CHAPTER XIII
I had just woken up when I heard banging on my bedroom door and Dick saying, "DUDE! GET OUT OF THERE!" I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and opened the door, saying, "What the heck, man? I've only had three hours of sleep!" "You'll want to see this," said Dick. He led me to the TV, rewinding the news. "How long have you been up?" I asked. "Since Bleach was on," he replied, "I decided to see what was going on in the news, and I found this." He played the news, and the news anchor said, "The criminal known as the Joker has escaped from Arkham Asylum along with Harold Barren, Joseph Wellsley, Masashi Ryukyu, and psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel." I was immediately woken up by the shock of this news. "Fine time to release this," I said. "Well, you know," said Dick, "crazy clown guy running loose around Gotham, they wouldn't want to worry anyone…too soon."
I rubbed my face, sighing, then saying, "Great. Just great." Dick looked at me and said, "I figure you should suit up and see what you can do." "No," I said, "The Joker's too smart. He won't try anything in broad daylight. He's probably laying low." "Still," said Dick, undeterred, "somebody has to be Batman." I nodded, walking to the Bat-Cave and changing into the Batman suit. Little did I know that Dick was behind me at the computers with a headset on. Suddenly, I heard this: "TESTING, ONE, TWO, THREE! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" I jumped and turned around. There was Dick, nodding satisfactorily, arms crossed. "That'll work," he said. He turned and sat down on the swivel chair in front of the computers, putting his feet on the desk. "What do you mean, 'that'll work'?" I asked indignantly. "Oh," said Dick, "I thought, hey, the guy's probably stressed, navigating the city by himself. So I came to the conclusion that I could act as your mission control, of sorts."
I stared at him for a long time, eventually saying, "Well, knowing you, you'll do it anyway whether I like it or not, so go ahead." "WOO-HOO!" he shouted, nearly shredding my eardrums. I cringed and said, "Don't shout when you have that thing on!" He grimaced, saying, "Sorry." I walked to the Batmobile, ears ringing, and got in. I rocketed out of the Bat-Cave, opening the gate before I smashed it. I turned left onto the road, heading towards the city. When I reached a place that was well hidden, I parked the Batmobile. But it's not like anyone could've stolen it. I'm almost ashamed to say I got a laugh out of watching a carjacker get shocked by the door handle. Remember I said almost. I traversed the rooftops, scanning the ground below me for any activity. Suddenly, I heard Dick say, "Hey, some politician's office was broken into a few minutes ago. His name is Antonio Guile." "Was he killed?" I asked. "No," said Dick, "but the place was ransacked, and there are a few files and such missing." "Right, I'm on it," I said, heading for the address Dick gave me.
When I reached the place, I saw that the window was broken in, and the roof of the building next to it was at the right angle to make a zip-line. I went through the window, noticing a few police officers were present, including Jim Gordon. A couple of them saw me, drawing their guns. Jim stepped out in front of them and said, "Wait. He's okay." "What do we have here?" I asked. "Well," said Jim, "There's not much. I mean, aside from that." He pointed towards the wall opposite from the window. The bookshelf was opened like a door, leading into a file room. While it wasn't uncommon for people like this to have secret rooms in Gotham, it was made strange by what Jim told me next. "There was an entire drawer-full of files taken from one spot in the room," said Jim.
I walked inside it. Like he said, there was an entire drawer missing, with a card in place. It was a Bicycle joker card. "Why am I not surprised?" I said, "Wait a second. There's something on the back." I turned the card over, where a tiny envelope was pasted on the back. I opened it up. There was a paper with a haphazard signature saying COMPLIMENTS OF THE JOKER. I unfolded the paper, revealing eight letters with the font of a file title: Perriman. Jim said, "Let me see that." I handed it over to him. He sighed upon reading it and said, "I know that name. Vernon Perriman was a British guy that came to Gotham for a large auction. Two days after the auction ended, he was found dead, presumably by a heart attack. There was one problem with that, though." "What?" I asked. "Our buddy Vernon," said Jim, "regularly ran marathons and had finished the Tour de France once before. A heart attack? Yeah, right."
"So, what does this have to do with Guile?" I asked. "Well," said Jim, "as you know, in an auction, there's always those two guys who go back and forth trying to pay more for an item than the other. In this instance, Perriman and Guile were those two guys. Perriman won. By this point, Guile had already been suspected of premeditated and planned murder, but as always, nothing good as evidence goes turned up." "I get it," I said, "The Joker is trying to prove that Guile killed Perriman, and then kill him. My guess is he'll leave the evidence at the scene." "We'll see," said Jim. Suddenly, we heard an officer yell, "Hey, boss! I found something!" We walked over to the officer, and he held in his hand a video tape. The same signature that was on the paper was present on the tape.
"Do we have anything to play this with?" I asked. "Probably in one of the conference rooms," said Jim. We headed down the hallway and into one of the said conference rooms, placing the tape in the VCR. Thank God people still use those. The tape began with a close-up of the Joker's face and the tail end of a sentence, "…thing on? Okay, there we go." The Joker took the camera out further to show his whole face. The whole room was pitch black except for the light on the camcorder. The Joker began, "I would have put this on a DVD, but call me old-fashioned, I couldn't resist putting it on this! You've already discovered that the Perriman files are missing. Let me tell you, this guy, Guile, is stupid. He should've burned these, 'cause boy howdy, they're juicy! At this point, they're only circumstantial evidence on their own, but I'm working on it! Soon, you'll see Tony Guile for what he really is, and what his blood looks like!"
The tape ended, and Jim pulled it out slowly, his face a grim mask. "Where's Guile now?" I asked. "A party downtown, I think," said Jim. "I'll find him," I said. "What're you going to do?" asked Jim as I left the room. "I'm going to have a little talk with him," I replied. I jumped out the same window I came through, swinging on a streetlight and landing on a car. I pushed a button on my gauntlet that called the Batmobile to my location. Within five minutes it arrived, and I jumped in immediately. "Dick," I said, "what's the address to the party Guile is attending, and…what's that crunching sound?" "Oh," said Dick, "It's popcorn. There's nothing to do down here, really, so…"
I sighed and said, "Never mind. What's the address?" He rapidly gave me the location, and I sped towards it, knowing that it could mean that Guile would be incarcerated or he'll be killed. I reached the party, quickly hopping out of the car. I entered the building, pushing past the guy with the list at the front, who simply stepped aside. As I went through the front doors, the music at the back died down, and the sounds of debauchery became nervous murmurs. I stood in the middle of the room and yelled, "WHERE'S ANTONIO GUILE?" The crowd parted to reveal a sweating and shaking Guile. I sprang towards him and grabbed him by his shirt collar. I practically dragged him out of the building, amid his protests, until I eventually said, "SHUT UP!" He did so.
I led him to the back of a dark alley, shoving him forward with his back towards me. I fired my grappling hook to the roof of the building over us and pulled myself to it as he said, "What is this all about? I can give you money, if that's what you want. And I mean a lot of…" He turned at that moment, noticing that I wasn't there. He gulped and spun around, looking for me. "I don't want your money," I said gravely. "Then what do you want?!" Guile sobbed. I dropped behind him and whispered in his ear, "I want to know about Perriman." He jumped, turned around, and scrambled backwards, falling. I stood over him. He held up his hands and said, "Look, just don't kill me. I have no idea what you're talking about." "They all say that," said Dick, messing me up, "it's the biggest cliché on the planet." "Shut up, Dick," I said. Guile lowered his hands and said, "I'm sorry, what did you just call me?" "Never mind that," I said.
I grabbed him by his collar again and put him against the wall, sticking a batarang into his jacket, pinning him. I grabbed another one and drew it across his face, lightly nicking his cheek. "Now," I said, "I'm not going to reiterate myself: did you order the murder of Vernon Perriman?" "NO!" he shouted. I stuck the sharp side of the batarang against his neck, making sure it was just below the pressure needed to break the skin. "No, I didn't order his death! It was an associate of mine, he wanted revenge on him for something else! I let him because I just didn't want to make him angry!" I growled, "Who wanted him dead?" "If I tell you," he said, "he'll do much worse to me than you could ever!" I left him hanging from the wall. He was so scared he didn't say a word. As I got inside the Batmobile, I replayed the recording I had gotten of his confession. "Hey, Dick," I said, "can you burn that onto a CD?" "Yeah," said Dick, "I'll get right on it."
There was something wrong, though. If Guile didn't order the killing, and the only reason he let it go was because he was scared, why would he keep files that would incriminate him as an accessory? I headed back to Wayne Manor, still pondering the question. As I pulled into the Bat-Cave, Dick ran towards me and took off the headset. When I reached him, he held up a CD. "Burned and ready to hand to the police," he said. "All right, send it to them," I said. "Will do," he said. I changed into my regular clothes and went inside the house. I turned on the news. It was breaking that the Batman had pinned Tony Guile by his sports jacket to a wall. I couldn't resist smiling. Of course, this didn't earn me any points in the public eye, but all it meant was I'd have to be a little more discreet.
That night, I poured myself a shot of Jack Daniel's. Knocking it back, I thought about the day as a whole. I put the glass down and absentmindedly spun it, still thinking. Dick came in a few minutes later, an A&W in hand. "Pretty productive day," he said. I nodded and said, "I suppose. There are a few things that don't fit though." "Like what?" asked Dick. I regaled my suspicions. "That is odd," said Dick, "but hey, don't worry about it yet. There's still progress." "True," I said, "but the biggest question of all: who was his 'associate'?" Dick shrugged and said, "No idea, but from the way he was acting, he must be a heavy-hitter." I stopped spinning the glass, saying, "I think I might know." "Who?" said Dick. Across town, unbeknownst to me, a British man was on a rooftop across from a party put together by Guile's associate, loading his sniper rifle. As he put in a round, I walked out of the room and said, "He's Carmine Falcone."