Chapter 5.
Commissioner Gordon frowned. "Why would this Lord Deathman suddenly want to expand his operations to Gotham?"
"The Japanese corporation Tekken recently acquired a Swiss-based drug company called Pharmaceutique Cinq-Fleches."
Batman nodded in recognition. "I've heard of them. It's rumored that they make designer drugs for L'Union Corse."
"Hence, the acquisition by the people who do most of Deathman's money laundering," replied the inspector. "He wants to move his yakuza clan into the 21st century. But, the distribution of new drugs on the streets of Tokyo would almost certainly lead to a prohibitively expensive war with his rivals! So, by instigating a gang war in Gotham City, instead..."
"...he eliminates local competition while simultaneously opening a test market for his new drugs," finished Gordon.
Inspector De Tector nodded once more. Batman, however, was quick to point out one salient point.
"He couldn't do all of that, openly. Not at first, anyway! He'd need a local man to front for him."
"True!" agreed the inspector. "Hence, his recruitment of one Anthony Zucco."
"Arnold Stromwell's nephew," muttered the Dark Knight.
"Makes sense," said Gordon. "He's over-ambitious... and mentally myopic!"
Meanwhile, the limousine owned by the subject of this discussion was en route to the Gotham Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
"I got this kidnapping caper I want to pull tonight. But, to do it, I need a diversion that'll draw as many cops away from the scene as possible."
"And that's where I come in," guessed "Matches" Malone: professional arsonist.
"Yep! I want you to cause some 'natural gas' explosions in the sewers around this hotel for a two-block radius. And I want it done within the next two hours!"
Malone whistled. "So soon?! Rush jobs can be risky with the kind of pyrotechnics you just described."
"But, nothin' you haven't done before, right?"
"Not without gettin' a generous down-payment in advance."
"Not to worry. I'll give you twice your usual fee! The first half of which is already in your favorite offshore account. As for the stuff you might need? You can pick it up at this address."
Tony Zucco handed the arsonist a business card.
"Any other questions?"
Malone shook his head.
"Then, I'll drop you off here so you can check in."
It took less than a minute for the doorman to open the left rear passenger door and help Malone exit the back seat. By the time the limo pulled away, Malone was halfway to the check-in desk. The only other people registering ahead of him being a young French girl and her weird boyfriend who looked like an albino midget wrestler.
Twenty minutes later, however, he came down from his hotel room and asked the doorman to hail him a cab.
"Where to, mister?" asked the cabbie.
"1050 Radomski Street," replied Malone.
ROOM 639, GOTHAM RITZ-CARLTON
MAY 1, 1990 (12:30 A.M./EDT)
Kuno Kodachi could no longer wait. Having learned from her American chaperone, Jack Ryder, where Madison Round Garden was located, she decided to go there before sunrise and confront this gaijin woman who had dared steal her "beloved" Ranma-chan from her, by posing as his long-absent mother. Hence, her going to bed right after an early dinner. So, she could both revitalize herself, after that long flight from Japan, as well as sneak out of the hotel, later on, without Ryder-san noticing. Having accomplished the first goal, she now sneaked up to the roof of the hotel, wearing her greenish-black leotard (with matching moccasins) and carrying a telescoping pole with a white ribbon attached to it. A ribbon that was weighted at the free end like a kusari-gama chain.
But, which was also coated with a powerful adhesive similar to that of flypaper!
She was not alone, however, in wanting to sneak out of the hotel.
"Where do you wanna start the search for those Chiropterans?" asked Brago, flexing his muscles instinctively.
"We shall let them find us," replied Sherry Belmont. "In the meantime, we can advance our own cause by searching for those other spell books you sensed."
"Counting Kiyo and Zatch Bell's, there are three of them," Brago reminded her. "Of the other two? One's very close by; about a two-block radius. The third is much more distant. About twenty-two-and-a-half kilometers (or fourteen American miles) from here. And, yet, strangely enough, the mystical energy signature of that tome is more powerful than the other two combined!"
"We shall take the one that is more geographically convenient," Sherry decided.
Fifteen minutes later, they were in the first-floor portion of the Madison Round Garden parking garage where the Haly & Norton Circus had parked some of their trailers. At that same moment, Michael "Matches" Malone was climbing down a metal ladder from a certain access hatch in a certain subway tunnel. Clad in khaki cover-alls, a pair of army-surplus hiking boots, and a coal miner's headlamp.
For 1050 Radomski Street had proven to be the Dini Brothers Auto Salvage Yard!
Bruce, Timm, and Paul Dini were identical triplets whose specialty was the "restyling" of stolen cars for Arnold Stromwell. And, over the years, they had become accustomed to receiving instructions from Stromwell via his nephew, Tony. Instructions they always followed, to the letter, without question. So, when Tony told them he needed certain kinds of metal pipes brought to their junkyard in a plumbing supply van, on behalf of an old friend of "Uncle Arnie," that was exactly what they did. Just as unquestioningly as they also left behind a map of the Gotham City sewer system on the front seat!
Consequently, Malone was now planting incendiary pipe bombs, in the first of the sewer tunnels, beneath the street directly parallel to Romano Boulevard. The street on which the main entrance to the hotel was located! The lights built on to the tunnel walls were not too bright in themselves. So, Malone augmented their illumination with the help of the headlamp. That way, he could properly see the dials on each of the detonation timers he was setting as precisely as possible.
Eventually, however, he completed laying the first series of charges. Thereby leaving him free to begin booby-trapping the tunnel beneath the street perpendicular to the hotel's north-facing wall. No sooner had he gotten started, though, than he heard a strange sound coming from farther down the tunnel to his right. An almost-asthmatic wheezing!
Thinking it might be one of those subterranean homeless people he had read so much about, in Brazil, he dared to call out.
"Hey! Who is it? Who goes there?"
The only response was more wheezy breathing. The breather (or breathers) sounding even closer, now. So, Malone repeated his demand. Reluctantly reaching, as he did so, for the .45 caliber Colt M-1911 currently holstered on his left hip for quick, right-handed drawing beneath the partially unzipped cover-alls. It was not that he was squeamish about using guns. Far from it. After all, it was the U.S. Army that had taught him his present trade in the first place!
It was simply that he loved the loud noise his bombs made so much like the Fourth of July fireworks of his youth! The sound of that asthmatic wheezing, however, was driving him to distraction. So, Malone repeated his demand for identification a third time. Only this time, he got a response. Not a verbal one, unfortunately. But, rather, a facial one!
Malone saw the face of what was doing all the wheezing... and he screamed.
tbc
