Gotham 1987 (Part 1)

The slightly chilly morning breeze rustled the branches outside the window. Orange dawn light filtered through the heavy layers of curtains, illuminating the dim room.

There was a knock on the bedroom door. Schiller turned over as the male servant outside said, "Sir, Mr. Gordon called for you ten minutes ago. I told him you would return his call after getting up."

Schiller slowly said in a somewhat hoarse voice, "…Got it."

He sat up in bed, shaking off the lingering drowsiness, then walked to the window and pulled aside one curtain with One Hand. He saw the milkman on his bicycle ring the bell at the gate. Someone soon went out and took the milk canister from him.

This was an estate in Gotham’s West End, and also Schiller’s new home in Gotham.

Although Gotham University’s faculty apartments were quite nice, it was indeed time for him to buy a house of his own.

This was Gotham City’s old district. Unlike the southern Affluent Area, this was a district established by a group of British aristocrats when European immigrants first arrived in America. It was therefore mostly filled with traditional English estates. Later, because of skewed urban planning and the south’s superior location, the Affluent Area shifted from the west to the south.

Most of the old estates left behind here retained a classical English charm. But since the descendants of those aristocrats had largely chosen not to remain, most of the estates stood empty. At a very good price, Schiller had bought the best-maintained one, with the style of decor he liked most.

He had not declined to buy a house in the southern Affluent Area because he could not afford it. There was simply a practical reason—the estates in the west were closer to his workplace, Gotham University.

If he commuted from the southern Affluent Area, he would have to drive a long way across most of Gotham City.

Worst of all, he would have to pass through the city center during the worst of rush-hour traffic.

No matter how luxurious the villas in the southern Affluent Area were, they would never be within Schiller’s consideration. He was not Bruce Wayne. When traffic got bad, Bruce could simply take a helicopter. Schiller had no intention of wasting most of his day on the road.

There was another benefit to choosing an old estate in the West End: there were fewer people here, so it was relatively quiet. There would not be constant traffic first thing in the morning, and Schiller could sleep soundly on his days off.

Most importantly, it was far from Wayne Manor, and far from the mountain where Bruce would someday want to build the Batcave. If Batman ever ran afoul of the Joker in the future, even any collateral damage would not reach him here.

After a while, the male servant entered, opened and tied back the curtains, then said, "Breakfast is ready, sir."

Schiller nodded, took the glasses case offered to him, put on his glasses, glanced down at his watch, and asked, "When did Gordon call?"

"About twenty-five minutes ago."

Schiller looked back outside once more, then went downstairs for breakfast.

He descended the wooden staircase and passed through a somewhat dim corridor. The dining room was at the westernmost end of the estate. At the end of the corridor was a semicircular dining room with tall arched windows. Dark green silk curtains hung on either side, while the silverware on the mahogany table glimmered mysteriously in the faint morning light.

Morning sunlight streamed through the arched windows and fell over the table. The window’s grid-like shadows and the round tableware formed an intricate painting of light and shadow. Schiller picked up the ironed newspaper from his right.

The ink on the printed newspaper had bled slightly. The top line read: "January 25, 1987. Cloudy. Rain in the afternoon. Gotham Daily."

As Schiller ate breakfast, he searched the newspaper for the information he needed. Newspaper print from this era tended to be tiny, and the ink easily blurred together, so he had no choice but to use a magnifying glass.

After a while, the male servant came in and said, "Mr. Gordon has arrived."

Schiller put down the magnifying glass and looked up. Gordon wore a brown trench coat and a beret. The chill had not yet left him when he entered the dining room. Seeing Schiller reading the paper, Gordon said, "Did you see today’s news? The Godfather is furious. He won’t allow ships from Metropolis to dock at the eastern piers anymore."

"I was just reading that part." Schiller pushed up his glasses. "I stayed up late writing a paper last night and happened to miss your call this morning."

As he took off his trench coat, Gordon said, "It wasn’t anything urgent. You know, work hasn’t been busy lately. I just wanted to call and congratulate you on your new home. Oh, right, my gift is still in the car…"

"No rush. Have you eaten breakfast? Why not sit down and have something?"

Handing his coat to the male servant, Gordon said, "I went to the station first thing this morning, so I’ve already eaten. I brought you the information you asked me to find."

As he spoke, he placed a black briefcase on the table and began searching through it. Then he took out a file and handed it to Schiller.

"Thanks for the trouble," Schiller said. "Even if you’ve eaten, have a cup of hot milk."

Gordon did not refuse. He sat beside the dining table and said, "When you first said you wanted to take over Viscount Bernard’s estate, I found it a little strange. After all, not many people like this kind of old-fashioned estate anymore."

"Rich people in Gotham now prefer detached villas, preferably with a big garage where they can park all their luxury cars."

Gordon looked around. The decor here was quintessentially English: silk curtains, knitted carpets, wooden furniture, and a stone fireplace with flames crackling inside. Even from a distance, it gave off a sense of warmth.

The dining room of the old estate was not particularly large, and the corridors were fairly narrow. There were even extremely old-fashioned metal wall-mounted candleholders on the walls. The atmosphere of the entire building felt as though it had traveled back to the Victorian era.

Gordon withdrew his gaze and said, "But now that I see it, this place suits you."

"It’s not that I’m especially fond of English estates. It’s just that if I bought a house in the south, it would be too far from where I work. Gotham’s terrible traffic might make me miss every class in the morning."

Gordon took a sip of milk and said, "Who doesn’t have that problem? Every time I go to work at the Police Department, I get stuck behind those damn people at the central roundabout. You know I took first place in driving class at the police academy!"

"This damned place is full of maniacs. They never consider that flooring the gas pedal in a roundabout with hundreds of cars moving at once might get them smothered by an exploding airbag!" Gordon said indignantly.

"I can tell you must have been stuck in traffic for quite a while just now," Schiller said with a smile.

"On the way here, I saw at least ten gifted racers who could win an F1 championship," Gordon said gloomily.

"Come to think of it, that’s also our new Director’s fault. The Police Department is short-handed, but he can’t just pull away all the traffic cops, can he? My team has had several newcomers transferred in these past few days. They don’t understand anything and want to rush in with guns in hand."

Gordon shook his head. "They’d be better off going back to directing traffic!"

"The police have had easier days thanks to this Director as well. Just put up with it."

Gordon set down his cup and rubbed his hands together, saying excitedly, "But I’ll soon be able to buy an apartment next to the Police Department."

"You’ve saved enough?"

"Almost. Can you imagine it? I made eighty thousand dollars last week. Even if I don’t make as much next week, if I save a little more, I’ll be able to buy an apartment outright."

"How did you make that much? There shouldn’t have been that many cases last week. At most, it should only have been fifty thousand, right?" Schiller asked, turning toward him as he ate.

Gordon raised his brows. "Oh, I forgot. You’re not local. Everywhere in Gotham, you have to pay protection money. Even the police do. I’m the head of the Field Operations Team now, and every officer under me has to give me fifteen percent of their income."

"So you took it? Like a mob boss?" Schiller joked.

"You don’t understand this place. If you don’t take it, they’ll be the ones who get scared. In Gotham, taking their money means you’re willing to keep leading them. If you don’t take it, they’ll worry that this business will be gone tomorrow."

"I heard you’re getting married to your fiancée? Is she in Gotham now? When are you planning the wedding?"

Gordon coughed and said, "She’s handling the paperwork for a job transfer. The handover at the company in Metropolis is especially troublesome, so it’ll take at least a week. But that’s fine. It gives me time to buy the apartment I’ve picked out and surprise her."

Schiller shook out the newspaper in his hands and said as he read, "Have you decided what you want as a wedding gift? I’m very rich now."

"Really? Richer than Wayne?"

Schiller rolled his eyes. "If I were richer than him, you wouldn’t be seeing me here."

"Actually, if I hadn’t made so much money, I wouldn’t have wanted to get engaged so soon. I might already be vacationing in Hawaii right now."

"I thought you never took time off."

"Come on, I’d go insane. I need to stay healthy and in a good mood if I want to survive long-term in this damned city."

Schiller took a cigar from the cigar box on the table, picked up the cutter, clipped it, and handed it to Gordon. Gordon accepted it. Schiller took the match offered by the male servant, struck it, and lit Gordon’s cigar.

Then he took one for himself and lit it. Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he said, "The Godfather has been in a very bad mood lately. Some reckless people want to come onto his turf and cause trouble."

Gordon stretched out the hand holding his cigar, shifted his posture, and leaned against the armrest with a comfortable sigh. "Why did you ask me to look into Gotham’s transient population? Did something happen in Metropolis? I heard the people who angered the Godfather came from Metropolis."

"If I said this was trouble that followed me here, would you be surprised?"

"Of course not." Gordon denied it almost without thinking.

"When I first met you, I had the feeling that you were someone capable of causing Big Trouble."

"Why?"

"You can take it as a detective’s intuition."

"Interesting. Can you explain?"

"I’ve seen many criminals. They’re different…" Gordon straightened up and braced his wrist on the table. "…Completely different. Petty thieves and real major offenders are worlds apart."

"I’ve never heard of a serial killer shouting at a judge or mouthing off. They have a temperament unlike ordinary people…"

"When you faced Batman, I always felt like the two of you were looking into a mirror."

"You think I’m like him? Are you serious?"

"In some ways, you’re completely different. But in other ways, you’re astonishingly alike."

Schiller looked at Gordon and said, "Keep that sharpness. You’ll become Gotham’s savior."

Gordon tapped ash onto the silver plate, then said, "The Godfather has a difficult situation this time. The group that slipped in seems to have some tricks up their sleeves. They killed two bartenders from the Falcone family. If the Godfather can’t catch them quickly, losing face in Gotham will be worse than anything else."

"The gangs probably wouldn’t dare challenge the Godfather anytime soon, would they?" Schiller put down the newspaper and leaned back in his chair.

"Hard to say. Don’t underestimate those people. Don’t forget that Maroney isn’t dead. He made a fortune in the East End conflict and may be planning to challenge the Godfather."

"He’s looking to die." His words fell with the smoke. Schiller extended his hand and flicked his cigar with his fingertips, sending fine ash drifting slowly down.

"Not necessarily. For some reason, the Godfather bypassed him and had the old Director Victor killed. I heard Maroney wanted a hand in Arkham Hospital too, but the Godfather kicked him out again. Maroney can’t swallow that insult."

"The East End is unstable. Maroney is eager to bring the forces he absorbed to heel. He needs a victory to establish his authority and fully consolidate the fresh blood he has just taken in."

"If he dares use the Godfather to establish his authority, Falcone will teach him a lesson." Schiller leaned fully against the chair back, tugged at the collar of his sweater, and looked utterly relaxed.

Gordon coughed twice more. Through the smoke curling from the tip of his cigar, he narrowed his eyes at the reflection on the silver plate and said, "Maroney is formidable, and the Godfather is already old."

"You think more highly of him?"

"No. I actually hope the Old Godfather wins. As long as Falcone remains, Gotham can’t descend into complete chaos. Once he’s gone, though, who knows?"

Gordon left soon afterward. He still had work to do, and this was his busy season. If he worked hard for another month, even buying a villa would not be a problem.

After Gordon left, Schiller leaned back and smoked the entire cigar. Smoke curled around his fingertips. It had been a long time since he had thought so calmly and leisurely.

In this city, where danger lurked everywhere, if he could not be certain of safety, he did not even have time to rest for a cigarette.

Before this, Schiller had never considered buying a house, nor had he needed a home. He was not a Gotham native. He came from the safest, most orderly country in the world.

As the cigar burned, smoke several times richer than cigarette smoke drifted into elusive abstract shapes, stirring endless associations. Amid that intoxicatingly sweet fragrance, Schiller began to reminisce.

He could no longer clearly remember whether the first emotion that rose in him when he encountered a shooting in Chicago after leaving his homeland had been shock or excitement.

He only remembered that as the plane fell, in the memories of his life brought forth by weightlessness and oxygen deprivation, all the strange and turbulent events he had taken part in blurred into a haze. Just as they had wished, when those memories vanished with death, countless secrets would be buried forever.

If there truly was a god in this world, Schiller thought, then that great being capable of granting someone another life really understood him well enough.

Gotham was the sewer of the world’s evil, and good people did not get washed into sewers.

Schiller stared at the end of the cigar between his fingers. The ember there gradually died out, the smoke thinned, and the patterns it formed slowly dispersed.

He had known it. When he regained consciousness and learned from the original owner’s memories that this was Gotham City, the excitement that had flooded his mind at the first instant would eventually destroy all his hopes for a peaceful life.

Or rather, his enjoyment of a dull, ordinary daily life had been nothing but self-deception from beginning to end, practiced by a madman skilled at self-hypnosis—until he saw Batman appear.

As the smoke drifted away, Schiller recalled how it had felt when he had first used his faint telepathic ability to touch Batman’s heart.

Just as Gordon had said, he had felt as if he were looking into a mirror.

So he gave Batman the answer he most wanted to hear, then almost impatiently drew a full stop beneath that dull, despair-inducing peaceful life.

And now, he had finally become a citizen of Gotham City, in the winter of Gotham 1987, on the first birthday of his second life.