The truck shuddered to a stop.
Batman's hand closed over the wheel. Joel's grip might as well not have existed—the Dark Knight simply took control, as if steering the thing had always been his job.
"You know two people from the Falcone family."
The voice was wrong. Not one voice—two, layered. The human register and something electronic beneath it, threaded together. Something mechanical, approximating something dead.
Joel wanted to deny it. The word lodged in his throat and stayed there.
Those white lenses looked through him. Not at him—through him, into whatever space his lies lived in before he could get to them.
He couldn't give up the Falcones. You survived in Gotham by understanding which commitments couldn't be walked back.
"I'm just a truck driver," he managed.
"What did those two men tell you to do at four AM last Wednesday?"
Joel's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Batman continued in the same flat, merciless register.
"Three years ago. September sixteenth. Early morning. Hit-and-run. Young mother and her child. You ran the light at sixty miles per hour. Blunt impact, ruptured organs, instantaneous. You got out of the vehicle. You watched the child for approximately four minutes. Then you left."
Joel's hands shook on the wheel.
"Two years ago. December seventh and December twenty-fifth. One motorcycle, one pedestrian, two separate incidents. Last year, on the fourteenth—"
"Enough!" Fear had curdled into something hysterical and loud. "I don't know what you're talking about, you freak!"
The pistol hit the floor.
Joel's arm hung from his shoulder, angled wrong, completely without tension, as though the elbow joint had simply been removed from the conversation.
He stared at it. He hadn't seen Batman move.
"Answer my question."
The voice hadn't changed. Calm. Cold. The arm hadn't changed anything about the tone.
"Fuck you—"
He grabbed for the door handle with his left hand.
The bone snapped before the door opened.
Joel tumbled out of the cab and hit asphalt with his full weight. His right leg bent sideways below the knee. He heard himself making sounds he didn't recognize.
"I'll talk! Everything—I'll tell you everything, just don't—"
Batman stepped down from the running board. Picked Joel up one-handed the way you'd pick up something unimportant.
The grapple gun fired. The line pulled tight.
They went up.
Gotham's rooftops came rushing at them from below and Joel made sounds that weren't words all the way to the top.
Five minutes later, Joel had explained everything.
Pickups. Drop-offs. Names. Locations. Everything he'd been carrying for years, unloaded at speed, because the alternative was continuing to be on this rooftop with this thing.
Batman stopped staring at him.
Joel exhaled in ragged stages. "So. Can I go now?"
Batman took Joel's phone. Dialed.
"Gotham Police Department."
"Gordon. There's a fugitive in Otisburg. Vehicular manslaughter, multiple counts, outstanding warrants. He's in the truck on Halsworth. Line's open—follow the GPS."
Joel's eyes went wide. "No—you said—you lying piece of—"
The strike came fast, calibrated. Hard enough to break teeth. Not hard enough to knock him out.
Joel spat blood. Went quiet.
Batman produced something from his belt, pressed it to Joel's neck. The man's eyes went up and he stopped being a problem.
"Send an ambulance," Batman said into the phone. "Two broken limbs. He'll need surgery before the interview."
He set the phone next to the body, stood, walked to the edge of the roof.
Spread his cape.
Dropped into the dark.
Gotham swallowed him whole.
Somewhere across the city, someone else was about to have a very bad night.
Every night. Always.
"Where did you get this thing?"
Drake stood in the living room doorway, staring at the folded wheelchair propped against the wall.
"I bought it." Jude took it by the frame and unfolded it in one smooth motion. The modified racing configuration expanded, LED strips dark, the chassis sitting low and ridiculous and fast-looking in the middle of a slum apartment. "Drove it from Otisburg in twelve minutes. You could show some appreciation for my skills."
"This flies?"
"It's a wheelchair. It doesn't fly." He folded it back down again, a series of clean mechanical clicks. "It goes fast. There's a distinction."
Drake stared at it for another moment. Gotham had clearly recalibrated his sense of normal, because eventually he simply shrugged. "Work go okay?"
"Harvey Dent was my first customer."
Drake's expression did several things in rapid sequence. "What."
"First customer of the day. Sat down, ordered, and spent forty-five minutes making carefully chosen comments about rats, nests, and the behavioral patterns of sewer wildlife while half my coworkers turned colors I didn't know human faces could achieve."
"God." Drake pressed a hand over his mouth. "And nobody—"
"Nobody did anything. A lot of wrists were grabbed. There was one close call with a waistband." Jude sat down. "He left a generous tip. I'm choosing to focus on the positive."
"You're handling this better than you should be."
"He doesn't usually come in, right? You said it was rare."
"It is rare. And when he does, he's always got a purpose." Drake sat on the arm of the couch, rubbing the back of his neck. "There was a situation about a year ago—some idiot took a shot at him, hit the vest, and Harvey used the hospital stay to coordinate with Gordon. By the time he was discharged they'd arrested a major Falcone lieutenant and dismantled half a dozen grey-market operations." He paused. "So. Not a man you want as an enemy."
"Deeply reassuring. Thank you."
"Tips were good though?"
"Three hundred dollars." Jude's mood lifted immediately, visibly. "Gotham's wealthy are generous."
Three hundred asset points. Which was exactly what the modified wheelchair and the intermediate driving skill had cost, to the dollar.
He'd spent it on the commute and earned it back the first day.
There was one small asterisk on the tip total. The largest individual contribution had come from the middle-aged society woman he'd rescued from Rick—she'd been warm, persistent, and wearing a perfume that had some kind of territorial ambition. Her hand had found his arm when he'd brought the dessert and hadn't been in any hurry to leave. He could still detect traces of it on his jacket sleeve.
Nothing to be done. Money was money.
After dinner—Camilla was cooking again now that she had energy for it, and it showed—Jude took a shower, counted his cash, and lay on the couch with his phone.
The Gotham Gazette app had updated.
Hit-and-Run Suspect in Custody Following Vigilante Encounter—Two Broken Limbs, Multiple Charges Pending
He skimmed the first paragraph. Truck driver, extensive criminal history, delivered to GCPD. Batman had been thorough, as usual.
Jude scrolled past it.
Checked the weather forecast.
More rain tomorrow.
Set his alarm.
Went to sleep.