The Blarney Stone on Danning and Fourth Avenue." It was an Irish pub whose owners were behind in making their protection payments to the Mafia. "Let all the bounty-hunting fucks destroy that place as they fight over who will grab the clown."
Chaz nodded and started to type a message. "Okay, but how are we going to get you across town to The Blarney Stone in your current state?" He motioned to Maroni's leg.
Vinnie's eyes narrowed. "You're not. You give that location, and add the condition that proof of life is mandatory. No one claims the reward without photographic proof that they have him alive. When we see proof that someone's actually nabbed that crazy fuck, then we text that person a message to bring the Joker here. That should scatter the scumbags outside."
Chaz's fingers flew as he furiously typed out the message.
Maroni tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. "What time is it?"
Dr. Silvi looked at the Breitling on his wrist. "It's after 4 am."
Maroni rubbed the back of his neck. "I said I wanted him here before dawn." He looked over at Mistress Femke. "You better hope that someone gets that psycho here before the sun comes up."
Femke's eyes darkened with indignant rage, her voice raspy from her earlier shrieking. "Or what?"
Maroni tapped the pipe wrench with his fingers. "Or we give you a set of toes on your right foot to match the toes on your left foot. That's if the Joker isn't here by dawn. If he is, then your right foot is off limits and I won't touch it."
Femke gritted her teeth and nodded once in reluctant acceptance.
Vinnie cracked his knuckles. "But I didn't say that I wouldn't do anything to some other part of you in the meantime, 'cause I still have some anger issues to work through. Tommy, get the pliers out of my second desk drawer."
As Tommy rummaged through the drawer, Dr. Silvi turned his head and tried to back himself into the furthest corner of the room. Suddenly everyone jumped when Chaz shouted, "Mr. Maroni!"
Visibly startled, the capofamiglia spun in his seat. "What is it?"
Chaz motioned to his phone with an incredulous look on his face. "It's Kruzynski! Walsh just texted me that they grabbed him in a bathroom, at the airport. They dragged him out and they're bringing him over!"
Maroni sucked in his breath quickly. "Kruzynski." He started nodding vehemently. His daughter's murderer. Yes, he would have his vengeance tonight, in spades. "That cocksucker is going to get his tonight. I will rip him apart. Fucking Kruzynski!" It's about God damned time I'm catching some sort of a break on this night from hell.
Dr. Silvi looked down at Mistress Femke, hoping that this revelation had bought her some sort of temporary favor. Then he looked at Chaz. "They dragged him out of the airport? How did that happen without that raising suspicion?"
Chaz looked back down at his phone. "I dunno exactly, he just texted 'people running, emergency at airport'."
Dr. Silvi looked over at Maroni. "Now there's an emergency at the airport? What the hell could that be about?"
Lundgren and Hobbs descended the outside stairs from the control tower, having splashed gasoline all over air traffic controller Fred Grimes and the rest of the employees who were all bound together and locked in the control room. Lucas pulled up with numerous empty gas cans tossed without regard in the back of the baggage truck, having completely dampened the tarmac under numerous super-sized jets with gasoline. He hopped out of the driver's seat and the three men made their way across the tarmac carrying duffle bags loaded with guns, rifles and semiautomatic weapons.
Hobbs and Lucas were elbowing each other, letting their excitement get to them over the prospect of notoriety that awaited them, their being so deeply involved in the Joker's master plan to further terrorize Gotham. Lundgren, however, slowed his gait as he studied his cell phone. "Hey, hold up."
Lucas looked back. "What is it? We gotta go, man. We got a schedule to keep."
Lundgren looked up at them. "Vinnie Maroni put a ten million dollar bounty on the Joker's head."
Hobbs and Lucas high-fived each other, grinning ear to ear.
Lundgren read the message: "'The bulldog will pay ten million dollars to anyone who brings him the Joker alive before dawn, at Flesh For Fantasy.'" 'The bulldog' was just one of the code names used for Vinnie Maroni, whenever jobs-for-hire were brokered underground. That was on the advice of Maroni's own lawyer, lest some mindless henchman name him explicitly in a job offer that involved murder. Lundgren continued: "That was the message a few hours ago, but a new one just came across in the last few minutes: 'New location, The Blarney Stone, meatpacking district, further out from GPD HQ. Proof of life needed before entry is granted. Photos or live video. Clown wanted alive before dawn."
Lucas whistled his surprise. "Wow, Maroni really isn't kidding around, is he? Don't matter, because he's in for disappointment. No one but us knows where the Joker is."
The gears in Lundgren's head started to turn. He'd crossed paths with the Joker while in Arkham, as had many of the men in the clown's employ. Lundgren was an ex-marine, the top sniper in his regiment. That was why the Joker recruited him: he had been the one to fire the first shots when the Joker's crew intercepted the North Korean-manufactured weapons that the Mafia were selling to the Belarussians. Sharp shooting was Lundgren's forte, and he had a formidable track record, sidelined only when his borderline personality disorder made him snap and shoot four of his own fellow Marines, landing him in the infamous asylum.
Lundgren could hit marks at an impressive distance. If he wanted to shoot someone in the heart, he'd find his mark. Or, if he wanted only to wound someone, he could confidently make the shot without any fear of hitting a vital organ. It could be a very bankable skill set… should a job arise offering ten million dollars for an unhinged psychopath in face paint. He looked back and forth at his colleagues and mouthed the words: Ten. Million. Dollars.
Hobbs stopped smiling. "Don't even joke about that, man. No way. Don't try it."
Lundgren smirked. "Why not? If we hand him over to the Mafia, it's not like he's going to survive and come hunt us down. Maroni's gonna kill him. There's no question about that." A crazed, wide-eyed look came over him, and he smiled darkly.
Lucas spoke up. "I don't know—" He cut off his own sentence upon seeing the ferocity on Lundgren's face. The Joker was by far the most dangerous and fearsome man Lucas had ever met, but Lundgren ranked as second. A distant second, to be sure, but second nonetheless. His moods were too mercurial, made all the more dangerous given his extensive experience with firearms.
Hobbs protested further. "Look, even if we went in on this with you, man, the Joker's not going to be alone. We're all meeting together at the warehouse, remember? I mean, what about Darnell and Kosaczyk? They've probably been waiting for hours after that shooting gallery they set up at the Winter Hill Overpass. Don't forget that Jones and Wallace will be there, too. And Curtis."
Lundgren smiled. "I can take them all out before we get to the Joker. I won't miss. I don't miss."
Lucas and Hobbs eyed each other. Hobbs shrugged his shoulders, and Lucas repeated the reward, mulling over its gravity: "Ten million dollars." Both men turned back to Lundgren. "You're sure about this?"
Lundgren pulled out his own private marksman's weapon, a Harris M89 bolt-action rifle, fitted with a sound suppressor. He aimed it over at an illuminated runway, one hundred yards away. With five shots, he took out five of the ground lights in a row. He dropped the weapon down to his side, and looked at the other men. "Like I said, I don't miss."
Smiles slowly waxed on both Hobbs' and Lucas' faces, as an unspoken accord was struck.
All three men crossed the last runway, heading for a trashed warehouse on the distant periphery of the airport. Lundgren slowed his gait slightly, looking in the distance toward the far side of the airport's outskirts, at a helicopter that appeared to be hovering not too far off the ground, shining a spotlight downward.
Hobbs stopped in his tracks. "Wait!" He pointed toward the warehouse, then turned to face Lucas and Lundgren. "Why are there two cop cars where the Joker is supposed to be meeting us?!"
Edward Tritt was livid. He loosened the collar of his prison guard uniform, and stormed over to Detective Murdock, and spat his words in an angry whisper. "What the fuck, man? Where is he? You told us the Joker was going to be here!"
Murdock was starting to sweat visibly, despite the cold October air that poured into the warehouse through numerous broken windows. "He was—uh, I don't, I—" Aw, fucking hell. He was completely at a loss for words. He cursed himself under his breath. The only thing that could be counted on with the Joker was his unaccountability.
Jonas Hodge could feel his stomach roil. "I knew this whole thing was a bad idea. I knew it!"
Tritt snapped at him. "Well if you knew it, why'd you agree to it, asshole?"
Hodge said nothing, just shaking his head and wondering what they'd gotten themselves into, pairing with a dirty cop working for the Joker, and death row convicts. The only grace he could see in the matter was that the convicts were down to just three: Smitty, who claimed to know the Joker from a past encounter, and two others who'd been in the back of the laundry truck. He could have sworn there was another prisoner.
He was right, but just hadn't seen Tritt shoot the man in the head before following them out to the warehouse, for the purpose of increasing each participant's share of the reward.
"Do you think they killed the Batman?" Hodge was thinking about five of the prisoners who'd made their way up to where Batman was being restrained back in the row house they'd left, each man hungry to take his turn beating the vigilante.
Tritt shrugged his shoulders. "I fuckin' hope so. What kind of a dick goes around dressed like a bat, anyway? He needs his ass kicked."
Murdock looked down at his watch again, and shook his head. "He should have been here by now. Something must have g—"
He was interrupted by the sound of a glass bottle being kicked against a metal support beam. All men spun around with weapons drawn at the sound.
"Hey, HEY! Murdock, what is this?!" The voice came from one of the two men who walked out of the darkness.
Murdock instinctively yelled, "Hands in the air!"
Darnell and Kosaczyk stepped out into a beam of moonlight, with confusion clearly written on their faces. Darnell was eyeing the guards with hostility. "Murdock? You wanna tell us what the fuck's goin' on here? Who are these guys? Where's the Joker? We've been waiting for hours!"
"It's okay, lower your weapons," Murdock yelled back over his shoulder. "I was going to ask you the same thing. I haven't seen him, and he hasn't contacted me."
Darnell pressed further. "You didn't answer my question, man. Who are these guys? Where's Curtis? And Jones and Wallace?"
Murdock shook his head. "I have no idea about Jones and Wallace. Haven't seen them or spoken to them all night. And Curtis…" How on earth could he possibly explain what he walked in on, up in The Room, finding Curtis naked and dead with a hunting knife lodged in the back of his head? He opted for brevity: "Curtis is dead."
Kosaczyk shook his head in disappointment. "Shit, man." Kozaczyk assumed that Curtis must have been shot when dumping Stick's hacked up body all over Gotham in parts. "Curtis was all right."
Darnell had a different opinion: "You serious? I'm glad that prick is dead! That guy was fucked up, man. You ever see that tattoo he had on his back? Dude was a like a, a serial rapist or some shit. Really violent."
Smitty piped up. "A lotta bitches need raping, and they ain't gonna rape themselves."
"Jesus, Smitty!" Murdock choked in disgust. What kind of low-lifes have I gotten into bed with, to take down the Joker?
Darnell furrowed his brow at Smitty. "What did you say?! Who the fuck are you, anyway?" He looked him up and down, along with the other two men in orange jumpsuits. He scoffed, "You guys on a field trip from prison or somethin'?" He laughed at his own insult and smiled over at Kosaczyk.
Smitty stepped forward. "Oh, you think you're hot shit, do you?"
Darnell snapped back. "Damn straight, bitch! You see what happened at the Winter Hill Overpass? That was our handiwork. Mowed down ambulances and fire trucks like they was nothin'!"
Smitty spat at him sarcastically. "Well aren't you just the big man?"
Darnell smiled. "Yeah, that's what your momma said to me last night when I was plowin' her hard."
"All right, all right! Enough! Look," Murdock stepped forward, wondering how to play this hand. He couldn't chance letting Darnell and Kosaczyk know that he was working with the guards and prisoners to collect the bounty for catching the Joker. Those two Overpass shooters were unquestionably loyal to the clown, and would alert him to any suspected betrayal the first chance they got. "There was a bounty placed on the Joker's head tonight."
Kosaczyk nodded. "Yeah, by Maroni. We heard."
It was exactly the response Murdock wanted to hear. "Right, so there are countless people in Gotham gunning for the Joker right now. I figured we could use all the men we could get, to help—" he looked back at Tritt and narrowed his eyes, " –protect him. I brought a little personal back-up here. We can trust these guys." Murdock was lying through his teeth, but prayed the men would believe his spontaneous artifice. In truth, for all Murdock knew, the guards or the prisoners would shoot him in the back the first chance they got, despite making good on his pledge to aid them.
"You sure?" Darnell's eyes narrowed.
Years as a mole in the GPD helped to make Murdock a cool liar. "Absolutely. There's no way I'd bring in anyone who wasn't fully vested in helping us."
Smitty scoffed, "Ha! Yeah," looking off to the side, smiling.
Darnell spun on him quickly. "The fuck you say, man? What was that?" He started to advance on Smitty but Murdock intercepted him.
"It's okay." He nodded in Smitty's direction. "He's just… he worked with the Joker in the past, and he's pretty confident that the big guy doesn't need help from any of us in the personal protection department. Still," he shot a warning look at Smitty, "he's going to help us look out for him."
Darnell taunted Smitty, "Yeah, you better, man."
The sound of a heavy door sliding in its tracks drew everyone's attention to the back of the warehouse, as Lucas, Hobbs and Lundgren came in. All three men had their guns drawn. Hobbs shouted, "Who's there? Who are you?!"
Murdock tried to get ahead of this one. "It's okay, guys. It's okay. Just," he motioned back to the guards and prisoners, "more protection for the Joker." Lundgren looked over at Darnell and Kosaczyk for confirmation. Both men nodded to convey that it was safe, and Darnell rolled his eyes and shrugged. All three newcomers lowered their weapons.
"Everything set at the airport?" Murdock wondered if they'd had enough time to get all the planes into place, and ensure the tarmac was covered with gasoline.
Lundgren smiled, but his eyes bore no warmth. "The planes are in place, the charges are rigged, and there's gasoline everywhere."
Tritt piped up, not even caring about the revelation that the airport was about to be blown up. "So where is the Joker, huh? Anybody know? I mean, we can't… protect him if we don't know were he is." Tritt was already counting Maroni's bounty money in his head.
As was Lundgren. "Yeah, anyone get word from him?"
All the Joker's men shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads. Murdock looked at the three men who just entered. "Did you see anything that would indicate a detour in plans?"
Lucas shook his head. "Nope, nothing." He turned his head, fearful that his guilty expression would betray the confidence he was supposed to be keeping, conspiring with Hobbs and Lundgren to turn the Joker over to Maroni.
Lundgren spoke up. "The only thing I noticed when we walked over here was a low-flying helicopter, hovering over a spot on the far side of the airport."
The Daily Planet rogue reporting duo was staying relentlessly in place overhead. Kip was still filming and Matt was doing his best to keep the helicopter steady.
Lex Luthor turned his head up and glared at them, shielding his eyes from one of the spotlights shining down. He keenly noticed that they were in a private helicopter. Although they appeared to have a professional-grade camera with them, the copter lacked the equipment for real-time broadcast to a central news station.
That was a plus for Luthor. No matter what the reporters ended up recording, there was a chance to make it disappear. However, the ego in him considered the merit of the exchange being recorded for posterity. When Superman showed up… well, he'd love to have official documentation to savor for years to come of what he was going to do with him.
The same train of thought was running through the Joker's mind, for the purposes of documenting what he was about to do to the Batman. For practicality reasons, as dramatic an aerial shot as a helicopter could capture, it wouldn't mean much if the dialogue weren't recorded. That wasn't going to happen with the sound of helicopter blades drowning everything out.
Looking directly up at the camera, he smiled and beckoned the helicopter down with his hands, then lowering his hands in a downward motion to simulate the helicopter coming down. He slowly mouthed the word, "interview", smiling and nodding squarely into the camera's lens.
Kip yelled to Matt, "You're not going to believe this! He wants you to land the helicopter!"
Matt scoffed. "What?! Are you kidding? That can't be right. How do you know?"
Kip clarified with excitement. "I saw him say 'interview' to the camera. I was on full zoom, there was no mistaking what he was saying. He motioned that he wants us to come down."
"Jesus, Kip. You're out of your mind to even consider that!"
Kip countered, "No, I'm not! This guy loves attention. Look at him, he's eating it up! He wants us to record him. And I don't know if you saw it, but a woman climbed out of that tank. It's gotta be Lois Lane!"
"Are you sure? To me it looked like, well, it sort of looked like a policewoman."
"I'm positive it's her! She looks like total hell, but it's her. If he hasn't killed her, and he's holding her responsible for insulting him and causing all this—" he swept his hand out around the scope of the city, "—then he's not going to do anything to us. We're in the clear!"
Matt shook his head. "Can you really not see just how badly this could end up going?"
Kip leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder. "Great risks mean great rewards. No one else has done anything like this, in the history of journalism! Being invited to talk to the man responsible for terrorizing an entire city… as it's still playing out?! We're breaking ground into new territory. This is how we make our mark, Matt. I'm telling you! We will never have an opportunity like this again. Ever!"
Matt hesitated. This felt way too dangerous, but as Kip pointed out, this could put them on the journalism map. Oh, God. What am I getting myself into? God, please don't let me die. Please don't let me die. Please don't let me die. He swallowed, shaking his head at the concession he was making. "Okay. I'll land, and you hop out and get your damned interview. But I'm warning you, I see the first sign of trouble from him, and I'm outta here. With or without you!"
"Deal!" Kip was grinning ear to ear, as Matt gently began to set the helicopter down about 50 yards away from the men, trying to keep the gusts from the propellers to a respectable distance.
Lex yelled over toward the tumbler at the Joker. "Excellent job making a discreet arrival," he motioned to the helicopter as it landed.
The Joker nodded with purpose and gave Lex a big thumbs up. "You're welcome!"
Lex's jaw jutted to the side, and he shook his head.
The Joker pulled out a cell phone and began typing. Lex stiffened. "What are you doing?"
The clown stuck his tongue out to the side, as he concentrated on his screen. "Updating my Twitter feed!"
"Twitter feed." Lex nodded slowly, offering sarcastic approval. "Nice."
The Joker looked up, feigning being affronted. "Uh, yeah…? What, you're not already following me?" More typing.
Lex responded with silence, glaring at the clown.
The Joker was actually sending a text message to Detective Murdock: New meeting point, now. Auxiliary airport, strip #6. Come armed. He tucked the phone back in his pocked, then turned to Lois. "Okay, Sweet Tart. Showtime. Let's go."
Lois followed as the Joker took a few strides toward Lex. Then, he began skipping. Skipping in a wavering path, humming with a sing-song voice in cadence to every bounce. "Hmm! Hmm-Hmm! Hmm-Hmm! Hmm-Hmm!" Then he stretched his arms out, like a child pretending to be an airplane, slaloming his path toward Luthor. "Neeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhrrrrrrrooooooooom!"
Lex was not amused.
The Joker intentionally stopped a few feet away from him. "I wanted to come over here and formally introduce myself." He cleared his throat, and made an exaggerated show of pulling on his coat sleeves, flattening his collar, and pressing his hair back while he sucked his cheeks in. He was mocking the vanity of the ultra wealthy.
The Joker stuck his hand out, in an offer to formally shake like businessmen. "I'm very pleased to meet you." His tongue swiped over his bottom lip, touching the scar on the outside of his left cheek, and he smiled broadly, yellow teeth bared. Lex felt himself recoil, but not from fear. From repulsion. He made no effort to close the distance between them, and he kept his hands in his coat pockets.
The Joker furrowed his brow in a display of confusion. "How are you going to shake my hand from over there? Come greet me like… like the civilized men that we both are." He tilted his head to the side. "Or do I scare you?"
The billionaire scoffed, fixing his jaw and smiling in disdain.
The clown took a step forward, hand still extended. He continued, "It's okay, really. I promise that I don't bite." Another step forward. His eyes were wide with nearly child-like eagerness.
Lex looked at the outstretched hand with contempt. The Joker tried to allay his apprehension. "Look, I won't bite. I promise." Another step forward, until he was directly in front of Lex.
"Biting's not my thing." He dropping his chin down, keeping his eyes fixed on Lex. "Stabbing is."
Lex stiffened. "Are you trying to be funny?"
"Nooooooo… I, uh… I'm trying to make good on a deeeeal that you proposed to me, remember?" He looked back and Lois, then back at Lex, leaning in toward the man with a lowered voice. He didn't want Lois to know what was coming. "You borrow her from me, once Batman gets here. Borrow, get it? You don't get to take her from me."
The billionaire was stone-faced. "Trust me. I have no interest whatsoever in spending one more moment of my life around her than absolutely necessary. I can promise you that the last thing I want to do is take her."
The clown worked his mouth. "And neither can… your 'friend'. The one you're drawing out. Her… ah, shall we say, her boyfriend?"
Lex smiled with cold eyes. "Trust me. He won't be going anywhere with her."
The Joker held his right hand up in front of Lex's face, wiggling his fingers, reminding the man that they still hadn't officially consummated the arrangement by pressing the flesh. "Then we have a deal?"
Lex took a measured beat before pulling his hand out of his pocket, to shake the clown's hand. "Yes, we do."
"Good!" The Joker took Lex's hand firmly, and shook it in a comically exaggerated manner. Lex found it hard not to stare at the scars, all the more prominent for having been painted blood red. The broad smile on the face of the man in front of him was nothing less than garish.
Lex looked away, and pulled his hand out of the Joker's grip, making a mental note to burn the gloves now that they'd been soiled with the touch of the lunatic. He nodded over the Joker's shoulder at Lois, who was visibly shivering in the Gotham Police uniform she was wearing. "Why is she dressed like that?"
The Joker looked over at her, and waved for her to step forward next to him. "She ran into a bit of a… wardrobe malfunction earlier." He pretended to brush dirt off of Lois' shoulder.
"And you happened to have a policewoman's uniform on hand." A statement, not a question. Lex didn't want to ask the Joker questions, lest he get pulled into some disjointed tangent of no worth.
The Joker went through that door anyway. "Well," he cleared his throat, "you'd, uh, be surprised at all the things I keep in my closets." He winked.
"I don't want to know."
The Joker took that as an invitation. "Okay, so I keep a bicycle tire, several sets of handcuffs—"
"I…"
"—a copy of 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' on the top shelf—"
"…don't…"
"—a plastic tub with, like, seventy or eighty knives in it, half of a pastrami sandwich—"
"...want…"
"—a box of flea collars for cats, some really, really dirty laundry—"
"…to…"
"—some military grade weapons that I stole from the Mafia, a trombone I bought on eBay—"
"…know!"
"—and a marshmallow launcher." He nodded for emphasis. "That's what's in the hall closet. I'd tell you what's in my other closets, but you need to get to know me better first."
Lex hissed at him. "No thank you."
The helicopter had set down and the rotors were winding down. As Lois looked over toward the two men in the helicopter, a blast of iciness washed over her. She became aware that back of her legs and her seat felt positively freezing, more so than the rest of her body. With her left hand, she reached down to touch the back of her leg and seat, underneath the left cheek. When she drew back her hand, a rush of horror came over her.
Her hand was completely red, slick with blood. Her pants were soaked in it.
Lois' eyes grew big and she gasped, looking with panic to the Joker for some sort of explanation. She held her hand out for him to see, frightened tears welling in her eyes. "Is this blood?"
Lex tilted his head with mild curiosity. There was no mistaking what was on her hand.
The Joker's right side of his mouth was hitched back in a playful smirk. He wondered how long it would take her to notice the blood. He lifted his eyebrows and looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. "It sure is, Lois."
She searched his face for some sort of explanation. "I—I don't understand… what—where did this blood come from?"
The Joker rolled his eyes. "Well, it didn't come from me. It's your pants that are covered in blood. Actually," he leaned back and looked at her behind, "the back of your pants is covered in blood, to be more precise."
She furrowed her brow in confusion.
"You're a woman, Lois. Why would the back of a woman's pants be covered in blood?" He stuck the tip of his tongue out to touch the corner of his mouth, allowing the insinuation to sink in.
Lois considered for a moment, and then a burning shame flushed her cheeks crimson. "Oh, no. Did I—oh…" Her eyes teared up like a child's.
"I brought a few items with me when we left, but none of them were," he leaned forward and mouthed the words in an exaggerated fashion, "feminine hygiene products."
Lois was completely baffled at what was going on, but a waxing embarrassment threatened to push her into a crying jag. Did I get my period? I bled all over my own pants? Why am I bleeding so much? Humiliation overtook her.
The Joker knew very well that the blood wasn't hers. When he first explored the inside of the tumbler back at the row house, he had seen the blood in the passenger seat, still relatively fresh, enough of it to pool slightly. He hadn't puzzled out an explanation for how the blood got there, but he hoped that the Batman had finally snapped and murdered someone. He had no idea that one of his own henchmen, Jones, had stabbed himself in the neck and bled out, instead of risking being found out by the clown as having informed Batman as to their base of operations.
The Joker sighed dramatically, shaking his head. Then he looked over at Luthor. "Hey, Lexy…"
Lex tilted his chin upward in defiance, not giving the lunatic the satisfaction of a reply for addressing him in so pedestrian a manner.
The Joker turned his palms upward and shrugged, scrunching up his face apologetically. "Lois is going to need to borrow one of your tampons."
Murdock's cell phone went off. He jumped, and pulled it out of his pocket, drawing the attention of everyone in the warehouse.
"Well?" Edward Tritt's patience was nearly at its end.
"Change in location. We need to move, now!" He started running, and everyone followed in tow. "Strip 6, auxiliary landing area. Other side of the airport!"
The men tore out of the warehouse, dividing themselves up to ride in the two police cars and the van that Kosaczyk and Darnell had driven from the Winter Hill Overpass. The gears had been turning in Mudock's mind: they'd had to let five of the Joker's men think that he, the guards and prisoner were going to the Joker's aid as back-up. He was furiously trying to cook up a scheme to turn the tables that would allow them to grab the Joker for the bounty.
Murdock was getting into one of the police cars, when two shots rang out. Everyone instinctively hit the ground, reaching for their own weapons. Murdock looked up and was stunned to see Lundgren standing with a gun in his hand, and Darnell and Kosaczyk dead on the ground.
Jonas Hodge was horrified. "Why did you shoot your own men?"
Lundgren turned to the rest of the group and smiled, Hobbs and Lucas walking behind him to show a united front. "Those two were loyal to the clown. I'm not. And I strongly suspect that the rest of you are loyal to that bounty that Maroni put out."
Murdock blinked in shock. "What?"
Lundgren scoffed. "How dumb do you think we are? You didn't bring those men to protect the Joker, you brought them to kidnap him. That's what we're doing."
Lucas sucked his breath in at his colleague's seeming betrayal of their confidential agreement. Lundgren looked back at him and winked. He had a plan. He turned back to the rest of the men. "The more people working together, the better the chance we'll have of grabbing him, right?"
Tritt wasn't happy about the prospect of having to split the bounty with any more people than necessary, but he nodded with a grunt. As soon as they had the Joker, he was planning on killing everyone but Hodge. The rest of the men agreed as well.
Lundgren motioned to the cars. "Then let's get going!" He, Lucas and Hobbs took the van, leaving the other six men to split up between the two police cars. Once in the van, Hobbs demanded an explanation. Lundgren smiled. "Once we have the Joker, we're killing everyone else, and we're splitting that bounty between the three of us."
Hobbs and Lucas nodded at each other in agreement.
As the three-car caravan made its trek to the auxiliary airstrip, Lundgren was already calculating how he'd eventually kill Hobbs and Lucas, too.
The posse's numbers would soon be diminishing. Violently.
On the far side of the airport grounds, a black pick-up truck smashed through an old chain link fence, as the driver listened to the exact coordinates being read to him of his tumbler's location on the airport grounds.
Batman spotted a small plane and three people in the distance. "There."
Death nodded. "I sees 'em."
He floored the accelerator.
Lex was infuriated and repulsed by the base humor the clown was displaying. He didn't know what had happened to explain the blood all over Lois' pants, but he was not about to be dragged down to some cretin's level of rejoinders. He gritted his teeth and began to work through how he'd respond to the Joker's crude remark, when something caught his eye. Lex furrowed his brow as he saw the black pickup truck approach with significant speed. "What's that?"
The Joker looked over his shoulder at the approaching vehicle and smiled. "That," he turned back to Lex, "is one of the last players showing up for our game."
"Game?" Lex narrowed his eyes.
The Joker's smile vanished. "Did I say 'game'? I meant business agreement."
. . . . . . .
Author's Notes for "Bracing for Impact"
. . . . . . .
Back in Chapter 38, "Into the Funhouse", we learn that Lex Luthor purchased the only known transcript of Batman's interrogation of the Joker, on the night that he was captured and taken to the MCU. After two years of wanting to murder Superman, for the betrayal he felt at Clark Kent not trusting him with his secret identity, the contents of that interrogation transcript changed the course of Lex's vengeance from murder to corruption; Lex saw that the Joker's game wasn't to kill Batman but to break him. Lex realized that it would be a much more satisfying course to do the same to Superman.
Subsequently in Chapter 45, "Deal With the Devil", Lex calls the Joker using Lois' phone, and reveals just how similar the two of them are, in their drive to corrupt seemingly incorruptible men like Batman and Superman. Lex told the Joker that his only interest in Lois was using her to bait Superman, and they struck their accord: Lex would draw out Superman to "save" Lois, so the Batman would feel that he'd failed, and Lex promised some plan that would do the same to Superman… though he never revealed to the Joker what it was.
All we know, from Chapter 38, is that he has his hands on a small piece of rock that is smaller than a dime.
If you've never looked up a marshmallow launcher online… you should.
As for this story line – things are about to go nuclear.
-4ofCups, 2016.04.04
