Wayne of Gotham Read online

  Thomas wound his way carefully down the metal stairs. The cast-iron railing seemed to be coated in something unpleasantly sticky, which, he reflected, was not unlike the crowd itself. He waded into the shifting bodies on the floor of the club, a white speck adrift on dark waves. He maneuvered with only moderate success around the small tables grouped too closely together and managed at last to reach the corner that Martha had established as her realm in which to hold court.

  “You’re such a fashion plate!” Martha chimed. She looked him over with one carefully plucked eyebrow arched. She was wearing a dark cardigan sweater and tight denim jeans that displayed her body to her considerable advantage.

  “You said we were going on the town.” Thomas tried to temper his shrug with an embarrassed smile.

  “And we are, ducky!” Martha beamed, flipping her hair back out of her face as she twined her arm around his. “Just not the town that you’re used to—and it’s about time you made it. Here, I have some friends you just have to meet!”

  Thomas leaned closer to Martha’s ear. “I thought it was going to just be us tonight.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Tommy,” Martha laughed, slapping his arm with her right hand. “Two people alone are entirely too serious. We’re here to celebrate. Here, may I introduce Denholm Sinclair?”

  The man stood in the corner on the opposite side of the small café table. He was approximately the same height as Thomas but with slightly broader shoulders and a more muscular build. He had wavy black hair that was carefully coifed and an artist’s goatee that was expertly trimmed. He wore a sports jacket over an open-collar shirt and pleated gray slacks with loafers. He held his hand out toward Thomas, his face breaking into a bright smile. “Nice to meet you, sport…call me Denny.”

  Thomas took the offered hand and regretted it. Denholm had the grip of a gorilla. Before he could say anything, Martha answered for him. “And you can call him Tommy—I always have. And this is Celia, my very best friend!”

  Thomas managed to extract his hand and turned to follow Martha’s gesture.

  “How do you do, Mr. Wayne?” Celia said from her chair, offering her hand with her pale, lithe arm. She wore a sad and distant expression, her large brown eyes not quite looking at Thomas as he took her hand. Her hair was cut short, the curls lying tight against her head. She had full, pouting lips under a prominent nose, and while the eyelashes were obvious fakes, they looked good on her.”

  “Fine, thank you, Miss…?” Thomas’s voice trailed off into the question.

  “Kazantzakis,” Martha interjected. “Celia Kazantzakis.”

  “Ah.” Thomas floundered for a moment.

  “Please, Celia will do just fine,” Kazantzakis said with a slight nod.

  “And please call me Thomas,” Wayne said. Denholm had already pulled the chair out for Martha, into which she quickly sat, sliding closer to Sinclair. Her arms snaked around the sleeve of Denholm’s sports jacket, leaning into him. “Now isn’t this just about perfect? I just knew the two of you needed to get together the moment I met Celi.”

  Thomas nodded with as gracious a smile as he could manage. Martha had done it again, and now he found himself as the blind date for another of Martha’s projects. To Martha, Gotham was her playground; everything in it either belonged to her or would if she bothered enough to buy it. There were marvelous places in her playground that irritated her parents, in whose discomfort she took private delight because it meant they were at least paying attention to her.

  “So,” Thomas said turning to the young woman next to him. “How is it that you know Martha?”

  “The orphanage. Copper Street Orphanage. Have you heard of it?”

  “Sure, I think it’s one of our endowments,” Thomas nodded, his eyes stinging from the smoke. “Over in Burnley near the botanical gardens, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Celia nodded, reaching for her cocktail and taking a halfhearted sip. “I was raised there.”

  “Oh,” Thomas said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Celia shrugged. “I didn’t really know any different. Anyway, I’m a secretary over there now trying to keep the place on its feet. Martha breezed in one day with a check that set us up rather well and the promise of more when we needed it. One thing led to another, I guess, and we just started ending up in the same places accidentally on purpose.”

  Thomas glanced back over at Martha, who was curling up closer to Sinclair and whispering something into his shoulder. Celia stopped speaking, letting the conversation stagnate on the table between them and die.

  Thomas tried to revive it. “So do you like your work?”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing, really…I just asked—”

  “Listen, I’m sorry—”

  “Thomas,” he prompted.

  “I’m sorry, Thomas. I’m a little distracted tonight,” Celia replied waving her hand slightly in the thick air. The smoke in the room was settling thicker than a London fog. “A friend of mine’s gone missing, and I just don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Missing?” Thomas said, raising his eyebrows. “Who’s missing?”

  “Lorenzo,” Celia said, biting her lower lip. “He’s just a guy I know named Lorenzo Rossetti. He vanished about ten days ago. No call. No postcard…nothing.”

  “That sounds serious. Have you notified the authorities?”

  “Actually, it’s probably better if we left the authorities out of this one,” Denholm said from across the table.

  “Why?” Thomas asked. He had not been aware that Sinclair was listening to their conversation.

  “Well, because in his line of work it probably wouldn’t be very profitable in the long run,” Denholm said with a slight arch to his eyebrows. “I think he’s just away on business and he’ll be back when he’s finished is all.”

  “You mean…you mean he may be involved in some nefarious activities?” Thomas said with incredulity.

  “Oh, honestly, Thomas! You are such a square!” Martha laughed, her own martini sloshing slightly in her hand as she waved it. “Loosen up a little, will ya? We’re celebrating!”

  “And thanks for coming to my place to celebrate,” chimed the nasal voice. Thomas caught the flash of disdain on Sinclair’s face before he turned around.

  He was a shade under five foot six, barrel-chested, with large, strong hands. His head was shaped like a block, and he appeared to have no neck. He wore a black formal jacket, but the collar of his shirt was open and the bow tie hung completely undone round his neck. His dark hair in a crew cut of bristles from which his ears stuck out slightly. He looked like a fullback slightly scaled down, and he was young; Thomas guessed he must have been in his late twenties at the oldest.

  “Hiya, Lew!” Martha beamed, raising her glass.

  “Miss Kane, it’s nice to see you again.”

  “You know my friend Tommy?”

  The crew cut gestured for Thomas to stay seated. “It’s all right, Mr. Wayne. Don’t trouble on my account. Just happy to have you here. Moxon’s the name, Lew Moxon.”

  “Thank you, uh, Lew,” Thomas said as Moxon pumped his arm. “Have we met?”

  “Nah, but a guy would have to be blind not to recognize a Wayne in this town,” the man said. “I appreciate you coming and classing up the joint. You need anything at all, just call for Lew.”

  “Generous of you, Moxon,” Sinclair said through a tight smile. “I didn’t know you kept up with the social set.”

  Lew’s smile chilled slightly. “Oh, I didn’t see you there, Sinclair…but then Miss Kane has a habit of taking care of the needy.”

  “We all have friends,” Sinclair answered. “Some are bigger friends than others, and we all need a little help now and then. How about you, Moxon? You buy this place all by yourself or did your friends help you?”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, friend,” Lew replied, a chill in the air despite the heat in the room. “I been working nights since I was twelve. This place is a hund
red percent mine.”

  “And just how much did your old man pay you for those jobs when you were twelve?” Sinclair sniffed. “I mean, surely the big Julius Moxon with all that money trickling up to him from so many low places has enough to finance a swank place like this for his baby boy.”

  “Not cool, cat,” Moxon replied, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side. “My hands are clean, and my joint’s on the up and up. By the way, how are things working out with you and old man Rossetti? I haven’t seen Cesare’s boy around here for a while. Did you send him on a vacation?”

  Celia caught her breath, her lower lip trembling.

  Sinclair slowly started to stand, pushing Martha away from him.

  “My house,” Moxon said through a smile. “You really wanna do this here?”

  “Excuse me,” Thomas said standing up suddenly, the metal legs of his chair squealing over the sound of the bongo drums.

  Both Sinclair’s and Lew’s heads snapped in his direction.

  Thomas held up both hands as he spoke. “I’d just like to interject something here, if I may.”

  Sinclair froze with one hand in his coat pocket. Moxon’s right hand hovered just inside the lapel of his jacket.

  “I’d just like to point out that we’re celebrating my graduation from Harvard Medical School which, as you probably know, is a really big deal for me…and thank you for your congratulations, but the thing is, I don’t start my internship until tomorrow morning, so I’m technically not supposed to actually use any of that medical stuff they’ve been pouring into my head for the last, oh, eight years or so. I mean, you would think it counted for something, but apparently I need some additional on the job training.”

  Moxon gave Thomas a look of bewilderment. Sinclair blinked.

  “So it all comes down to this: I’ve got this really swell white dinner jacket on and, yes, I know I probably should have worn something leather or torn, but it’s what I’m stuck with for the evening. And it would be really hard to get bloodstains out of this, and I’m not supposed to save anyone’s life for a few more weeks at least. So, Lew…how about getting me a drink so we can toast my future instead of making my coat all messy?”

  Lew stared at Thomas for a moment.

  “Please?” Thomas urged. “Coffee would do. I can toast myself with coffee…Do you serve coffee here?”

  A wide grin grew on Lew Moxon’s face. “Sure, Mr. Wayne, whatever you say. You’re all right in my book. If you ever need a favor, I’m your guy.”

  Sinclair sat back down, chuckling as he did. “Nice moves, Tommy!”

  “Call me Thomas,” he said as he fell into his own chair. Wayne reached across the table, snatching Martha’s partial martini from the table and downing it in a single gulp.

  Denholm nodded. “I think I’m beginning to like you, Thomas. What say I show you a few places I know about?”

  “Great,” Thomas answered, setting down Martha’s martini glass. His hand was shaking slightly. “But first, let’s order Martha another drink.”

  Martha looked into her empty glass and started to laugh.

  CHAPTER SIX

  UNTOUCHED

  * * *

  Kane Estate / Bristol / 6:22 a.m. / October 5, 1957

  Dawn was breaking as Thomas drove the Lincoln Futura across the Kane Memorial Bridge. The theater district of Gotham proper and Sheldon Point receded behind him quickly in the light traffic. The Futura was a concept car—the car of the future—and his father had financed a second version of it from the Ghia plant in Turin, Italy, when it was being built two years before. It had the opalescent pearl-white finish that could only really be appreciated in person; the long, flat back deck and the forward and rear fins were dramatic, but it was the clear Plexiglas double-teardrop top that always turned heads whenever he drove it. It was both an icon of the age and of its problems: the Plexiglas roof acted like a greenhouse under the sun. Worse, it was designed to seal the passenger compartment so tightly that a microphone actually had to be mounted in the center of its “futuristic” circular radio antenna on the back deck so the driver could hear sounds coming from outside the car through a speaker placed behind and between the bucket seats. A safety feature made it so the bubble top could not be opened unless the automatic transmission was in park, which meant there was practically no ventilation inside the car. The air conditioner was always faulty and never quite kept up with the ant-under-a-magnifying-glass interior. Worse, the stylish exterior restricted airflow around the engine, constantly causing it to overheat. Still, such practical matters hardly impacted the thinking of Patrick Wayne; anyone could purchase a production Lincoln, but to spend a quarter of a million dollars on one of only two hand-built cars of the future? It was not simply transportation to the senior Wayne; it was a demonstration of power and wealth that could not be ignored. Giving it to his son provided more than a photo opportunity for the press; it was Patrick’s way of saddling his son with the responsibilities of being a Wayne and pushing his boy to acknowledge the superior and unquestioned authority of his father.

  Thomas had responded to his father’s most impractical gift by taking a screwdriver and a wrench to the unique concept car and removing the automated section of the roof. It improved the airflow considerably, he liked the convertible aspect it gave to the otherwise enormous car, and it simultaneously demonstrated, in Thomas’s small way, an act of defiance.

  This early morning, however, with the dawn just breaking over the ocean to the east, the long vehicle was a bit chill even for Thomas. He reached over to the left of the steering column—with its unique speedometer sitting inside the hub of the wheel—and pushed back the cover on the heat controls. They slid back into the console like a jet-aged rolltop desk. He adjusted the knobs to pour heat over the floorboard and glanced across the center console between the bucket seats to the form snoring softly on his right.

  Thomas reached forward, turning up the volume on the radio dial. The close-harmony male duet sang louder about the troubled reputation of two teenagers falling asleep at a drive-in movie.

  Thomas glanced once more at the voluptuous, makeup-smeared mess sprawled next to him that was Martha Kane.

  Her dark hair was piled over her face. Her lipstick was smeared, and her mascara had made her eyes reminiscent of a raccoon. She lay as she had been put into the car, Thomas doing his best to put her form into some semblance of a passenger and failing utterly. She was a restless sleeper, and it had been all he could manage to keep her arm inside the car while he closed the door.

  Thomas reached over casually, trying to push the hair out of her face as he drove. The wind whipping through the open top of the car, however, prevented any success in that either, and so he gave up. Martha would have to remain wild…as he had always known her.

  From the bridge, he turned right at the northern exit and followed the coast highway a short distance around Breaker’s Point before turning between the brick pillars that supported the gold-painted iron arch fixed with a single K in the center. He sped up the private road, a few rebellious leaves defiant of the wishes of the groundskeeper having fallen to the ground only to be spun into life as the car sped past. The canopy of trees would provide shade later in the day, but for now the low angle of the rising sun cast intermittent patches of light and dark across the car as it sped past the trunks and the orange hue of the morning.

  He knew the house itself was nearly a mile further on. Thomas reached forward and switched off the radio, letting the engine fill the silence in the morning.

  He had driven down this road many times before, and truth be told, he had brought Martha back down it in similar states before. They were so very different and yet bound together in strange ways. Both of them were wealthy and both of them carried that wealth on their backs like modern versions of Heracles, bound by fate. They both reacted to this burden with their own ways of rebellion: Thomas by turning his back on the business world of his father to become a doctor and Martha by spending as much of he
r parents’ money as possible, either by burying herself in her charitable causes or by finding the bottom of a bottle with friends as willing to spend her money as she. She was notorious for being as likely to appear on the morning police report as she was on the social pages at some gala. She tended to be a loud drunk and had an uncanny knack for attracting trouble. He had always thought her beautiful, although not nearly so after a long drunk, and Thomas had found his mind wandering to what might be discovered beneath the suggestive lines of her cardigan sweater and tight blue jeans.

  Thomas’s attention jerked back to the road. The car had drifted off to the right, and one set of tires was thumping in the grass off the gravel drive. He gripped the wheel and with a firm hand eased the car back onto the road.

  Martha might give him the time of day, Thomas thought, but she would never see him as anything but that gawking boy next door who was a good friend to have around when everyone else had deserted her like vampires with the rising of the sun, when she had thrown up the expensive dinner hitting both the alley wall as well as her shoes and she needed someone to drive her home. He was Tommy, the boy who would always be a chum and nothing more.