All claims are DC. Please enjoy. Reviews humbly appreciated.

Batman 1939: The Dangers of Being Cold

Chapter 5: Facing the Wall


There is a folk tale in Gotham called the Legend of Susie Popinski ...

Years ago, a traveler arrived on the last train to Westville Station. He set out to find a certain hotel but was new to the streets and soon lost. Night fell and Gotham's night-folk slithered out of their dens. Rounding a corner near midnight, the traveler saw a pack of motley youths conspiring under a gas lamp. As the gang turned to him, wild-eyed and grinning like sharks, the traveler glimpsed a slender girl behind them, trapped beneath the lamplight. Not a day over thirteen, she wore a pretty blue dress with dainty curls in her hair. The traveler feared what dark business the gang had surrounding this young lady, but he feared for his life even more and sprinted away.

He ran nine blocks before catching his breath, his mind echoing with all the gruesome rumors of Gotham street toughs whispered across the country. Soon after, he found an inn. Weary to the bone, the traveler bought dinner at the bar and sat to eat. As he ate, he told his tale to the barkeep, a paunchy old local who knew the area well.

Soon he mentioned the young girl in the blue dress. Hearing this detail, the barkeep's eyes bulged and he gaped in awe. The barkeep asked the traveler if he had met the group on Ninth Street. The traveler supposed this was possible and the barkeep told him there was an infamous gang there called the Ninth Street Hooligans, the most terrifying in the city. Indeed, the traveler was lucky to escape! One word from their boss and the Hooligans would have chased him all the way to Bludhaven.

Morbidly curious, the traveler asked who could lead such a crew. "Was it the stocky lad with the knife?"

"No," said the barkeep, "that was Stabber Sam: a crass ruffian in the worst way, but not the boss."

"Was it the hunched boy with the droopy eye?"

"No," said the barkeep, "that was Torcher Tim: there's a bounty on him from the Fire Brigade worth a gold watch, but he's not the boss."

"Was it the brute with the baseball bat?"

"No," said the barkeep, "that was Head Trauma Jones: charismatic, I suppose, but not the boss."

"Then who orders around the Hooligans? Who's the boss?"

The barkeep glanced around to make sure his establishment was empty then leaned forward.

"That'd be Susie Popinski."

"The wee girl?"

"The same."

"But she's a child! Why would fiends like these Hooligans deign to listen to her?"

The barkeep scrutinized the traveler. He rested his old arms on the counter and shifted his head just beside his patron's ear, as if the walls might listen in. The barkeep continued in a voice forced low and calm.

"Don't be fooled, son; you cross Susie's path again; you better hoof it for the county line. She's Hell-in-polka dots. A hot spit worse than all the other jackals put together."

"How? What happened?"

"Not wise to say 'round here, but ask yourself; what sort of deeds would a sprite like her need to do to scare a group like them?"

The traveler slept fitfully that night. He awoke before dawn, hailed a carriage to the station, and never returned to Gotham again.


Like most folk tales, the great professors of lore disagreed on what it meant. Some said the lesson was the folly of making assumptions. Some read it as a warning against the violent working class. A few thought it was another example of locals bragging how tough they were, that the story had a happy ending.

Amanda Waller was no professor. She didn't think literary criticism was worth a plug nickel. She was new to the state and avoided its namesake city like the plague. Needless to say, Amanda Waller probably never heard this particular legend.

This was a shame. She would have loved it.

Amanda "The Wall" Waller was a squat, formidable woman, all thighs and hips, with an intellect like a battleship and a face like a battleship. They could have carved Mount Rushmore from the chip on her shoulder. She had dark brown skin and kept her black hair in a short bob. Her voice was harsh from a lifetime of yelling at idiots and the occasional cigar.

Amanda was born on the worst streets of Chicago, the granddaughter of sharecroppers. The Wallers took nothing for granted. As far as she was concerned, the Almighty gave her grit, brains, and American citizenship; the rest was stacked against her. She recognized this at a young age, and her reaction was to man-up and fight. So she fought and she won, albeit as much of a win as a woman of color could grasp in a land where half the restaurants were segregated and Klansmen ran for office. In a different time, she could have clawed her way to the White House.

Nevertheless, she was somebody. She had clout. Just how far had she risen? A difficult question. Amanda Waller worked among men with distinguished titles - senators, ambassadors, admirals – but she had no title of her own. She worked in the shadows between titles, in the spider's web of quiet departments all governments sometimes needed to get anything done. Her kind was the oil that kept the cogs of power spinning. For the sake of appearances, Amanda was occasionally called an attaché, an assistant, an investigator, or a specialist. What mattered was that she could make federal agents fetch her coffee and twenty-year colonels gave an audience at her whim.

With Amanda's limitations, this was an ascent to shame Caesar. And like old Julius, much of her success was owed to the keen recognition that if you wanted something done right, sometimes you had to do it yourself.


In this case, doing it yourself meant Amanda Waller was standing outside in an inch of half-melted snow, stuck ten miles north of the frozen butt-end of nowhere and struggling to see shapes in a patch of icy mud with the help of an overgrown child who probably started shaving last year.

"Just what are we looking at, Private?"

"Errr ..."

Private First Class Norton Hershey was a good soldier. He marched where he had to march. He saluted when he had to salute. When he fitted a bed, you could bounce a desk lamp off of it. Good soldiers follow orders. For that reason alone he kept his thoughts to himself. It wasn't easy: he had plenty of concerns to share regarding this strange black lady who showed up four months ago in a fancy car wearing a fancy coat. She looked distinctly un-military, but word came down from brass saying everyone had to dance to her song until further notice.

There was one soldier who didn't get with the program, a Lieutenant Alan Moss, who confronted her a few days after she arrived. The story went that Waller told him to clean up his disorganized workspace, but the Lieutenant spit at her feet and accused her of something unprintable. For his conduct, he was swiftly promoted to a three-year stint on an ice barge off the coast of Alaska. No one had talked back to her since.

Rumor was she was some specialist out from Washington reviewing the base doctors. The officers called her Ms. Waller. Enlisted boys weren't supposed to talk to her at all. This was the first time she had spoken to him, and it took a second for PFC Hershey to collect himself. Ms. Waller wasn't pleased with the hesitation. For a lady half his size, she sure looked more than willing to take him behind the woodshed if he didn't shape up.

She set her arms on her considerable hips and frowned. "Well?"

"It's like I just told the Sargent, ma'am. After the snow froze this morning, I found these two boot-prints outlined in the mud right here."

"Looks sort of vague. Are you sure that's a boot-print?"

"All due respect ma'am, but soldiers get a lot of experience making tracks in the dirt. That's a boot-print."

"Fine. Lots of boots around here. What's special about these?"

"Its tread ain't one we use."

"So an intruder was here last night."

"Maybe last night. Maybe earlier than that. The ground's been dry and brittle these past few days. If nothing else disturbed it, the prints may have stayed in the dirt."

"Hold on. You walk patrols between these two buildings every afternoon, correct?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you haven't noticed the print until today?"

"I haven't, but it may have been there without me noticing."

Ms. Waller looked skeptical. "Uh-hmm."

"This ground is uneven, and there's always shadows from that wall. Small tracks would be nearly hidden without the snow, their distinguishing contours only visible when chromatically contrasted with the ice"

"Chromatically contrasted?"

"All due respect, ma'am, I know the assumptions about my chosen profession, but I am an educated individual."

"Is that so?"

"Self-taught, ma'am."

"Fine. So you're saying we can't tell whether the prints were made six hours ago or a week?"

"Not a week. I wouldn't bet on any tracks here lasting more than two or three days, even frozen. I'm just about the only one who goes though here, so no one else would contaminate it. People tend to stay on the gravel paths."

"Fine, let Colonel Tanner know I want any man who's noticed anything the least bit suspicious in the past seventy-two hours to inform me. That's highest priority."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, and Private Hershey?

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Don't you think it strange that there's only two prints? Why isn't there a whole line of them?"

"Now that you mention it, ma'am, it is strange. The ground was just as soft for fifteen yards in each direction, but there's no prints leading in and none walking away. It's like our intruder's footsteps just got real heavy for a spell."

"Hmm. Perhaps ..."

Amanda Waller had a sudden notion and stared upward. Strung nearly twenty feet above their heads was a black telegraph cable. The cable was a petty fixture of the base, easily forgotten. But Amanda Waller wasn't the type to ignore details. Suspicions began to percolate.

"Perhaps they got heavy because that's where he fell out of the sky."

"Um, uh, I ... suppose that's a possibility, ma'am. But aircraft don't pass by here, and we would have seen a parachute."

"Hm. Very good, Private Hershey. Dismissed. Oh, and when you talk to Colonel Tanner, let him know I would like to speak with him at his earliest convenience, and that his earliest convenience will be in half an hour."