A Soft Barren Aftershock

  No. I wasn’t going to say thank you.

  “How’d it drive?”

  I’d been running late already and had no choice but to drive the Mercedes to work. How’d it drive? Like piloting a cloud. But I’d been too angry, too unsettled by this arrogant intrusion into my life to enjoy it.

  I steadied myself. Finally, I felt able to speak calmly.

  “Where is my old car?”

  “Gone. Dead. Kaput. Junked. Pounded into a neat little cube of twisted steel and sent back to the melting pot from which it came.”

  “Listen, pal,” I said, “if you think such a blatant attempt at bribery will get you special treatment from me, or turn me into some sort of clandestine ally, you’re sadly mistaken. I’m not for sale.”

  Not ever. I thought. Especially not to the murderer of Colin Whittier.

  “Of course you’re not. Do you really think I’d be so clumsy as to try to bribe you with a car? A car?” Good gracious me, no. It’s just that I simply couldn’t bear to know that my personal physician was driving around in public in that 1982 Toyota. A Celica, no less! I’ve got a reputation to uphold. How do you think it looks to my organization when they see their leader’s doctor driving a Jap junker? It was an intolerable situation that required an immediate remedy.”

  “I won’t stand for it!”

  “I’m afraid you have no choice, Dr. Lewis. The deed is done. Your old car is no more. You might as well use the new one. Why not enjoy it? Your conscience is clear, you ethics are unsullied. I ask nothing in return, only that you drive it. My image, you see.”

  “Guards,” I called. I wasn’t about to listen to any more of this.

  “Dina will love it, too.”

  Dina? What did he know about Dina?

  Weak and numb, I watched the guards unlock his restraints and lead him out.

  Session Eight

  The session was going particularly well. The Joker was opening up about his troubled, turbulent childhood. I still had no insight as yet into the mechanisms of his behavior, but we were just getting started in therapy. The important thing was that I felt that we were beginning to make progress toward a viable physician-patient relationship. Then he started with the crummy one-liners again.

  “You know, Dr. Lewis, I was the kind of student who made my teachers stay after school. Get it? I was an honor student—I was saying either ‘Yes, your Honor,’ or ‘No, your Honor.’ Get it? When I was a kid I was so tough, I got thrown out of every reform school in the country.”

  “Can we try to be serious? Just for a moment?”

  “Don’t worry, Doc. I know you’re trying. In fact, you’re very trying. Get it?”

  That did it. I made a final note prior to ending the session. But when I looked up, I saw that his hands were free. He was holding out a deck of playing cards.

  “Pick a card,” he said. “Any card.”

  Terror jolted through me. I shouted for the guards. By the time they reached us, the Joker’s hands were back in the manacles. The deck of cards remained between us on the table.

  “Never mind,” I told the guards. After all, he hadn’t tried to harm me. Maybe this was an opportunity to gain his confidence, which might put us on the quickest road to meaningful therapy. “False alarm.”

  As they returned to their posts outside the door, the Joker looked at me curiously. I picked up the deck and shuffled through it. All jokers.

  “How do you get these things smuggled in?”

  “I’ve told you: I’m the—”

  “ ‘Clown Prince of Crime.’ I know. A regular modern-day Mabuse.”

  “Ah. The doctor is a movie buff. Yes, I suppose I could be compared to Dr. Mabuse on a superficial level, but I am his superior in every way. Dr. Mabuse was a piker compared to the Joker.”

  More grandiosity. It was wearying.

  “But you’re real,” I said. “Mabuse was fiction. He didn’t have to worry about running up against Batman.”

  I knew immediately that I’d struck a nerve. Something changed in the Joker’s eyes and demeanor. The airy, bon-vivant pose vanished. I felt a chill worm across my shoulders as cold hatred flashed from his eyes and hung like rank smog in the air between us. And then as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. Blown away by a gust of laughter.

  “Batman! Talk about crazies! They put me in here while they let him run around loose in his cape and tights.”

  “They could have put you in the electric chair for murdering Colin Whittier,” I said softly. I’d almost said should instead of could. I’d have to be careful.

  “But they can’t!” he said with another laugh. “Because I’ve been classified as insane! I’m not responsible. Isn’t that wonderful? Oh, it’s so good to be mad in America. I can do unto others, but they can’t do unto me!”

  As he giggled on, I said, “Don’t you feel any remorse for the hurt you’ve caused people? For the artistic riches you’ve robbed from society by killing Colin Whittier?”

  “Society? What has society ever done for me?”

  “Well, you might have a point there, but you’ve caused untold harm in your lifetime—the deaths, the grief, the pain. Don’t you feel any impulse to make reparation?”

  “Not the slightest. I put the Joker first. If I don’t, who will? I. Me. Moi. Society, the public good, the little man, they can take my leavings. And I’d prefer you not mention Batman in my presence again.”

  Remembering how quickly he’d gotten in and out of his manacles a moment ago, I nodded.

  “And by the way,” he said, “how does the lovely Dina like the new car?”

  I was suddenly boiling on the inside, but I remained cool without.

  “Just as you do not wish Batman mentioned, I do not wish anyone from my personal life mentioned.”

  “She’s very attractive.”

  “I hope you’re not thinking of threatening her.”

  “Threaten?” He laughed. “That sort of thing is for pistoleros and dime-a-dozen desperadoes. Fratellezza swine. I like you, Dr. Lewis. I have no interest in threatening anyone dear to you. Besides, why should I? What can you do for me?”

  “You might think I can help you escape.”

  Another laugh. “I can escape any time I wish.”

  “Really? Then, why are you still imprisoned here?”

  “Because for the time being it amuses me,” he said without missing a beat. “Just as I can smuggle in anything I wish, I can leave anytime I wish. And when I decide that it’s time to take my leave, I shall escape with élan, dear doctor. Without your help. No crude, petty jailbreak for the Joker. The Joker will not sneak out, nor will he crawl or tunnel out. He’ll either fly or walk—at the time of his own choosing.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Yes. We will. And when are you going to ask that woman to marry you?

  “None of your business!”

  “Ah! Business! I wish we were in business! Building and loan—I wish you’d get out of the building and leave me alone. Get it?”

  “Good day, Joker,” I said, rising.

  “Good day, Dr. Lewis.”

  Session Ten

  I could barely contain my rage. As soon as the guards left, I exploded.

  “This time you’ve gone too far, Joker!”

  “Whatever are you talking about, Dr. Lewis?”

  “The ring, damn you! The goddamn ring!”

  “You mean that little bauble I sent Dina? Think nothing of it.”

  “It wasn’t ‘just a bauble,’ and you know it!”

  When I’d answered my doorbell the night before, I’d been shocked to find Dina standing there with tears in her eyes. She threw her arms around me and told me how beautiful it was, and what a romantic way to propose. And then she showed me the ring—a huge solitaire, flawless, at least three carats. It was perfect, she said, the engagement ring she’d always dreamed of, and to think I’d sent it to her nestled in a bouquet of roses with the note: Dina—Make my life complete. Marry me. Hal.

 
I’d been planning to ask her to marry me as soon as I got on my feet financially, but I’d had nothing to do with this. I knew immediately who was behind it, though. I should have told her right then. But when I saw the look in her eyes, the joy in her face, I couldn’t. How could I take that ring off her finger and say it wasn’t from me? I wrapped my arms around her and said nothing.

  “I won’t have you interfering in my life!”

  “Who’s interfering?” he said through that grin. “I like you. I don’t want to see you settle for second best. In a few years you’ll be able to afford all these things on your own. But for now, it gives me pleasure to help you out. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “You’re trying to compromise my judgment! And it won’t work!”

  “Of course it won’t. We both know you’ve got too much integrity for that. By the way, there’s an engagement gift waiting for you in your apartment.”

  That did it. I stormed out of the examining room.

  But deep within my gut was a strange new feeling, a growing awareness that it was my duty to render this . . . this Joker incapable of corrupting or harming anyone again.

  Conference

  “A prefrontal lobotomy?” Dr. Hills said. “You must be joking!”

  The irony of his choice of words was lost in the shocked silence around me. I’d gone directly from my session with the Joker to the psychiatric conference where I’d blurted out my recommendation. The rest of the psychiatric staff—Drs. Hills, Miller, and Bolland—were there, and I believe I stunned them all.

  The solution had occurred to me as I’d entered the room. A prefrontal lobotomy—surgical invasion of the frontal lobe of the brain. It had been used briefly with great success in the 1930s. Violent, agitated patients had become pussycats—gentle, placid, physically and emotionally in low gear. But the procedure had fallen out of favor because it was deemed too extreme. And because it was irreversible.

  “Yes, I’m aware that it’s a radical suggestion,” I said, “but you’ve got to admit that this particular case warrants a radical solution. Demands it, I should think. Lobotomy is definitive therapy in the case of a patient as incorrigibly violent as the Joker.”

  Dr. Hills said, “We’ll come under heavy fire from the patients’ rights groups merely for suggesting it. The ACLU, all the—”

  “What about the rights of the people he will harm in the future when he escapes again?” I replied. “And we all know he will escape again. Let’s be honest, gentlemen: modern psychiatry has failed society in the case of the Joker. I know. I’ve gone through his past records. The man seems to escape at will. Then he goes on a rampage of murder and robbery, is caught, is returned to us, only to escape again for another rampage. No matter how we chain him, drug him, psychoanalyze him, he escapes. And he never pays a price for the harm he does! Between rampages, he’s given a clean, comfortable cell, three meals a day, and free medical care. For life!”

  “But a lobotomy—?” Dr. Hills said.

  “We’ve failed to contain him, we’ve failed to change him with therapy or control him with drugs, and the courts won’t send him to the chair. As physicians charged with treating the so-called criminally insane, I think we have a duty to consider the definitive therapy for his sort of behavior disorder.”

  There was a long silence. Finally, Dr. Hills said, “I’ll take it up with the State Board of Medical Examiners.”

  I left the conference room in a state of wild exhilaration. I might have been the new man on the staff but I was making my presence felt in no uncertain terms. And beyond that, I knew that my recommendation for lobotomy would prove to the Joker once and for all that Harold Lewis, M.D., was not for sale.

  Session Nine-A

  Numb, speechless, I stared across the table at the Joker. That smile . . . if only he’d stop smiling.

  “Well?” he said. “Do you like your engagement gift?”

  “Where—?” My mouth was dry. “Where did you get it?”

  I’d come home last night to find an original Colin Whittier hanging on my wall. An original! An abstract of swirling blues and greens that made me think of the depths of the ocean . . . the eternal cycle of birth, life, and death . . . cold, ghastly, unutterably beautiful.

  The cost of a Whittier had gone through the roof since his death at the Joker’s hands. Each was worth millions now. I’d never be able to afford a Whittier. Never. And the Joker had given me one.

  I owned a Whittier original . . . a Whittier . . .

  The monetary value meant nothing to me, for selling it was out of the question. I’d sell my soul to the devil before I’d part with it.

  “I have a bunch of the things,” the Joker said. “From his show at the Gotham Gallery.”

  “But the papers said you burned them!”

  “Don’t be silly. They’re far too valuable for that, although for the life of me I can’t imagine why. The man showed not the slightest trace of talent. I burned some old canvases of my own that I was unhappy with.”

  “Then . . . you still have all those Whittiers?”

  “Yes. Stacked up in one of my warehouses. I forget which one, actually I had one of my men dig that piece out for you.”

  A stack of them . . . I felt weak.

  “Well? Do you like it? You haven’t told me.”

  “I—I can’t accept stolen goods,” I said, forcing the words past my lips.

  “Too bad. I was going to give the rest of them to you as a wedding present.” The Joker shrugged. “Very well. I’ll have my men remove it and—”

  “No!” I said—almost a shout. “I mean, not yet. Let me live with it awhile.”

  The Joker’s smile seemed to broaden. “As you wish, Dr. Lewis.”

  Conference

  Whittiers . . . a stack of Whittiers . . . sitting in a warehouse . . . collecting dust. . . rats nibbling at the canvases . . . clawing at the paint . . .

  The image roamed my mind at will as I sat at the conference table and waited for Dr. Hills to arrive. Finally, he burst in.

  “They approved it!” he cried. “The State Board of Medical Examiners approved a prefrontal lobotomy on the Joker! Any other patient and they would have said no, but the Joker—yes! Within weeks Arkham Asylum is going to be in all the medical journals!”

  As excited chatter swept the table, I felt my blood run cold. The paintings. The Whittiers. A lobotomized Joker would be so passive and tractable that he’d tell the police the whereabouts of all his stashes of loot. The Whittiers . . . my Whittiers . . . they’d be returned to the gallery . . . to be sold for millions apiece.

  “When is the surgery scheduled?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Dr. Robinson is flying in from Toronto tonight.”

  “Maybe we should give electroshock a try,” I said.

  “ECT has failed already. What’s the matter, Hal? The lobotomy was your idea. Having a change of heart?”

  I hesitated. How could I protest the implementation of my own suggestion?

  But that had been before I’d known about the Whittiers.

  “Maybe. I think ECT deserves another chance. It could be we’re rushing this too much.”

  “We have to move quickly. It was the Board’s opinion that delay will only allow opposition to organize and cause legal obstruction. They feel that if we present the world with a lobotomized Joker as a fait accompli, there will be far less protest. And we will have discharged our duty to the public. As you so eloquently stated, Hal, we need definitive therapy in the Joker’s case. And that’s just what we’re providing.”

  What could I say? I decided to risk everything.

  “I’d like to go on record right now as being opposed to the surgery. At least at this time. I think we should explore other options first. And I’d like to call for a vote.”

  They all stared at me in shock. I didn’t care. I had to stop the surgery—at least until I got my hands on the Whittiers. They were all I could think of. Even if I could only delay the surgery, it would give me time
to convince Dina to move up our marriage so that the Joker could make good on his promised wedding gift. After that, I’d push again for the lobotomy.

  But when the vote came, mine was the only hand raised in opposition.

  Session Nine-B

  That night I arranged another session with the Joker. I didn’t even bother going through the motions of turning on the tape recorder.

  “Did you really mean what you said about giving me the other Whittiers as a wedding gift?”

  “Of course,” the Joker said. “Have you set a date yet?”

  I clasped my hands together to keep them from trembling. I’d always been a terrible liar.

  “Yes. Tomorrow. We’ve decided we can’t wait any longer. We’re getting married before a justice of the peace in the morning.”

  “Really? Congratulations! I’m very happy for you.”

  “Thank you. So . . . I was wondering . . . could you tell me where you’ve stored those stolen Whittiers? I’ll pick them up tonight, if you don’t mind.”

  “No. Of course not. Do you know where Wrightson Street is?”

  I could barely contain my excitement.

  “No. But I’ll find it.”

  “Here,” the Joker said, casually freeing his hands from the restraints and picking up a pencil. “I’ll draw you a map.”

  As he began to draw, I leaned forward. Suddenly his other hand flashed forward. I felt a sting in my neck. As I jerked back I saw the dripping syringe in his hand. I opened my mouth to shout for the guards but the words wouldn’t come. A roar like a subway charging into a station filled my ears as everything faded to black.

  A voice, faraway, calling me through the blackness. I move toward it and come into the light.

  A bizarre, twisted face, half Joker, half normal, floating before me.

  “Time to wake up, Dr. Lewis,” it says in the Joker’s voice. “Time to rise and shine.”

  I try to speak. My lips feel strange as they move, and the only sounds I can make are garbled, unintelligible.

  I try to move, but my hands are cuffed to the chair. I can only sit and watch.