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Batman 1939: Swimming in the Styx

Chapter 3: Caught


Arturo Bertinelli was a compact gentleman on the graying side of forty with a dark Italian complexion and a well-trimmed mustache, but this was hard to see through the blood on his face. He awoke in bleary confusion to the feeling of a swelled lip and a great pain in his right hand. He glanced down. When his vision condensed, he saw that two of his fingers were bent wrong. The image brought up a wave of shock and nausea. Like many who wake with blood on their face, Arturo wasn't sure where he was or how he got there. He was trying to form a thought when he was hefted into the air, spun, and confronted with a terrifying eyeless face so close that it monopolized his vision. He screamed. Worst of all was the smile, carved like a Jack-o'-lantern's grin and just as soulless. If his scream told the demon that he didn't want to see it any longer, his wish was granted. Arturo was tossed with the careless ease given to an empty wrapper. The world spun. His knees hit first, then his shoulder, then his broken hand struck and everything turned red and disconnected.

When he found his senses, he happened to focus on an unfamiliar pile of metal near his nose. With a strain, he rolled upright onto an elbow. From here he recognized the pile for what it was: his revolver, now disassembled down to its thrity-some component parts, the pins, levers, screws, and springs all lined up like a manufacturing blueprint.

Arturo saw the revolver and remembered.

He had been relaxing in a chair with some wine. He felt safe. Then the light went out. Before he could begin to register panic, a furious noise erupted beside him. The air cavitated. He was pelted with dense debris. Then the light went on, revealing a massive dark figure looming over him. Drawing on a nerve and instinct that survived a hundred gangland fights, he lunged for his weapon, smoothly palmed the grip in his right hand, then twisted to take aim. But he was too slow. A huge glove caught his wrist like a vise. Another glove seized the revolver and tore it backwards out of his grasp with his middle and index fingers still caught in the trigger guard. He tried to stand. The stolen revolver was lifted high, and the last thing he saw was it speeding towards his face.

The memory made Arturo vividly aware of the long bruise beside his nose and the streaks of crusting blood that spread sideways over his cheek and ear. He knew violence. He knew the blood dried that way because he had been horizontal while the wound was fresh. By the texture, he guessed he had been horizontal about five minutes.

A voice spoke calmly with titanic force, "Sit."

Arturo looked up. The broken revolver was so bizarre that he had ignored the looming demon. It was obviously the Batman. They had never met, but all the myths agreed on a few traits: the cape, the pointed cowl, the white eyes, the symbol. And like they said, he was very tall. This was especially obvious from the floor. Arturo knew now why Batman lived in the shadows: standing under a bright bulb made him look more gaunt than fearsome - a tired man draped with a cloak. He wasn't grinning any longer. Now he was coldly serious. Arturo wasn't sure which was worse.

He realized there was a hole in the wall. If only he could buy a few seconds ...

"Now."

Arturo pushed to his feet, staying low and wary. He faced his chair, pretended to stumble, and caught himself on the end table. With the burning in his old joints, this didn't take much acting. He could sense Batman looming just a pace behind him. Staying hunched, Arturo stepped back. Then he turned with uncanny speed, holding the corkscrew hidden close to his body, and stabbed it under Batman's ribs. The corkscrew bounced off Batman's abdomen with a metallic plink. They eyed each other. Batman blocked the next urgent stab then ended the exercise with a beautiful chokeslam.


The Dark Knight's largest equipment project was his suit. The current prototype added a set of metal plates to the padding and resembled, appropriately enough, a late medieval knight. Unlike a knight, Batman used aircraft-grade aluminum and bonded fiberglass. The suit was all but invincible below the chin to blunt or bladed trauma, a fact proven superbly on its few field-tests. The reason it remained a prototype was the weight. Being able to shrug off a crowbar to the liver wasn't worth a third of his sprint or long jump. If anything, it it was more durable than he needed. A trimmed variant would take time. Until then it stayed on the rack. He made an exception tonight because taking chances with the Four Families was suicide. He wasn't expecting trouble, but he was dressed for war all the same.

There was another reason for the armor. Tonight would be his first success towards a dream he had chased for years, and wearing his finest gear felt right. The spine of the Batman myth was that no one was beyond justice, but on any given day this simply wasn't true. There were powerful figures who committed their sins at such a distance that the strings would never be found and who eased through the legal system at a whim. It was why he had never seriously considered using his talents against warlords and other global monsters; there was no court for these men. The only way to hurt them was a line he would not cross. At least America was built on a foundation of the impersonal Law. On any given day some figures couldn't be touched, but in the long run? In the long run, the juror and the voter could bring down giants. They just needed a strong case and a reminder that they could.

This was what he told himself. It was the conviction that kept him going through every brutal night and every death and every setback. It kept him going, but it didn't bring him peace. Batman was a perfectionist with a fanatical sense of symbolism. He knew he wouldn't feel satisfied until he brought down the biggest giant of all. In Gotham, that meant the Families. Permanently convicting even a minor lieutenant was unthinkable. They guarded themselves on every front. For years, he couldn't find a weakness.

The problem wasn't just corruption. They couldn't buy or threaten every single judge, attorney, cop, agent, councilman, sheriff, and politician in the city, no matter how hard they tried. Gotham was too big. If the Four Families were as destructive as any other gang, the law would eventually bring them to justice. So they stayed safe. For starters, most of their income was now legitimate. When they did engage in crime, it was the quiet, victimless type - collusion, kickbacks, insider trading, and the like. The complicated schemes they specialized in were much harder to catch than small, obvious crimes. Anyone could rob a gas station, and prisons were full of robbers. But it took connections and expertise to skim the Sanitation Union's pension, and a good union scam was a prosecutor's nightmare.

That wasn't to say the Families didn't still profit from old-fashioned street felonies. They did, handsomely. They just had someone else do the dirty work. The actual perpetrators (say, a store selling untaxed cigarettes in the back) gave a cut of the loot to someone supporting them (say, a tobacco wholesaler) who gave a cut to an organization that owned or regulated the supporters (say, a bank or customs office) which was itself part-owned in some complicated way by a Family associate. All these steps were obstacles to an investigator, and most of the transactions were legal. By the time the loot reached the top, it had washed through so many jurisdictions and balance sheets that the stink was utterly gone. It was said the Families kept two accountants and five lawyers for every made man. They didn't invent Gotham's criminal feudal system, but they did master it. In a way, conspiracy and laundering was their real vocation.

Comparing their gift with this vocation between the Four, the Maronis and Nobilios were respectably average, usually working a racket at least two steps removed. The Maronis were larger and more creative, but both paled next to the Falcones. The Falcones were the first among equals in their pact, and here they played on another level entirely. Falcone money could change hands seven times before it reached their accounts, often crossing borders in the process. To lead an empire so discreetly yet with such firm control required nothing short of genius. The more one studied the clan, the easier it was to suspect that they had the most sophisticated management team in America.

The Bertinellis were the opposite. This wasn't their fault, more or less. They always had less territory, less muscle, and frankly less brains than their peers, and this fueled a deep insecurity to prove they were peers. It wasn't an inferiority complex. If you weren't a big shot, sooner or later you were food. They had eaten enough rivals themselves to know that. The Bertinellis were well aware that if they hoped to match the money and respect the other families made, they had to take more risks, even if this made them crude and hasty by comparison. They entered businesses the others wouldn't touch, they set up rackets with only a single middleman, and once in a blue moon the most desperate members even pulled street crimes themselves.

Learning this last tiny detail helped Batman solve the puzzle more than all his years of plotting combined.

A predator hunting large herd animals faced a difficult proposition. Herds were content to stay together and were invincible as long as they did. The predator's only hope was to find a straggler: prey too old or injured to keep up, too headstrong to stay close, or simply shunned by herd politics. Against sufficiently careful herds that looked after their stragglers, a predator's only chance to eat was the last option, the outcast. But if the prey was human, sometimes the predator didn't need to wait for an outcast. Sometimes an outcast could be made.


Arturo spent a few minutes on the floor. Someone had used his spine for kettle drums. People in the corridor were knocking now and trying to talk though the door, their voices muted by the metal. Arturo didn't bother calling out. The barrier made them useless, and besides, if seeking nearby help was an option, he wouldn't be here. Batman seemed indifferent to the noise. Arturo strained to his feet with the help of the wall, then he fell into the chair with as much dignity as he could manage.

Batman watched him. No one tried harder than a felon to act tough, and the Dark Knight was in a rare position to test them. He learned, for instance, that some of the biggest punks were cardboard. One flyweight jab to the snout and they were off like the Kentucky Derby. But most men and women who stole and cheated for a living could suffer a few lumps, especially those born into a family business and those born without family to speak of. And then there were the rare few carved from wood. The hard cases who didn't know the meaning of quit. It fascinated Batman that, for all his experience, he couldn't pick one out of a lineup. Anyone might be brass to the core. They came in every size, shape, color, history, and walk of life.

But there were still trends. One of the steadiest groups, stone cold men of honor who didn't rat for nobody, was the Old Guard Sicilians, the ones who ran the streets before the streets had cars. Any still in the game now went beyond tough; they were rawhide. Batman didn't expect Arturo to crack anytime soon.

To his credit, the man finally accepted the situation. Lesser crooks made a show even after they were beat, acting defiant or sullen, but Arturo just stared coolly as he sucked in air. That was one advantage of dealing with old pros. No doubt Arturo had done this before, as the interrogator or the captive and likely both. He knew the rules. This practicality could help or challenge Batman's goal. The Dark Knight had planned his pitch very carefully.

He began to pace around the chair. Arturo didn't turn to watch him, possibly from neck pain.

"In June, eighteen Ukrainian university students escaped the German invasion by sailing to Istanbul. They traveled across Turkey by rail and continued south through Iraq to the Persian Gulf. The students boarded a freighter to Cape Town, then another to Gotham City. But here their journey's incredible luck failed. Immigration officials detained them when they stepped off the ship. They had no papers. They didn't know anyone. It's likely none spoke English. The refugee process was backlogged for months, and until then they were trapped in limbo. But someone saved them that evening. The authorities were given false passports and visas so they could enter the country."

Batman paused to check Arturo's reaction. He had none.

"I don't know where the students spent their first two nights on American soil, but on the third they were seen with you near a tenement you own in South Piedmont. Two men arrived before dawn on a bus. They paid you stacks of bills hidden in a grocery bag, and you led the students onto the bus. They disappeared."

Arturo looked bored.

"These eighteen foreign nationals surfaced a week later at Swenson Corrugated's tin factory in Bludhaven, all clearly victims of abuse. Many were bruised. One young woman wore a foot cast. They were forced to work twelve hour days and slept in a locked basement, all so Swenson Corrugated could shave nine cents from a can of soup. You knew this. In fact, you received weekly compensation delivered by courier to your office in Bayside. I assume the money was to purchase your continued silence, but maybe it was a down payment on future labor.

"The students didn't stay long. They had been sold to a copper mine in New Mexico. They didn't spend much time there either, but the trail after the mine was a dead end. I couldn't find where they are now, but I found plenty of evidence at both prisons to where they had been. The District Attorney's office and the Justice Department are gathering confessions and building a case as we speak."

Arturo's cool showed a crack. He squinted at the wall and frowned testily. The noises outside the door seemed to fade to a buzz in his ears.

"I'm not shocked by what you did. The only surprise was how easy it was to find. The Bertinellis aren't especially bright," Arturo snorted. "But they cover their tracks. They scrub evidence. They buy witnesses or make them disappear. This sort of cleanup is too much work for one man, of course, but you could've brought in a crew any time you wanted. You didn't. The rest of the Bertinellis didn't help you because they don't know."

A bead of sweat ran down Arturo's forehead, across the long scab, and off his chin.

"You were desperate, so you found an ugly job even other thugs wouldn't touch. It solved all your problems."

Arturo had been desperate. His dancehall was closed for water damage, work was slow at the fish processing plant, and he had bungled a huge deal that spring selling dry cleaners to an outfit from Central City. His bookkeepers said he had just enough cash to either pay his men or pay the Family's cut. He couldn't afford both. Missing either would ruin him. His boys would jump ship if they didn't get their compensation, and cousin Franco would take away his best gigs or bench him altogether if he didn't add his share to the pot.

"But you were sloppy. You left the prosecutors plenty of proof, not that they need it. A slaver is the darkest sort of villain. This isn't just a crime, it's an outrage. The warrants will come soon, and the jury will burn you at the stake. You're going to spend the rest of your life behind bars.

"If I was guilty of something, ya lunatic, which I ain't, I have a few friends with-"

"If you had any real respect in your organization or any favors to trade, you wouldn't be here. And it wouldn't matter if you did. This isn't a con you can fix with bribes or blackmail. Anyone who comes to your defense will be in the spotlight of the inquisition. Your acquittal would cause riots in the streets. The judge would be lynched. The Slavic community would burn down City Hall."

The Families looked after their own. No one wanted to lose respect by sharing matters that should be handled privately, but if a member faced a real problem, then there was no hesitation or debate. The Family fell into lockstep until the problem was erased. This was their blood oath. But the oath wasn't absolute. No one felt obliged to save a fool whose mistakes made them all look bad. Loyalty wasn't stupid. The Bertinellis might have been the crudest of the Families, but you could fill a graveyard with the rivals who underestimated them over the years. They wouldn't have earned a place among the Four if they weren't vastly more ruthless and pragmatic than the typical pack of jackals.

"That kind of notoriety is bad business. Your own cousin won't lift a finger at your trial. I woudn't be suprised if he punishes you himself for keeping secrets. You're a pariah, Arty, and you know it. That's why you're here alone and your wife and children are in hiding - not the behavior of a man who trusts his benefactors.

Arturo eventually responded in a low voice just short of a snarl. "Why are you here? What do you want?"

"I want to give you one last choice. Tell me where the students are. Where were they taken after New Mexico?"

"Where's the choice? Tell you or I eat some teeth? That the choice? Or maybe I get a big nap in a ditch somewhere, but I heard you don't bump off nobody. Besides, why would I know?"

Batman stopped his pacing in front of Arturo's chair.

"The managers at the tin factory and the mine had no idea where the workers went. You didn't just deliver the captives, you're their agent. You know where they went because you rented them out. Every day those refugees remain in bondage is another scar on your reputation, and their current employer might decide their lives are a liability once news of the case leaks out. Maybe a week with a police interrogator will get you to share, but I don't have time. So this is your choice: tell me where they are now or don't. I won't hurt you either way."

"Pff. Sure."

"But I will give you some advice. Tell me where they are now, and you might dodge eighteen charges of accessory to homicide, and your proceedings can begin. If the case starts soon, the DA will try you first; their prosecution is nearly ready. That means a Gotham judge, someone you know. You'll probably end up in Blackgate. They have decent visitation rights. Marie and the kids might appreciate that."

"And if I don't?"

"Then the investigation drags on. The case happens whether or not the abductees are found, but by then the Justice Department will have priority. That means a hostile courtroom and most likely a sentence to Golgotha Federal Penitentiary upstate. You may have heard of it. You may know, for instance, that among the many notorious inmates are seven members of the OUN, a Ukrainian nationalist group, all serving fifty-year terms for trying to attack the Soviet consulate. They hold a dim view of anyone who oppresses their countrymen. I'm told they have quite a following with the other convicts."

Arturo's eyes unfocused.

"You were right when you said I've never taken a life, but your cellmate may not be such a pacifist."

"You're bluffing. Whatever you think I did, you got no proof."

For a moment, a shadow of Batman's grin returned. "No, I do. Let me convince you."


Three minutes earlier.

Wonder Woman landed deftly on the hood of a fancy Lincoln triple-parked in front of the Twelfth Street Arms with her face puckered at the stench. The air in Gotham was acrid and damp, like the entire city was downwind of a tannery. Wonder Woman could understand pollution easily enough in theory, but she was still getting used to it in practice. At least the air was better on the ground, and it would be better still indoors. That is, unless people were smoking. Burnt tobacco and phlegm were also hard to tolerate. Regardless, she had a job to do.

The receptionist in the lobby was busy smiling at his new twenty-dollar bill when Wonder Woman burst through the entrance in her short blue culottes, red and white boots, red breastplate gilded with an eagle, golden tiara, long silver bracelets, and golden belt carrying a shining cord on her hip. She jogged to the reception desk and leaned over it. "Sir, I need your help!"

The receptionist blinked at her mutely, looked down at his money, and decided he was going back to church this week.