A/N Wow, feels like forever since I've updated, but I guess it's only been a little over the usual two weeks.
Disclaimer Unless it turns out that I'm adopted and the heir to the DC Comics empire, I don't own Batman.
Acknowledgement There's this restaurant in my hometown with a to-die-for chocolate cake called Black Rose…
Chapter 9
It's plot exposition. It has to go somewhere.
-The Great Muppet Caper
He gently waved the poker, watching the red tip glow and spark as it moved through the air. "No, Señorita, I don't think so."
She could feel the beads of sweat trickling down her cheeks as she stumbled to the desk and dropped to her knees. "Por favor, Señor Gutierrez, you must tell him I would never do such a thing."
The man behind the desk remained silent, refusing to meet her eyes.
Don Carlos spoke. "Alberto."
A hard hand on her arm dragged her to her feet and back toward the center of the room. She began to sob. "Do not hurt me, please do not hurt me..."
"We will not hurt you, Señorita, if you will tell us the truth." Don Carlos stood directly in front of her, poker upright like a sword. "Who sent you to us?"
"No one," she gasped, trying to shrink away.
His hand cracked against her jaw. "What did you steal?"
"Nothing," she whimpered, tasting blood in her mouth.
"How many times have you been a thief in this house?"
"Never!"
Don Carlos said calmly, "Alberto, give me her hand."
An iron arm wrapped around her waist, pinning her left wrist to her side. Then her right hand was caught and the fingers bent painfully back. She began screaming, futilely kicking at the legs of her captor, banging her head against his chest.
"Liars are always punished, Señorita," Don Carlos said gently, and then he nestled the poker's end against the palm of her hand.
- - - - - -
Gordon chewed thoughtfully on the end of his mustache. His wife said it made him look like a wet-whiskered Chihuahua, but in moments of deep meditation, he fell automatically into the habit. And at the moment, his meditation was positively profound, as he contemplated two definite problems which, coincidentally or not, had entered his life along with Batman.
After the fall of Carmine Falcone last spring, Gordon had expected at the very least a respite from the illegal drugs that daily flooded his city. It should have taken at least a little time for another crime lord to emerge and settle his distribution system into place. But Falcone's fall didn't seem to cause to much a flicker in the flow of LSD, heroin, and cocaine. Especially cocaine.
And that had scared Gordon. It meant there was someone so intimately familiar with the Gotham underworld that when a kingpin disappeared he could be replaced without trouble. And Gordon had had absolutely no idea who this person might be. With no idea what he might find, he had begun the long and dangerous process of tracing the chain of command backward, from the pushers on the street corners to the larger distributors.
Then, about four months after the destruction of the Narrows, Batman had managed to capture a high level distributor and wring out a few cryptic words concerning a "flier" before the man was shot by his own associates. And almost immediately afterward, the drug trade plunged. Most things became scarce over a period of about a month, except for cocaine, which all but disappeared overnight. If you weren't a fan of the closet marijuana industry, you may as well roll joints with Ben Franklins. It was more affordable.
And then there was this Joker…
There was a whisper of movement behind him, but Gordon didn't bother turning around. "Took you long enough. You get stuck behind a flock of sparrows or something?
Silence. Gordon rolled his eyes and turned to find Batman standing with arms crossed, glaring. You, my friend, need to develop a sense of humor. "So, what's your side of the story?"
"When I arrived, the car was in flames. The boy recognized me and began running toward me. The woman tried to prevent him. I didn't realize who she was and treated her as an attacker."
"Knocked her cold in the snow, eh?" The corner of Batman's mouth was beginning to have a nasty curl to it, and Gordon hastily added, "She wake up on the ride home?"
"Yes."
"You talk to her at all?"
"Very little. She seemed disoriented. I thought it was a job better left to you."
"I couldn't get to her. The doctor had sent her to bed. But from what the kid said, it was like…like she knew the car was going to blow."
Batman let out his breath his a soft hiss. "You think she could be in league with the Joker." It was a statement, not a question.
Gordon shrugged. "I don't know anything. I'm just going to ask Miss Somerville a few questions, first thing in the morning. By the way, did you do any poking around out there?"
"No. I thought it important to get the hostages away."
"There was somebody else in the shed. Nothing you could have done; we're pretty sure they were dead quite a while before the explosion. But it was weird. We don't know who it was yet, but the arms were stretched out over an iron frame. Kind of looked like wings. And there was another, real fancy iron thing lying on the chest. Shaped like a J."
- - - - - -
Cecilia's eyes flew open and she stared blindly into the fuzzy dark. It's always nice to wake up before they get bad.
Tossing off the suffocating blankets, she discovered that she was in her allotted room at Wayne Manor. She turned on the bedside lamp and fumbled for her glasses, at last resting them on her nose and blinking through their blessedly clean lenses. The clock read four thirty.
"Abominable hour. No decent person ought to be awake right now," she muttered, just before her stomach let loose a terrific growl. She'd had nothing but a cup of tea the night before; the doctor had pronounced her un-frostbitten and sent her straight to bed, a course of action she'd had no wish to protest.
Pulling her thick robe on over her flannel pajamas, she stuff her feet into her slippers and shuffled her way to the small kitchen. Although the occasional dim light glowed, the manor appeared deserted. I wonder when the servants start coming in? What servants there are. Considering the spotless state of the mansion, they had to exist, but if they had corporeal existence, Cecilia had yet to discover it. Like the enchanted castle in the fairy tale – invisible servants. I'll have to ask Pennyworth.
Flipping on the small light over the sink, she opened one or two cabinets before her eye fell on the crystal covered cake stand. She lifted the lid and found the remains of a dark chocolate cake, thickly iced and decorated with maraschino cherries. Maybe I froze to death after all because this is definitely heaven.
- - - - - -
Bruce leaned tiredly against the side of the cage that carried him to the study. After his conversation with Gordon, he'd spent the night prowling the darkest neighborhoods of Gotham, looking and listening for a clue, any clue, to the Joker's whereabouts, but he'd come up empty-handed.
The hot shower beating his shoulders seemed to ease the tension that had knotted there ever since Alfred's phone call this...yesterday afternoon. He toweled off, climbed into his pajamas, and realized that he was still too keyed up to sleep.
He padded down the hallway to Dick's room and gently pushed open the door. The boy with his face almost entirely buried in the pillow, curled into a lump beneath the rocket ship comforter. Bruce stared with unconscious anxiety until he saw Dick shift slightly beneath the covers, proving that he was still breathing. Making a face at his own paranoia, Bruce shut the door and went downstairs.
As he approached the kitchen, he could see soft light streaming from the doorway. Alfred. Does the man ever sleep? He was halfway across the kitchen floor before it registered that the figure sitting behind the counter not Alfred.
Somerville sat with her chin propped on her fist, staring at him. "I always imagined that if I made a billion dollars I'd never get up before noon." Her eyes traveled thoughtfully over his unwrinkled pajamas and wet hair. "But maybe never going to bed at all is an equally enjoyable alternative. A little club hopping to soothe your nerves?"
Bruce couldn't think of a response. Any response, that is, that didn't involve accusing her of complicity with organized crime and kicking her out of his house. "How are you feeling?" he managed in a more or less neutral tone, and stalked past her to the refrigerator.
"Fine, thank you. The restorative powers of chocolate cake are really quite remarkable."
Startled at the suddenly amiable tone, he glanced at her and finally noticed the icing smeared crystal plate in front of her. Turning back, he pulled open the fridge and pretended to deliberate between the orange and the cranberry cocktail. He heard her plate clatter in the sink and slowly reached for the orange juice, hoping that she would be gone by the time he turned around. She wasn't. She stood leaning against the counter, arms folded, hands hidden inside the sleeves of her enormous, and enormously hideous, bathrobe.
"The…boss…was dressed as a clown. I suppose you know this?"
His hand gripped the juice cap. She acts like she's never heard of him. "The 'boss' is a recognized felon, popularly termed the 'Joker.' His costume is his trademark."
"Really? Well, he's going to have replace his shoes. He tried to touch Richard and Richard threw up." She grinned suddenly, her round cheeks melting into crescent moons. "I thought we were dead."
"Richard was sick?"
"No. He simply got rid of what little was in his stomach. They didn't offer us lunch."
"Why?"
"No manners."
He shook his head impatiently. "Was Dick hurt?"
Surprise flickered across her face. "Richard has a phobic fear of clowns. Didn't you know?"
He leaned back against the refrigerator, absently popping the sides of the carton in and out. "No," he replied slowly, "I didn't. Dick's only been living with me since August, and I never knew his parents."
"He was brave enough around the mimes, but when clown himself appeared…it was almost as if his mind shut down." She frowned. "You don't know what caused such a deep seated fear?"
"No," he answered, a little too quickly.
She stared at him, her eyes unblinking behind her glasses. "I wonder if Richard himself knows. If you could discover the incident that began his phobia, you might be able to solve some of the mystery of his early past."
"I'll think about it."
She quirked an eyebrow at his lack of enthusiasm but didn't pursue the subject. "How much did he tell you about yesterday?"
"The same things he told the police. That you were held in a warehouse for most of the day before a truck drove you to the tree farm. That you told him to get out of the car and that the car blew up. And that Batman gave you a ride home."
"The police were here? Of course they were," she answered herself.
"They'll be back to talk to you."
"Ah." She straightened and began to walk toward the door. Halfway there, she stopped and looked back at him. "By the way, Mr. Wayne, there's no need to thank me. I am, after all, paid to work this job."
Bruce choked on his orange juice. He was still coughing when a new voice said coolly, "I hope I haven't missed breakfast." A ticked off Rachel Dawes stood in the doorway, glaring at them.
"Rachel." Somerville was smiling, but it was less than friendly. "It's been a long time."
Rachel wasn't smiling back. "What are you doing here?"
"My job, Miss Dawes."
"Balancing Wayne Enterprises' accounts?" Rachel asked sarcastically.
"No, I work for the government. They figured out that it was cheaper to hire me than to put me in a correctional institution."
Before Rachel could reply, the opening notes of Beethoven's Fifth filled the kitchen. Somerville pulled a cell phone from her pocket. "I hate to run when we have so much to catch upon, but I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me." She lifted the phone to her ear as she left, and they could hear her voice drifting back. "Hello, Terry."
"What was that about?" Bruce demanded. "And what are you doing here?"
"I'm here because you walked out on the middle of our conversation, and that was about you nurturing a viper in your home."
Bruce straddled one of the bar stools and regarded her intently. "I did notice the fangs."
"Five years ago we both up at Hearts and Homes."
"The charity foundation for street kids?"
"Yes. It's headed by Henry Judas."
"He's a busy man – head of social services too, isn't he?"
Rachel's face softened momentarily. "A busy man and a very good one. He really cares about those kids. Anyway, I was doing pro bono work, and she was there on some kind of internship. One night, I forgot my briefcase in the headquarters office, and when I went back for it, I caught her hacking into the financial records. I went to Judas, and he said he would talk to her. Later, he came to me and said that it had been a misunderstanding and that Miss Somerville was very sorry about the whole thing. He also asked me not to say anything because the incident could be very damaging to the woman's career. I agreed, but I swear the only thing she was ever sorry about was that she got caught."
"Do you know why she was interested in the financial records?"
"There's usually only one reason. And anyone who steals from homeless kids should be locked up and the key thrown away."
- - - - - -
Cecilia shut her bedroom door behind her. "Terry, I promise you, I'm fine…Yes, I know what you saw on the news…I didn't lie when I said I thought it wouldn't be dangerous…I didn't…Yes, I know I'm fat…Look, I'm going back to bed, and you need to get ready for work. Goodbye, Terry…No, don't even think about coming up here…Goodbye…Terry, goodbye." Clicking the phone shut she switched it for a slender, silver laptop and crawled into bed. A minute later she was connected to the mansion's wireless network.
Time to start living up those character endorsements Rachel Dawes is no doubt giving me. I wonder what billionaires choose for passwords?
To Be Continued…
A/N Large thank you's and bat shaped helium balloons to all who left reviews! This story now has over 100! Responses to reviews can be found, as always, by going to my bio and clicking on the homepage link.
OK…my internet is acting up and I can't access the review response page. Hopefully they'll be up tomorrow.