Batman 6 - The Dark Knight Read Online Free PDF

and that was to say nothing of poison in the food and drink. The Chechen’s solution was the obvious one, a nightclub of his own, and it proved to be an excellent solution.
    His nightclub was where he preferred to do business, surrounded by his rottweilers, bodyguards, and lady friends, and it was in his nightclub that he met with a small time dealer named Burton. It was a Tuesday night, not a big night in the nightclub business; there was only one couple on the dance floor, a man with white hair and a woman who looked to be in her late teens, and no one at the bar. Burton came in with his two bodyguards who took up stations opposite the Chechen’s bodyguards and the two sets of men glared at each other, hands near the lapels of their jackets, while their bosses sat in a circular banquette upholstered in rhinoceros hide and conferred.
    Burton had news: he had discovered a new source of product he felt the Chechen should know about. A highly trained man with doctorates in both chemistry and medicine who was able to synthesize a product that would put the average user into orbit.
    “This man has name?” the Chechen asked.
    “Most people do,” Burton said. “This guy has two. The one he was born with is Jonathan Crane—”
    “Sounds like sissy,” the Chechen said.
    “—but the one he likes to use is the Scarecrow.”
    “Sounds like sissy at costume party. Why we can trust him?”
    “He has this little problem with the cops. They’d like to hang his ass on a flagpole. You maybe heard about what happened in Gotham last year? Lotta people going nuts? Crane was part’a the reason. Nobody knows all that happened, but Crane was in on it. We give him a place to work, a cut of the profit, he delivers us the goods, and we don’t haveta worry about foreign suppliers. Nice little domestic operation. Good for us, good for America.”
    “You vouch for him?”
    “I ain’t gonna go that far. What I’m saying is, he’s a solution to a problem. He stops being a solution, he ain’t bulletproof, know what I’m saying? You in or out?”
    “In. What you need from me?”
    “Right now, money. A couple days, I’ll call, set up a meet with you and Crane.”
    “Deal.” The Chechen leaned back and almost smiled. “You hungry? Thirsty? You want drink? Food—steak?”
    “In your place? Do you think I’m crazy?”

CHAPTER SIX

    R upert Casterbaugh was what some people, the charitable ones, would have once called a “remittance man.” Others, less charitable, might have used words like “wastrel,” “lay about,” “worthless waste of protoplasm.” He had no job, no relationships, no prospects and, truth to tell, no idea how he landed in Gotham City. But land there he did, in a studio apartment in an expensive building. This gave him a fixed address, a place for his mother to send a monthly check that paid the rent on the studio and Rupert’s other, quite modest, living expenses, and his single major need, the stuff he absolutely could not live without: drugs. Rupert Casterbaugh was an addict—a junkie, to the uncharitable and a “bright young man with a problem” to his mother—and he could and did easily blow a hundred thousand a year feeding his habit.
    He was nice. Polite, well-spoken, even funny. The few women who drifted in and out of his life found him sad and in profound psychological pain, but they couldn’t help him, and neither could the platoon of therapists his mother employed from time to time. So he wandered from city to city, country to country, befogged and lonely and not caring. Gotham City? Why not? It was as good a place as any, and a man he’d met in Tangiers had set him up with a supplier, which meant that Rupert would not lack for life’s necessities once there.
    The first meeting between merchant and customer was the usual—furtive and fast. But the drug, whatever it was—a white powder—the drug was way better than anything he’d ever tried, and he didn’t know why. A lot of his