Jim Gordon smoked the last Newport in his pocket on the steps outside the precinct. He knew his wife would not see eye to eye on his lack of restraint during these police lunch breaks. In his left coat pocket was an unopened pack of nicorettes he'd bought from the local dispensary just a couple of days ago. His doctor had asked him to take one every few hours, wean himself off of the cigarettes with a new habit, and Barbara had been one hundred percent behind that idea.
Now, here he was, inhaling the tobacco smoke like it was the only bit of fresh air left in Gotham. It really felt that way sometimes, especially with the newly affected shaking in his right hand; even his doctor had been confused by it. Everything about the city seemed to affect him neurologically, like a disease seeping into the fiber of his being. When he smoked he always had a moment of revelation where all of that seemed to stop - time, reality, his degenerative hand, the city.
At that moment he only wondered what would kill him first - the snugly rolled cigarette in his hand or a stray bullet on the streets of Gotham.
It was a strange sense of calm with which he threw the finished butt on the concrete pavement and crushed it under his heel. When he walked back inside, Flass was sitting at his desk digging into a hot dog. Jim sat on the other side and pulled out the sheaf of paper stuck under his plate.
"What?" Flass said, sauce dribbling down the side of his mouth. "You worried I'm gonna get barbeque sauce on your papers?"
Jim clicked his pen and started filling out the paper.
"Believe it or not, some of us here have work to do," he said. "Even during lunch breaks."
"I saw your little lunch break," Flass said.
"Did you? I applaud your powers of observation, detective."
"I wouldn't be so smug with that awful smoking habit of yours."
Jim looked up. "Why, is it giving you cancer just looking at it?"
"You never know when people start dropping in this city, sergeant. Heart attacks, cancer, mob hits. People just go plain cuckoo and blow their brains out from all the stress," Flass said, taking a big bite.
Jim clicked his pen twice. "If this is your attempt at selling some whacky life insurance policy to me then rest assured, I'm good.
Flass met his eyes for a second, then he shrugged.
"You've got a tongue on you, Gordon. The young ones usually don't when they start out."
"That was almost a compliment."
"Almost," Flass said, nodding his head. "I wonder what your wife would have to say about your excursions during lunch break."
Jim laughed. "You're never too low to stoop to blackmail and bribery, are you? You do what you want, Flass. No one is gonna stop you."
"You want to, though, don't you?" Flass said, looking at him. "You think I'm a piece of shit."
"What I think doesn't matter, and I have neither said those words nor do I abide by it. I only have respect for all my fellow colleagues."
"See, that," Flass pointed a finger at him. "That's the kind of thing that makes you a freak out here. You've got that diplomacy shit going on while you're silently judging the rest of us."
Jim stopped his writing to face him.
"Do you always get paranoid about people on the force who aren't chummy-chummy with you?"
"Only the silently mysterious types," Flass said, holding his gaze. "Makes us nervous to not know what you're thinking all the time, Jimbo."
Jim ignored him and stapled the finished papers together. He then moved on to the next form.
"Just finish your food." He motioned towards the door, "Then, get out of here."
"Will do, counselor," Flass said, smiling now. "Will certainly do."
When Flass left, Jim dropped his papers into his desk drawer and brought out a transparent pill bottle from underneath. He popped a few zolofts onto his palm and drank it with the warmish coffee lying in the styrofoam cup to his left. He leaned back into his chair. It was a rush as the chemical took effect inside him. He could imagine tiny chains of molecules climbing their way into his brain and beating it into submission. The relief was immense and that's all he cared about no matter the artificial source that was providing it.
Usually, as he sat in momentary bliss for a few minutes he wondered about things unrelated to work - his wife, his newborn son, their new neighborhood, the crowded subway he had to commute to work on. It had been just over a year since he moved to Gotham. Not that long in his estimation for anyone to settle into the grimy state of affairs the city operated under. But he felt he was coming along pretty well. If there was one thing he trusted in, it was his ability to adapt to his surroundings quickly.
He'd be lying, however, if he said his nerves hadn't been frayed from all the talks he and Flass had had over the last few months. The politics here was a dangerous game - the whole place was full of cops looking after each other's backs and that was Jim's problem, he had no one watching his. He didn't care much about making friends on the force. This was his job, after all, and he had the responsibility of being a professional. If he wanted a promotion that badly he'd simply resign from the major crimes unit and turn to probation work. Much better security there, and a longer life expectancy.
Sometimes it depressed him that he was fast becoming like the people surrounding him in the department - people like Flass. Cops who were apathetic to the cause they'd devoted themselves to. Flass didn't care about anything or anyone except himself and that terrified Jim. Who could change a city as bent as Gotham, he thought, if the people looking after it had stopped caring? The only thing that soothed him these days was the smoking and the pills and the preacher who sat next to him on the train to work.
"One man can't change this city any less than he can reverse a river's direction." the man often told him, "And you, Jim Gordon, are just a man."
It was an hour later when Jim left his cubicle to go to the washroom. He was feeling the sting of paperwork burn against the back of his eyeballs. He used his eyedrop while looking at the dirty mirror in the toilet. Perez and Bullock walked in mid-conversation while he was at the urinal. He gave them a look before turning away. A moment passed, Perez disappeared into an empty stall. Jim saw Bullock leaning against the broken vinyl tiles looking at him.
"How's it going, Sergeant?" Bullock said. "Busy day?"
"Not as busy as you homicide boys I imagine," he pulled his fly close and walked over to the washbasin.
Bullock took a toothpick out of his wallet and started poking at his gums. "Damn right about that. Killer's hit the lower docks this morning, got a fresh body washing in the Gotham River just a few hours ago."
"Another one?"
Bullock nodded while taking the spot next to him. "Say, you bath in tobacco ash or something?"
He shut the tap and wiped his hands. "I've got a little problem with my smoking."
"A little?"
"Listen," Jim said, turning to face him. "What's the status of this thing? Just, you know, give me the lowdown on these murders."
"I'm sorry, Gordon," Bullock said, shaking his head. "Can't divulge information on an ongoing investigation."
Jim rolled the used toilet paper into a ball and threw it in the bin. "I'm not asking for a lot. I heard from Ramirez yesterday you've already got a suspect."
Bullock looked at him, then sighed.
"I knew talking to her was a mistake," he said.
"Maybe you shouldn't go drinking with her next time."
"I won't." He scrunched his face, "That fucking bitch."
"Hey, it's just you and me here, buddy, don't sweat it."
He could not hear the words Bullock was muttering under his breath but he could hazard a guess.
"Alright, fine," Bullock finally said. "But you have to be discrete."
Jim nodded his head. "Fair's fair."
Bullock hesitated, then spoke. "The body we found in the river today, it was a girl in her early twenties. She went missing around ten P.M last night, same time she got off from work."
"Where did she work?"
"Some cheap diner in the East End."
"Shit, that's a bad part of town, isn't it?"
"They were all from bad parts. The first one, Harper Minogue, was a dancer at one of Cobblepot's clubs. Five victims so far, and all five were women in their early to mid-twenties, poor as dirt, desperate, and lived somewhere close to the East End."
Jim straightened his glasses. "Killer must be from there too, right?"
"That's what we thought in the beginning. But the area's full of lowlife scumbags. Could take months or years to track down the real one."
"Who've you got then? Ramirez told me you had a name."
Bullock looked to his left and right before leaning close to his face. Jim could smell the onion and mustard sauce on his breath. He whispered the next part.
"It's not a name. But we think it's the Batman."
Jim backed away from the man. "What?"
He expected Bullock to be smiling as he said it but he wasn't. This wasn't a joke. In fact, this was the most serious Jim had ever seen him in his short tenure.
"Think about it, Jim. You've got this masked idiot running around in his circus tights playing make-believe while terrorizing people. Guy's a nutter. Murder can't be far off his mind."
"Harvey, that doesn't qualify anything, We've got procedures to follow in serious cases like this."
"Fuck procedures, man. Do you think this city cares about some homicide detectives jumping through the manual and getting it right? It's a warzone out there. Only madmen and lunatics run this place. You know it as much as I do. It's Gotham, there are no good people here, they're all gone, buried in wooden coffins six feet under the ground. So don't come to be about procedures," Bullock pointed a finger suddenly. "Out there, out there is a guy running around in a bat costume leaving a trail of violence everywhere he goes. He's a fucking nutjob, a freak, a disease, a symptom of the rot that's eating this city. And he needs to be brought to justice. And I'm gonna do it if that's the last thing I do."
A weighty moment passed between the two men in which Bullock breathed down Jim's face with intent and white-faced fury. The man wasn't easily dissuaded from whatever course of action he thought was the right one and Jim knew that. So he stayed quiet. Perez exited the stall at that moment and cut their conversation short. They both separated and went back to washing their hands. The younger detective pulled up to Jim and flashed him an ugly smile in the mirror.
"Jimbo," he said, patting his shoulder. "How's the sergeant faring at his new desk job? You give your wife any new presents lately?"
"None of your business."
Perez grinned. "My my, you're prickly today. All that paperwork finally scramble your brain to pieces?"
"I don't know, detective. Shouldn't you be able to tell?"
"I might," Perez said, bending to take Bullock's spot at the washbasin. "But I'm just curious what's got you so worked up. Where did good ol' moralizing Jimbo disappear to?"
"Don't talk to me about morals," he said. "You haven't got any."
"I've got plenty more than you right now. A lot more manners too."
Jim almost laughed. "If I had your morals, Perez, I'd be selling drugs to minors out of a park bench in the Heights."
Perez turned to face him, he stood an inch taller than Jim but that didn't make him back away. They both sized each other up before Perez laughed. He jabbed two fingers sharply into Jim's chest.
"You're funny, sergeant," he said, poking a little harder. "Sometimes a little too much for your own good."
Jim held his gaze until Perez turned around and left. Bullock followed behind him, he gave the sergeant an awkward tip of the hat as he did. Jim stood alone in the toilet for a while afterward contemplating his next move. His hand was shaking again. Despite hating what he was about to do, he found an empty stall and smoked himself into a calmer state. The more he sank into the pungent, decrepit state of the walls surrounding him the more alright he felt. By the time he walked out, his hand was dead steady.
He drove straight home after his shift ended; no stops at the liquor store that night. His wife had already gone to bed when he arrived. There was cold meat and some Chinese takeaway lying in the kitchen microwave. He heated it up and ate while getting out of his uniform. There was something miserable about him sitting at the dinner table forking chunks of hard slabby meat into his mouth in the dark. He hadn't even switched on the lights. Just a tiny sliver of moonlight slipped in through the shutters.
After dinner, he stripped down to his boxers and laid down on the couch. The coarse, uneven texture of it chafed his back. He twisted and turned for hours and hours until sleep was a more distant prospect than the touch of his wife's body. Jim sat up and placed his hand on the police badge he'd kept on the side table. His wife's gentle snores reached his ear as he sat in the living room like a wraith. She was in there with the baby, sleeping soundly, preserving its innocence, doing what he couldn't.
He listened to her breath rise and fall while wondering why he felt so empty without the gun holstered to his hip. The digital clock beside the badge he was lightly fingering read two-thirty-three A.M. Jim got off the couch, wore a gown, and stepped out into the balcony for some fresh air. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the railing, an ambulance siren ran off in the distance. The pitch black of the Gotham night seemed to be lying over him with an oppressive weight. There wasn't a single star to be seen above.
He coughed, then tapped the cigarette to get rid of the ash. Somewhere, a cool wind was picking him up. This was it, he thought, this was nothing. The hardest part of the night was just passing him - the part where he felt like an outsider in his own house. Sometimes when he was alone, like he was now, he felt he deserved it and that he should get used to it. He took another swig of the cigarette and turned to look at a creature that had just flitted past his ear. It was small and fast - a bat. By the time he caught a glance of it, it was already gone.
Jim looked towards the farthest point in his horizon, past the skyscrapers, the rundown buildings, the abandoned warehouses, the middle-class apartments, to the rooftops with the red halogen light shining over them, and to the Hindenburg shining dimly in the distance. For the first time, he wondered, entertained even the possibility that somewhere out there in the middle of the night was a man in a mask trying to make a difference. The notion was so ridiculous, so out there that he couldn't even consider it with a straight face for more than a second.
That's why he'd nearly scoffed when Bullock had suggested Batman as the culprit in all those recent murders. Harvey wasn't always the brightest bulb in the department but at least he wore his convictions on his sleeve. The other two, Perez and Flass, were different animals though. Of the two kinds of cops he had met at the MCU so far, theirs was the worst. Harvey was an idiot but Flass and Perez were sharks. They'd eat the whole department if it meant saving their skin, and they'd do it without apologizing to anyone.
He threw the finished cigarette over the railing and leaned over to watch. As he did he wondered which kind he was - the shark, the idiot, or something else.
"Jim?"
He turned around to find his wife framed against the balcony door. Something churned inside him as soon as he saw her.
"Sorry, Barbara, honey," he said. "Did I wake you?"
"It's cold outside," she said, pulling her gown tight. "What are you doing here?"
He turned to face her, then looked back out over the city. "Couldn't sleep. My mind won't calm."
She walked over to him and put a hand against his cheek. "You worry too much, sergeant. Whatever it is, it will sort itself out."
He grunted. "Maybe."
"Now come back inside," she dragged him by his fingers. "We'll catch a chill out here."
He followed her inside and saw the digital display of the clock again. In less than five hours he would be back at the precinct. Back doing the same nauseating things as today, yesterday, and the day before. It depressed him to see just how quickly everything was moving around him. His wife pulled his hand, it momentarily jerked him out of his head. She took him to their bedroom and made him lie down next to her. Jim cradled her body and drifted off. He had no dreams that night. Just nightmares.
He sat at his desk playing with a paperweight. Juggling it from hand to hand he stared off into the distance. A month had passed, winter was now in full flow. Snow covered the roads of Gotham while the window panes of the precinct were caked with a layer of hard frost.
Inside the MCU, was an eerie silence of empty chairs. It was the Commissioner's birthday today and everyone was down at the city hall celebrating. Well, everyone except Jim. He was still at the precinct keeping his seat warm rather than wandering down the red carpet in his navy blazer and tie. He wasn't a formal occasions kind of man, those things only vexed him. He liked to be the guy on the street doing things. The entryway to his cubicle was suddenly blocked by someone. He turned to look. It was the lady from the ground floor, Bertha was her name. Jim always told her hello on the way up.
"Yes?" he said looking at her.
"Sergeant, this is highly irregular of me," she said, blushing slightly. "But there's been a break-in on Dover Street. Would you mind?"
Jim wasn't usually brash about these things but after months of doing nothing but paper-pushing, he craved some action.
He cleared his throat, "I'll check it out. No worries."
She lingered at his desk, "I hope you won't report this. It's just we have a shortage of patrol officers tonight. I wouldn't ask otherwise."
"Not a problem." He waved his hand, "Let those guys at City Hall have a night off."
She smiled. "Thank you, sergeant."
Jim saw her off, then got his coat off the rack. Checking that he still had his gun holstered, he made a beeline for the parking lot downstairs. His legs had nearly frozen from all the sitting, so it took him a short jaunt to get the blood flowing again. Detectives Bullock and Perez stood leaning against the staircase at the bottom just as he got off the last step. He ignored them at first but then they cornered him.
"Fellas," he said. "I don't have the time for this"
"Neither do we," Perez said.
Jim scrunched his face. "What is it? What do you want?"
"Take too long to explain." Bullock put a hand on his back. "Let's get in your car. We'll talk on the way."
"I don't understand, I'm just responding to a break-in. I don't need backup."
"Gordon," Perez said, "Don't argue. Just get in your car."
Jim shook his head. "No, if you won't tell me, then I'm wasting my time here. Move aside."
He crossed his arms and stared at them both. Perez snarled but showed no signs of letting him leave. Bullock looked frustrated, he looked at Jim with a scowl then turned a more hesitant eye towards Perez.
"Let's just tell him," Bullock said.
"There isn't time."
"Well, it's not like we're going anywhere if Gordon doesn't budge."
Perez looked at Bullock with narrowed eyes. There was a mental battle going on between them.
"Fucking waste of time," Perez finally said, turning away.
Bullock looked at Jim.
"It's not just a break-in attempt you're responding to."
"Then what is it," Jim said.
"It's Batman," Bullock said. "They've sighted him at one of the old murder sites. The one on Dover Street."
"Fuck," he said. "Fuck."
They drove to the location in haste. The car wheels skidded across every turning Jim made, piles of snow were shoved aside as the patrol car made its own path. The red and blue siren light cast a strange glow on the sides of buildings and pavement. On the corner to Thimbleton avenue, Jim realized his hand was shaking again. He clenched the steering wheel a little tighter trying to will it to stop, but it only did the opposite. For a second, it felt like his entire body was falling apart inside the car.
Dover Street beckoned to the three policemen in a quiet, mysterious way. They exited the car and stood on the curbside not really knowing what to make of the silence. The whole street was devoid of life, buildings with small brick walls were falling apart. If someone had committed murder here, then this place was exactly the kind to inspire the horror of it. Jim checked his radio to establish some connection, Bullock stopped him by grabbing his hand. He pointed towards the floors above, Jim followed his trajectory.
"That's where the call came from," he said.
He was pointing at a dark apartment with its windows boarded from inside.
Jim nodded and turned to Perez who was slinking at the back of the car, trying to get into the storage locker. He looked at him, Perez responded with a scowl. That was the range of emotion the detective displayed most times, scowls, snarls, and obnoxious smirks. Young blood was always like that.
"Left my gun at the precinct," Perez said.
"Great," Bullock said, throwing his hands in the air. "So, now we've got only two instead of three men to take the bastard down."
"We don't even know he's here," Perez said. "He could be gone by now. I don't hear anything."
Bullock kicked the empty ground.
"We have to call backup," he said.
Just then, Jim saw something move near the side of the apartment they were stalking. He took out his gun and started running towards the entrance.
"Gordon, where are you going?" he heard Perez say.
"Gordon," Bullock called behind him, but he was already moving out of their earshot. "Fuck me."
Once the two men were left behind, he turned his full focus to walking up the rickety wooden stairs with as much assuredness as he could muster. His hand was shaking, Jim could sense it now more than ever. He just ignored the feeling as much as he could and pushed on. The gun swayed hither and tither in dangerous ways but his finger remained locked on the trigger. He wasn't entirely out of control just yet.
The steps under his feet creaked ominously as he went higher up the building. The whole place felt deserted, tube lights flickered in the corridors outside the apartment doors. Some floors didn't have any lights, just pitch-black darkness. He couldn't see a thing in places but he stumbled upwards. At the very top, he felt he had been plunged into a deep-sea scuba dive. Not only could he not see anything but he also couldn't hear anything. Nothing except the blood pumping in his ears and the ragged breaths coming out of his own mouth.
The physical toll of making the climb had shocked his system, he hadn't done this much exercise in months. He wasn't ready to stop though. There was the door to the apartment on his right - number nine-one-two-zero in faded white, it was partially cracked open. Jim carefully traversed the last few meters with a careful eye on the ground. It would be remiss of him to snag his foot on a weak floorboard somehow, not with his destination so close. And as it happened, he didn't.
He pushed the door open with his gun held aloft.
Inside, Jim saw him. The flashlight in his other hand hit him almost instantly. The Batman had his back turned to him, crouched like an animal feeding on a corpse, poised in a position to strike. At the sight, Jim nearly dropped his gun and light on the floor. It would have been embarrassing if he did, no policeman ever drops his gun at a crucial moment. And this was as crucial a moment as he could imagine in his career. This was him being exposed to a world he didn't know or understand.
"Don't move," he said. "Slowly turn around and put your hands in the air."
Nothing happened. Jim felt a large drop of sweat slide down his cheek. His hand was unmistakably spasming and growing numb with each passing second.
"I said," Jim said. "Turn around with your hands in the air."
The dark figure slowly rose and turned. His cape made a fluttering noise as it scraped against the ground. There was an unconscious man held in his hands.
"I'm not your enemy, sergeant," he said.
Jim pointed the gun with force. "What have you done to him?" he said motioning towards the unconscious man.
"What he deserved."
"You killed him?:
"I don't kill."
Jim gritted his teeth. "Explain that to the court, psycho. I'm taking you in."
"No," he said.
"No?"
"I won't be explaining anything. I just did your job for you, sergeant."
"Sergeant?" Jim said. "How'd you know I'm a sergeant?"
Batman dropped the unconscious man to the ground.
"I know a lot of things about you, Jim."
Jim wasn't sure why but he laughed. "You've been keeping tabs on me."
"Of course."
"Why?"
"It's part of the job," Batman said. "And you're worth someone keeping an eye on."
"Am I?" Jim said. "Even if I have a loaded gun pointed at your face?"
Batman didn't say anything. He backed a few steps away so that Jim could inspect the pulse of the downed man lying on the floor. It didn't take long to ascertain he didn't need to call an ambulance just yet. The man had injuries but they were contusions and bruises on the skin, nothing seemed internally damaged.
"You're a clever man, sergeant. Surely you've pieced together why I'm here," Batman said.
Jim looked at him. "Enlighten me."
Batman turned away, the shadows seemed to flit across his partially hidden face in intriguing ways. "Kent Bukowski, that's the man in your arms, the man you just made sure is still breathing despite me already telling you I don't kill."
"Who is he?" Jim said.
"An ex-Blackgate convict. Charged previously with cases of serialized killings of teenage girls and women in their early twenties. Active from circa 1990 to 2000."
"They let him go?" Jim said. "Isn't the punishment for crimes like that for life?"
"Sometimes they're for even longer. Bukowski got one for so long his body would have been decomposing in a crypt that's overgrown by wildlife by the end of his."
Jim scrunched his face. "How'd he get out?"
"Well, our friend here had a generous patron backing him. They bought the whole jury during his retrial."
"I don't believe it," Jim said, shaking his head. "Who was it?"
Batman stayed silent.
"Someone big and important, I'm guessing," Jim said.
Batman didn't answer and it was one of those silences that filled the air with a thousand words. "A topic for another day," he said.
Jim stood up. "My friends at the precinct believed you were the killer," he said. "Now you're telling me it's this guy."
"Who do you believe?"
"Honestly?" Jim said. "I don't know."
They looked at each other for a bit.
He sighed. "But, I have to admit, you put forward a compelling case."
"Then I was right about you being clever."
"I guess so," he said. "I guess you were."
Batman was gone when he looked up.
That night Jim was standing on the balcony of his house. The whole evening had gone by in celebration at the precinct. Bullock and Perez had been hailed as heroes at the MCU for nabbing the murderer while Jim had stood at the back with his drinks. He didn't mind the lack of attention, there were other things going on in his head at the time. Someone had come up to him and told him to cheer up. "It's the Commissioner's birthday, sergeant. And the day we nabbed the killer. It's a day to lighten up, so, wipe that glum look off your face." Jim couldn't and he didn't know why.
Hours later as he stood on his balcony trying to find a cigarette on him, he still didn't.
"Not a bad view," someone said beside him.
He turned to face a familiar dark figure perched atop the balcony railing.
"How long have you been here?" he said.
"A while," Batman said.
He nodded and turned around to look at the buildings. "Thanks for the assist tonight."
"No," he said. "I should be the one thanking you."
Jim looked at him.
"Usually, cops don't listen to what I have to say, but you did. It's good to have someone on my side."
"On your side?" Jim said. "And what side is that?"
Batman got off the railing and stood beside him. "I thought we already established that I'm not your enemy."
"I never said you were."
The two men took the time to appreciate each other's presence. With the erratic nature of their earlier encounter long past them, it seemed only right that they shared some mutual respect that wasn't marred by hostility. Jim didn't mind the intrusion of privacy, it was his moment of solitude being up here. He wondered if it was the same for this darkly clad man when he was not jumping off rooftops, beating strangers to a pulp, or embracing the terrifying prospect of becoming a creature of the night. He wondered if he craved these little moments of silence himself.
Batman stepped towards him and handed him something. Jim took it in his hand.
"What's this?"
"A burner phone," he said. "In case you need help in the future."
"So what," Jim said, amused. "I'm just supposed to call you if something comes up?"
"Something like that."
Batman slinked back into the shadows. There was something magnetic about what he was wearing that drew darkness to him. "What I do every night," he said. "I can't do it alone. Not for very long. So, it would help if I had…a friend."
Jim wasn't sure what to make of this. "I'm sorry to disappoint, but I don't think I have the belief in you, or the people in Gotham, for this to work between us," he said. "Whatever this is"
Batman smirked, the first time he'd shown any signs of humor. "So, you're a pragmatist, then, and not one without the decency to admit it either."
Pragmatist, Jim thought. So, not a shark or an idiot. A pragmatist with a crippled hand and a penchant for smoking uncontrollably. What a sad combination of qualities to have.
"Yet, despite what you've told me so far, you didn't shoot me tonight," Batman said. "Even if the rational mind would have done it in seconds."
"Yes."
"Why, Jim?" Batman said. "Why didn't you?"
Jim looked at him, then looked at the city lights dimly glowing in the distance. It was two A.M., a strange hour to have a conversation with someone. The hours after midnight were always the ones that brought delusions to his head. He leaned over the railing and lit a cigarette, the last one in his pocket. He inhaled deeply and faced Batman.
"A few months back," he said. "I was at Gotham General. My wife picked up the flu from our neighbor and we had to get her checked. When I was there I ran into this woman, this patient, the orderlies had rolled her in on a stretcher. When I saw her, she seemed pretty banged up. Right from her forehead down to her feet were marks of injury, parts of her legs had abrasions that ran so deep I could almost see the white of her bones, and she had cut marks on her wrist - like she'd done it to herself." He blew a cloud of smoke into the night. "When she passed me by, she clutched one of the orderlies by their gown and sobbed that she should be dead. I would be dead, she said, if it wasn't for him. If it wasn't for the giant bat. He saved me, she said. The Batman saved me."
Jim looked at Batman, who seemed just as impassive in the cover of shadows as before.
"Then, last week," he said. "I heard about Captain Wolfe, he works at the MCU right down the corridor from me. Everyone at the precinct knew Wolfe had associations with the mayor and the city mob. He acted as an intermediary between both parties, a dirty cop basically, but no one would do anything about it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they were all envious of him. They knew he was hauling a good deal of money to fund all those vacations he took to the Bahamas every summer. Him and his wife, with the sea mermaids in the tropics, what a life that must be." Jim looked at the flickering lamp-post on the street below him. "He left Gotham last week. Disappeared into the wind, quite literally. The only thing he left behind was a note on his desk that read - He's found me. He won't stop until I've atoned for my sins. I'm sorry."
Jim turned to face Batman as he threw the cigarette away.
"I may not believe in you, yet. But a part of me already knows you're making a difference," he said. "More than I ever could, and definitely more than any of those cops in my precinct could."
Batman shifted in the dark. He was like a sentinel the way he moved and stayed quiet for long periods.
"It's only a start," he said. "Now we do the rest."
"We?" Jim said.
By the time he turned to look, he realized Batman was gone. Turning to his left and right, he saw nothing. He scratched the side of his face and leaned over the railing. There was no sign of him anywhere, either below or above, he really did vanish whenever he made an exit. Jim wondered if he would have to get used to this with time, or if he was being too hopeful about the future. Hope kills, especially in a city like Gotham. Well, he thought, If anything, I have a friend to help me survive that now.
Somewhere far above, Jim Gordon saw the first stars in the Gotham night.
