Chapter 7

Rachel Dawes wrapped her overcoat protectively around herself as a brisk breeze swept through the block. It was nearly 9PM. Almost time.

There were very few people on the streets, and most of them were walking like they were in a hurry to get somewhere. The building she had just came out was nothing special; a large fifteen-story complex of apartments, looking worse for the wear, but actually not too bad on the inside. For the dubious pleasure of two hundred square feet, she forked over almost half her monthly salary. Distant memories of living in Wayne Manor came to mind. Bruce's bedroom was much bigger than my place; even his closet was almost as big as my little cubbyhole.

The thought sparked an inchoate fury within her; it was a wholly novel feeling, as she never once had been jealous of Bruce's fortunes before. That fire burned away lots more than my face; it stripped me of all my illusions. Now she saw the world in cold, hard terms, and the facts were undeniable as to the gap between them.

But unlike you, Bruce, I'm going to solve things once and for all. Her cold calculating rage was such that she almost missed seeing the big black car slowly pull up in front of her. She stepped forward.

A sallow-faced man, whose age and ethnicity was impossible for her to pin down, peaked out of the dark-tinted window. "Evening, ma'am," he said in a slightly accented-voice. "I'm Dave."

A chill ran up her spine. So it begins. "I'm Rachel."

"I need directions to the show. Any ideas?"

"SouthTown. It's in SouthTown."

Dave nodded silently. The rear passenger door opened, and without hesitation she stepped inside.

"Evening, Miss Dawes." To her left sat a tall, thin man with thick black hair. "I'm Janos."

"So, did Garcia hire you as well?"

Janos flinched, a deep frown on his face. "Was it something I said?" she asked innocently.

"The way he contacted you was most sloppy. Insecure." Janos' English was perfectly fluent, but like with Dave's (if that was his name), she could detect a trace of accent, Eastern European, perhaps Slavic. A veteran of the Balkan wars? And massacres? "It would have been better if one of us had done so."

"But I would never have trusted some unknown figure coming to me and asking what the Mayor asked," she replied. "Am I not right?"

He smiled, but it was chilling rather than reassuring. "Touché, Counselor. Only someone you would trust could have been the contact. I was only critiquing his choice of rendezvous point."

"Well, don't worry, I'm in." She peered out the windows. "What's my role to be?"

"I will brief you when we get to HQ. Don't worry, Miss Dawes, you will not be any physical danger—"

—his condescending words and tone of voice instantly fired Rachel's emotions up. She harshly yanked off her mask, ignoring the pain; it pleased her to hear Janos gasp in shock. "I'm no stranger to violence," she hissed. "If you ever capture the Joker alive, I want to be there when you kill him, because I have a pound of flesh he owes me, and I'm going to cut if off with a knife one tiny bit at a time!"

Janos merely stared at her, his mouth half-open in shock. Then he grinned again. "Of course, Miss Dawes. As you might guess, everyone one this job has plenty of experience in receiving and dealing pain. I see you'll fit right in."

Rachel nodded and sat back. She did not replace the mask, and it pleased her again that Janos was reluctant to gaze upon her for the rest of the trip.

They drove for almost an hour, winding their way through the cavernous streets of Gotham. Their eventual destination was a shabby, nondescript neighborhood just north of the Narrows.

They pulled up to a small boarded-up building with a first-floor garage. The garage door opened as they approached, and Dave drove them in. Once the door closed behind them, Janos unlocked the doors and stepped out. Rachel followed. As they entered the first floor, Rachel noticed there were several men lounging about—five in total. They all stopped talking and immediately got to their feet as they stepped inside.

"This is Team A," Janos said with an expansive gesture. "There are five teams total, each team rotating in duties between security and active field operations. Me, Dave, and three others are the command team, in charge of planning operations."

"Where do you get your orders from?"

Janos smiled again. "The Mayor and his colleagues are working through a point man of their own. I don't know who it is, but he is completely reliable. Their point man works through a neutral broker, who in turn works with our point man, who you don't need to know."

"Seems rather complicated."

"It's necessary, for security. As you can imagine, the Mayor does not want his hands to get dirty, so he has to work through several intermediaries to hire our services."

"And I'm sure you're being well-compensated for your troubles."

"Of course. One million per week for expenses, plus another million for each target neutralized."

'Neutralized', he means killed. "I'm surprised the Mayor trusts you enough to play this game. Seems like you could very effectively blackmail him."

Janos feigned a pained look. "We are professionals, Miss Dawes. We didn't get the reputation we have by double-crossing our clients." He paused. "And besides, it's not just about the money. Breaking heads is not just what we do; it's what we enjoy." Janos said those words in a quiet tone of voice, but Rachel could not ignore the menacing tones by which he said them.

"And what will be my job? I hope I'm not just going to be a pretty face." Everyone in the room chuckled softly.

Janos shook his head. "We have everything we need except information about which targets to strike. After tonight, your day job will be to return to Gotham's DA Office and provide us with information the police and detectives have regarding the Joker and his associates. We'll take it from there."

"And what about evenings? I'm a hard worker, too."

Janos smiled. "I have not forgotten what you said to me in the car ride over here. We will have many targets who will not be terminated immediately, but will require... interrogation. You can help out with that... as well as watch what happens to those who do not comply... or even do the deed yourself, if you wish!"

Torture. Despite herself, Rachel shuddered at the prospect. But it's all for the best...

"Very well. I'm in, Janos, and you don't even have to pay me. All I want his the Joker's head on my living room wall." The other men guffawed in response; she flashed a crooked half-smile. "You can take me back now, I need to get some sleep before going back to work tomorrow."

Janos' eyes opened in surprise. "I thought you wanted to see us in action?"

"You're going out tonight? I thought you needed me to find out who your targets were."

"We do, but our first target is one our patrons specifically designated to us. You should come, unless you don't want to get your hands dirty after all."

It was very sudden for Rachel, and she was tempted to decline. But I can't show weakness, not to anyone anymore, certainly not to these thugs. "Okay, let's go."

"Good. You will be in the car, so no danger, but you will see our handiwork. I promise, you'll be impressed."

"Looking forward to it."

Rachel and the assault team rode in two different cars that night. It was well past midnight when they arrived at the shabby apartment complex. The car Rachel was in pulled up across the street. By her side, Janos was speaking softly into a radio; it sounded like Russian.

The other car pulled up in front of the building, and four men silently poured out. It was very dark, so she couldn't see too well, but there was something oddly familiar about their appearances. Before she could figure it out any further, they had disappeared inside.

Minutes passed. Then someone contacted Janos on the radio. He nodded, then took off the headset. "Target neutralized. We have ten minutes to inspect before we must leave. Shall we?"

"Okay," Rachel said, her stomach more than a little queasy. They got out and walked briskly towards the building. They took the stairs up to the third floor and walked down a dimly lit hallway. There was a man standing by a door that was ajar. With a jolt, Rachel was shocked to see that the man's appearance bared more than a passing resemblance to the Batman. He was garbed in the same basic black armored gear, gloves, and boots, but without Batman's cape or bat-eared cowl; instead, he wore a combination helmet and mask. Rachel also noticed that, unlike Batman, he was carrying a gun: a submachine gun with a large silencer on it.

"As an added part of your cover, you'll pretend to be the Batman, or at least his agents," Rachel said, trying to keep her voice casual.

"Exactly." Rachel didn't know what to think of this, and realized that now was not the time. Janos stepped inside, as did Rachel. The other three members of the team were silently but rapidly ransacking the dingy apartment. There was a door to the bedroom, which they both entered.

Rachel could not stop a shocked gasp from escaping her lips at the sight before her. On the bed were two naked bodies slumped over each other in death, bleeding profusely from multiple gunshots to their bodies and head. One was a very young Hispanic woman; the other was a middle-aged black man. He looked familiar—

"—That's Councilman Ayers!" Jonathan Ayers, elected from the 15th District. His nickname is 'The Cleaner', because he cleans money out of all his constituents in exchange for favors. Rachel didn't know who the woman was, but it obviously wasn't his wife.

"A total degenerate," Janos said contemptuously. "As you can see, he likes his ladies young, younger even than this one." Rachel shifted uncomfortably; the whispers about his predilections were only rumors, but apparently they were true. "Stealing from those who didn't vote for him, and making deals the mob to keep them quiet. Gotham is well-rid of scum like him, don't you think?"

"Uh, sure," Rachel said hesitantly.

Janos glared at her. "Don't get squeamish, Dawes. Cleaning Gotham out is a Herculean task, and we're going to need a lot more blood to wash it clean than we spilled today."

"But she wasn't a criminal, she was just another victim..." Rachel's voice trailed away.

"She would have been a witness," he said coldly. "And what's one more dead whore in the greater scheme of things?"

Nothing, really. Rachel sighed; a few months ago, she would have been busting chops to bring the killer of a prostitute to justice. Now... "Killing Ayers isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things, either, Janos. There'll be ten others lining up to take his place by the end of the week."

"Oh, it's even worse than that; my guess is that one of our sponsors ordered us to eliminate him just for that very reason."

Rachel gasped in shock. Janos continued: "We may be hired guns, but we're not stupid either. Bigshots willing to pay millions to kill people won't hesitate to use us to get rid of their personal or business adversaries. Doesn't matter to me."

But if the politicians and leaders of the community are criminals too, what difference will it make? As if reading her mind, Janos continued: "First things first. We kill the Joker, and those who hired him: the organized criminals who've choked the life out of your city. The big shots who are doing this don't realize that by getting rid of the underworld's muscle, they'll have no one to protect them in their shady dealings. The good people of Gotham—" he said those words sarcastically, "—will then have a chance to vote better men to office."

It was almost believable. Almost. "I'm glad you're so concerned about the welfare of our city," Rachel said in an equally sarcastic voice. "But it'd be easier to believe if you weren't getting millions for your troubles."

"Without those millions, we wouldn't be here," Janos conceded. "And it is more likely that when we're finished, we'll have just cleared the way for others to take over. But if the choice is between fairies like Garcia wetting their beaks, or the Joker..."

Put that way, it was no choice at all. "No complaints from me." She went back into the living room and viewed the assassination team's handiwork. "Very efficient. Your men are messing up the place to make it look like a robbery, instead of a targeted killing."

"Indeed. If the police are half as bright as you, they'll see right through it."

"I doubt it." The others were leaving. "I guess it's time to leave."

"Past time. Let's go." As they got into the cars and drove away, the faint wails of sirens could be heard. Too little, too late, coppers, Rachel thought contemptuously.

A police car flashed past them, sirens blazing and lights flashing. Just like you were too late with Harvey...

"Do you need a tissue? Your left eye is leaking."

"No, I'm okay. Just take me home."

"You know what to look for, right?"

"You don't have to say it again—"

"—I'm going to anyway. Remember, we must work down from Maroni, it's his street people who will be closest to the Joker."

"Right. Got it."

"Good luck, and good night." Rachel did not respond. She went straight back to her apartment, threw off her clothes, and went to bed.

I'm a criminal now, she thought over and over again. No turning back. But it's all for the best. We'll kill the Joker, and all the other criminals, and it will all be set right. But as she drifted off into an uneasy sleep, over and over in Rachel's dreams the body of the hapless prostitute appeared. Her very short and hard life came to a terrible end, merely because she had the misfortune to be with Ayers at the wrong place at the wrong time…

"Hope there won't be too many others like her," she said softly to the ceiling. She closed her eyes.

Not likely…