"Bad day at black rock," Wayne replied, playing his ne'er-do-well role to the hilt. He spied another of his father's business colleagues in deep conversation near the wall of windows. He bulled his way across the room, pausing only to collect a drink from the tight-lipped bartender. With carefully calculated rudeness, he marched between them.
"What a view!" He opened his arms and flung bourbon into one man's face. "There's no place like home---when you're up here and everyone else is down there---"
"Mr. Wayne---?" A butler---not Alfred, of course---appeared at Bruce's side. He laid one hand on Bruce's shoulder and wrapped the other around his wrist. "There's a call for you. If you'll just step this way..."
Bruce allowed his arm to be lowered and the pinching hand on his shoulder to guide him toward a darkened doorway. Mission accomplished. He had the club's undivided, but discreet, attention. Within hours the old guard would be asking itself the perennial question: What should we do about Tom Wayne's son? A few hours after that, Bruce could count on a call from Harry.
But, as it turned out, he didn't have to wait hours. The door closed behind him, and Bruce was alone in one of the private rooms, face-to-face with a disapproving Harry Matheson. A shiver of anticipation raced down Bruce Wayne's spine as he divided his consciousness between the actor who would play out the scene and the coldly sober Batman who would be watching Harry with a new eye.
"What is it this time, Bruce---liquor, the wild life, some unholy combination of the two?"
The actor let his jaw hang.
"Look at you. You're a disgrace to your father's name. What's the matter with you? When are you going to take hold and make something of yourself. Something worthwhile?"
The younger man whined alcoholically; the older man scolded. Both seemed completely sincere. Batman looked at the edges for a sign that the disguise was not quite complete, that they were both, in fact actors. The analysis was inconclusive. After all, Harry Matheson could be the Connection and still care deeply about the ruination of his dead friend's son; the roles were not mutually exclusive. Batman sought the words for a speech that would place Harry's roles in conflict.
"You're not my father!" Bruce shouted. "Stop treating me like the son you never had. You're planning to take your businesses with you to your grave---like all fathers. Like my father did." It was an act, his inner voice said urgently, calming the part of him that would always feel an orphan's anguish. "If I was your son would you teach me what you know? Would you have shown me all your inner secrets, the deals you made to get to the top?"
The actor waited; Batman watched.
Harry opened his mouth and shut it again. He set his glass on a polished wood table and ground his cigar to shreds in a cut-glass ashtray. "Show you? Never." He squeezed his lips into pale lines, biting off words Batman dearly wished to hear. Then he stalked out of the room, allowing the door to strike the wall when he beat it open.
For a moment, while he was truly alone, Bruce Wayne shed all his roles and let his tension out with a shuddering sigh. He had as much information as he was likely to get. Mental images of Harry's response, clearer than any photograph or videotape, were printed in his mind's eye. Later, after analysis and reflection, perhaps he'd have an answer.
There was no reason to stay. Harry's stormy exit left him with no need to explain his own. Bruce Wayne left the club scarcely a half hour after he'd entered it.
"Let's go home, Alfred," he said as he settled in the back seat of the limo.
"Did you learn what you wanted to? Is Harry Matheson the man? Is he the Connection?"
Bruce pulled off the black tie and undid the top studs of the starched white shirt. He sank back in the upholstery as Alfred pulled away from the curb. "I don't know. I can't tell---that says something right there, doesn't it? A man I've known all my life---and I can't tell what he really is."
"Yes, it does, sir. Yes, it does."
Chapter Eight
Catwoman awoke to a rooster crowing before dawn. The sound startled and disoriented her. She lashed out at unfamiliar shadow-shapes, then, as she shed last night and dismissed it as an unsuitable place for sleeping, without giving the inevitable roosters a second thought. For her, roosters had become an urban sound. Cockfighting was another of the East End's ongoing illicit entertainments. Men kept the gaudy, mean-tempered creatures in cages on the fire escapes, turning those vertical sidewalks into noisy obstacle courses. She'd forgotten that a more natural place for a rooster was a henhouse.
Perhaps she had been cooped up in the city too long.
Shaking her head one final time, Catwoman peeled off her costume. Selina's clothes, left overnight in the backpack, were cold and damp. She was shivering by the time she crept out of the toolshed. Many of the convent windows were lit; nuns were notorious early risers, but they had prayer on their mind and weren't likely to look out the curtains as a lone woman marched through the drizzle and climbed over the gate at the end of the driveway.
Selina was wet to the skin and as mean-tempered as any rooster by the time she got to the Riverwyck station. She boarded the first train to Gotham City with a herd of bleary-eyed commuters who ignored her as a stream ignores a boulder sitting in its bed. The train was wonderfully warm. The air thickened with humidity and echoed with snores. Selina kicked off her shoes, drew her op-art knees up under the capacious neon-green sweater, and studied the life cycle of condensation droplets on the steamy windows.
Rose was safe, not sane or sound, but safe. Eddie Lobb wouldn't hurt her again. It seemed to Selina that Rose D'Onofreo should wander out of her thoughts the same way the movement of the train made the droplets migrate to the bottom of the window. But Rose stuck in the middle of Selina's thoughts. She wasn't satisfied knowing that Eddie Lobb couldn't reach her.
"He did it with cats," she murmured to the rhythm of the steel wheels. "He did that to her with cats. That's wrong. Wrong. I'm gonna get him. Eddie Lobb. I'm gonna find him..."
The metallic shriek of the brakes in the terminal tunnel roused Selina from an increasingly vengeful and graphic reverie. She joined the throng flowing to the street, only to discover that the drizzle had become a downpour and half of Gotham City was trying to flag a taxi. Shrugging the backpack over her shoulders, she hiked the thirty-odd blocks to home.
A half-dozen cats raised their heads, took a look at the sopping, sullen creature in their midst, and surrendered the bed without a fight.
Selina figured to spend the next few days indoors, sleeping or exercising. Catwoman went out no more than once or twice a week---anything more risked needless exposure to both sides of the law. It was a monotonous life, but Selina liked it that way, considering what it had been before.
Most of the pimps and streetwalkers Selina had known when she came to Gotham City had vanished; none of the ones who remained had changed for the better. Life on the streets was nasty, brutal, and short. Besides, working with people wasn't the same as being friends with them.
The cats were her friends. Whenever Selina was lonely or bored, she followed their example and curled up for a nap. She was surprised, then, when she didn't fall asleep before she was warm. She thought about Eddie Lobb. She didn't know his face, so she made one up from memory, and slashed it with Catwoman's claws. She made up another face, another punishment. After a while she forgot about sleeping.
There weren't many books around, but one of them was a telephone directory. A half-inch of Lobbs were listed. One was an Edward. Selina checked the address against the directory maps. Her fingers marched to a place north of the East End, near a park. She knew the area. Catwoman prowled there occasionally, when the police were keeping a temporary lid on the drug trade. But she couldn't mentally match buildings with their street addresses.