16

The hulking GCPD prowl car drove slowly along the darkened street. The officer on the passenger side had his searchlight on, moving a lever on the inside of the car to aim the beam left to right, up to down. The beam probed the stone and glass exteriors of various buildings, then the car stopped at a specific structure.

Where the windows used to be, barren cavities stared out. The light shone inside the ground floor of what had been the old Meskin Oil and Gas company headquarters. The beam moved around, revealing stained cardboard boxes, shopping carts filled with stuffed black plastic shopping bags, and homeless people sleeping under ratty blankets.

The light remained stationary for a moment, the sound of the big car’s engine idling, drifting upward toward chipped and weathered gargoyle outcroppings. Then the cop extinguished the light, and the car continued on, turning at the far corner. The engine’s growl faded into the distance.

Inside the ruin several floors had been gutted—walls knocked down and new aluminum skeletons erected, supporting wiring and conduits. A half-dozen real estate developers had tried to make a go of it, converting the building to apartments or condos with retail shops on the ground floor. Eventually they gave up.

A few of the homeless and assorted street people had made their way to the second floor, and a smattering to the third. Above that there were only pigeons, ambitious rats, and the evidence that a roving graffiti artist had found a virgin wall to tag could be found in the gloomy hallways and rooms.

That’s why when the three burly men undid a sealed side door on the ground floor and used their flashlights, they weren’t too concerned that their shoes echoed on the metal stairs as they ascended to those darkened upper reaches of the abandoned building.

Each carried a nylon equipment bag, and all three could be said to be “men of a certain age.” They all had criminal records, having been henchmen of some third-tier masked villain.

They weren’t dressed in the ridiculous ways they once had been outfitted, mimicking the attire their bosses had worn. They wore khaki chinos and windbreakers or leather coats.

Having served their prison sentences, they found the pickings slim. This led them to My Alibi, a watering hole along the Gotham docks in the East End where those of the henchman profession could buy beers, talk smack about the old days, and not have to worry about the law or Batman rousting them.

*   *   *

“How was anyone supposed to take serious a dude named Mr. Camera?” one of the men said, waving his glass around. “Let alone running around with a helmet shaped like some kind of big-ass Nikon? Sure, he was able to hypnotize people with that thing, but still.” Harry Simms had once been the quirky villain Mr. Camera.

He paused and took a swallow of cheap bourbon, setting the glass down heavily and causing the ice cubes to rattle. “But hey, I signed on.” Idly he scratched at an earlobe that was no longer there. He’d lost it in a shootout with a rival gang, over a bunch of raw cut diamonds.

“I hear you,” his companion said. They sat among others of their ilk. He too downed some of his drink, a domestic beer in a bottle, and used the back of a hand to wipe his gray mustache. “Now when I did my last bid at Blackgate, there was a guy who worked the antique cons. He said that Simms had a kick-ass camera collection. That being his thing and all.”

“Yeah, supposedly he had stuff like the camera that belonged to some Nazi officer who took the last photo of Adolf Hitler, and one that belonged to Ray Charles, and—”

“Ray Charles is blind,” his drinking buddy pointed out.

“Yeah, whatever,” the guy with the missing lobe said. “Maybe he’s got people to tell him what’s in front of him so, you know.” He scratched again. “The point is, the cameras are supposed to be worth a lot of money—money that could get a guy started in a… lucrative pharmaceuticals business, for example.”

His companion mused on this. “What happened to them?”

“Who the hell knows.”

“I heard he sold it when he was trying to raise money for his lawyers,” a guy said from a couple of stools over. He had a serious gut, and held up a beer that showed where it came from. They shot him a dirty look, but he kept going. “Some private collector who paid him handsomely—real handsomely. Only Simms got the bright idea to try and pull one last job before his trial. The Huntress put him and his partner away.”

The two stared at the third man.

“I used to run with Julian Day, the Calendar Man,” he explained. “He was the partner. Got shot by the cops and lived. Simms got away, but Day made a deal and ratted him out.

“Thing is,” he added, “Simms was supposed to have left that nest egg hidden away somewhere.”

That got their attention.

*   *   *

One thing led to another, and the three began making inquiries. Each on his own might have been able to run the information down, but facing the prospect of a major payday, none of them was about to let the others strike out on their own.

They found out Simms had a sister who was middle management at Meskin Oil and Gas. At one point, when the gas company had pretty much moved to an upgraded headquarters, she was one of the few who still worked in the old building. What better place, they’d reasoned, to hide the swag? To further cement this theory, the last time Simms went down, the Huntress had busted him near there.

The sister wasn’t around any longer. She’d keeled over from a heart attack one afternoon while attending to her azaleas, and no treasure had been unearthed at her modest house.

That brought them to the sealed door and the metal stairs.

“Hey, slow down,” the man with the gray mustache said. They reached the sixth floor, and he was sweating despite the cool of the evening.

“Too many cheeseburgers and brews,” the man with the missing lobe chided. He too was feeling winded, but wanted to macho it out. “C’mon, we’ve just got a couple more floors to go.” He pointed his flashlight up the stairs, and thought he saw something move.

“He’s got a point,” the third man said. “If the swag’s up there, it ain’t going anywhere in the next few minutes.” He leaned against a rail and sucked in air.

“Okay,” the man with the missing lobe said, setting his bag down. “Take five, then we hit it so we can quit it.”