The Rabbit Hole
6.
Theme: Kelly Lee Owens - 'Arpeggi' (Youtube) (Spotify)
Helena -
It was like walking on water.
Like gliding across a smooth, widening pool, her toes barely touching the surface.
Molly sighed out a long string of relieved curses when Helena pulled the Ducati into Texas Joe's Body Shop, where Molly was waiting with her adult sons, Foggy and Paul. She helped Helena change out of her clothes, which were covered in DNA, and gunpowder, and other physical evidence, and bagged them up along with the Glock 16 she'd used to do the job. Foggy and Paul took it all to dispose of where the Falcones and the cops on their payroll would never find it.
Molly cupped Helena's face in her hands as Foggy rolled the Ducati into the back of the garage, hiding it behind a canvas sheet.
"How do you feel, my love?"
Like nothing was the answer. Weightless and invisible. Like she was evaporating on the spot.
"Tired," Helena admitted.
"Paul will drive you home," Molly said, but Helena shook her head.
"I'll take the subway."
Molly let her go, reluctantly, but pressed an old Nokia cell phone into her hands first.
"I'll be in touch, love."
On the metro, the sense of gliding continued. Helena thought about what she had to do at work the next day. The publicity campaign for the reactor announcement needed to be signed off. She had to chase up the caterer for Miranda's Christmas party. Arrangements still needed to be made for Pino's funeral.
She thought about how the families of the five men she just killed would need to make similar arrangements.
Per Molly's instructions, she'd left her iPhone at home; it would make her easy to track, unlike the 'burners' the Sullivans used to communicate. Without her phone, Helena didn't know if Dinah would be home. If she was, she'd say she went for a walk. When your brother was murdered, you were allowed to go for as many walks as you wanted, no matter what time of day.
But Dinah wasn't home. The loft was quiet and dark and empty, and Helena's phone was where she left it in the kitchen. Dinah had texted to say she would be home late. It was almost midnight now, but who knew what 'late' meant in a cop's book. Either way, she was relieved Dinah wasn't there so she wouldn't have to look her in the eye after what she just did.
She hadn't enjoyed it. When she'd kicked the restaurant door open, her heart was racing so fast she felt like she was going to pass out. Her hands trembled as she fired at the men sitting at the table, missing the kill shots because she was shaking so badly. They'd started screaming in pain, surprising her. It was surprising that she could hurt people so badly. But their pain centered her. She took the kill shots and put them out of their misery—all of them.
The last one begged. This big man, Yuppie Don. According to Foggy and Paul, he was the one who'd tracked Pino down.
Pino would have begged—he loved being alive too much not to.
And then it was over, the smell of blood and gunsmoke and the Italian cooking smells she grew up with filling her lungs.
Helena could still smell it. It hit her like a wave as she stood alone in her kitchen, making her dizzy. She slapped a hand down on the counter to steady herself as she started to sway, and all she could think was, thank god Dinah wasn't there to see her like this.
She gagged and ran to the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time to empty the contents of her stomach. She collapsed on the bathroom floor, wiping her mouth, then wiping the toilet seat as best she could, her vision blurring like she'd hit her head. She struggled to her feet, using the bathroom sink to haul herself up, and she faced herself in the mirror.
She was weightless.
She opened the medicine cabinet and fumbled for the diazepam hidden behind skincare products and allergy medication, shaking out two in her palm and then a third for good measure. She swallowed them with a mouthful of water straight from the tap, then let the water run over her tongue.
The phone Molly gave her was on the floor beside the toilet, and Helena used the last of her energy to pick it up and stagger into the bedroom, shedding her clothes before she fell on the bed in her underwear. She lay there, breathing hard, head spinning, throat aching, and she thought about Dinah coming home and finding her like that, which was enough to force her to sit up and pull on the tee-shirt she slept in.
She climbed under the covers and tucked the burner phone under the mattress on her side of the bed before finally collapsing on her back, her work done.
But she wasn't done. Not yet.
Foggy called Yuppie Don 'practice,' and Molly smacked him on the back of the head and told him he was a bloody idiot. Molly was no stranger to murder, just like Helena's father hadn't been, but she wanted to protect Helena from that. She didn't want Helena to feel like a murderer. A killer who needed to practice.
But that's what she was now, Helena realized.
And Molly had been right; there was no going back from this.
The Joker -
Ed's knock-off-Harley showgirl, Shimmie, woke up as Frost pulled the Caddy out of the Saks staff parking lot. Like the rest of them, her ears were still ringing from the grenades and gunfire, and she was talking loud, complaining, and shrieking as she wrenched around on the back seat.
Harley, who was squeezed between J and Frost in the front, got up on her knees and reached into the back to punch Shimmie in the face, which just got her madder and less quiet.
"Glovebox, doc," Frost recommended, his eyes on the road as they pulled onto the Midtown Bridge. Sirens wailed as the pigs drove past them in the opposite direction toward the Diamond District.
The Joker banged his fist against the wood-paneled glovebox, which popped open to reveal a few dangerous items, including a cloth rag and a canister of chloroform.
"The boss is gonna rip you limb from limb!" Shimmie raged from the backseat. "I'll never give him up! Never! You'll have to kill me first!"
Harley rolled her eyes while the Joker turned to squint at the Siren, who was wearing a glittering star-spangled leotard and fishnets beneath a white fur coat, her arms zip-tied behind her back as she wriggled around on the long leather seat.
Shimmer scowled at J. "I'll never talk!"
The Joker shrugged helplessly as he dumped a not-insignificant amount of chloroform on the rag.
"Why dontcha see how you feel about that once you've had a word with the real Harley Quinn, hmm?"
Shimmie's eyes widened indignantly, but before she could say another word, J lurched over the seat and grabbed a handful of her crunchy, white-blonde hair, shoving the rag over her nose and mouth. She struggled furiously for about three seconds before she got sluggish and floppy, her eyes rolling back in her head as she succumbed to the chloroform.
They drove east to the Bowery, beyond the relatively civilized Meatpacking District and Cauldron neighborhoods into the more derelict part of the Eastside where heroin was prevalent, and Alexandra Kosov and her gang ran the streets. Harley had a particular place in mind for how to make Shimmie more… amenable to them. It took an hour to find it, by which point the Joker had taken to smoking Frost's Lucky Strikes, ignoring Harley when she harangued him about dying of lung cancer.
Finally, they found the spot, a small tattoo parlor down the street from a rowdy biker bar, which was blaring metal music as brawling patrons spilled out into the street, only lit by a flickering streetlamp. It was coming up to two in the morning, but the tattoo parlor was still open - possibly catering to any drunken bikers who decided they needed some late-night ink.
They parked right out front, and Frost hauled Shimmie over his shoulder, carrying her easily as she hung limply in his arms. Harley looked a little more feral than she had at the beginning of the night, her warpaint smeared and the neck of her red dress ripped to her shoulder, the ruffled cuff of one long sleeve dangling by a thread. She was sweaty and sooty, running high on adrenaline, and the Joker could see she wasn't ready for the night to end.
Harley led them inside the tattoo parlor, the bell jingling as they stepped over the threshold. The floor was cement, and the walls were painted black, covered in framed designs of the most popular tattoos — flaming skulls, tribal prints, and MOTHER written in Helvetica.
A heavily tattooed man was giving a bald biker a tattoo on the back of his head. His eyes narrowed in concentration as the tattoo gun buzzed noisily.
Harley cleared her throat meaningfully, prompting both men to look up. The tattoo artist had a cigarette dangling between his lips. His eyes widened, and his jaw went slack, the cigarette tumbling to the floor.
"Shit!" the biker yelped, sprang out of the seat. His eyes darted from Harley to the Joker to Frost, who had Shimmie dangling over his shoulder, her sequined ass peeking out from under her white fur coat. Then he bolted like a coward, the door jingling cheerfully after him.
"What uh… what can I help you with?" the parlor owner stammered, getting to his feet with more dignity. "I ain't got any money."
"Why do they always think it's about money," the Joker mused, shooting Harley a knowing look.
"We need to borrow your chair," Harley explained drolly. "Just give us an hour."
The parlor owner glanced at Shimmie, at her long, fishnet-clad legs dangling limply over Frost's shoulder, possibly thinking about doing something chivalrous. But in the end, he kept his mouth shut and shuffled out of his store, pulling the door closed behind him.
Harley locked it and turned to the Joker.
"Why don't we get Ms Shimmie comfortable."
Frost sliced through the zip-ties binding Shimmie's wrists and lowered her into the parlor chair while Harley and the Joker examined a tattoo gun, figuring out the mechanics of it and snickering to each other. Frost re-tied Shimmie to the chair and waved smelling salts under her nose. She awoke with a start, her eyes wide as she blinked around, bewildered, yanking on her restraints experimentally.
"Where the fuck am I!" she demanded.
"Don't you worry about that uh, Miss Shimmie," the Joker drawled, leaning against the chair and squinting down at her. She was no Harley, but her huffy indignation wasn't far off.
"The boss is gonna kill you," she spat, fighting to free herself.
Harley huffed moodily (proving the Joker's point). "I really hope he doesn't try that."
"Oh, c'mon, Harl," J purred, twirling a brittle piece of Shimmie's white-blonde hair around his gloved finger until it snapped off. "How's Eddie gonna have time to kill you and the Batman."
Shimmie froze at that, her eyes darting between them and then over to Frost, who was standing back with his arms crossed, watching.
Harley turned on the tattoo gun, its mealy buzz making Shimmie's head snap back around to her.
"So," the Joker drawled. "What do you know about Eddie's plan to kill the Bat, hmm?"
Shimmie's face soured. "I don't know what you're talking about, clown-boy."
"Clown-boy?" Harley laughed as she joined the Joker, leaning against the other side of the chair, so they were flanking her. "Come on," Harley cajoled. "This doesn't have to get messy. What's Ed planning?"
"I'd never snitch on the boss," Shimmie scoffed, getting emotional as she glared at Harley. "Especially after what you did to him."
"That was an accident," Harley countered fiercely.
"Oh, sure, you just accidentally shot your arch-nemesis," Shimmie huffed. "You accidentally almost killed the only man in Gotham who could take you down. You two are only alive because the Riddler allows it!"
The Joker ducked his head as he started giggling hard, but Harley didn't seem to find it funny, not in the least because Ed's mini-Harley was sitting here telling them to be grateful for his benevolence.
"Help me understand, Shimmie," Harley shifted into her shrink voice. "We know you guys want to kill the Bat. We know Ed's made deals with like-minded individuals who feel similarly. Now..."
She shifted forward so she was right in Shimmie's face, and even though Shimmie managed to do a decent job of covering her fear with stubbornness, she started tapping her stockinged feet anxiously against the end of the chair.
"What is the plan?" Harley cocked her head to the side, her blackened eyes imploring. "Why wouldn't Ed want us to know? Don't you think we'd be able to help him if we knew what was going on?"
Shimmie scoffed incredulously. "You weirdos don't want the Bat dead."
Harley shrugged. "I could be persuaded. I certainly wouldn't save him. I just want to know what the plan is. Maybe we could even give you some feedback."
"No way," Shimmie started struggling again. "No way am I telling you anything!"
"Now that's a shame, Miss Shimmie," the Joker cooed. "Pretty face like yours? I was really hoping we wouldn't have to mess it up."
Shimmie's eyes widened, her gaze flicking from the Joker to Harley to the tattoo gun. And before she could protest, J had grabbed a handful of her brittle, bleached hair, pinning her head back against the worn leather seat.
"Wait!" she shrieked as Harley turned the tattoo gun on.
"What do you think?" she smirked at the Joker and ran her finger along the plump apple of Shimmie's cheek. "Maybe a teardrop right here?"
"No! No-no-no!" Shimmie wailed.
"Hmm," the Joker offered her a wide, leering grin. "She's more of uh… Daddy's Little Monster kinda gal."
"Oh, she definitely is," Harley grinned. "Don't hold it against me if this looks terrible, okay? I've never done it before."
"No! No! Wait!" Shimmie shrieked. "Wait! I'll tell you!"
Harley and the Joker exchanged a look, both of them fighting back pleased grins. Harley turned the tattoo gun off and lowered it to her side.
Shimmie took a shuddering breath, trying to pull herself together.
"The Batman," she started reluctantly. "Someone knows who he is. Who he really is. They're selling his name at an auction, and the Riddler got a seat at the table."
Now that the Joker had not been expecting.
And from the way Harley caught his eye, he could tell she hadn't either.
Once, a long, long, long time ago, the Joker had tried to get the Batman to reveal himself. Aside from killing him outright, it was the one way to take him out of the game. The secret identity schtick was crucial to his existence. Without the mystery, he was just some weirdo dressed like a bat.
Trying to learn the Batman's identity was a favored pastime of many in Gotham and elsewhere.
But buying his identity at an auction…
That seemed a little more… organized.
There was a long stretch of silence in which Shimmie panted unevenly, the evening's events and her near-acquisition of a face tattoo catching up with her.
"Hmm," the Joker turned back to her. "So you think…. If you know who the Bat is, you'll be able to kill him. Easy as pie, hmm?"
"Yes," she admitted, shrinking back against the seat.
"Who's the seller?" Harley asked, but Shimmie shook her head.
"We don't know. The boss doesn't know either. We just know we gotta send someone to bid for us, and we got more than enough cash to win."
"Who are you sending?" Harley pressed, and Shimmie licked her lips nervously.
"A friend of a friend," she said uneasily.
"Who?" Harley sneered, lifting the tattoo gun again.
Shimmie shrieked when Harley pressed the needle against her cheek but didn't turn it on.
"Who!"
"The Turk!" Shimmie yelped, squeezing her eyes shut. "They're called the Turk!"
Harley looked to the Joker, who prodded the scars inside his cheek thoughtfully as he turned the name over in his head. The Turk.
"And who the fuck is that?" Harley demanded, exasperated.
"They run the Turkish mob," Shimmie explained, looking sick.
Something about this revelation about a Turkish mob seemed to click for Harley. Her eyes lit up with renewed interest.
"Where can we find them?"
Shimmie whined unhappily as her chin fell to her sequined chest, giving up.
"There's a kebab place uptown," she said miserably. "En Iyi Shawarma. That's their headquarters."
"Well, well," the Joker purred, smirking. "You're just selling out all your pals today."
Shimmie shot him a wounded look, making him snicker cruelly.
"Awww," Harley cooed, feigning sympathy even though she was grinning like a demon.
She turned the tattoo gun back on, and Shimmie's eyes bulged.
"I told you everything!" she insisted frantically.
"Maybe," Harley smiled. "But I still think you just need a little something to turn that frown upside down."
The Joker grabbed Shimmie by her hair, making her squeal and wriggle as Harley moved in with the tattoo gun.
Dinah -
After the business with Bullock and Gambol at the Cheetah Bar, Montoya sank further into her black mood. Queenie's was busy for a Thursday night, people lining up to play darts and pool while Boy George crooned on the jukebox. They managed to find space at the bar and ordered a round of beers. Queenie—who was wearing a pastel blue bodysuit covered with frilly, sequined swans—attempted to flirt with Montoya as she cracked open their beers but quickly realized it was a lost cause and pranced off to serve someone else.
Dinah tried to get Montoya to talk, but she wasn't interested.
"Leave me alone with yer hippie-crap," she grumbled, chugging the remaining half of her beer before waving Queenie over for another.
They sat, drinking in companionable silence instead of discussing the fact that they'd made a deal with a mobster, which technically included executing a predator should they catch him. Dinah sipped her beer more slowly than Montoya, who was putting them away like they were going out of style, a line of empties growing at her elbow.
Queenie danced up to them again, offering a round of shots on the house to "cheer them up so they wouldn't scare away the customers," and Dinah agreed. She and Montoya were in this mire of desolation together, and it only seemed right to drink in solidarity with her.
Dinah was a notorious lightweight. The whisky burned her throat and made her cheeks hot, and it brought her frustration right to the surface. That they were expected to come running when they were called. That was how Bullock operated. When his masters in the mob called, he went sprinting to wherever they needed him. And the longer Dinah ruminated on his behavior, his corruption, the more irritated she became.
And it was really annoying her that she couldn't remember when and where she'd heard his name beyond the walls of the MCU.
She drained the last of her second beer, alcohol, and the Bonnie Taylor song blasting from the jukebox giving her enough courage to ask Montoya a question she'd been toying with since she met her.
"Can I ask you something?"
Montoya shot her an amused look. She'd switched from beer to whisky, but it seemed not to affect her.
"What's that, kid?"
"Why don't you work with the Batman?" she asked, making Montoya's eyebrows raise. "You know like Jim Gordon did."
"Jim Gordon?" Montoya laughed bitterly. "You do know what happened to Jim Gordon, don't you, Lance? He was run out of town by those fuckin' clowns."
Dinah shot her a loaded look. "You're telling me you're scared of what the Joker and Harley Quinn would do to you?"
Montoya scoffed, but she was finally smiling.
"What are you suggesting?" she asked. "We put a Bat Signal on the roof and see if he's got any leads for us? He's a lone wolf. Does his own thing." She shifted uncomfortably. "That's been the case for a long time now."
She swallowed another mouthful of whisky and stared into her glass, her thoughts far away.
Dinah had a pretty good idea of where.
"You mean since Black Canary disappeared?" she asked.
"Black Canary," Montoya knocked back the remaining whisky in her glass and motioned to Queenie for another. "You know I met her a few times? She was just a fuckin' kid. She's probably dead."
Dinah picked at the label on her beer bottle, remembering those handfuls of times she'd met Montoya back then. She had been just a kid. An angry, reckless kid with something to prove. She shoved her bottle away and ordered a coke, and they sat in slightly less tense silence for a while, both lost in thought as the jukebox played anthem after anthem—Cher, Diana Ross, The Weather Girls, Madonna, Lady Gaga, George Michael, Prince.
"You ever discharged your weapon?" Montoya asked abruptly. Dinah looked up to find her peering at her curiously. "I see the way you carry. You don't like having a gun."
"No," Dinah shook her head. Suddenly she could feel her gun in the holster at her hip, burning through her clothes. "I can do a lot with a taser and a pair of handcuffs," she tried to joke.
"A taser and handcuffs?" Montoya scoffed. She looked almost offended. "So, if the moment comes, and it's you or them— or worse, it's them or me what will you do, huh?"
"I would take the shot," Dinah reassured her. "I believe in finding balance, including how and when I discharge my firearm."
"Well, that's a nice fuckin' way to look at it," Montoya shook her head, her face souring. "Sometimes this job, in this town, you know you're just spinning your wheels. You get a perp who killed some old lady, but he'll get off because he's so-and-so's cousin. Maybe he'll kill someone else once he's out. You just don't know. It's times like that you think maybe the world would be better off if this guy was in the ground. You think I could put him there. I could make a lot of people's lives better."
Dinah pressed her lips together as Montoya held her glass out to Queenie for another top-up. She swallowed a mouthful of liquor and wiped her chin with the back of her hand.
"But when you cross that line, you just become a cog in the wheel of this cycle of shit," she pulled her Juul from her jacket pocket and took a long drag. "Taking a life? It wears you down, eats away at your humanity until you don't stand for anything. In the end, you just become part of the fuckin' problem. More people die, good and bad. It's endless."
Dinah nodded soberly. She knew Bruce would agree too.
"But," Montoya sat back on her stool and took another drag off her Juul. "If it's me or someone else, I'm taking the fucking shot." She glanced sideways at Dinah, making sure she had her attention. "And if some psychotic clown terrorist falls off the side of a building, you can bet your ass I'm not saving him."
Dinah measured her words carefully. "You think the Batman should have let the Joker die?"
"Wouldn't you?" Montoya raised her eyebrows, and Dinah swirled the ice in her coke, her thoughts turning to the night at the Janus Plastics Plant.
The sheer terror she felt as the platform collapsed beneath her.
The flames licking at her feet as she fell.
Harley's eyes, blazing and determined as she threw herself after her. Saving her life.
Dinah never let herself think about those things. She'd pushed them far, far away.
"I don't know," she shrugged.
They lapsed into silence again, and Montoya put away whisky after whisky until eventually, she was slurring. Dinah had to keep grabbing her elbow to stop her from sliding off the barstool.
Queenie announced she was closing up, and Dinah helped Montoya out to the Buick. The street outside was full of cheerful, colorful people staggering out of clubs, singing and laughing as they moved on from the spots that were closed to the ones with late licenses open even later. But over the din of happy voices, Dinah could hear sirens in the distance.
They were coming from the south.
Midtown.
She packed Montoya into the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel, turning on their dispatch radio, and her heart sank at what she heard.
There'd been an attack at Saks, a high-end department store in the Diamond District. Fifteen dead and six injured, most of them members of the Riddler's crew, but many of them night security.
More victims in the War of Jokes and Riddles.
Dinah sighed and lowered her forehead to the steering wheel, closing her eyes as she listened to dispatch squawk about the aftermath of the attack.
Bruce would be out there, searching for them, and part of Dinah yearned to join him.
She knew what he'd say. That it wasn't her job anymore, her job was to catch Jervis Tetch and provide the District Attorney with enough evidence to lock him up for life. Her job was to make sure the families of Tetch's victims received justice and closure for the ones they'd lost.
That was the kind of hero Dinah wanted to be — not one who lingered in the shadows but worked diligently in the daylight.
It was what she wanted, and she'd taught herself long ago that what she wanted was valid. She was entitled to happiness and daylight and love.
Montoya slurred something to herself as Dinah put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, and her thoughts returned to that night five years earlier, her feelings still so muddled and conflicted after all this time.
The betrayal in Harley's eyes. The emotion in her voice.
I cared about you.
I protected you.
I trusted you.
How could you do this to me.
Harley -
The Turk.
It wasn't a name Harley had heard before, but she did remember Lucy whining about Turkish assassins in her list of many grievances.
"Turkish assassins?" Frost narrowed his eyes as they piled back into his Caddy. "Maybe they're new in town, ya know? trying to get a toehold by giving Lucy grief and making friends with the Riddler."
"Shimmie said The Turk's a friend of a friend," Harley mused. "Walker said the thief who helped him steal the Daggett suit was a friend."
"Everyone's got so many friends," the Joker drawled, plucking a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket.
Harley watched him light up but didn't say anything. He'd drained the e-cigarette battery again, even while sneaking real cigarettes when he thought she wasn't looking. She still considered this "light" smoking by his standards. At least he wasn't lighting one off the other, a sign that he was genuinely stressed. It occurred to her that vaping might increase his appetite for nicotine rather than cut it back, making her sigh fitfully.
They crossed the Uptown bridge back to the main island of Gotham and headed for one of the younger, more lively neighborhoods on the Upper westside. En Iyi Shawarma appeared to be a small, family-run Turkish take-out place on a street populated by record stores, galleries, and bars flying rainbow flags. It was coming up to four in the morning, but the shop was a flurry of activity with a line of exuberant young people stretching out the front door, shivering and chatting as they waited for food to soak up the booze after a night out.
"Seems like the old days," Frost observed once they parked across the street. "Operating from a family restaurant is just like the Italians did it way back."
"Won't be long before Shimmie gets back to Eddie," the Joker pointed out wryly. He hung his head back as Harley leaned across him to squint at the kebab shop.
"So Ed will know that we know," she shot him a knowing look. "But what's he going to do about it?"
"Probably something crazy," the Joker drawled, popping another cigarette between his lips.
Harley stared at him coldly until he turned to look at her, exhaling a plume of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. They gazed at one another in a silent contest of wills, making their opposing positions known, then turned back toward the Turkish restaurant.
"We got some grenades left," Frost said. "Could just clear the place out ourselves."
"Mmm," the Joker agreed enthusiastically.
"Grenades are more conducive to screaming than talking," Harley pointed out.
They waited an hour and then sent Frost in to pick up some food and get a sense of the place. He returned to inform them that two busboys, an old man, and a young woman were running the place. He also came bearing three boxes stuffed with pita bread and glistening, shaved meat, spiced aioli, and pickled salads. Harley inhaled it, groaning happily as she licked her fingers and stole the Joker's pickles while he shot her an amused look.
The shop finally started emptying around six, when even the latest clubs and bars closed, cutting off the faucet of En Iyi Shawarma's clientele. Frost wandered down the street to scope out the back alley and reported that the busboys were breaking down the kitchen and taking out the trash, unaware that the Joker and Harley Quinn were in their midst.
They made sure to wipe away any traces of greasepaint and armed up with what was left in the trunk of the Caddy, then crossed the street with no real plan of action. Threaten, cajole, sweet-talk, bribe, maim—it was all on the menu depending on how the Turk responded to them.
The bell on the door jingled as they stepped into a long, narrow restaurant with linoleum floors and fluorescent lights, a silver counter running its length. A young woman with dark hair and a long, pale face stood behind the counter, wiping it down and covering leftovers in plastic wrap. She wore a stained apron, and behind her, two huge inverted cones of glistening meat rotated on their spits.
She looked up when the bell rang, and her eyes widened.
"We're closed," she announced uneasily. "I've already turned off the grill."
"Sure," Harley leaned against the counter, squinting at the silver pots of pickles under the glass before she looked up at the girl. "Is your father around?"
"My…. father?" She started edging toward the register. "He doesn't speak English."
"Is that so?" Harley smiled as the Joker locked the restaurant door with a loud click, making the girl's eyes dart toward him. Harley braced her elbows on the counter purposefully, crossing her wrists and cocking her head to the side. "I guess that means you'll have to translate."
The girl held Harley's gaze for a long moment, her expression grim as she tried to decide what to do. Then in the blink of an eye, she disappeared behind the counter and popped back up with no less than an Uzi submachine gun under her arm, her eyes flashing dangerously as she loaded the bolt with a practiced hand.
The Joker chuckled, impressed.
"Wow," Harley took a step back, grinning. "That's a big gun."
"What do you want?" the girl demanded, her eyes darting between them
"Ya know what, Harl," the Joker drawled, draping an arm over Harley's shoulders. "I think this…. Lovely little lady may be the Turk we're lookin' for."
The girl puffed out her chest as she glared at them, full of confidence thanks to her very, very big gun.
"Get out of my—!"
But before she could finish, Harley whipped out the taser she'd stashed beneath her coat—the last pickings of their haul—and shot the charged wires at the girl's face. They hit her square in the forehead, making her tremble violently as the electrical current raced through her. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she dropped the Uzi before collapsing to the floor beside it.
"Huh," Harley looked at the taser gun in her hand and then at the Joker. "That was effective."
He snorted and circled the counter to find the girl twitching helplessly on the floor. He ducked down and grabbed her by the straps of her greasy apron, then dragged her out from behind the counter and through flaps of plastic into the restaurant's back room, where Frost handily had the old man and the two busboys on their knees at gunpoint.
The old man looked horrified as they dragged his daughter in. He started ranting or maybe begging, in Turkish, a velvety, tongue-curling language.
The Joker raised an eyebrow at the busboys, both of whom shrank back, more afraid of him than Frost's pistol.
"So...who's the real boss here, huh?" he glanced at the girl, who was starting to come around. "Her? Or daddy."
The busboys looked at each other, their eyes wide and terrified. They looked at the girl.
"Put them in there," Harley jerked her thumb toward the walk-in fridge behind them. "They don't need to hear this. Daddy will be persuasive enough."
Frost did as directed, shuffling the two young men into the walk-in while the Joker squatted down in front of the Turk. She was leaning against the wall, limp with her legs splayed out in front of her.
The Joker ran his fingers along her pale cheek, prompting her to look up at him, eyes wide and angry.
"Hello, pussycat," he drawled, cocking his head to the side as he examined her. "Or maybe… not such a pussycat, hmm? Not if you're in the business of pissin' off Lucy Falcone and making deals with the Riddler."
Harley grabbed a chef's knife off a magnetic strip on the wall above the sink, testing the tip with her finger as she stood over the Turk's father, the threat implicit.
"I—" the Turk faltered, distracted by having the Joker so close. She shook her head to clear it. "Why do you care?"
"Ahhh, that's a long story," the Joker sighed, playing up the melodrama. "But let's just say uh, we like to know the ins and outs of a situation." He poked her in the chest hard, making her gasp. "And you just so happen to represent a good buddy of ours at the table."
"What do you know about the auction?" Harley asked mildly.
The Turk opened her mouth and closed it again, not entirely convinced she had to talk yet.
Harley ran her gloved hand over the old man's balding head like she was rubbing it for good luck, then slapped his cheek, making him whimper and cringe away.
"Wait— I—" the Turk faltered.
"Go on," the Joker purred.
"There was a meeting," she explained nervously. "To discuss terms. At the Tobacconist's Club, downtown."
Harley's nose wrinkled as she let go of the old man's face. Memories of Roman and the Tobacconist's Club flashed before her mind's eye, none of them good.
"And who was there?" The Joker pressed in a sinister sing-song.
"I didn't get their names," she admitted uneasily. "The auctioneer was fat, like really fat with white hair. He represents the person selling. There are two other buyers. One was represented by a woman with curly hair and big eyes… the other was a man, bald and creepy. Like, super creepy."
She shuddered, and the Joker looked over his shoulder at Harley.
Bald and super creepy.
Victor, they both agreed.
Dinah -
Dinah dropped Montoya off at her apartment, which involved helping her inside and putting her to bed on the couch. She tried to order an Uber home, but it turned out Ubers were in short supply in the wake of a 'Rogue Attack.' So Dinah hauled herself to the decrepit metro station near Montoya's place and took the subway home.
Helena was dead asleep when she got in, not so much as stirring when Dinah came into the bedroom and changed into her pajamas. She slipped into the bathroom to scrub off her mascara and brush her teeth when she noticed a faint spattering of vomit on the toilet bowl. Then beside the sink, the orange prescription bottle of diazepam was out. These two pieces of evidence collided like a pair of freight trains in Dinah's mind, and her throat grew tight with worry.
She climbed into bed beside Helena, watching her sleep—a drugged sleep— until she could no longer keep her eyes open.
When Dinah's alarm went off four hours later, Helena was already gone.
Feeling like a zombie, Dinah went about her morning routine, including a feeble attempt at her morning meditation, which felt impossible with too little sleep and her thoughts tied up with Helena.
She was standing in front of her closet, staring blindly at the clothes hanging there when Montoya called. She sounded surly and hungover, but she was calling with good news.
"Duffy and her lawyer are gonna be at the Cheetah Bar at noon," she explained. "I'll pick ya up."
"Okay," Dinah agreed flatly, reaching for a maroon suit she'd picked up from TJ Maxx in a sale, another item left over from her days at the gallery in LA.
"Don't sound so fuckin' miserable, Lance," Montoya chuckled. "Didn't you hear the good news?"
Dinah paused. "No?"
"DeCarlo caught the Calendar Killer," Montoya sounded almost cheerful. "Seems like Julian Day thought that Rogue Attack last night would distract the Bat long enough for him to get another job in. Boy, was he wrong."
"So was it DeCarlo or the Batman who caught Day?" Dinah frowned.
"DeCarlo's an idiot," Montoya snorted. "He couldn't catch herpes in a whorehouse."
Dinah laughed despite herself, and she felt a sliver of the weight on her shoulders lighten.
She hoped Bruce felt that way too.
Harley -
The Turk agreed to keep her mouth shut, and in exchange Harley and the Joker agreed not to kill her and her family or tell Lucy Falcone where to find her, which was essentially the same thing. Frost gave her his number, and she quietly agreed to be in touch when she next heard from the auctioneer or Ed. Then she filled up a few more boxes with meat and bread and pickles for them, glaring as she stacked the boxes in a plastic bag and handed it over.
People were filtering into town on their morning commutes by the time they were back in the Caddy, and as Frost drove them to the safehouse downtown, the question of what next loomed over them. What did they do with this information about the auction, about Lucy and Victor's involvement? About this mysterious fat man auctioneer and curly-haired woman bidding.
Christmas Eve was only four days away, and the Batman's identity posed something of a philosophical dilemma for them, especially the Joker, who was very much a stranger to philosophical dilemmas.
Harley could tell it was bothering him. He got quiet, staring at the glovebox without speaking as he was prone to do when deep in thought. Probably, if she had to guess, searching for an impulse to guide them to their next destination.
She was fresh out of impulses, especially when it came to the Batman's real name.
Frost dropped them off in front of the computer repair store, and they climbed two flights of steep stairs to the hideout. Harley unlocked the front door, and they trooped over the threshold and down a hallway so narrow they had no choice but to go single file into the almost equally tiny kitchen, where she dropped the box of take-out on the little kitchen table and sighed.
The Joker shrugged out of his coat and threw it over the counter, then fell into one of the kitchen chairs. He snagged one of the two boxes of take-out from En Iyi Shawarma and kicked his feet up on the table, diving into the box of meat balanced on his lap while Harley rifled through his coat for the e-cigarette. Once she found it, she plugged it in at the wall to charge.
She sat in the free chair and opened the other box, picking at it with an eco-friendly bamboo fork.
"Ya know who's next on the list dontcha?" the Joker drawled. "Donna Falcone."
Harley made a face, not feeling motivated to give Lucy a hard time or be near her when she was grossly pregnant. She shuddered, remembering the way Lucy's belly button poked out against the spandex of her leopard print dress — like the child inside her was trying to climb out.
"What can she tell us?" Harley shrugged. "Of course she's bidding on the Batman's identity. Why wouldn't she?"
"She'll know more than the Turk does," the Joker pointed out, shoveling another forkful of gyro into his mouth.
"You should have seen her the other night," Harley smirked. "She had the Bertinelli kid on his knees, and she was like, 'Do you know who that is, Pino?'" Harley lifted her chin, looking down her nose at the Joker in an impression halfway between Lucy and the Godfather. "That's the woman who killed your father."
The Joker giggled as he piled up another forkful of food.
"Then she just shot this kid like he was nothing," Harley continued, her eyebrows raising. "I've never seen a pregnant person shoot someone before. It was so intense."
"Awww," the Joker shot her an amused smirk, his black eyes glittering. "You're bragging, Puddin'."
"I'm not bragging," Harley scoffed, smiling. "I was just impressed."
"Mm-hmm," he waggled his eyebrows at her. "That ain't easy to do, Harl."
Harley shrugged one shoulder and stabbed a pickle with her fork, popping it in her mouth and chewing on it thoughtfully.
The Joker stood up abruptly, dropping the take-out box on the table and holding his hand out to Harley.
"Whaddya wanna bet this fat guy is some kinda mob shill," he raised a rakish eyebrow, and Harley fought back a smile as he pulled her out of her chair.
"Oh, count on it," she agreed, falling into his arms comfortably.
His free hand slid up her back, nudging her closer as they started to sway in an impromptu two-step.
"Do you think Ed likes Shimmie better than me?" Harley stuck her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout, and the Joker chuckled darkly.
"She didn't shoot him in the ass."
Harley rolled her eyes. "He's going to be so pissed when he sees what we did to her face."
The Joker chuckled again, his tongue wagging over his bottom lip as he used his grip on Harley's hand to twirl her before pulling her back into his arms.
"Aw… but now she's always smiling."
Harley closed her eyes and giggled, the Joker joining her until a phone beeped in his coat. They shuffled over to the counter where his jacket was flung haphazardly, and the Joker released her hand to scoop a burner out of one of the pockets.
"Hello, Anarky," he answered in a growl, rolling his eyes.
Harley pulled away from him, letting him get on with the business of dealing with Lonnie. Feeling content, she turned a corner into the small bedroom, the cheap Venetian blinds hiding the sun from the room aside from in a few places where they were bent or snapped off.
She unzipped the back of her dress and shrugged out of the long sleeves, letting it bunch up around her waist as she sniffed her shoulder experimentally. Gunpowder and sweat, but also meat grease from the kebab shop that made her nose wrinkle. She dropped the dress to the ground and unzipped each of her long boots, kicking them off as she turned into the tiny en suite bathroom.
The shower was more of a plastic box, the showerhead a flat plastic thing that looked like a vacuum cleaner, and the once-clear plastic walls were covered in a film of creeping calcium deposits thanks to Gotham's hard water. The door creaked and rattled as Harley yanked it open as far as it would go, just wide enough for her to reach in to turn the water on. She unclasped her bra and stepped out of her underwear, then fought with the door some more to get it open wide enough for her to shimmy in sideways.
As she wet her hair beneath the lukewarm water sputtering out of the plastic shower head, she thought about the past twenty-four hours, which had been far more playful and enjoyable than the more severe focus that characterized the week of tracking down Tetch.
Bullock had hoped they'd end up taking Tetch out as a happy consequence of finding him in their bid to get to Ed. Harley tried to picture a scenario in which she could be persuaded to hunt down Tetch under different circumstances. Would she do it to save Gotham's children? Ha. No. To save herself some grief? Maybe.
She thought about Lee's apartment. She thought about the bloodied backseat of a car, the Joker dying beneath her while she screamed his name.
She would do it to save him.
The shower door rattled as the Joker struggled to open it, grumbling to himself when he got it open as far as Harley had, which wasn't wide enough for him to step inside. She snickered and slicked her hair off her face as she listened to him mutter over the shaking until finally, something broke off, and it flew open, crashing into the wall.
"Oh, look," Harley grinned as he joined her in the stall, which was hardly big enough for one of them. "You fixed it."
He wrapped an arm around her neck from behind, pulling her back against him as Harley washed her hair with some drugstore shampoo promising luminous results. Her roots were starting to grow out, her natural honey blonde peeking out above the platinum dye job Frost maintained for her. He'd recommended the shampoo as a temporary fix until they had time to bleach her roots.
Washing her hair wasn't especially easy when she was trapped in a bear hug, but Harley could tell he was deep in thought and using her as a kind of human stress ball as he worked through his thoughts. His hand on her shoulder would occasionally flex, or he'd drum his fingers on her collarbone, not impatiently, but like an especially fruitful idea had come to him. Harley knew all his ticks and what they meant.
When she'd finished her hair and given her face an extra scrub to remove the leftover grease paint, she leaned back against him, and he dropped his chin on top of her head, a pose as familiar as walking or breathing.
"What did Lonnie want?" Harley asked, raising her voice so she could hear herself over the sputtering shower head.
The Joker gave an exaggerated shrug that made the crook of his arm tighten around her neck.
"Somethin' about maps and phones and uh, 5, 4, 3-2G," he drawled, ambivalent.
Harley laughed. "What?"
He just shrugged helplessly, and Harley grinned as she leaned against him.
"You know, this whole auction thing," she sighed, waving her hand under the water. "It's way too complicated."
"Mm," he agreed in a low growl.
"All I wanted was to get ahead of Ed before he tried to kill me," she continued thoughtfully.
"Mmm," the Joker agreed again, a little distracted.
"This auction is what he and the Sirens have been working on," she added. "It has nothing to do with me."
"Mmmm," the Joker pulled her back against him tighter.
"Let's just forget about it," Harley concluded, and as the words rushed out of her mouth, she immediately felt the tension she'd been carrying around melt away.
When she was younger, she would have never been able just to let it go. It wasn't in her nature. Her slightly obsessive nature. That was the reason Harley had always been so drawn to the Joker — his lack of interest in control, his wide-armed acceptance of the world's naturally chaotic state. Changing directions to navigate the chaos made sense.
"It's the Batman," she added, more to herself. "He can handle himself against Ed."
The Joker chuckled like he found her endorsement of the Batman deeply amusing.
"Oh, shit," Harley hissed. She squeezed her eyes shut. "I promised Pam I'd help her with a heist tomorrow night."
"Uh…" the Joker's arm tightened around her again. "What?"
"She wants to steal some dead flower from a museum," Harley explained, shrugging. "I'll take care of the guards and the CCTV and any cops who show up."
"Typical Red," the Joker sneered. "Always using you for her dirty work."
His disdain for Pam made Harley smile as she shut the shower off and turned to loop her arms around his neck, the confined space making it impossible not to be pressed flush against each other.
"Do you have any dirty work for me?" she smirked. "Daddy."
His mouth spasmed like he was trying not to laugh, his black eyes glittering. He thrust his elbow into the broken shower door, and it immediately fell off its remaining hinges, landing flat on the floor with a loud rattle. He ducked down to lift Harley off her feet, hoisting her up so she was a head above him. She laughed helplessly as he struggled to maneuver her out of the shower like that, then staggered across the wet floor perilously, in the general direction of the bedroom.
"You greedy slut," the Joker growled in her laughing face.
Dinah -
Most of the prisons Dinah had visited smelled of body odor and cleaning supplies, and Blackgate Prison was no exception. It was located on an island south of Gotham, so the uniquely disgusting smell of sulfur permeated its walls when the tide went out, as it was when Dinah and Montoya arrived there.
They'd had a productive day. Dinah's theory about Jenna Duffy being less than enthusiastic about covering for Tetch panned out. She gave them much more than ten minutes of her time to describe, in more detail than Dinah could have hoped for, how Tetch's operation was set up, the names of associates who'd yet to be identified, and his state of mind.
She had one request in exchange for this information; one that confirmed Bruce's original theory about her.
"Harriet Pratt," Duffy had said, looking uneasy. "She hears voices, and she doesn't know what she's doing most of the time. Jervis had her working for him since she was just a kid —I mean a real kid, like twelve. She shouldn't be in Arkham. She should be in St Mary's where she can get treatment."
Dinah and Montoya agreed they'd see what they could do.
Duffy's information led them to Blackgate, where they spent much of the day haggling with the prison's bureaucratic system to get time with the inmates Duffy named as Tetch associates. But once the information started flowing, time seemed to fly by, and before Dinah knew it they were ordering Chinese food for dinner with a long night ahead of them.
She texted Helena, who had been in her thoughts all day, weaving in and out between the triumph she and Montoya shared about finally making headway. That's what she told Helena in a lengthy message that took her so long to compose, Montoya stuck her head out in the hallway to ask her what she was doing.
Good luck! Helena replied almost immediately.
Good luck, Dinah thought. That seemed like a step in the right direction. Maybe catching Tetch wouldn't just be a win for her and Montoya — maybe Helena would see it as a win for her too.
Feeling more optimistic than she had in days, Dinah nearly skipped back into the interrogation room where Montoya and a former Tetch associate were waiting for her.
Johnny Viper -
It was coming up to midnight when Johnny Viper arrived at an old South Channel warehouse with three of his boys in tow. It was beside the docks, and it stank of rotting fish and sewage. Johnny held his handkerchief over his nose as he stepped across the damp, icy floorboards, mourning his thousand-dollar leather loafers and cursing that vigilante cunt for making him come all the way out there.
Big Gigio was waiting with his crew. As his name suggested, he was a big guy, and he stood with his shoulders up around his ears, his heavy brow folded in an unhappy furrow. His brother, Little Gigio, had been murdered at Carluccio's and the rest of Yuppie Don's crew the night before.
"Gigio," Johnny tucked his handkerchief away as he squared off with the larger man. "Mr Mandragora sends his condolences."
"And what's Mr Mandragora gonna do about it?" Gigio demanded. His voice shook with emotion—anger, but also fear.
"He's lookin' into it,'' Johnny explained, evasive. "Don had a lot of enemies."
"Enemies?" Gigio scoffed. "Are you fuckin' kidding me? I saw the CCTV footage. Are you gonna tell me a wiseguy killed my brother after I saw that? Huh?"
Johnny ran his tongue over his crowded bottom teeth, contemplating his reply. They were scared. He could see it in all their faces, smell it coming off them just like the fish rotting below the floorboards. It was pathetic, mainly because they were shitting themselves over a woman.
Yeah, Johnny had seen the CCTV footage too. What he saw was a bunch of drunk idiots get unlucky. They'd forever be remembered as the dumbasses who got killed by some masked bitch dressed like she'd just come from a fucking spin class.
"Like I said,'' he struggled to keep his patience in check. "Mr Mandragora's looking into it. We got a friend inside the GCPD keeping a close eye on things. When they find this bitch, they're gonna make sure we get a word with her first, don't you worry."
"Find her?" Gigio looked aghast. "Johnny, you were in Chicago when the Batman first showed up. You weren't around for how things were back then."
He took a step closer, and Johnny's boys reached for their weapons instinctively.
"This is how it started last time," Gigio insisted. "Except this new Batman ain't got any rules."
Johnny sighed fitfully, finding Gigio's display of weakness deeply disappointing. But it was his job to calm these idiots down, to stop them all from ginning up into a frenzy and doing something stupid.
"Look," he started, trying to keep the patronizing note out of his voice. "Whoever killed Don and Little Gigio, she ain't—"
There was a creak in the rafters overhead, and a split second later, a masked woman dressed in black descended from above with a loud, metallic rattle. Johnny's eyes widened as a heavy silver chain flew toward him, cracking him in the side of his head and throwing him to the ground with his boys.
He was disorientated, his head ringing like a bell, the sounds of men shouting bleeding with his own bewildered thoughts as he tried to shake the shock off.
It took three gunshots in rapid succession to snap him out of it.
Johnny pushed himself up to his elbow, blinking hard as he watched the masked woman duck and roll past him —like a fuckin' ninja, he thought dumbly. She landed on her knees, a long, heavy chain in her hand. She whipped like a snake, knocking some of Gigio's boys off their feet before they could return fire. Then she jumped to her feet and shot Gigio in the fucking face, and before Johnny could blink, she'd pivoted toward him.
He froze. The moment seemed to last a lifetime. He absorbed the black hood covering her hair, the black face mask covering her nose and mouth, the large, dark eyes fringed with thick lashes, narrowed in ice-cold concentration.
It was her.
She fired two shots, and Johnny felt dull thumps on the floorboards on either side of him as both his boys hit the ground. Then the masked woman swung back around to face the rest of Gigio's guys, taking one out with a perfect shot to the head and another with two to the chest before she cartwheeled sideways to dodge more gunfire.
It was shocking how fast she moved.
Panic flared through Johnny, every instinct he possessed telling him to flee instead of fight. He didn't even reach for his gun. He forgot he had it. He staggered to his feet and bolted down the hallway he'd come in through with gunfire echoing in his ears.
He took a sharp corner and got disorientated, losing precious seconds as he tried to remember the way out. The firefight in the warehouse stopped abruptly, and he took off running again, blind panic making him stumble in his desperation to get out of there.
Then he saw it—the big silver door he'd come in through when they first arrived. He nearly sobbed in relief as he threw himself against it, welcoming the freezing, fishy-smelling air that hit him flush in the face.
There was a shot behind him, and as soon as he heard it, he felt the bullet cut through the back of his calf. He howled and went careening to the icy dock, catching himself on both hands. His leg was in agony, his ears still ringing, all of it making his head spin as he hauled himself up onto his elbows and made one last desperate bid for survival.
He'd only managed to drag himself a few feet when footsteps echoed behind him. He sobbed brokenly, not daring to look back. A hand wrapped around his arm, and he was thrown onto his back, his skull cracking against the old wooden planks as he sobbed again.
"Please!" he begged, holding his hands up in surrender. He blinked up at the woman hunting him, trying to see her. But she was just a black, blurry shape against the night sky. "Please! Whaddya want? What is it, huh? What do you want from me!"
She didn't say anything. She just stared at him until Johnny broke down again, too distraught to speak.
"I just didn't want to shoot you in the back," she admitted, her voice low.
She raised her gun, cradling it with both hands like it was something precious, and she shot Johnny Viper in the head.
A/N: Helena's opening scene was one of my early favorites. It just came together so beautifully, and god, what a relief to write someone feeling guilty for their actions?
Thank you for reading - please review to show me some love!
Next week: quite a lot of smut, actually.