The energy of the night was still reeling as the DJ lit up the dance floor with another round and the women were steaming up the room with the gents in the room. Suddenly there was a round of gunfire that hit a few of the patrons. Screaming and panic broke out as the guards cleared the dance floor. Eye of the Tiger was playing in the background as people started to sort through the chaos. The police then came crashing into the room as badges were flashed. The room was contained as people were huddled in fright as the party atmosphere had turned into a nightmare…. Quickly.
Harvey Dent came in with the cops and looked around after the police had cleared the club with suspects. Somehow he knew there was more here than what had brushed over by the scrubs. “Jack, get me a baggie.” He waved over a uniformed cop that had taken up position to guard the detectives that had come in.
“What’d you find, Harvey?” Commissioner James Gordon came in with his contingent of cops.
“Just a lot of screwed up teenagers, Jim.” He stood up as he handed a detective a broken tooth of a dancer that had lost in the scuffle to get out of the room. “I’ll bet if we proposed a curfew for this part of town that’d we get a fight from City Hall again?”
“You got that right.” Gordon nodded.
Dent looked over his shoulder as he saw the Dark Knight in the shadows. “I don’t think this hit has anything to do with the people who were at this club.”
“Why do you say that?” Dent cocked one of his dark eyebrows in response to The Batman’s surprise entrance.
“I think it’s meant as a message to the owners of the club.” He picked up a casing from the semi-automatic weapon and looked up at Dent and Gordon.
“Jeb Kane?” Gordon raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, the Kane family is just as well as established as the elder clans that have been here for…”
“I know, but someone is marking their territory.” The Batman took out a grapple and launched a grapple that crashed through the roof of the building. “I’ll get back to you both when I have some answers.”
“See ya Bats.” Dent piped up. He had a grudgingly respect for the Dark Knight, but he wasn’t about to let it out in the open too much.
“I hate when he does that.” Gordon shook his head.
“Makes you wonder, I guess.” Harvey Dent waved his detective friend, Renee Montoya over. “Renee can you see that CSI gets these?”
“Sure, Mr. Dent.” She nodded with a slight smile.
“I’ll be seeing you Jim, I gotta go talk to the media and call it a night.”
“Big campaign speech?” Gordon quipped.
“Nope. Just me doing my job.” Dent walked out of the club as the flashbulbs of the media had finally gathered. He put his hands up as he looked around. “I am not going to stand here all night ladies and gentlemen, so I’ll keep it brief.” He looked around at them as the reporters held up their recorders. “This looks like it was a blatant attempt for murder… the city will be pressing charges against those responsible as soon as this investigation closes down.”
“Mr. Dent!? Does this mean that you’ll be leading the investigation team?” Elizabeth Gary, who was one of the more popular beat reporters for Gotham Action News, yelled out.
“No Liz, I’ll be behind the scenes this time. I think the police can handle this, but I am going to be monitoring the progress very closely.”
“Who do you think is responsible, Mr. Dent?!” Another question was screamed out.
“I am not sure right now, Alec, but as soon as I know something you all will as well.” Dent raised an eyebrow as he saw Selina Kyle waiting at his car. The two of them had been on and off for the last few months, so it surprised that she would show up at the time when he least expects it. “If you all could excuse me.”
The media screamed his name until he got far enough from them that he could just ignore them. “Fancy seeing you out here, Kitten?” He kissed her cheek. She didn’t recoil even though relationship had been over for a few months now.
“News is news, Harv.” She quipped at him.
“I suppose so, but I don’t really expect Selina Kyle to be at the site of a double homicide media circus.”
“Funny what you’ll find.” Selina looked at her former lover with a mild sarcasm.
“You think I am doing this because for campaign points?” He looked at her somewhat seriously.
“I don’t know, Harvey, you’ll do whatever it takes to benefit yourself.” She merely responded to him as she tweaked his nose. “I need to go, I have to go prowling for some trouble.” She looked at him as he rolled his eyes at her.
He cringed as she said that. Their break-up hadn’t been too well and he had cursed himself everyday since then. “I don’t know why you keep the hours that you do… you’re going home?”
“Harvey, I live in the fast lane.” She winked at him as she left him and headed back the posh apartments she made her home in.
“No kidding, Kitten.” He sighed as he got into his car and rolled up the window and headed off home himself.
*****
Guns made things easier to organize and execute. Being able to form the alliances it took to bring by the gunpoint. It was easier that way. “Bingo” Wallace was one of the few that never were afraid to take chances. He knew that the moment was what you made it. If you lived that long that was…
The pool table clicked with the banging of the balls into the pockets. “You left me with little choice.” Wallace looked up as he pulled down his shades as his eyes locked onto his ‘visitor.’
“The cops showed up way faster than anyone thought… It wasn’t my fault.”
“Coppers don’t pay me any business, you know?” He looked at his eyes intently. “Paul, you had it all, and you blew it… You put our business at risk and frankly we can’t have that.” He looked
“Listen Bingo.. eh.. we can make this work out you know?” Paulie looked at him and then Bingo’s men with a mild hesitation for the first time.
“No, Paulie you had your chances and you let them dry up and blow away in the wind.”
BAM!
BAM!
His henchmen had taken out their guns and planted slugs into his brain as he fell dead before Bingo Wallace. “You had your chances. Please get this trash out of here.” They made quick work of the body as picked up a cigar from his desk and lit it… Cleaning up this town was for fools… He liked living on the fear of others.
Fear paid the bills.
*****
Saint Mary’s in the ghetto of Gotham was full of runaways and transients that Gotham had forgotten about long time ago. Or that’s what she thought. Selina had been one of those girls… a girl on the edge of reality. Not knowing what was truth and what was a lie. She knew in her heart that she was a good girl, but society had reached out and molded her into something else. Maggie was on of the few that Sel had confided in since she had been able to claw out of the ghetto. Maggie was just seven-teen years old herself… Maggie had been on the take, but she knew that heroin or pot… or whatever the hell she was on would take months for her to get completely sober. It was how the pimps controlled you.
Maggie saw Sel walk in with a Harlequin romance novel like you had asked for. “Oh thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome.” Sel smiled as she hugged Maggie with all the love a sister could offer.
“Such filth!” Sister Mary Margaret grabbed the paperback trade from Maggie’s hands as she threw it into the cast iron oven that served as the Mission’s only central heat source. “You’re going to burn in hell for the abomination, Selina Kyle!!!”
Selina shook her head. “I have heard enough of this, Mary Margaret!” She waved her hand in dismissal. “You act like a tyrant and you wonder why this is the shithole of Gotham!” She looked at Maggie. “Com’on we’re going!”
Maggie looked confused. “I don’t know, Sel…”
“You’re a sinner, Selina Kyle. You’ve always been a sinner!” Sister Mary Margaret slapped Selina’s face
Selina grabbed her hand and pushed her back as she looked into her eyes. “I’ve done more than sin, Sister. I suggest you keep your hands to yourself.” Selina growled. “Let’s go, Maggie!” The seven-teen year old girl cowered for a moment until she finally relented and grabbed her book and coat… and took off with Selina.
“Where are we going?!” Maggie finally was able to speak up.
“You’re going to stay with me… until I can figure some things out.”
“Oh.. like what?” Maggie pulled her hood over her head as the night air started to mist a little from the rain that was moving in.
“I am not sure yet, but as soon as I know, I will tell you.”
“Okay.” She shyly added as the two women headed back to uptown Gotham. Selina’s life had really done a 180. She couldn’t have predicted that she would be here today.
*****
“This don’t make no sense.” Harvey Bullock was wandering from one end of Gordon’s office to the other.
“Take it easy, Bullock.” Gordon merely tried to reassure him.
“Jim, that review panel is takin’ forever! You know just as well as I do that I ain’t never killed anyone without a reason!”
Gordon put down his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose before he looked at him. “Harvey, you tend to walk a fine line. You thumb your nose at the people that want to help you and you piss the people off that could care less.”
“Yeah like those freaks in IA.”
“They have their purpose, Harvey, we just have to trust the system.”
“Yeah. Trust. Sure, Jim.”
“Listen to me, Harvey. You shot and killed someone. That doesn’t jive with the public. There always have to be a review when something like that happens.”
“You know like I do, Jim that cops don’t get no breaks they always gotta be the fall guys.”
“Maybe that’s true, but we have a badge and we serve the public. So we have obli….”
Suddenly a red-haired woman walked in before Gordon could complete his sentence. She was new to the ‘Force. One of the few that Gordon didn’t have a handle on yet. Jamie Henson was her name and she reminded him of his daughter Barbara in some ways. “We finished our meeting, Commissioner and Detective. If you could follow me please.”
“Yeah, sure.” Bullock just had his hands his pockets as he followed behind Henson. Gordon looked over at the window and seemed to ponder things. He just picked up his glasses and put them on as he walked with Bullock and Henson to the Internal Affairs conference room.
When the officers entered the conference room they could see the psychologist Chase Madison and District Attorney Harvey Dent and head of Internal Affairs Roger Dalson. “Please have a seat.” Dalson spoke up.
They all sat down as Bullock just pulled a toothpick from his coat and put it in his mouth. “So what’s the verdict, eh?”
Dent spoke up. “We have a procedure to follow, Detective.”
“Yeah sure.” Bullock just clammed up as watched them.
“Eye witnesses put you at the scene of the murder ten minutes before our first squad car got there.”
“Yeah.”
“Eye witnesses say you got into the argument with the killer… who had just shot his wife. You told him you were going to send him up the river for being a wife-beater among other colorful racial epitaphs you decided to use.”
“I don’t hold back.” Bullock shrugs.
“Then you shot the man.” Dent looked at him with all the seriousness that he could show.
“He was pulling a gun on me!!” Bullock blurted out.
“Yet eye witnesses said he was surrendering to you.” Dalson added as Dent just watched him.
“We’re suspending you without pay on Administrative leave until we conclude our findings, this is standard procedure.” Dalson looked at Gordon. “I am sorry Jim, but the Mayor’s office wants to save face with this.”
“I understand, Roger.” Gordon stood up.
“How long I haveta go without a check?!” Bullock looked like he had been lynched.
“Two weeks and then we’ll get back to you, Detective.” Dalson stood up as he watched the meeting disperse.
“Yeah sure.” Bullock shrugged at him. He hated IA, but he had had been through this a couple times already.
*****
Isis curled around Maggie’s arm as she purred. Maggie scratched the cat’s ear as it purred. Selina saw what was happened and she couldn’t help but smile. One of the few times she had the opportunity to lately. “Did you sleep well, kiddo?”
Maggie pulled herself up which made Isis scatter away. “Yeah I guess so. What made you get me out of there like that?”
“I grew up there myself, Maggs.” Selina offered her some mint tea.
As Maggie took the tea she looked at her and then out the window. “But now you’ve got an apartment in uptown.”
“Came through a lot of hard work.” Selina smiled as she went back into the kitchen and started to cook some eggs.
“What kind of work?” Maggie lifted an eyebrow in curiosity.
“Consultant work.” Selina wouldn’t go into it much more than that. “Here are your eggs. Would you like any toast?”
“Ahh mmm.. Sure!” Maggie put some eggs on her fork and saw Selina come over with some toast and heard the telephone ring. Selina pulled off her apron and she went to answer the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hello Sel.” It was the familiar voice of Harvey Dent.
“Hi there, Harv, what are doing?” She moved back to the table as she saw Maggie now teasing her by making kissing noises.
“I just got done with a hearing in house.” Dent seemed like he was distracted as she heard some paper rustling in the background.
“Who, Bullock?” She asked and then got annoyed with the background noise. “Why are you calling me, Harvey?”
“How’d you know that?” Dent sighed. “I just wanted to talk to you, Sel.”
“Listen, Mr. District Attorney.” She paused. “You cheated on me and then you expect me come prancing back into your life? It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart. Goodbye now.” Selina hung-up on him before he could respond to her statement.
“Well, that was rude.” Maggie looked at her.
“Well when you’re in love, you come and tell me.” Selina shrugged as she just put her face in her hands as she propped up her head on the table that faced Maggie. “Love is like a chocolate dipped strawberry… it tastes so good but when it’s gone yeah you feel bad.”
“Eww I hate strawberries.”
Selina laughed as she tweaked Maggie’s nose. “Whatever.” Selina had been Maggie’s sponsor in the past since she was thirteen. Selina had learned to rediscover her own youth Maggie’s eyes, but it seemed harder to look through the rose coloured glasses more and more as her life had gone on since the break-up with Harvey.
*****
The cool air felt great. She was swing from one flagpole to the other as she landed on her perch that over looked the Schulman’s Jewelry Store. The wind blew through her black raven hair as she snapped her whip and aimed it and the awning below and landed on the pavement as she kicked in the door. The alarm went off, but she could careless. She’d done this time in and time out and not been caught yet. “Consultant work.” She used her claws as she opened the glass case and fenced the biggest jewels she could find.
She heard the cock of a handgun behind her and she quickly ducked down and swept the gunman’s leg instinctively the gun went off as the silent continued to go off. “Little boys belong in bed at bedtime.” It was the night guardsman that took the tumble as Catwoman swung her foot into his face. She took out her whip as she snapped it and as she made the sprinkler system turn on. She went outdoors and climbed up a fire escape and watched as Gotham’s finest arrived on scene. It made her giggle inside to watch the cops scramble around looking for a robber on foot. She stood and turned around and turned into the eyes of The Batman.
“I thought we talked about your ‘playtime.’”
“Hmm… tall dark and brooding, almost any girl’s Dark Knight in Kevlar.” She winked at him and backed off and she did a double back flip over the edge of the building and before The Batman could react she threw three gas pellets that landed at his feet and the whole roof was covered with tear-gas. “Smoky!” She yelled as bola whip had caught onto an adjacent building. “Bye bye Bats, maybe someday.” She ducked into an open window and disappeared from sight.
The Batman was able to fire a grapple that snagged onto the ledge of the building as he swung over to where he thought she went and saw nothing. “You’re going to get too cocky, Cat, and then I am going to catch you.” The Batman clenched his jaw a moment and just let it go he had other matters to attend to that night.
Another hook was fired off into the night and he swung off as his cape made the shape of a bat. Selina now without her costume on and dressed as housekeeping for the hotel she swooped into watched him leave. “Mmm.. that was fun.” She put the jewels in her pocket and simply walked onto the street. She knew that her contact would be able to get her good money for the jewelry that she fenced because she had bills to pay and a mouth to feed besides Isis now.
*****
Harvey Bullock followed his own set of rules and that’s what got him into the most trouble he thought, because most people didn’t think like he did. If the world ran by his rules then it’d be a helluva lot safer. He raided his favorite hot dog stand as he watched the man protest. “Bullock, I got kids to feed!”
“Yeah sure.” Bullock walked off as he sank his teeth into the hotdog that dripped of ketchup and mustard. “Good times, Sammy. See ya tomorrow.” He put the cash that he had lifted from the vendor and put it into his pocket. He was going to need it for his booze later.
Bullock walked his beat like he was still backed by the Department, but he knew that if he started flashing the badge around these parts that it’d get him killed. He walked that line before. Knowing who and when to say something wasn’t something he was afraid of doing, but the problem was that people around him wanted him to push the envelope even more to get what they wanted. Bullock ducked into a dingy pool-hall that was full of the transients of Gotham nightlife. Not all of them were criminals, but those that weren’t: Wanted to be.
Bullock saw Bingo with his men sitting at a table. Bullock grabbed a quick shot of Tequila and swigged it as he approached Bingo. “Yo, Bings, what’cha doing this side of town?”
“I heard there’d been some problems up at the precinct, Mr. Bullock. I just wanted to make sure that my investment was taken care of.” He said with a tone. Bullock knew that by his mannerisms he had better give the man the answers that he was looking for.
“Guess what happened got around town?”
“You could say that Detective.” Wallace nodded at detective. “You need to learn to keep your mouth shut, Mr. Bullock. I ain’t paying you to run your mouth off at nothin’.” He paused. “You got me?”
“Yeah, sure, I gotcha.”
“Good, I am glad we have had this understanding then.” He put his cigar down as he watched Bullock fidget. “Calm down, Detective, I am not going to blow you away… yet. I still got needs from you.”
“Yeah?” Bullock took out a handkerchief.
“Yeah, I got lots of things to ask you about, but the most important one is when are ya going back to work?”
“Like two weeks, after their red-tape bullcrap.”
“Ahah, good enough. I got this girl that I need to reign in. She’s really good at doing things for me, but I ain’t got the money she’s bringing with her heists.”
“Who is she?” Bullock took the toothpick out of his mouth that he always had as this story started to interest him greatly.
“Irena Dubrovna, or that’s the name she’s used to help me smuggle in a Renoir from Italy.”
“I dunno anything about art, but that sounds like it was worth a lot of money… so you can’t pay her no more?” Bullock looked at him.
“I can pay her, but I want to control what she gets for me.” He nodded as he picked up his cigar and puffed on it.
“Controlling women ain’t so easy, but I’ll see what I can dig for ya.” Bullock nodded as he put a new toothpick in his mouth and stood up. “I’ll be seeing ya, Bings.” He headed out in the night Gotham night. Bingo watched him leave as he merely shrugged.
“Better hope it’s what I want, Detective.” He said in a low tone that no one else could hear.
*****
PURR PURR!
Isis licked Selina on the lips as she stirred a bit. “Isis.. what’s wrong?” Selina looked up and saw that her place was a mess but there was no sign of Maggie. She checked the other bedroom, but the bed was still made from when she had left the day before. She gasped to herself as she realized for the first time that Maggie was missing. She picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1 and waited until an operator got onto the phone.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“My.. my daughter she’s missing.” Selina half panicked because she had no idea where Maggie could have gone.
“When did she turn up missing?” The operator had the same monotone voice that everyone from the municipal government seemed to have. No emotion. No caring.
“I.. I.. “ There was a knock at her front door. Selina hung-up the phone and she went over to the door. She pulled her bathrobe around her and opened the door.
“Can I help you?” Selina peered and saw Slam Bradley with what looked like a very beaten up Maggie in his arms. Slam was a private detective that she had befriended to help form a neighborhood watch in her apartment building. Maggie looked like she had been beaten and worse. “Where did you find her??”
“She was in the streets it looked like she had been gang-raped pretty close to the Narrows.” Bradley took off his fedora as he saw Selina’s was in utter horror.
“I guess we better get her to the hospital.” Slam smoothed back his brown hair as he looked at Selina as he waited on her to say something.
“Yeah, you should’ve took her to the hospital and not bring her here.” Selina clenched her fists in rage.
“I had no idea you had a kid, Irena, damn cut me slack, eh?”
“I don’t have a kid, Slam.” She ducked behind her bedroom door and pulled on some clothes quickly and pulled back her raven black hair into a ponytail. “Com’on let’s get her to the hospital.” Someone knew that Maggie had been staying with and someone knew how to pull her strings and she needed to find out.
They raced to the hospital and Slam looked over at Selina with a look of sorrow. “I am sorry, I just thought I did what was best.”
“It’s okay, I am not angry at you. Someone is sending me a message.” Selina drove-up into the Emergency Room as the paramedics helped put Maggie into a wheel chair. Maggie wasn’t saying a word and it seemed like she was asleep.
“Do you think she’s going to be okay?”
“I have no idea really.” Selina looked over at him. “But, I intend to find out who did this.”
“I think I know who did this, Irena.” Slam put a hand on her shoulder. Selina shook her head because of the triple-identity she was leading was getting her confused at times, but she somehow was able to pull it together as she looked at Slam.
“I think I know who did it too.” She held his hand and then she closed her eyes. And they would pay a dear price for crossing her.
She swore to Maggie to that in a silent prayer. No one crossed her and lived to tell about it!
