Continuing the search...
I ended the night five thousand dollars richer, with a few more miles of street cred, and the respect of two of Gotham's top bad asses. I got out alive, on top of it all. However, I didn't have Batgirl and that was all that I could think of as I took a cab to the nearest House of Pancakes.
The driver of my cab was one of Ivy's goons. He looked too fresh to be a real driver on graveyard shift. When I asked what Ivy planned to do with Batgirl, he looked at me in the rear view mirror like I was nuts, but he relaxed a bit when I slipped him a Benjamin through the fare slot. He smiled and told me that the word was that she would end up as fertilizer in a bomb to blow up City Hall if my boss went through and took over Parkview Square.
"Gang war? Really?" I looked amused.
"The guy you work for won't stop until he's narrowed the number of players down a bit," came the response. He took a turn on Burton and sped up to make the light at 55th. We got caught behind a delivery truck, however and he had to slam on his breaks to avoid kissing its rear bumper.
I asked, "What's so important about Parkview?" I knew, of course, but I wanted to hear it fresh from someone who might have a new perspective.
He laughed. "New marketing strategy." I raised an eyebrow. Looking out through the wind shield, I noticed something moving in the rear window of the delivery truck. It vanished. The driver continued, "Your boss wants it for the old stand bys...drugs, heists, whores...Ivy wants to take it into the 21st century. She's got Penguin, Scarecrow and even some old Legion of Doomsters backing her up. Dude, its gonna be big..."
The rear door of the delivery truck suddenly sprang open. As I asked, "What is going to be big?" The muzzle of a .50 calibre machine gun peeked out and started spitting at us. The front windshield disintegrated. The driver blossomed into a mist of red and yellow. I heard snaps and pings as I threw myself onto the seat. The plexi divider was bulletproof, but the impact created a spider pattern that spread with every burst. I reached up and threw the latch on the door. It sprung open and was immediately hit from the side by dozens of rounds, piercing the thin metal of the door and shattering the window. The roar was deafening, but I wasn't paying attention. It was all going to come back to me in the form of a long, loud ringing somewhere, sometime I could afford to stop panicing. But for the moment, I had to figure a way to get out of the firing range.
I was on the floor of the cab, with the blood of the driver oozing under the front seat over my pant legs and shoes, the smell of burning plastic and blood and bile...whatever else was in the abbatoir of the front seat. There wasn't a pause to reload - a constant stream of one machine gun began pulverising the cab from front back. The bulletproof glass finally buckled and slivers of it rained down on me as the rest of it folded and cracked, the rear windhield exploded, dagger-sized pieces striking me in the neck and small of the back. It sent up a cloud of glass particles. I held my breath until I could filter my nose and mouth. I tried to gan traction to move, but slipped in the blood and fell on my face.
I found myself pinned between the seats, facing the floor of the cab. I thought of dying there, blood pooling underneath me, the filth of the cab and the rain of glass....it was nasty....nasty nasty nasty....but there I lay. In the distance, I heard the sound of sirens, then the gunfire stopped. Over the rising ring in my ears I heard the screeching of tires as the delivery van tore away from the scene. The smell of gasoline saved me from passing out and, on pure adrenalyne, I scrambled out of the car, glass and metal tearing at my clothes and flesh. I carried myself to a nearby alley and collapsed as the cab burst into flame. As I caught my breath, police arrived. Then there was smoke...lots of it and I took off down the alley.
I kept my bearings enough to follow the alley parallel to Burton up to 47th. Around about the time the sun was rising over Gotham Harbor, I was picking the lock of a Block House and slipping inside. I can talk to you about the Block House on 47th because you've already torn it apart. The doctor who ran this pit is now dead and gone and the red graphitti marking it as a Block House for wounded thugs has been scrawled over with black tar. But that night, the fetid stink hole was heaven to me. I limped down the steps and into the exam room. Dr. Panzer didn't keep any nurses or housekeepers...or alcohol that wasn't used to keep him stoned 24/7, so the floor was always an interesting shade of brown with a thick ring built up about the drain at the center of what must have been a tiled floor. It was built back in the Golden Age by our grandparents who needed a place to stow bootleg booze or patch up the guys who trucked it. I looked about to see if the doc was in and he sure as hell was. He was inside Catwoman, fucking the shit out of her unconscious body across a surgical table.
He didn't notice me as I stepped into the room. He was quiet except for a noise that sounded like a hissing snake every time he shoved himself back into Catwoman's pussy. Most of the action was covered by a stained lab coat, but I could see this little, thin man of 70, perched on a soapbox grinding against this tall, shapely woman in a purple catsuit. Her feet were strapped into the raised stirrups and spread wide. She was pulled down to the edge of the table. Dr. Panzer had already patched her up and it looked like she had been in a pretty big scrape. Her left eye was blackened and her right and left ankle were in a fresh dressing. Panzer upzipped her jump suit enough to fre her large, perfectly shaped tits and was suckling them as he fucked her. He lapped at the nipples and nibbled them as she lay lifeless. Pretty soon, it was clear that the doctor was ready to go. The hissing he made quickened and then stopped as he pounded her relentlessly, bumping her up the plastic-lined table. He spasmed for a moment and them collpsed, kissing her body and removing himself from inside her.
