Chapter Four

Midafternoon, Friday, downtown Gotham City. North Julius Street, on the edge of the financial district. Noise and confusion. Blaring horns and rumbling engines and sunlight glaring on thousands of panes of glass. A thin blue haze of exhaust fumes hanging in the air.

Above it all, on the fourteen floor of a skyscraper still under construction, two men wearing clown masks, with weapons and tools strapped to their bodies, were standing in a vacant loft facing a ten-foot-tall window. The first of the men, whose code name was Dopey, aimed upward, fired a silenced automatic pistol at the glass, and watched shards of it fall to the floor. The second man, code named Happy, stepped to the now empty window frame and lifted what looked like a spear gun to his shoulder, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and a hook trailing a length of cable, hissed across the street and buried itself in the wall of another building. Dopey secured his end of the cable to a naked I-beam and nodded to his partner. Happy hooked a bag to the cable and sent it across the emptiness. A moment later, Happy and Dopey followed the bag, dangling from wheeled devices that fit over the line. If anyone happened to look up and see them&Hey, this is Gotham City, whack-job central. Just another pair of loonies doing something loony, and if it's interesting, maybe it'll be on the eleven o'clock news&

Below, and three blocks away, a black SUV with dark-tinted windows and out-of-state license plates sped between two school buses and jerked to a stop at an intersection. The front passenger door opened, and a tall man wearing coveralls dashed from a doorway and climbed into the vehicle. Once inside, he pulled a clown mask from his pocket, pulled it on, and turned in his seat to face another clown, code named Bozo, in the driver's seat. "Three of a kind. Let's do this," he said, now going by the name Grumpy.

The man in the backseat, code named Chuckles, looked up from loading a compact submachine gun, and said, "That's it? Three guys?"

Grumpy said, "There are two on the roof. Every guy is an extra share. Five shares is plenty."

Chuckles said, "Six shares. Don't forget the guy who planned the job."

Grumpy said, "Yeah? If he thinks he can sit it out and still take a slice then I get why they call him the Joker."

On the rooftop, Dopey and Happy pried open an access panel. Happy paused and stared at Dopey. "Why do they call him the Joker?"

"I heard it's 'cause he wears makeup," Chuckles said, pulling out a thick bundle of blue CAT5 cables. "To scare people. War paint."

Back on the street, Bozo guided the SUV to a metered parking spot in front of the bank. He switched off the engine and, without bothering to feed the meter, went into the bank. Grumpy, Bozo, and Chuckles carried assault rifles; they carried several empty duffel bags as well. Once inside, Grumpy fired a burst into the ceiling as Chuckles hit the security guard on the head with the butt of his weapon, and Bozo closed the door and lowered the blinds.

Grumpy fired another burst, and yelled, "Everybody down on the floor—now!" Customers and employees alike dropped to their hands and knees, then to their bellies. One of the senior tellers managed to press a silent-alarm button as she went down. Fifteen floors above her, on the roof, Dopey stared down at a palm-sized electronic device and heard a faint ping.

"What's that?" Happy asked.

"Here comes the silent alarm, just like we figured," Dopey said. "And there it goes. Funny thing is, it didn't dial out to the cops. It was trying to reach a private number."

Behind him, Happy raised his gun and fired his silenced automatic into the back of Dopey's head. As Dopey slumped to the roof dead, Happy picked up his bag. He took from it an old-fashioned crowbar and went to the work on the roof access door. In less than a minute, he had it wrenched open and was running down a steep flight of steps, lit only by red bulbs on each landing. When he reached the bottom, he opened a door marked EXIT and was standing in front of a shiny steel vault.

In the bank proper, Bozo and Grumpy were moving down a line of customers and tellers, who stood along one wall. Bozo handed each a hand grenade and Grumpy followed, pulling the pins. The hostages gripped the grenades in both hands, holding the tops to prevent the grenades from exploding.

"We don't want you doing anything with your hands other than holding on for dear life," Grumpy told the hostages.

Then there was a loudbang and the third robber, Chuckles, fell backward, his mask and the front of his jacket shredded, dead.

The bank manager, wearing an impeccable tailored brown suit and holding a shotgun, stepped from his office and fired again. The hostages, clutching their grenades, scurried along the floor seeking cover. Grumpy and Bozo both fired blindly in the general direction of the manager with the shotgun as they dived behind a desk.

"What's he got, a five-shot?" Grumpy asked.

Bozo nodded.

"He's got three left?"

Bozo raised two fingers.

Grumpy edged his gun around the corner of the desk and squeezed off a single shot. The bank manager fired twice. Grumpy looked at Bozo, who nodded.

Grumpy stood and aimed his gun over the desktop. The bank manager fired again and a hail of buckshot clipped Grumpy's shoulder. He fell behind the desk and the manager moved forward, pulling fresh shells from his pocket. Bozo stood from behind the desk and shot the manager in the chest.

Grumpy had pulled aside the flaps of his shirt and jacket over the place where the buckshot had struck him and was peering down at his wound. He rubbed some blood away with the palm of his hand and looked more closely. The damage was only superficial.

Leaning on the desk, he stood and turned to Bozo. "Where'd you learn to count?"

Bozo ignored him and started loading fresh shells into his shotgun.

"You have any idea who you're stealing from?" the bank manager whispered. "You and your friends are dead."

Happy clamped a drill to the vault and pressed a button. With a high whine, the drill blade bit into the metal and—

He found himself on the floor, dazed and shaking. It took him a few moments to realize that he'd been hit by electricity, a lot of electricity. They wired the vault?

He pulled his sneakers off, put them on his hands and, bracing himself on a wall, approached the vault once more. With a lot of fumbling and repositioning, he was able to operate the drill, the sneakers protecting him from the high voltage.

Grumpy entered the chamber from a side door. Happy glanced at him, and said, "They wired this thing up with—I dunno, maybe five thousand volts. What kind of bank does that?"

"A mob bank," Grumpy said. "I guess the Joker's as crazy as they say."

Happy shrugged. The noise of the drill changed from a whine to a grinding sound. "We're almost home," Happy said.

He grabbed the large wheel and spun it.

"Where's the alarm guy?" Grumpy asked.

The wheel stopped spinning. Happy pulled on it, and the vault swung open. "Boss told me that when the guy was done I should take him out. One less share."

"Funny," Grumpy said. "He told me something similar."

Happy grabbed for the pistol shoved into his belt at the small of his back as he whirled to face Grumpy, but he was too late. Grumpy fired a burst from his assault rifle and, after a moment, stepped over Happy's body and into the vault.

He stopped and stared at the mountain of cash at least eight feel tall.

Ten minutes later, he emerged into the bank burdened by several bulging duffel bags. He dropped them at Bozo's feet and laughed.

"C'mon," he said. "There's a lot to carry."

The hostages, clutching their grenades, watched as the robbers disappeared into the vault. Some of them glanced nervously at their neighbors, others stared at nothing in particular, while still others had their eyes squeezed shut, their lips moving silently.

Grumpy and Bozo reappeared, each burdened with several stuffed duffel bags. Grumpy dropped his bags onto the floor next to the first batch and said, "If this guy was so smart, he would have had us bring a bigger car."

Then he jammed his pistol into Bozo's back and took his weapon. "I'm betting the Joker told you to kill me soon as we loaded the cash."

Bozo shook his head. "No. I kill the bus driver."

"Bus driver? What bus—"

Bozo glanced at the nearest window and jumped back. The rear end of a yellow school bus smashed through the window, sending a shower of glass into the room and slamming Grumpy into the tellers' cage. Bozo snatched up Grumpy's fallen weapon and turned to face the bus. Another clown opened the bus's rear door, and Bozo shot him dead.

Sirens began to wail in the distance.

Bozo began loading the duffel bags into the bus.

The bank manager still lay where he'd fallen, his right hand splayed over his wound, his head raised to stare at Bozo. "Think you're smart, huh?" he wheezed. "Well, the guy who hired you'll just do the same to you. Sure he will. Criminals in this town used to believe in things."

Bozo stepped over to where the man lay and crouched beside him.

The man stared up at Bozo. "Honor. Respect. What do you beli—"

Bozo jammed a grenade with a purple thread knotted around the pin into the man's mouth.

"I believe," Bozo said, "that what doesn't kill you—"

Bozo yanked off his mask. The manager's eyes widened. He was looking at another clown face, one far more disturbing than any of the masks: white skin, green hair, a mouth horribly scarred beneath a red slash of makeup.

"—simply makes you stranger," the Joker concluded.

The scarred clown rose and strolled toward the bus, the thread attached to the grenade unraveling from the purple lining of his jacket. He climbed into the bus and shut the rear door, trapping the purple thread.

A moment later, the bus engine grumbled, and the bus jerked over the sidewalk and into the street.

The purple thread yanked the pink from the grenade in the bank manager's mouth.

Hostages screamed.

The grenade hissed and began spewing red smoke, but it did not explode.

A block away, a line of school buses left the curb in front of the Ferguson Middle School and edged into the traffic stream. A final bus, which came from the direction of the bank, joined them as five police cars, sirens screaming, sped past them on the opposite side of the street.