Arnold Wesker or the Ventriloquist was uneasy tonight.
"It's going to be okay," he murmured, turning the puppet in his hands. "We're safe here, right, Woody?"
Scarface stared back at him from its perch on his forearm—pale lacquered face, crimson lips, round eyes that bulged slightly from the wood, and a deep gouge along the right cheek that had always looked like a scar. Under the room's dim light, the puppet looked like something that had decided to be more than a puppet and was making progress on the project.
"Arnold." The jaw opened and closed. The voice came from the wooden mouth, not from Arnold's stomach—Arnold's lips weren't moving. "My useless, hopeless, rotten old friend. Lift your head and look at me."
Arnold lifted his head. His white hair, the posture of a frightened child receiving a lecture he'd heard before—he accepted all of it with the specific dejection of a man who genuinely believed the other party in this conversation had standing.
"You're the Ventriloquist," Scarface said. "I'm Scarface. We are currently dominating Gotham City. That psychotic Joker? He'll be under our feet. We are the criminal kings of this city, Arnold. With me here, that is destiny."
The puppet raised both miniature submachine guns above its head, arms extended, triumphant. Arnold's hands lifted it into the light—the small black leather shoes, the striped suit, the white gloves, the felt hat, the red rose. An entire wardrobe, carefully maintained, on a foot-tall wooden body.
"Woody—don't scold me," Arnold said, voice wobbling.
"Shut up. Someone's breaking in. Are those snipers out there decoration?"
Scarface swung one gun toward the door and pulled the trigger.
The door panel took the burst at close range and came out the other side as a fine piece of abstract art, then fell off its hinges. On both sides of the corridor, the Falcone thugs heard the signal and moved—boots on concrete, the sound of people responding to a prearranged alarm.
The visitor in the corridor was about to be caught in a crossfire.
Then the wall came in.
The plaster and brick went in one direction and Killer Croc came in from the other, hunched under the doorframe he'd created, golden vertical pupils lit against the dark, scaled arms wider than most men's torsos, tail clearing a two-foot radius of floor space behind him. He filled the room differently than people fill rooms.
"Kill him!" Scarface's voice cut through the dust. "Everyone, concentrate fire! I'm going to make shoes out of it!"
"Wait." A voice from somewhere around Killer Croc's midsection.
Two-Face stepped out from behind the scaled arms, adjusted his jacket—the half-dark, half-light suit looking oddly correct for this room—and regarded Scarface with the calm of a man attending a meeting he'd already decided the outcome of.
"Woody. We came to negotiate. No reason for hostility—we may end up working together."
The puppet's round eyes rolled. "Is the great Two-Face afraid to die?"
"Are you?" Harvey said. "If you weren't, you wouldn't be under the Joker's umbrella."
"We are different, idiot." Scarface's sharp laugh bounced off the walls. "I have ambitions. I don't yield to anyone to save my skin. When the Joker takes Gotham, I'll replace him. I will be the master of this city."
Harvey processed this quickly.
Scarface had said it openly, in front of everyone in the room. Which meant the people flanking them on both sides weren't just hired guns—they were committed. Loyal enough that Scarface wasn't afraid one of them would carry this back to the Joker. That changed the math on the original plan considerably. Shoot the puppet, and three people would be immediately surrounded by desperate, cornered men with nothing to lose.
He made his decision.
"Then we have common ground." He kept his voice even. "You want the Joker gone—so do I. I'm not invested in who sits at the top afterward. I just can't stay with the Riddler anymore. The hypocrisy is unbearable. He's apparently considering recruiting Batman, of all people, and Batman and I have a personal history." He let that land. "So. Let's settle it simply."
He produced the coin—black on one side, white on the other—and held it up where Scarface could see it.
"Heads, we move forward on our own terms. Tails, I come over to your side and we work under your arrangement."
Scarface's jaw worked. The eyes moved. "Deal."
Harvey flipped the coin.
Every eye in the room tracked it—the arc, the spin, the strange dull shine of its two faces catching the light alternately as it rose.
Harvey stepped sideways.
Behind him stood Jude.
The black robe absorbed the room's shadows completely. The ghost-white mask sat above it like something that had detached from a face and was operating independently. Under the dim light, the combination produced an effect somewhere between person and bad omen.