A Man of His Word

Chapter Three: Boss

Doc escorted me out to the back yard where we made laps around the playground, observing the behaviors of the other patients whom took up the middle of the grounds. Some stayed in the grass, pulling out the flowers from the fertile soil to create hand-made necklaces or bracelets. The non-communicable patients sat on the swings without moving, lost in thoughts of their own. The more vocal patients sat at the tables and had erratic conversations with each other or themselves in incoherent speech patterns. This was what the staff called 'recess' for the mentally insane. Fresh air was good for all of us. You could lose yourself faster spending a lot of time in a cell. But only the more 'innocuous' patients were let outside. The more dangerous ones were locked in a heavily padded cell in maximum security, like Dr. Crane.

It made me sad that if ever they caught Boss, he'd be one of them.

"Why didn't you fight him, Costlee?" asked Doc curiously, striding beside me leisurely with her hands behind her back, hands clasped together with dubious thought.

We hadn't said a word since we left the room.

"I thought the other man was his friend," I answered. "And he shot him. What would you have done?"

"But he pulled you out of the vault, with several people in view. Why didn't you scream, or wriggle free out of his arms?"

"There were other gunmen in the bank."

"Were they his men?"

"Yes," I said. "Whatever he was after, he didn't take it. He left without money, without codes. All he did was take the keys."

"And you," said Doc pointedly.

"Because I could identify him," I said.

"Who did you tell that you had an eidetic memory?"

"Hardly anyone," I said. "No one I thought would particularly care."

"I hear that it's quite a powerful thing to have."

"I wanted to fly under the radar."

"So who knew that you had one?"

I shrugged. "I mean, I told my father several years back. I used to count cards for him when he'd take me to a casino. He had a gambling problem."

"Did he gamble with the mob's money."

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "I was seventeen the last time that he took me to the casino."

"And the casino. Who owns that?"

"How should I know?" I snapped irritably.

"Sal Maroni," Doc said calmly. "He owns the casino. He also owned some of the law enforcement before Harvey Dent started to prosecute them. Do you think that the reason why those criminals knew about your memory prowess was because your father mentioned it to the mob so he could escape a gambling debt?"

She posed that question; and actually, it made a lot of sense.

I shrugged my lips, quietly admitting that 'Hey, you've got a point right there'. Doc seemed pleased with this little 'breakthrough' and continued to walk with me.

"All right, so," she pushed forward. "You were put into the back of the van, and he drove you where?"

He had jumped into the back of the van with me, and it seemed as if my presence there had actually been part of the plan because the driver spoke from the front, "So that's the girl, hm? Where's Chuck?"

"Lost his head," said my kidnapper, who made himself comfortable beside me. "You can sit up if you want, Costlee. It ain't gonna do much harm if you don't want to lie down like that. But," he was quick to lower his face within inches of mine, peering down at me with authority as I'd never seen before, "if you make an attempt to try to be rescued..."

"You'll kill me." I repeated his threat.

"Look at that, you do have a great memory."

I made to sit up in the moving van. It swirled this way and that. Two lefts, and a right, then heading straight. Traffic must have been pretty clear. There were five traffic lights to pass with the directions the driver was taking. And unless he was running red lights, which wouldn't have surprised me, there weren't a lot of people on the street. That alone was strangely odd, since it was in the middle of the afternoon, and around these parts close to the bank, traffic was almost always congested.

"So," I attempted to make some sort of conversation with my kidnapper. My voice was surprisingly steady, compared to what it was like in the vault. "What do I call you?"

"Persistent little thing, aren't you?" he said, and he uttered an unidentifiable chuckle. "Well, I suppose that we should get to know each other a little better. No, no," he shook his finger at me—I imagined that his word choice had made me visibly uncomfortable—"not like that. But if you're going to work with me, I suppose you shouldn't refer to me as 'the kidnapper'. That's just not a good name at all."

"Work with you?" I repeated. "I don't know what I could possibly do for you, in that way. I have no technical skills, I don't know how to suture a wound...which I guess, would actually be pretty useful in your line of...work." I glanced at his sidearm hooked onto his police uniform.

"All of those things you can learn. That brain of yours makes you a fast learner."

"Why didn't you take the money from the vault?" I asked.

"Why, indeed."

He never answered my questions, he just added more to the fire that he still wouldn't answer.

"Everyone always wants to know why," he said in a gravelly, low voice, as if he were talking to himself. "It just...is."

A pause.

Two rights, a left, another left.

"We're going in circles," I told him quietly.

He looked at me curiously, glancing around the van as if to wonder how I knew. No windows in the back of the van, and I couldn't see pass the driver's window. It took him a second to understand, and then he smiled so widely that his scars along his jaw stretched and deepened.

"That brain of yours," he wagged a finger at me. "Yes, we are."

"Why?"

"Why." He shook his head. "Why. Why. You must have been a gem to have in the class. Because," he explained, "the cops are going to be trying to find us."

I didn't understand, but I supposed it made sense to him or even the driver; so perhaps it was because I wasn't in on the not-plan. I shrugged away his explanation, still adamantly confused. I stared at a random spot on the floor of the van and chose to keep my eyes on that rather than on him. Yet, although I turned away, I could feel his eyes burning a hole in my face.

"Boss," he said.

"What?" I startled.

"Boss. That's what you'll call me," he said.

That's strange.

"Boss." I muttered.

"Yeah?" he answered as if I had called his name.

"Nothing. Just, uh...feeling it out. Or something." Even hearing the explanation made me feel socially awkward. How does one do that in a van full of 'interesting' people who just attempted—or did they—to rob the Gotham National Bank? My voice trailed off.

"I can see that you're quite uncomfortable," said Boss.

"I am."

"That's a good thing."

"Wh—?" I almost asked him 'Why?', but I cut myself short. I shouldn't really ask that anymore. I found it better to play along after all. He was intimidating, and I feared if I ever upset him that he'd act irrationally, just as he killed Guy Named Chuck inside the vault. And I wondered briefly if he'd dismiss my death as quickly as he dismissed Guy Named Chuck. The driver didn't even mention wondering what happened for Chuck to lose his head. He was never brought up again. It was as if Boss had done this enough that if a person went missing, you'd have known exactly what happened anyway. And the driver never asked why. That was a good enough rationale to keep me quiet.

"Let me tell you the rules." Boss said.

"I didn't know a man like you would have rules," I remarked.

"Cute, but there are, and there aren't."

Jesus, it's like riding with the Riddler.

"Okay." I said.

Do I just look like I have a permanently confused expression on my face? I hope it at least looks flattering.

"When we get to where we're going," said Boss, "You will do everything that I say. You won't ask why, you will simply do. As long as you do these things, you'll live to see another day. If you don't, I'll kill you. There might be some freaky stuff happening; you won't try to figure out what is going on outside of the cabin."

"Cabin?"

"You really can't control yourself, can you?" Boss said tiredly. "Do you have to know every single detail? Oh, you're one of those." A thin smile appeared on his face. For a rather dark fellow, he smiled a lot. "Boys," he addressed the driver and passenger of the van, "Looks like we've got a control freak."

The two men up front chuckled knowingly.

"Do you know that's how we were able to get in to the vault, Costlee?" Boss remarked with delicious delight. "Your routine is absolutely defined by control. Well, sweetie pie, your whole world is about to be out of your control."

I wonder what upset me more: the fact that they had followed my routine so equivically as I did, or the fact that Boss knew exactly would make me the most anxious. I think both did the same thing, for I felt the familiar pulse in my ears, my blood began to pump as if someone were doing the living for me.

"Look, listen," he suddenly lunged for me, and I reacted—I started by trying to edge away from him on the floor of this van, but there wasn't anywhere for me to escape; so he grabbed the side of my face, fingers digging into the underside of my jaw. What stilled me was a sudden glint of light bouncing off the serrated edge of a pocket knife he held so close to my lips. "Listen." He cooed in a slow whisper, as if in attempt to calm me.

Still, I felt my face burn.

"If you're going to do it," I hissed, feeling the beginning of anger begin to push through my nerves, "Do it."

"You might be all nerves and anxiety, but there's fight in you," said Boss.

He tapped the flat of the knife against my cheek.

"You'd feel a lot better if you'd just let go for a moment."

I pursed my lips together.

"Or has that failed you in the past?"

Did he want an answer, or was all of this rhetorical.

"Guess we'll figure it out together." Boss said. "You're like the rest of Gotham, Costlee. Throw a wrench into a machine, and all you get is chaos. But there are times that if you make a very good dish, and something random gets added to it, it turns absolutely delicious." Upon the word, he tightened his grasp along my jaw, but then he released me.

A few seconds of silence passed.

"Whatever you hear outside the cabin, the cabin that you will be staying in, you are not to interfere," continued Boss as if he hadn't been interrupted. "Whatever people you see, you will not engage unless I ask you to."

"No, you mean unless you tell me to."

"I'm not an unfair guy, Costlee; I will always give you a choice." Boss corrected me. "It is up to you to make it."

"Like the ultimatum you gave me in the vault?"

"Ultimatum is a very fancy word for 'option'." Boss replied nonchalantly. "The options will always win in my favor. It's up to you to decide if it bodes well for you."

"It was either die or go with you," I said, unable to help myself.

"Well, I mean, right now you can change your mind," Boss said incredulously, withdrawing the pistol from his waistband, "if you want to pick option A instead. But this is the only choice that you can take back."

"No, no," I shook my head quickly, gesturing for him to put the pistol down. "No, no."

"Oh, okay. It'll be good for both of us if you make up your mind the first time. Women," he muttered, holstering the pistol once more.

I couldn't help but a feel a bit amused—a very loose term of the word—about how he would interact with me. It was almost jokingly. If he presented two bad choices as a joke, why did it sound not as bad as when he was threatening me? The lightheartedness was coming strange from a kidnapper, from someone who had committed murder right in front of me. Was I still in shock?

"All right, we're almost there, Joker," said the driver up front.

Joker. Well that explains his behaviors. There had been rumors. But it wasn't public knowledge. More like...More like a ghost story that parents told their children to keep them from joining the Mob or going out at night. One of those things. Perhaps he was making a name for himself.

Boss glanced at me knowingly.

"You call me 'Boss'," he said.

"Yes, Boss." I attempted at appeasing him. It was the only way that I was going get through this.

"Good girl." He reached toward my face and patted my cheek patronizingly with an open palm.

A stomach flutter.

Strange sensations, I thought. The words themselves registered praise. As long as he said that to me, I knew I wasn't going to be hurt. And yet...