Chapter 55: Batman Is Such a Total Son of a Bitch

"With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Who said this, and about whom, Mazhaodi couldn't quite remember, but the moment he heard those words, the very first image that popped into his head was the man standing right in front of him.

True to expectations, Batman proved time and time again that this quote was his absolute best portrait.

Just listen to what he had to say: three sentences. The first monitored the innocent citizens of Gotham, a poor man whose wife was suffering from a critical illness—namely, Drake. The second monitored his own best friend and one of his staunchest allies, Harvey Dent. The third monitored Mazhaodi himself, suspected of potentially being the Pumpkin Man.

Did that sound like something a hero would do? It certainly didn't, but when applied to Batman, it immediately felt entirely reasonable.

To claim that Mazhaodi possessed any counter-surveillance awareness would be pure fantasy. He was just an ordinary short-story writer; whether it was wiretapping or signal blocking, he relied entirely on the built-in software features of his computer and phone. Obviously, those crude tricks were far from enough when dealing with Batman.

He didn't even know when a bug had been planted on him, and the fact that it had never been detected was the most glaring problem of all.

"Where did you put the bug?"

"It has already been burned by fire."

What absolute nonsense. You couldn't believe a single word that came out of Batman's mouth.

"Since you've got your eyes on me, hiding is useless, isn't it?"

Mazhaodi gave a self-deprecating chuckle, silently swearing to himself that he would mind his own business from now on. "That's right, I did steal the bounty Falcone handed over to the Irish mob—I kept nine thousand dollars, used the rest to fix his house, and buried the final portion in his family's basement."

"Why take only nine thousand?"

"That was the money I spent on making bombs and setting up wiretaps. I had to recover my costs, didn't I? I'm not a rich man."

"Yet you had no partnership with the Irish mob." Listening to his reply, Batman seemed to piece together the whole sequence of events instantly. His tone wasn't an interrogation, but a statement of fact.

"That's right. The target of the wiretap was the Irish mob. Donnie, greedy for petty gains, picked up a metal lighter off the street. It was a pretty lighter, and he liked it."

"But it wasn't found among the evidence—you stole it back."

"Yes. Just the night before the explosion at Harvey's house, I sneaked into their stronghold carrying a rigged-up fake bomb, swapped out the high-powered explosive they had prepared, and retrieved the lighter I used for eavesdropping along the way."

"Why?"

Batman looked straight into Mazhaodi's eyes. Those azure-blue eyes reflected a homeless, unlucky bastard—no madness, no chaos, no hysteria, no one bad day, and no tragic life.

He lacked all the defining traits of either a villain or a hero; he was simply a bit lonely, coupled with a dash of bad luck.

And a little bit poor.

"Why?"

Mazhaodi had originally intended to answer that it was because Harvey Dent was a good man, but looking into those bat-like eyes, he somehow couldn't bring himself to utter that perfunctory excuse.

"...Because I felt guilty."

After a brief silence, he answered, "A normal person should have a bit of selfishness and a bit of conscience. I consider myself a normal person."

"I was the one who burned down the factory. I thought there was only counterfeit money inside, so I just tossed a firebrand. Harvey Dent took the fall for me this time. I didn't have the courage to stand up and directly declare to Falcone that he had grabbed the wrong person, nor did I know how to handle it."

"So I figured I could at least minimize his losses."

It all fit. Batman thought to himself, every piece fit together.

"You didn't know that was where Falcone stored his black money."

"I didn't. I had no reason whatsoever to go out of my way to track down the Roman's illicit funds—I know you want to ask about the pumpkin business too, so I might as well lay it all out. On Halloween night, I did indeed sell a small pumpkin."

"The buyer's face was hidden. He wore a black bowler hat, a loose trench coat, his features were blurred and indistinct, and he wore rough men's gloves. Aside from the hat, everything about him was gray."

"Is there anything else you wish to say?"

"A little while ago, the Thanksgiving cornucopia I made was hijacked right on the street. That time, he didn't even pay."

At this point, even Batman couldn't help but cast a sideways glance at Mazhaodi. Not many major events had happened in Gotham lately, yet this guy managed to bump into every single one of them.

"Why you?" A low voice muttered to itself, his brain racing at lightning speed. "Why you?"

"Maybe because I was close by. If it hadn't been me, it wouldn't have made much difference if he bought it from a store instead." Mazhaodi shrugged. "I've said everything I can. If you don't have anything else, can you let me go?"

"There is one more thing. In the sewers of Gotham, there is a—"

"Yeah, yeah, I recently brought some food to poor Solomon. That big guy isn't bad at all, at least he didn't punch my head off. Doing something like that isn't against the law, are you going to investigate that too?"

Having spilled everything he had done, Mazhaodi suddenly felt a profound sense of relief. He was never someone accustomed to harboring secrets anyway.

"Now, Batman, what's your verdict? Am I going to be thrown into a heavy-duty prison, or are you dropping me off at a hotel for the night?"

"I will take you to a hotel in the Burnley district. It's open twenty-four hours a day—and here is your thirty-five thousand dollars, which was originally supposed to be used as evidence."

Mazhaodi didn't reach out to take the money bag. His entire mind was consumed by the first sentence Batman had just uttered.

"I will take you to a hotel in the Burnley district."

"How are you going to take me? Ahem, I mean, I don't seem to have brought my car keys out with me, so you'll have to provide your own transportation to take me there."

"Just to be clear, I'm not terribly fond of swinging back and forth across skyscrapers. Of course, I'm not afraid of heights, I just don't like the swinging part—I might throw up."

The core point of Mazhaodi's two statements boiled down to just two words:

The Batmobile! The Batwing!

Even though he had told himself to avoid contact with superheroes as much as possible and live separate lives moving forward, since tonight was already this disastrously unlucky, what harm was there in letting him enjoy himself for once?

Catching a ride in the Batmobile or the Batwing—if supervillains could ride in them, why couldn't he?

Just the thought of those two ferocious mechanical beasts, their sturdy bodies, sleek curves, chilling metallic texture, and the roaring thunder of ultra-high-horsepower engines tearing through the wind, made it hard for Mazhaodi to suppress his mounting excitement.

A customized creation by Lucius Fox, the pinnacle of Wayne Enterprises' cutting-edge technology—an 18-million-dollar Batmobile and a 60-million-dollar Batwing. Surely that carried vastly more prestige than any ordinary luxury car?

Batman watched Mazhaodi. The abrupt spike in the man's emotional state made him somewhat suspicious that some hidden scheme was afoot.

"No need to ask questions. You'll arrive at your destination when you wake up."

"Huh?"

*Thud.*

With lightning speed, Batman delivered a swift chop to the back of Mazhaodi's neck, knocking him out cold on the spot. Only a single thought managed to flash through his mind before darkness took him:

"Batman is truly a massive son of a bitch."