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The worst of it is, John actually frisked Barsad in the bathroom before they went in to find their seats.
He should’ve been suspicious when the scrawny shit actually let him do it.
“You are too trusting,” Bane tells John, when he waves his arms and shouts at Barsad on the rooftops afterwards, the reflection off panda car blues and reds dim in the near distance.
“You’re an asshole!” John yells at Barsad. “An asshole!”
Barsad curls his lip. In the cast-off street light, it almost looks like a smile.
The skinny little banker has been staring at Cris for the last ten minutes. It’s starting to tick him off.
The uniforms have herded the witnesses into a different room, though for whose sake is anyone’s guess. They’re less hysterical now that they can’t see the remains, which is something, anyway. From the looks of her, Renee Montoya sees nothing wrong with the situation as it stands -- not with the venue, the witnesses, or the so-called crime -- but then, she’s a Gotham native: the strange is bread and butter to her.
Cris is from Metropolis. He’s used to self-respecting criminals who commit reasonable, self-respecting crimes. He covers his eyes with his hand and itches for a lighter, certain there are sacred places in his memories that will never be the same again.
“He was so nice, otherwise,” wails Kate, clinging to Renee with the tenacity of the born drama queen. “He had such pretty eyes.”
“Cold, dead eyes,” says her on-stage boyfriend. ‘Princeton,’ reads the courteous ‘Hello, My Name is...’ sticker on his sweater. He peers up at Renee with obvious admiration. “Serial killer eyes.”
“Color?”
“The ice on a cloudy midwinter day, right before you fall through and the inertia of winter sucks you down into the dark, crushing the life out of your heavy, regret-wracked body.”
There’s a short silence while the rest of the witnesses nod solemn agreement and the detectives stare at Princeton. “So... blue, then?” Cris hazards, and Princeton says smugly, “ I know eyes. Mine were in a guest spot on Crank Yankers once.”
“What,” Cris says.
“It’s so unfair,” Kate laments, unheeding. “You try to put yourself out there, look your best, use the golden rule, and just when you think you’ve met someone you could have a real connection with, he shoots your coworker in the head. It’s so hard to meet a nice guy, you know?”
“Can’t say I do.” Renee isn’t even bothering to hide her enjoyment of the situation. “You said you had a long conversation with him?”
The skinny banker pitches in sourly, “At gunpoint,” in a nasal complaint that tumbles all kinds of nostalgic backwash across Cris’s brain. It’s unexpected enough that he says, astonished, “You even sound like him,” which results in a flutter of frantic hands through the room.
The banker draws himself up, mouth squashing flat.
“We don’t like to talk about that. Rod has feelings,” mutters the banker’s on-stage roommate, Nicky, triggering an impressed, “Damn, that’s good,” from Cris. “How is it you haven’t been sued yet?”
“By whom?” demands the banker, his brow beetling with suspicion.
“You can’t be serious.”
“So what’d you all talk about while he was holding you at gunpoint?” Renee interjects.
The witnesses glance at each other.
“Sesame Street,” volunteers Princeton.
“Trekkie Monster used to work there,” explains Kate, while Renee raises her eyebrows down at Princeton, who is massaging the detective’s elbow with crazed optimism. “He wanted to know what it was like working on Sesame Street.”
“I shared trailer wif Elmo,” says a shaggy thing with massive black eyebrows, proudly, before those eyebrows twitch down in a glower. “Then Elmo get famous and stop being able to smell own farts.”
“Elmo’s a tool,” declares a bear in a haughty British accent.
Cris frowns at it..
“What?” it says. “Oh, like you didn’t know Elmo was a complete tosser.”
“You’re British?”
“What about it?”
“British bears?”
The bear sniffs. “Sod off. I did Shakespeare with the RSC.”
“He was a fan,” Princeton explains. “The man with the gun, I mean. Of Sesame Street.”
“This sort of thing never happens in Metropolis,” Rod mutters. Cris can’t help but agree, albeit in silence.
Kate brightens. “Do you think I’d meet more guys if I carried a gun?”
"Yes," says the bear.
"No," says Rod.
“I suppose that depends on the kind of bars you hang out at,” Nicky says.
“I know some good places,” volunteers the bear. “Friendly to nontraditional lifestyles. And species, if you get my drift.”
“If you don’t mind,” Cris says, exasperated. “Can we please get back to the gunman? And can we just … go without the puppets for a moment? Please?”
Eyes — human eyes — go round. The puppet eyes, mostly made of felt, don’t. Two of the puppeteers — a woman powering one of Nicky’s arms; a man who provides the voice, left arm, and upper body for the puppet — slowly lower the large puppet. Everybody else in the room, human and otherwise, gapes at them.
“Um. I suppose this is a little strange to the uninitiated,” says the man, in Nicky’s voice. His partner thoughtlessly powers Rod’s arm to cover the puppet’s mouth. Which is moving, Cris notices, in time with his voice actor’s mouth. “I guess we can go naked.”
“He means without the puppets,” translates Not Really Gary Coleman, the only human witness in the room who seems perfectly sane, if one ignores the fact that she introduced herself as ‘Not Really Gary Coleman.’ “They’re not going actually naked.”
Nicky’s puppeteer looks pained. “God, no. The clothes are stitched on.”
“Thank you,” Cris says, relieved. “If everyone else could put down their—”
Which is when Trekkie Monster bellows, “You no take me alive, pigs!” and makes a run for it.
In the stunned silence that follows, the people in the room can hear the uniformed officers outside wrestling Trekkie Monster and his puppeteers down. His outraged, “Free internet! No oppress nude creative exchange of ideas! Safest sex is virtual sex! Down with TPP!” is perfectly in character.
Cris snaps his mouth shut. Renee blinks.
"His shag used to be a rug belonging to a poli sci major," Nicky shares apologetically. "UC Berkeley. You know how it is. You never outgrow your roots."
Kate tips her head back in a full-body sigh. “Don’t even get me started on pigs,” she moans. “The smartest move I ever made was dumping Miss Piggy. She was amazing in bed but, oh my God, the drama.”
“Right,” Renee says, visibly fascinated. “How the hell does that even work? Your body ends at the waist.”
Cris closes his notebook. “You got this?” he asks his partner. “You got this. I’m going outside. I need a smoke.”
“I miss smoking,” Princeton says wistfully. “I had to quit. No lungs, and I’m flammable.”
Cris leaves.
“This is why we can’t have nice things!” John raves, shaking his own rolled up program in Bane’s face. Bane’s eyes crinkle at the corners, that infuriatingly fond look softening his brow.
“He did not harm anyone--” Bane points out.
“Through the head! He shot her through the head!”
“—much,” Bane amends.
The body. The body is—
“You are not seriously putting a chalk line around that,” Cris says, pausing at the taped-off door to the second green room to stare inside.
Crouched on the floor, the forensic technician looks up at him with a shrug and an expression of bored indifference. “It’s SOP. There’s a call. There’s a body. We put an outline around it. Coroner takes the body away.”
“It’s a goddamn puppet!”
“You know we’re not supposed to make definitive statements before the autopsy,” the technician says smugly.
Nearby, there’s a loud sob. Cris looks back down the hall to see one of the puppeteers, her eyes red-rimmed, holding an identical twin of the puppet in the green room. It’s sobbing in a jiggly, blond floozy sort of way into a handkerchief.
“It was my favorite body,” the puppet laments, pressing herself into the broad, blue-covered chest of Officer Kobayashi. “It had the bounciest breasts. They were like ripe cantaloupe, perfectly matched, no lumps. You could have used them as bowling balls.”
Kobayashi, who modeled for 2010’s GCPD calendar in a black thong and dress hat, pats awkwardly at Lucy’s shoulder. He looks an irritatingly handsome mixture of hilarity and horror. “The ones you have now are nice?” he says helplessly.
Lucy sniffles and pushes up one of her breasts. “Cotton batting fill is so early 2000’s. Squeeze these. Do these feel firm and fresh to you?”
Cris watches Kobayashi press himself flat against the wall, hands raised out of Lucy’s reach in alarmed refusal. Five months dodging Bane and the man doesn’t turn a hair; thirty minutes with sexually harassing puppets, and he turns into a quivering kindergartener.
“Problem?” Cris asks as Kobayashi makes a break for it, speeding down the hall towards him.
“My job description doesn’t involve getting felt up, Allen,” Kobayashi retorts.
The puppet, creeping up behind him, pats him on the ass. "Oh, baby," she croons.
“Goddammit,” Kobayashi says, aggrieved. He books down the hall, the puppet in hot pursuit.
“Jesus Christ,” Cris says.
Inside the green room, the forensics technician pops his gum. “Show a little respect for the family, detective,” he says, deadpan.
“I don’t think he liked Lucy,” Princeton tells Renee in a hushed voice.
“She thought his eyes were gorgeous, too,” Kate says.
“She was more interested in what was in his pants. She offered to fuck him,” the bear says.
Rod huffs. “Excuse me. Ladies present.”
“Thank you, Rod. She did, though,” Kate tacks on with a sniff.
“Was this before or after the gun made an appearance?” Renee asks.
“After.”
Renee whistles long and low.
Nicky explains, “Lucy’s sexualization of chance encounters is a reaction formation against internal insecurities, originating from decisions made during her formative phase that imprinted her subconscious with the notion that hypersexualization was the only way she could win approval from her parental figures.”
“She’s a slut,” Kate snaps.
“And that’s okay,” Nicky says brightly.
“Judgey McJudgey,” complains Not Really Gary Coleman. She frowns at Renee. It’s refreshing to be spoken to directly by someone who can make actual facial expressions. “Excuse her, please. Tan puppets are all the same, with their tan puppet privilege.”
Kate flails an arm that’s all noodly curves and no angles. “She’s Lucy the Slut. That is her actual name.”
Princeton massages Renee’s bicep. He peers adoringly up at her. “Do you work out?”
“She was an abomination,” Barsad says to Bane, because apparently he isn’t talking to John anymore.
“Shooting someone through the head isn’t a proportional response for being asked out for coffee,” John counters.
Bane turns his head from Barsad to John and then back again, looking expectant. Barsad’s face, already grim, sets even further.
“She did not want coffee.” He stresses the last word, terse.
“Not a proportional response,” John repeats loudly.
Bane considers this. “If a woman propositioned you—” he starts to tell John, who narrows his eyes and interrupts with, “Never a proportional response! No! Never!”
The worst thing about Gotham isn’t the crime, or the corruption, or the nights that are somehow always longer than the days, or this delusion that Gotham natives have jointly bought into, that their bullshit is how things happen in the rest of the world.
The worst thing about Gotham is the vigilantes.
The fucking vigilantes.
The fucking vigilantes that pop out of nowhere when a man is minding his own fucking business, trying to relax in a quiet alley behind fucking Gotham Theatre.
“Detective,” says the night.
Cris almost swallows his cigarette.
His night vision is shot, between the pool of light he’s standing under and the lighter he just used. He squints into the darkness anyway, and is rewarded a little while later when a massive figure steps out of the shadows. Batman himself. It’s Cris’s first time seeing the man, and while he doesn’t have the superstitious awe about Batman that most Gotham’s cops do — Batman is still just a man, after all, and surely half his destructive antics couldn’t have happened without Gordon’s unrecognized help — he can’t help the shiver of awe that rattles his spine at the sight.
You had to hand it to the guy. He knew how to make an entrance.
“You,” Cris says, and drops the cigarette to rest his hand on his gun. Batman doesn’t move, to all appearances unimpressed by being drawn on. “You’re under arrest.”
“What happened in there?” Batman asks.
Cris has heard that voice described, but in reality it’s almost painful to listen to. Batman is either a heavy smoker or recovering from a bad head cold. He sounds ridiculous, Cris decides firmly, and tells himself again that the next cigarette he smokes will be his last one. “Shooting,” he says, sidling away from the door to make sure nobody exiting gets between him and Batman.
“Casualties?”
“None. What’s your interest?”
Batman stares at him. Maybe. Light glimmers off what could be his eyes, in Cris’s general direction.
“Detective Crispus Allen, Homicide,” Batman says at last. “Decorated. Eighteen year veteran. Transferred from Metropolis three months ago. Partnered with Detective Renee Montoya. Married for twenty-two years, two sons.”
There’s something about having one’s personal details read out to you that kills a man’s sense of humor. Batman’s voice is no longer ridiculous.
“Son of a bitch,” Cris says, fervent, and draws his gun.
Batman says, “You were one of the first twenty Gordon requested from Captain Sawyer. He didn’t think you’d come.”
The door opens. Renee’s voice cuts in over the creak of the hinges. “—Out there, Cris? This damn puppet has his hands all—“ She breaks off. A second later she’s beside Cris, a reassuring presence just within his peripheral vision. Her own piece up and aimed in automatic backup of his play.
“Montoya,” says Batman.
Renee lowers her gun. “Oh,” she says, sounding surprised. Cris spares a glance aside; she’s blinking quickly, sidestepping into deeper shadow with one eye half-squinted against the light adjustment. “I was wondering if you’d show up.”
“You did?” Cris asks.
“Man shoots puppet after ranting about the corruption of western civilization? That’s a Batman kind of crazy.”
“One of Bane’s men,” Batman says.
“Might just have been a nut job,” Renee says.
“Barsad,” Batman says, and out of the shadows an arm materializes to hold out a photo to Renee. She takes it without noticeable hesitation, glances at it, then passes it to Cris.
It feels vaguely ridiculous to be the only person there treating the situation as volatile. He lowers his gun and takes the photo. The picture is a black-and-white candid, the kind taken by private detectives and cops on a stakeout. The man they show is lean-jawed, hollow-cheeked, his features distinct and sharp but landing somewhere undefined on the European/Middle Eastern scale. He looks familiar.
“He looks familiar,” Renee says.
“Bane’s lieutenant,” Batman says.
“Shit,” Renee says. “Does that mean Bane’s around?”
“Why the hell would Bane put a hit on a puppet?” Cris demands. “Why the hell would Bane’s lieutenant even be at a musical? Was there someone in the audience important enough to target?”
Renee is already calling for backup, her phone pressed hard against her ear, so he turns to the shadows that hide Batman. “What’s in it for Bane?”
The shadows say nothing, lying strangely flat. Batman is gone.
Cris reaches for another cigarette.
“At least he waited until after the show was over,” John allows grudgingly.
Bane turns that expectant look onto Barsad again.
“Thank you,” Barsad tells John through gritted teeth. “It was an interesting experience.”
“Yeah, we’re never doing that again,” John tells him.
Barsad brightens.
“Asshole,” John snaps.
“Mewling child,” Barsad says malevolently. He nods to Bane in farewell, then disappears over the side of the building.
Silence falls. Bane drags John in to settle his head in the warm hollow between shoulder and neck, the lines around his eyes still amused. After a few moments, John lets himself relax, the tight rictus of anger and fear slowly unknotting itself against the heat of Bane’s body.
“He hates me,” John sighs, closing his eyes.
“He tolerates you.”
“How can you tell?”
“You are not dead.”
“This was probably a bad idea.”
“It was a foolish risk,” Bane says mildly.
“Seemed a good idea at the time. He likes Sesame Street. Puppets, dancing, singing— Who the hell could’ve predicted this?”
Bane’s silence is eloquent.
“Fine,” John mutters. “At least you didn’t say ‘I told you so.’ Although you could’ve told me from the get-go that this was a stupid idea.”
“If you do not make your own mistakes, you will never learn,” Bane points out.
“They had sex on stage.” At Bane’s thoughtful pause, John replays the last few moments and amends, “the puppets did. On stage.”
“Ah,” Bane says, “And this amused you?” He sounds indulgent and gently inquiring, the way he always sounds when John brings up something that makes no sense in his worldview. ‘I fight crime.’ ‘Justice isn’t a lie.’ ‘Don’t kill people, no, not even the bad ones.’
John smothers a grin in Bane’s shoulder. “Don’t tell him I saw him,” he says, “but he stole a CD.”
Bane rumbles deep in his chest and falls silent.
After a few seconds, John starts to shake.
Bane glances down at him, and at his inquiring look, John can’t choke back the laughter anymore.
“Crap,” he gasps, tearing up as Bane’s eyes start to crinkle again. “Oh God. Barsad. Barsad did Broadway.”