Catwoman - Tiger Hunt

Chapter Nineteen

Hours after hauling herself out of the freezing harbor, Selina crawled into her apartment. She was shivering from the cold and, she feared, from the onset of some river-borne disease. Despite Batman's warning, she'd swallowed more of the rank, salty water than she cared to remember. Several bouts of nausea had prolonged her journey home. All the horror stories she'd ever heard about people dying after one swallow of Gotham's polluted water elbowed to the front of her memory. Since arriving in the City she'd only been seriously sick---as opposed to seriously beaten---once, during her first winter here. That was when she'd discovered the mission.

The thought that she might wind up there again refueled the nausea. Selina staggered to the bathroom and wretched until her gut was sore. Then she turned on the shower and sat beneath it with the warm water pelting her face.

If the harbor water did make her sick, Selina decided that she'd call Bo

Whoever would have thought that Batman was an old man with graying hair and puckery, alcoholic's mottled skin and wrinkles in his cheeks? She remembered all the times she'd changed her plans because of him---a man on the downhill side of fifty! Then she remembered how he'd tossed her off the pier.

You don't belong here; those were his very words. It was almost as if he'd been protecting her like a father.

Selina shuddered and pulled the pillow over her head. She was fantasizing about having Batman for a father! She really must be getting sick. Batman hadn't protected her; he'd come between her and Eddie Lobb. He'd been protecting Eddie! A muscle spasm put knots in Selina's stomach. She ground her teeth together and waited for the pain to pass. In her mind's eye the world was a mass of writhing, eel-y things with gaping, round mouths and sharp teeth. The spasms struck again, worse than before. She knew her thoughts were making her sick. She tried to redirect them or, when that failed, to make her mind go blank. She got rid of the eel-y things, but not Eddie Lobb and not Batman. Their faces continued to haunt her as she fell into a restless sleep.

She awoke with a jolt many hours before she wanted to. Dream wisps tangled her thoughts, leaving her disoriented. Selina didn't recognize her surroundings. She didn't know where she was, or who she was, or what that infernal ringing was. Then her mind cleared enough to identify the telephone. She thrashed free of the bed coverings and answered it automatically.

"Selina! Have you seen the papers? You've got to read them. Turn on your television!"

The female voice was familiar. When Selina was able to match it to Bo

"The Feds waited until the TV crews were ready. They're going in right now; it's live on the National News Network. Oh, Selina---don't tell me you don't have a television. Hurry up and come up to the Warriors office, you can watch from here. Oh! There's the table. They're bringing out the table! It's all because of what happened last night."

"What do you mean 'because of what happened last night'?" Selina kicked away the last clinging blanket. Her stomach remained sore from all the retching, but otherwise she felt fine. Angry and suspicious, but physically fine. She began to pace.

Bo

Selina stopped pacing. "Who says Catwoman was anywhere last night?"

"It's in all the papers. It's even on 3-N. Eyewitnesses---policemen---who say they saw you---her---step out of the shadows and then get thrown into the water. It's not like there're pictures, but everybody saw you---her. Everybody who lived, anyway."

"What about Eddie Lobb?" Selina abandoned her pretenses. Bo

The rustling newspaper created static on the line. "It just says that Eddie---they call him 'Edward, a.k.a. Tiger, Lobb'---was identified by the suspects and police as the man who followed Catwoman into the water. 'Although the pier was immediately cordoned off and the search continued until after sunrise, Mr. Lobb could not be found. Divers will search the water around the pier later in the day. However, u

Selina shook her head wearily. Whether it was the police or the media, they never got her role in anything right. "U

Bo

Selina was appalled to hear the words her own voice was saying. "Later," she corrected. "I'll tell you later. We'll do di

"Okay---I'll make tapes of everything. You can tell me how stupid and wrong everyone is. It'll be our secret."

"Maybe," Selina said as she hung up the receiver. She lingered beside the phone, expecting it to ring again, expecting that she would have to ignore it, but it remained inert.

The costume was nearly dry. Selina pulled it on carefully and folded the mask hood under the neck band and wrestled with the white seams. The gloves could be folded up under the sleeves, although she could count the number of times she'd bothered to do so on the fingers of one hand. She rarely layered the costume beneath her mundane clothes; even in the dead of winter she preferred to shed one identity completely before adopting the other. But not today. Today Selina wanted Catwoman with her.

Batman was alone in Commissioner Gordon's City Hall office. The raid had been ruled a success, despite the gunplay. The two policemen who fell from the rafters were in the hospital; their lives had been saved by the elasticity. The officer who'd taken the fatal neck wound was being named a hero who'd fallen in the line of duty. Today that didn't lessen the anguish of his grieving family, but in time it might.

As for the others: Khalki, the Gagauzi leader, was in temporary serious condition. The remaining three Gagauzi had been arrested, but the story of their tiny community's struggle for identity and independence was capturing the hearts of those Americans who could always be counted on to root for the underdog. Even the Moldovans---the other men in the rafters whose unexpected presence had reduced Commissioner Gordon's carefully pla

Commissioner Gordon had impounded the crates of weapons sitting in a Gotham pier. Batman, himself, had provided the navigational information necessary to retrieve the balance of the cache from its submerged mooring in international waters. A delegation from a handful of national agencies had already flown up from Washington, proverbial caps in their proverbial hands, to pay homage to Gotham's finest. He hadn't seen the Commissioner look so proud and happy in years.