Batman 3 - Batman Forever by Peter David Read Free Book Online

was pleasant, as indeed was his entire demeanor. His thick brown hair was neatly coiffed, his square-jawed face annoyingly flawless (annoying to “mere mortals,” as one newspaper gossip columnist was fond of observing). His suit was Savile Row, dark pinstripe, tailored and perfectly pressed.
    And his attention was not remotely on the pilot’s query, or the quality of the helicopter ride. Instead, his concentration was squarely on the video screen situated directly in front of him.
    There was a photo of Harvey Dent . . . Dent as he had been, a lifetime ago, illuminating the upper right-hand side of the screen. And the newscaster, appropriately grim, was saying, “And in Gotham City last night, ex-District Attorney Harvey Dent escaped from Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Dent, once Gotham’s leading contender for mayor, was horribly scarred by underworld kingpin Boss Maroni during an indictment hearing. Dent, whose resulting left-brain damage transformed him into a violent criminal, launched a grisly crime spree before being captured by the Batman. Reported to have sworn revenge on the Dark Knight, he is extremely dangerous. Repeat . . .”
    Words.
    Just words. Words that covered the surface aspect of the situation, but didn’t begin to approach the depth of what had happened. Didn’t come close to the core of guilt that Wayne carried with him to this day.
    It was one of those moments where he had done everything right . . . and it had still gone horribly wrong.
    There he’d been at the indictment, seated some rows back, in disguise (since he didn’t want the high-profile Bruce Wayne to be a presence at criminal proceedings. He always preferred to err on the side of overcaution).
    The collaring of Maroni had been the latest success in the private little arrangement between Batman and Harvey Dent. The improvement in Batman’s ability to operate had been fairly immediate. Commissioner Gordon had been a longtime supporter of the Batman and his “questionable” activities. But the mayor and the city council were far more political animals, and were concerned about how the Dark Knight’s shadow cast itself over Gotham.
    It had been Harvey Dent who had swung the balance of public opinion (not to mention behind-closed-doors and smoke-filled-room opinion) toward Batman. Dent had been the first to go on record that Batman apparently had been framed by Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, dubbed “The Penguin” by the same media that had crucified Batman until Dent spoke out on his behalf. And Batman, in turn, had saved Dent when the D.A. came up against the demented villain known as “Poison Ivy.”
    With all of that, with all that history, there had developed a bond and trust between the two. And so, on the bigger trials, Bruce felt a need to be present, even if Harvey was unaware of it. It felt . . . right . . . somehow.
    A hundred, a thousand times since then, Bruce Wayne’s mind had replayed that moment. It had seemed to stretch out into infinity. Boss Maroni stepping out of the witness box, a substantially changed man from when he’d first stepped into it. He had been swaggering and confident when Harvey Dent first started questioning him. Harvey’s courtly, gentlemanly demeanor could be very disarming if one wasn’t prepared, and the overly assured Maroni was as far from prepared as one could get. His lawyers had warned him, but he hadn’t listened.
    But as Harvey Dent had slowly and methodically torn him to shreds, watching Maroni had been like watching a deflating balloon become smaller and shriveled and pathetic. By the time Dent had finished with him, it had seemed like there was nothing left.
    There had been, though. There had been the desperate act of an infuriated man. It was as if somehow Maroni had had a premonition of how things might, in some unimaginable reality, go. And he had decided before setting foot in the courtroom that if he did go down in flames, there would be some final, furious act