File Stealing

Part Seven

Catwoman, Two-Face and Scarecrow entered the selected warehouse at the agreed upon time, back up and their own security people making sure everything went as they’d all planned.

“If you two gentlemen would be so good as to trying to be a little less a noisy it would suit me purrfectly, thank you.”

“Of course, my dear, anything to please a lady.” Harvey Dent ‘accidentally’ tripped, causing her to stumble ever so slightly.

Jonathan Crane had enough of the squabbling between his two erstwhile cohorts. “If you two would please contain yourselves, I’d be a lot happier, thank you.”

The made their way to the front door, such as it was—a large sliding metal loading dock entrance posted over with graffiti and ‘post no bills’ decals. It moved easily, well oiled, dented and in better condition than it looked.

The meeting had been arranged almost a month ago, the earliest anything could be set up, considering the busy schedules of everyone involved—the ones who weren’t in jail or an asylum, anyway.

“When is he supposed to be here with his friends?”

“When he gets here, we’ve been over this.”

“I don’t trust him or any of them; this smells like a set up to me.”

“Then leave. Arkham will welcome you back with opened arms.”

“Pass, thanks.”

The place was suprisingly well lit without the usual dark corners and cobwebs one comes to expect with these kinds of places. There was a conference table with comfortable looking chairs in a cleared spot between high walls of cartons and containers. Coffee carafes and catered sandwiches were arranged on a platter. All in all, it was acceptable and looked more like a corporate meeting than what it really was; though that might not be a bad description, when you came down to it.

‘Sorrysorrysorry to have to report that our little Speedyboy seems to have fallen off the straight and narrow-arrow path, poor dear. Let’s just say that he’s well named—and was seen by my informants hanging out with some serious baddies down at the park making what looked very much like a drug deal and I don’t mean as a cop. Don’t do it, Speedbump—we’re worried about you, hon.’

“Ah, right on time—I always love good manners in business dealings. ‘So polite!”

The other three invitees looked up from their places; he was here.

“Good evening Joker; always a pleasure to see you.”

The cackle was a little too loud, as usual, the eyes a little too bright to look sane. “And I’m thrilled to think that we’ll all be best friends from now on!” He was clapping his hands as he went to stand at the head of the table. “And you all trust me enough to come without any of your little henchlings or toadies—what fun!”

“We all agreed to meet without our usual back up, Joker, we’re just doing what we said we would.”

His demeanor changed in an instant to melancholy. “Yes, it’s all puurrrfect as you would say, my dear.” He sighed deeply, his shoulders slumping. “Shall we have at this? We all work together to rule the world!” The last rose phrase in pitch until he was shouting. “Madame Cat shall have her lovely way with Europe, Master Scarecrow will do as he wishes with the Western and Central United States and both of Harvey’s Faces shall rule the East Coast with an iron fist in a velvet gauntlet. Wonderful!”

“And what will you be doing, Joker? That’s the part I’m not too clear on.” Harvey Dent didn’t look pleased but seemed patient enough to wait for more details.

“Oh—well, I’ll be ruling the rest of the world—It’s all mine!” He was just so pleased wit the thought. “Oh, and you shall—what’s the word?—of course! You shall tithe fifty percent of whatever you accrue to me as tribute. I assume you’re all good with that?”

‘We can’t say who, but one of our favorite costumed good-guys is under treatment for two different and very nasty STD’s, poor baby. That’s just no fun at all and all we can say is that we hope he has the good sense to, shall we say?—keep things covered up when he goes out to play, if you know what we mean. We also hope he has the even better sense to drop a word to the wise with his recent playmates. Believe us, we hate when this happens to us and we can only assume our heroes get just as cranky.’

Joker jumped up, circling the table. “I have it all worked out—we’ll all run or personal fiefdoms anyway we want but we’ll be like a fraternity—best friends!—we’ll all be there in case one of us has one of those nasty encounters with the Justice League or those Titan brats. We can have cookouts and go to the movies together—I love exchanging Christmas present—don’t you? Fabulous? Questions? No? Even better!” He bent down and gave Catwoman a lingering kiss on her cheek, his hands curling around her neck a little too tightly, threateningly. “So we’re all agreed?”

“Not really.” Two-Face didn’t look pleased. “Are you suggesting that you’ll be in charge, that we’ll be following your orders for some reason?”

“Lordy-lordy, no! I was just saying that this is the best way for us to do business. I mean let’s be serious for a moment, shall we? Since I’m the smartest I should be the big boss, don’t you think?”

Scarecrow seemed dubious, at best. “I’d like to point out that we’ve all run our own operations for a while now and have had some success; why should we go along with this?”

“Safety in numbers? I mean—gracious, it works for the Mafia, doesn’t it?” More high-pitched laughter and hand clapping accompanied this. “It’ll be fun! We’ll be like the four Musketeers! Mus—cat—teers, get it?”

‘Ohdearlord! It seems that the Titans have been busybusysbusy and that’s not always a good thing. Now we’re getting reliable reports that not only is our favorite babybat a teenaged babydaddy but he also seems to like to relax after a hard day in the Batcave changing the batdiapers by tossing back a few too many cans of the evil brewski. My little birdie tells me that the Big Bat is getting very concerned and is checking out various very discrete rehabs for out babybat—all very quiet and secret, of course.

Not good, sweetbatbuns.

And, we also hate to report that, whilst out of costume and mask, he’s also been known to frequent the Gotham hotspots since w all know they tend to wink at false ID’s.

Say it ain’t so, Sweetbabybat. You’re making us verklempt.’

“I don’t work well with others. I say that anything we each gain—independently of the others—belongs to whoever managed to get their claws on it.” Selina stretched almost lazily, gracing the men with a small and very sly smile.

Joker circled around to the table, stopping behind her chair. Gently he placed his hands on either side of her head and began squeezing slowly. “But, my beauty, you don’t seem to understand. You see, unlike the Batman—whom I happen to know you’ve been known to curl up with, I have no compunction with killing.”

The pressure on her skull increased.

“Like a cat, I guess you could say.”

The pain was becoming painful.

“Don’t you agree, my pet?”

Very painful.

“After all, lovely as you are, my dear, we can always find another fourth for our little bridge game we intend to play, couldn’t we?”

She imagined that she could feel the separate plates of her skull shifting.

“I’d be so very upset if you decided that our little group wasn’t to you liking. You can understand that, can’t you? I have particularly high hopes of your helping all of us in dealing with that annoying old Batman we’ve all had so many run-ins and problems with. You can see how it would—disappoint—me to know you’d rather not join our little play group.”

The pain was unbearable.

“You wouldn’t want to be anti-social, would you?”

Selina shook her head as well as she could.

“You’re sure? Because if I thought you were just saying what I wanted to hear my feelings would be terribly hurt and then I’d become upset. You know how I can be when I’m upset, don’t you, dear?”

She nodded. The pressure stopped. He’d let her go. This time.

His deformed smile leered too close to her. “Oh, good. I’d have been so sad to not have you with us, you know.” Joker spun and pranced back to his own seat at the head of the table. “Well, gentlemen, do either of you have any questions no that my feelings regarding insubordination are clear?”

Both Two-Face and Scarecrow ignored the stunned look on what they could see of Catwoman’s face. She’d recover and if she didn’t things would proceed without her.

“No questions? Wonderful! Now, I’ve been thinking and I feel that our first order of business should be to kill the JLA, whaddya think, guys, huh?”

Scarecrow shrugged. “Why kill them now? I think it would be better to establish our new territories and then use those bases to separate them and divide their resources; make it easier to catch them off guard.”

Joker looked pained. “Well, we could do it that way, but this way we also throw the Brat Titans off their little annoying feet by killing their mentors and big brothers. Imagine their little pimply faces when they find out we’ve blown up that spy-n-the-sky satellite the League has up there watching us all the time. It will be fun!”

Two-face was shaking his head. “It has potential, but if we kill the kids first, the League will be easier to take down. We could hit them during the funerals—in fact, I kind of like that.”

Scarecrow put his coffee cup down. “I don’t want to ill any of them.”

“But why on earth not? It will be fun!”

“Because they’re the only challenge I have; if they weren’t here, it would be boring.”

The others stared at him in disbelief until Joker broke the silence. “In that case, my dear fellow, we’ll find you a new hobby as soon as they’re dead. Have you considered petit-point?”

‘The news from the hero front just keeps getting more and more depressing!

First of all we think that suggesting Babybat’s Babymama is Wonder Girl is a piece of hooey! Good lord, people, use your eyes; the young lady has been in the public eye forever and there’s no way she could have popped out a kid and still worn that costume, okay? Let’s put that one to rest, shall we?

But then who is the mystery lady, hmmm? Natch we asked around and made thousands of calls, but no one—and we mean no one—would return our calls for us.

So we did some digging on our own and—unconfirmed, of course—we think we’ve found the answer.

Honest to God and hold onto your pants here kids. Ready?…..

Jamie Lynn.

I’m dead serious and hear me out on this one, okay?

They’re around the same age.

They travel at will.

They’re both two honking good-looking kids.

They’re both ‘mature’ for their ages.

They were both in the city of the Angels last spring—her working on her show and him working on catching that nasty old Joker yet again.

We’ve all seen the pictures of them ‘accidentally’ bumping into each other at both Spago’s and Mr. Chow’s within three days of one another.

They’re both young professionals and would have that to talk about.

They’re both from the East Side of the country (we think babybird is, anyway—and if he isn’t he’s living there now anyway). And you can almost consider Louisiana as East Coast. It’s certainly not West Coast.

Jamie Lynn seems pretty reluctant to marry that homeboy she’s supposed to be the other half of.

And—the best part—neither one has issued a denial.

So—y’think?

TBC
 

Return to File Stealing