Gotham Read online

  “I’d really like that,” she said.

  Her soft, raspy tone reminded him of the time she’d whispered in his ear after she’d beaten the crap out of him. “Lacey’s in charge,” she’d said, “and don’t you ever forget it.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she replied.

  “Yeah, actually I do,” he said, smiling. “Thing is, in your case, I mean it.”

  She laughed, enjoying the banter, as she headed back toward the cameraman. Harvey got along well with all of his old flames. As he often told people, “Don’t judge a man by his friends, judge him by his exes.” Every guy got along with his friends, but if he got along with his exes—well, that told you something about the man’s character.

  As he resumed walking with Amanda toward the entrance, she tossed him a harsh, judgmental look. Already he was beginning to find it familiar.

  “What?” Harvey asked.

  “Flirting at a crime scene?” she said. “Seriously?”

  “We’re not at a crime scene yet,” Harvey protested. “We’re outside a crime scene. Big difference. Huge, actually.”

  Amanda remained stone-faced. “When we get in there, I’ll take the lead,” she said. “You just hang back.”

  Harvey did a double take, partly because he was at least half-drunk and partly because he was thinking, is she serious? Amanda had been getting more and more controlling. What was up with that? She’d only been his partner for a week, and she kept insisting on doing a lot of the driving, picking the music they listened to in the car, and editing his arrest reports before he handed them in. But telling him how to handle an investigation? Was she serious?

  He had twenty years in the Department, nine as a detective, and she had what, five and less than a month? Besides, she was a woman. He didn’t have anything against women—like, obviously. He loved women, and women loved him—it was a mutual respect sorta thing, and he had a lot of, well, notches on his belt to prove it. But he didn’t think women should be cops was all. There was plenty of other work they could have, so why cops? For example, was he trying out to be a cheerleader? No, he was not.

  The other day he’d voiced his opinion to Amanda, and she’d called him a sexist.

  Harvey had fired back, “I’m no sexist. I’m the opposite of a sexist. If I was sexist, I wouldn’t like women as much as I do, and if I didn’t like women, I’d want them to be cops, so they could get hurt or killed. But I don’t want them to be cops, because I love women and want them to be safe.”

  She hadn’t bought it, but it had shut her up.

  Now he said, “Sorry, I had a cold last week and maybe my ears are still a little clogged. I thought I just heard you telling me how to do my job.”

  “First off, you’re piss drunk,” Amanda said.

  “Whoa, I’m not at all drunk,” Harvey said. “A little buzzed, yeah, okay, but not drunk. Want me to walk a straight line for ya?” Harvey managed a couple of steps, as if he were walking along a tightrope, and lost his balance. Then he said, “Or, better yet, wanna give me a breathalyzer?”

  “Why do I need a breathalyzer?” Amanda asked. “I can smell it from here.”

  Attitude, Harvey thought. See? You didn’t get crap like that from a man. A man’ll stab you in the back, but he won’t needle you to death.

  “Second, I’m better at a crime scene than you are,” Amanda said.

  “What?” Harvey couldn’t believe this. “Who says?”

  “It’s a fact,” she said. “I just am. You get too worked up, you don’t ask the right questions, and this is all exacerbated when you’ve been drinking.”

  “Oooh, big word,” Harvey said. “I’m impressed. When did you memorize that one?” As they headed up the several stairs, leading to the entrance, Amanda was muttering to herself. Harvey, dizzy, had to hold the railing.

  Yeah, okay, he was a little buzzed. So what?

  Amanda noticed he was wobbling and smirked. She rang the doorbell.

  “Okay, I need to hear this,” Harvey said. “So how are you better than me?”

  “It’s called having people skills,” she said. “I have them, you don’t. Honestly, your attitude embarrasses me sometimes. We’re in a partnership, so it reflects on both of us.”

  Harvey laughed—for effect. He didn’t think any of this was funny.

  “I embarrass you, huh?” Then he was full-blown serious—even angry. “Look, you’re lucky I’m even working with you, okay, sweetheart?”

  “Sweetheart?” Amanda said. “Seriously? Who do you think I am, your news reporter ho?”

  “Whoa, easy, Lacey’s a classy lady,” Harvey said. “And what’s wrong with ‘sweetheart’? Why’s that a bad thing to say these days? It’s a term of freakin’ endearment.”

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t work with me if you had a choice,” she said, ringing the bell again.

  “What do you mean?” Harvey asked. “I mean about not having a choice.”

  “Captain Essen told you if you didn’t, you were going on desk duty.”

  This was true, but Harvey hadn’t known it was public knowledge.

  “Where did you hear this?” he demanded.

  “Gimme a break,” Amanda said. “Everybody in the department knows about your misogynistic tendencies.”

  “Wait,” Harvey said, “they said I gave a massage to who?”

  “How much exactly did you drink tonight?” Amanda asked.

  “It’s last night, now,” Harvey said. “And not much. Not as much as usual anyway.”

  “If you’re inebriated you shouldn’t be here,” Amanda said.

  “No, you shouldn’t be here,” Harvey said. “You and your fancy words. Inebriated.” He laughed. “What’s wrong, people can’t say ‘drunk’ anymore? That’s too low class?” He belched then continued, “Wanna know the truth? Okay, yeah you’re right. I didn’t wanna work with you, and I still don’t wanna work with you—but as long as we’re together, I’m in charge, I call the shots. Comprende mundo?”

  “Comprende mundo?” She wrinkled her face as if she smelled something foul. “That doesn’t even mean anything.”

  Harvey glared at her, and didn’t notice that Martha Wayne had answered the door. When he did notice her, he let out a soft whistle.

  Talk about pretty—yowza. If you looked up “Harvey’s type” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, you’d see a big picture of this lady. He’d seen her around a lot over the years, talked to her a few times at charity balls, GCPD functions, and whatnot. She was blonde, classy, okay a little on the thin side, but somehow with Martha Wayne the whole package worked. The thing Harvey liked most about her, though, was her confidence. In a weird way she reminded him of Fish Mooney.

  Yeah, Fish and Martha came from totally different walks of life—it probably wasn’t possible to get more different—but there was something similar about them, too. Fish always made herself the center of attention. Same with Martha Wayne—when you were in the same room with her, you noticed her. It was hard to look away, and she didn’t just have attitude. She had the looks to back it up.

  Even now, in the middle of the night, after there’d been a murder at Wayne Manor, the lady of the house looked stunning. How about that as a litmus test for beauty? Of course Martha Wayne was married, and Harvey wasn’t the type of guy who would ever make a pass at another man’s wife, but looking? Looking never hurt nobody.

  Snapping out of it, he realized Amanda was already asking questions.

  “Were you here when the shooting happened?” she asked Martha.

  Had Harvey’s gaze drifted down to her chest?

  Yep, yep it had. Hey, he was only human.

  “No, I was asleep,” Martha said. “We were in Switzerland for a week, and just arrived back this afternoon, so I was pretty tired. Actually, it was the gunshot—I mean shots, that woke me up.”

  Harvey caught a glimpse of Amanda, sneering at him as if saying, Seriously? They stepped throug
h the doorway and started down the hall. He shook his head a little and spoke up.

  “Um, how many shots were there?” he asked. It didn’t really matter; he just wanted to say something.

  “Several, I believe,” Martha said. “I’m not sure. When I heard them, I went and woke up Alfred, our butler.” Harvey and Amanda followed her along the wide, brightly lit hallway, past all the fancy antique furniture, toward the crime scene further back in the house. He couldn’t help noticing Martha’s swinging hips. Even in yoga pants, or whatever she had on, her body looked in perfect proportions. Harvey didn’t know how to draw, but even if he had, if he was the best damn artist in the world, he wouldn’t have been able to draw a body like that.

  “You’re so classy,” Amanda whispered into his ear. Harvey began to smile, then realized she hadn’t meant it as a compliment.

  As they approached a door that probably led into the drawing room, there was a kid waiting for them. Martha approached her son Bruce, who was standing there in pajama bottoms and T-shirt. Harvey had met the kid a bunch of times. Good, polite rich type. Smart too.

  “Bruce, why don’t you go upstairs and get some rest?” Martha said. “You’ve had a long day, and you’re probably still jetlagged.”

  “I’m not tired, Mom.” He glanced at Harvey and Amanda, his eyes wide, and said, “Are you the detectives who’ll be in charge of this case?”

  “Yep, we are,” Harvey answered.

  Bruce eyed him carefully, but didn’t say anything more. Could the kid tell he’d been drinking? Eh, highly, highly unlikely. Nobody could hide his drunk better than Harvey Bullock.

  “Who do you think is responsible?” Bruce asked.

  “We don’t know yet,” Amanda said. “We just got here.”

  “But you must have some idea,” he insisted. “I’ve heard that police always know who the criminals are.” Something in his voice indicated that he didn’t believe it, though.

  “Cynicism,” Harvey said. “I like that, kid.” Harvey belched, re-tasting that last shot of Jameson he’d downed. And, damn, it still tasted good.

  Outside Thomas Wayne’s study the body remained splayed. Several uniformed cops were in the room—a couple of them talking to Thomas Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth, his butler, near the entrance to Wayne’s study. Pennyworth may have looked like an uppity butler, but he had a tough-ass past—you could see it just by the way he stood, and by looking in the guy’s eyes.

  The medical examiner was photographing the dead guy, who was in a hooded sweatshirt and was wearing a werewolf mask.

  “Who is he?” Harvey asked.

  “Looks like a werewolf to me,” one of the cops said. He was a fresh-faced blond guy, probably right out of the academy.

  Smartass. The kid must’ve caught his expression.

  “He has no ID on him,” the cop said, “and obviously we didn’t want to pull off the mask. I mean, not till the ME and you guys got here.”

  “This the only vic?” Harvey asked.

  “Yeah, there were two other intruders, but they escaped.”

  “The security’s tight here. How’d they get in?”

  “The security system was disabled and the guard at the gate, guy named Nigel Hayward, got ambushed. When we got here he was tied up and gagged. Beaten up pretty bad, too—his face looked like hamburger meat. He’s in Gotham General now. He’ll live, but he’s gonna take a lot of scars with him.”

  “We’ll have to talk to Nigel,” Amanda said.

  “Good idea,” Harvey said, the sarcasm so dry it almost sounded sincere. He got a pair of latex gloves from one of the EMS workers and squatted near the body, careful not to get any blood on his favorite chinos. Reaching out, he gripped the edge of the mask, avoiding the wound on the dead man’s neck. “Time for the big reveal,” he said. “Let’s see who we’ve got under here.”

  The dead guy was a pudgy-faced, red-haired guy with a thick scar on his forehead.

  “Never seen him before in my life,” Harvey said.

  “Neither have I.”

  Who the hell said that? Harvey looked back over his shoulder and saw that Thomas Wayne had come up behind him.

  “Hey, Mr. Wayne.” The detective stood up, lurching a little. “I’d shake your hand, but…”

  “Do you want to tell us what happened here?” Amanda asked.

  “Yes, but it’s late obviously,” Wayne said, “and I’ve already explained it all to the officers. Can’t they fill you in?”

  “Better if we get it from the horse’s mouth,” Harvey said. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Wayne said.

  “And we’ll need to speak to Mr. Pennyworth as well,” Amanda said.

  “Of course,” Wayne said. “If you’ll give me a moment…” Harvey nodded, then watched Thomas go over and whisper something to Bruce, who was still standing with Martha. A moment later both mother and son headed away, probably to get back to bed. Before Bruce exited, however, he looked back at Harvey, as if to say, Find out who did this.

  Harvey smiled, and gave the kid the thumbs up.

  * * *

  A short time later, Harvey and Amanda were seated across from Thomas Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth at the dining room table. Wayne leaned his elbows on the polished wood surface, while Pennyworth sat stiffly.

  “We’ll make this quick,” Harvey said. “There’s been a bunch of other art robberies in Gotham over the past couple months, so there’s a chance the same crew is behind this one. So you say there were three intruders in the house, right?” The uniformed cops had filled him in, but he wanted to hear it for himself. Besides, it made him sound official.

  “That’s right,” Wayne said. “All in Halloween masks. A zombie, a werewolf, and a gorilla. The gorilla was holding the Picasso, the zombie had what looked like a meat cleaver.”

  “That explains how your wall got chopped up,” Harvey said. “Do you have any idea why they did that?”

  “No,” Wayne said, and he shook his head. “None.”

  Questioning witnesses was Harvey’s forte, and even when he was two sheets to the Jameson wind—as his relatives in Ireland liked to say—he could tell when somebody was holding back. He had that feeling about Thomas Wayne.

  “Come on, you must have some ideas,” Amanda insisted. Harvey glared at her, annoyed. Hadn’t he made it clear that he’d ask the questions?

  Wayne remained silent for another few seconds.

  “Well, since they’re art thieves, it might be that they were looking for some sort of electrical alarm system,” he suggested. “Maybe they thought the painting was wired for protection?”

  No, he’s reaching, Harvey thought. But for what?

  “Do you have separate alarms like that for your paintings?” Amanda asked.

  “No,” Wayne said. “I thought my main system would suffice.” With a smile he added, “Obviously I thought wrong.”

  “How do you think they disabled the main system?” Harvey asked.

  “That I have no clue about,” Thomas said. “Nobody knows those codes except my wife and Alfred… well, and Wayne Security, the company we employ.”

  “Well, they figured out the code somehow,” Harvey said. “So somebody must’ve squealed.”

  He looked at Alfred.

  “I beg your pardon,” the butler said, and it came out more of a growl. “Are you implying that I might have any involvement in this?” Pennyworth had a British accent. It wasn’t a fancy Brit accent, though. It was the kind of accent that tough guys had in crime movies.

  “I like to shoot from the hip,” Harvey said.

  “Bloody idiot,” Pennyworth said. He looked like he was ready to jump over the table. Harvey kept a hand on his piece—just in case.

  “It’s okay,” Amanda said. “Let’s just calm down.”

  “I’m calm,” Harvey said. “It’s this guy who looks like he’s about to blow a gasket.” Then he said to Pennyworth, “Down, boy.”

  The butler’s face went red and Harvey saw veins in
his forehead. So the detective turned back to the master of the house.

  “Is it possible somebody at Wayne Security is involved in this?” he asked.

  “Anything’s possible,” Wayne said. “I’ll certainly conduct an internal investigation.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Harvey said.

  Pennyworth was still sneering.

  “So where were you when you heard the intruders?” Amanda asked Wayne. “In your bedroom?”

  Wayne hesitated, then said, “No, I was in the kitchen.”

  Again Harvey’s gut told him something was off about the man’s answer. “Didn’t they have to pass by the kitchen to get to your study?” he asked.

  “I suppose they were already in the house when I went down to the kitchen to get a drink,” Wayne said.

  He was smooth—Harvey had to admit it.

  “Okay,” Harvey said, “so you heard them, and then what happened?”

  “I came out here, and one of the intruders—the one with the werewolf mask, shot me, so I shot him. He didn’t die though—Alfred shot him from the stairwell.”

  “One shot from the stairwell, huh?” Harvey was impressed. “That’s some good aim ya got there. What’re you, some kind of sniper?”

  “Actually, I did toy with it in the military,” Pennyworth said.

  “A butler who knows how to kill,” Harvey said. “I guess that can come in handy.”

  “It did tonight,” Wayne said.

  “Back to the walls,” Harvey said. “Sorry, but I ain’t buying the security system theory. These art thieves are pros—they can tell if a painting’s wired or not. Without doing enough damage to raise the dead.”

  “Okay, so perhaps they thought I had something hidden in the walls,” Wayne said. “Jewels, or money, or some sort of valuables.”

  “Do ya?” Harvey asked.

  “Do I what?” Thomas asked.

  “Hide valuables in your walls.”

  “No,” Wayne said. “It was just another theory. I have no idea why they chopped up the walls, Detective. Maybe they’re just crazy. There are a lot of crazy people in Gotham these days—just look how Arkham’s overflowing. There’s a mental health crisis in this town, which is why Wayne Enterprises has been such a huge advocate for mental health reform in Goth—” He cut himself off, rubbed his forehead with one hand, then continued. “Look, it’s late and I’m exhausted, so can we call it a night? I’d be happy to answer any more questions you have, just as I’d love to get my painting back, but it’s very late and it’s been quite an eventful evening. If you’d like to come by again tomorrow and—”