"Crimes are something only a person can commit," Jude said.
"Don't be ridiculous." Harvey's coin appeared in his fingers and disappeared again. "We're Riddler's men. Super-criminals. The Riddler has hundreds of ordinary criminals under his command. Know where you're standing before you start philosophizing."
"Wrong is wrong," Jude said. "If a normal person commits a crime and knows they're in the wrong, does refusing to admit it somehow make them a better person?"
He reached into his robe and produced three chestnuts, handing them out without ceremony. Killer Croc ate his immediately, shell and all. Too much trouble to peel.
"My greatest skill is being willing to play the villain—and the thing that makes it work is being honest about it. I know what I am. That gives me room to operate." Jude peeled his own chestnut with his thumbnail. "For example. I used to worry about two things. First: laziness. My mom said my room looked like a pigsty and my sleep schedule wasn't much better. She was right. I stayed up late, slept late, lived in mess. I knew it was a problem."
"Second: I'm short. Have been since I was a kid. The neighborhood boys called me Short Winter Melon, then the school kids picked it up, then it just became a fact about me. I even lost a girlfriend over it. My mom bought milk constantly—didn't work."
He shrugged. "Eventually I had to live alone, so I fixed my sleep and cleaned my own place. First problem gone. The height—" He spread his hands. "I was born this way. Nothing I did was going to change it. She didn't like short men, I wasn't going to get tall, we weren't compatible. That's all it was."
He patted Killer Croc on the arm, the reachable part. "We've both made our peace, haven't we? You can only work on what can actually change. The rest—you either make it part of yourself or you don't, but you can't pretend it's not there."
"You're not short now," Killer Croc said.
"I worked on my body later, grew a bit. But that's not the point. The point is I'd already accepted it." He glanced at the scaled arm beside him. "Your situation is more complicated. But you survived Gotham. That's a kind of peace too."
"I don't like that kind of peace." Killer Croc's voice was quiet. "If it weren't for the people in the sewers, I wouldn't have accepted it at all."
"The ones the city threw away," Two-Face said, not looking up from the street ahead. His coin moved through his fingers. "Falcone's era. If you were poor, inconvenient, or simply worth nothing to the family structure, you got swept underground. Sick people, street kids, scavengers, criminals who didn't want to join gangs—all of them gone from the surface. Then a crocodile-faced monster appeared in the garbage with them." He almost smiled. "The gangs above ground never dreamed that their king's trash pile had developed a crown of its own."
"They made him their king," Jude said, working it out.
"Built a whole kingdom down there."
"Are you telling me a Bible story right now, or—"
"We don't have time for stories." Two-Face drew his pistol and nodded toward the buildings ahead. Their bulk filled the end of the street, tall and lit from within. "Joker-controlled Falcone snipers. Multiple positions, every direction—enough coverage to lock down the block entirely. The Ventriloquist is in the tallest one. That's the target."
"So how do we get in?" Jude said.
Harvey looked at him. "We walk in."
Jude looked back. Killer Croc showed no particular surprise.
"If you want to play it safe," Killer Croc said, patting Jude on the back with the force of a man who had not recalibrated for human tolerances, "you can stay outside."
Jude stumbled forward a step. "Ow—no, I'll come. If I do something wrong, the Riddler shouts at me. If I do nothing at all, he'll find something worse."
"Worse how? You're an orphan. What does he do, torture you?"
"Dock my pay."
Killer Croc blinked his vertical pupils. "That's quite a life."
Harvey was already crossing the street. He walked with the unhurried confidence of a man entering a building he'd been invited to, Killer Croc two steps behind. Jude followed. They went through the entrance, up the stairs—and at some point during the first two flights, Jude became aware that the sniper problem had apparently been resolved.
"When did you—how did you get past all those snipers?"
"Bribed a few of them," Harvey said, still climbing. "Several per direction means we only needed to compromise one direction's coverage to get a clean approach. The Riddler has money right now. Spending money to solve a problem is intelligence. When money is scarce, you improvise. Right now, money is available." He glanced back at Killer Croc. "Climbing the outer wall under active sniper fire isn't intelligence. It's theater."
"Being shot repeatedly is unpleasant," Killer Croc confirmed. "Stairs are fine."
They kept climbing.
"The target is the Ventriloquist," Harvey said, voice dropped. "Here's how this goes. Waylon, you're cover—you'll draw attention and absorb whatever comes your way. I handle the negotiation and keep the focus on me." He looked at Jude. "You. Bike Stripper. We know you can shoot. Mid-range, you're accurate enough for this. When the moment comes, you're on Scarface."
"...Scarface."
"The puppet. Wooden dummy he carries everywhere. Look at the face and you'll see the scar—that's how it got the name. The Ventriloquist won't do anything without Scarface giving the order. Take out the puppet, you take out the command structure." A pause. "You do know what the Ventriloquist is, right?"
"Honestly?" Jude said. "No."
Harvey stared at him.
Jude is not lying. he didn't know every character. If they didn't show up in a movie he had seen, he is probably in the dark.
Harvey rubbed his scarred face slowly with one hand.
"Wooden puppet," he said again, slower. "Scar on the puppet's face. Shoots a small pistol. The man's name is Wesker. He thinks the puppet is real. Shoot the puppet."
"Got it," Jude said. "Shoot the puppet."
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