She caught up with Bonnie on the roof. The neophyte was slumped against the wall, quivering with terror.
"Hey---it's over. It's all done." Catwoman tried to pull her to her feet, but it was like pulling lead. "You did good, Bonnie. I know you got enough pictures to---what did you call it?---make them weep blood." Still no response. "Can't you see him---he's standing right in front of the door. He sees the scratches. He tries to open the lock. He's having trouble, getting nervous, he drops the key---"
Bonnie raised her head and grinned weakly. "Sure would be something to see his face when he turns on the light, wouldn't it? Zap him with a flash. Gotcha, Eddie Lobb!"
It was tempting. Very tempting. With Bonnie safe up here, Catwoman could easily slip back down with one of the cameras.
"They're not that hard to work, right? Just point and shoot?"
"Not quite, but almost. Here, I'll show you. Let me put a new roll of film in, too... ."
Moments later, Catwoman was headed back down the fire escape.
"Good luck!" Bonnie whispered after her.
It was a strange, warm feeling to have someone wishing her luck. Catwoman squelched it quickly. Luck was not something she liked to rely on.
Eddie was in the cat room. Catwoman could hear him yelling before she climbed through the window.
"Well, cancel it, I'm telling you. Screw the damn Bess-arabs and their dirty pictures! I'm telling you, somebody broke into my place while I was gone."
Catwoman crept to the bedroom door and peeked out. She could hear him pacing as he talked, and she remembered that there had been a cordless phone on the table that Bonnie had moved to the floor.
"Well, let 'em stand there. It'll do 'em good to get a little nervous. I already heard that they've been lightin' up the town and getting everyone nervous. Do the greasy little sheepherders good---"
There was silence; the pacing stopped. Catwoman understood that Eddie was getting reamed out by his boss. The warm feeling bloomed under her heart again, and this time she let it simmer.
"Yeah, right." The voice was subdued, the pacing slower. "208 Broad, off Tenth, in an hour. Yeah, I'll be there." Another pause, not as long as the previous one. "No, I don't know if they took anything. That's not the point. The point is some sick-o, punk bastard got into my place and messed around with my things, you know, boss, my personal things... No, no---not the front door... Shit, I don't know how--- Rose... ? Shit, no. Maybe. I didn't look."
Catwoman hurried down the hall. She wanted his picture with the tiger skins in the background. She held the camera in front of her like a weapon or a shield, her finger poised above the button Bonnie told her to push and hold.
"Gotcha, Eddie Lobb," she snarled from the doorway. He was at least five feet away; Bonnie said the camera needed five feet if Eddie and the background were both going to be in focus. She pushed the button. Strobe-light flashes burst from her hand. Eddie was transfixed. His mouth gaped, the phone fell from his hand.
"A cat. Jesus H. Christ, it's a giant freaking black cat."
But he didn't move. Catwoman had no trouble making her retreat.
"He's one ugly dude," she said, giving the camera back to Bonnie. "He's got scars like the ones I put on the--- Well, you'll see them when you get the pictures developed."
Zippers zipped and buckles buckled, Bonnie announced that she was ready to go home. They could look at the black-and-white pictures in an hour, when she had them developed. The color shots would have to wait until morning.
"Can you get home by yourself, kid? I'll help you get down to the street, but, there's someplace else I've got to go... ." 208 Broad off Tenth in an hour, but there was no need to tell Bonnie that.
Bonnie wilted, but she didn't whine. "Yeah, I think I'll take the bus, though. You'll---you'll tell Selina to get in touch with me, so I can show her the pictures?"
"Yeah, kid. C'mon."
Chapter Thirteen
The night was warm, with a hint of summer's humidity in the haze. Batman traveled crosstown the hard way---without using the streets or sidewalks, just especially with a heavy wooden box clamped under his arm.
He was careful with the box, but not as careful as he would have been if he hadn't examined it thoroughly and made a few adjustments. Nothing that was visible on the surface---but then, what he'd changed had been well-hidden in the first place. The icon he'd received from the young man in the Russian bakery had been far too ordinary to be the major payment in a bartered-arms deal. The frame wasn't gold, but thinly gilt wood. There had to be something more, so he'd subjected the icon to close scrutiny in the Batcave, and found the real icon, the seventeenth-century masterpiece, sleeping under a removable veneer.
Bruce Wayne, of the Wayne Foundation, patron of a hundred useful causes, summoned the appropriate curator from Gotham's finest art museum to his office. Saying he'd found the object in an old chest in the mansion's attic---where wonders and trash had been found many times before---Bruce flicked the box open as if it were just another flea-market curio.
The woman dropped to her knees in awe and for a closer examination. She was speechless for several moments. She mentioned a name that meant nothing to Wayne and showed him where the artist had concealed it in the goldwork. She hoped the Wayne Foundation wouldn't consider selling it for less than three million dollars or before her museum had an opportunity to make an offer.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
When Bruce Wayne was alone again he studied the delicate, melancholy saint with her hooded eyes and glistening gold headcloth.
Put it back beneath the veneer? Allow it to flow from hand to hand, until the weapons were moving toward Bessarabia and Harry Mattheson disposed of the priceless artwork? If Harry Mattheson were the Connection...
In the end Bruce Wayne locked the icon in the Foundation vault and reinstalled the flexible veneer over another, equally worthless, plank of lacquered wood. This way, no matter what happened, when it was over, the Foundation would make certain that an object of reverence and beauty could not be perverted again. He thought about injecting a short-range transmitter into the frame, but did not. He'd follow the icon in person, until it reached the Connection's hands.
The rendezvous was set for midnight in the warehouse district not too far from the pier where Batman first spotted Tiger. He arrived twenty minutes early, climbing out of an abandoned steam tunnel into a restaurant's basement storeroom. He expected to have time to check out the immediate area, but the ethnic Russian was in another late-night eatery across the street, so he decided to get rid of the box first. They met in a reeking alley.
"You have got it?" The young man asked the obvious, took the box, and found a patch of relative brightness in which to open it. His relief was palpable when he saw what he wanted to see exactly where he expected to see it. "I will speak well of you to my people." He closed the box and glanced nervously at the street. "You will go now. Three men can keep a secret only after one has killed the other two. Benjamin Franklin; citizen class. The Gagauzi and the scar-faced man, they would not keep our secrets."