LOOSE ENDS
by Gaggy Rimshot

        “There comes a time in every man’s life, when he must move on.”
        “What are you talking about, Rimshot?” bellowed Rupert Thorne.
        Gaggy Rimshot, Gotham’s legendary henchman, stood in front of the desk of 
the
city’s most powerful crime lord.  It had been no secret that the midget 
mercenary was an
intricate part of Thorne’s ascension, as well as the ascension of numerous 
so-called
“super criminals.”
        “Mr. T,” he always addressed employers as such for anonymity, “I’m quitting 
the
henchman scene.  I’ve already notified my other employers; I’m coming to you 
to ask
you not try to contact me with jobs anymore.”
        Thorne seemed a little shocked, but picked up a poker and walked to his
fireplace, “Why do you want out, Gaggy?”
        The midget smiled and fixed the lapel of his blue zoot suit, “I don’t know. 
  I just
had a feeling like I had accomplished almost everything I set out to do.  I 
just have to
close business with one more person and I won’t have any strings left.”
        Rupert Thorne smirked, “Always tying up the loose ends of other people’s
plans?”
        Gaggy returned the gesture, “Always.”
        Thorne turned around, but his loyal henchman had vanished and the window
stood open.


        As Gaggy got into his red convertible, he thought hard about his decision.  
He had
helped so many people achieve fame.  Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Roxy 
Rocket,
Scarecrow, and most notably, the Joker.  He smirked.  It was strange really. 
  Everyone
knew who Gaggy was, except for his public.  He could walk down Crime Alley 
and be
asked for an autograph.  An autograph!  But then again, he could walk right 
up to a police
man, do cartwheels in front of him, and he wouldn’t be arrested.  And why?  
Because he
stayed out of the limelight, had taken all the precautions, and more.  His 
employers went
to prison and he always got away.  Why?  He was so good at being bad that no 
one knew
who he was.
        Well, there was only one person left to settle up with.  Batman.

        The murders began.  The first was an alley way murder.  Someone had lured a
man to an alley and savagely beat him to death.  Across town, a woman was 
shot
execution style with a .22 caliber bullet.  A little girl was killed in an 
elementary school
rest room.  She was decapitated and her blood used to paint the mirrors red. 
  At Gotham
State University, a cheerleader was found poisoned and raped.  The police 
were unsure in
what order.  An elderly couple’s night out was ruined when they were mowed 
down in
the street by a hit and run.  Three men were killed walking out of a gym by 
a drive-by
shooting moments later.  A bomb went off in the baseball stadium.  An 
elevator crashed
fourteen stories.  A sniper took out half the high school track team.  A 
woman’s entrails
were found decorated a store lot Christmas tree with her head on the top.

        “All different victims, all different methods of demise....different times, 
no prints,
no trails, no hairs, no clues.  We wouldn’t even know it was the same 
murderer if he
didn’t leave his calling card.  We normally say ‘calling card’ and mean a 
certain style.
This guy’s is ACTUALLY leaving calling cards!”
        Batman listened to Gordon’s rant as he took the extra copy of the file of 
the
newest murder.
        Batman replied coolly, “And we still don’t know where Rimshot has gone to?”
Contrary to the midget’s understanding, the police knew a lot about the 
henchman of
Gotham.  He could not be hunted more than his clients because for public 
relations, the
star criminals had to come first.  Besides which, he was not an easy man to 
reach.  For
police or clients.  There was a better chance of Gaggy simply showing up 
like a ghost
when a job was needed.
        Gordon sighed, “We know he’s in Gotham, simply because we know he wouldn’t
let anyone else put his name on a business card.  He’s really starving for 
attention now.
.....   Batman?”
        But Batman was gone already, in the same way that the midget mobster had
disappeared right in front of Thorne.

        In the Batcave, the Dark Knight fed the new information into the computer.  
The
projected pattern was incomprehensible.  It made no sense.  Batman rubbed 
his eyes and
sipped on his coffee.  Gaggy was certainly starving for attention, like 
Gordon had said.
They were denying the press the information on the cards.  It was like a 
game of chess,
trying to figure out what your opponent was thinking.  Gaggy had to have 
known that the
cards would be denied to the press.  In his twisted mind, he was driving for 
attention, but
couldn’t abandon his secretive ways.  His murders had been the cleanest 
Batman had
seen in a while.  And completely random.  Gaggy knew that only Batman and 
the police
would know it was him.  But it wasn’t like Gaggy to just kill for no reason. 
  Especially
for his own publicity.  Who was he working for?  Who?
        The Dark Knight checked one of the midget’s old hideouts.  It was only the 
only
one of the known three that the midget hadn’t destroyed to hide evidence.  
But it was
barren as Batman knew it would be.  A shattered crate in the corner, a 
pigeon in the
rafters, a cockroach crawled threw the cracks in the floor.  He had checked 
all the wall
for secret passages.  He looked through ever inch of the place before going 
back to where
he first stood.  The cockroach crawled threw the cracks of the floor again.  
He tapped his
foot.  A part of the floor was hollow.  The Dark Knight pried up a floor 
board to find an
underground staircase.  It was built for Gaggy’s minuscule size, but with 
fluid breathing
and by relaxing his muscles, Batman was able to crawl through.  At the 
bottom of the
staircase was a room with nothing save a dilapidated old wooden table with 
three legs.
He scanned the room.  No more hidden passages.  After searching and 
frustration and
thinking of all the murdered people, people murder by someone he should have 
caught
YEARS ago and had had the chance to catch a hundred times over, he was so 
full of rage,
he just lashed out in this little room and began destroy the broken table.
        That’s when he found the key in the hollowed out table leg.

        That’s when he found the key in the hollowed out table leg.  A quick 
reference
with the local fifty-four locksmiths turned out that it had been privately 
made.  Damn.  A
quick reference to the hundred and forty-three manufacturers and 
distributors of the
needed equipment unveiled fifty-six machines sold in Gotham City.  
Fifty-four to
locksmiths and two to individuals.  And the two individuals had nothing to 
do with
Gaggy.  Damn again.  But one had sold it at a garage sale.  So after two 
days of tracking
and thankfully no more murders, Batman traced the lock smith machine to a 
company
called Gotham Cleaners and Waste Disposal which had gone out of business.  
At the
warehouse, Batman received a welcome of barb wire fences and attack dogs.  
Bingo.

        Batman stood in the shadows and studied the warehouse.  It was surrounded 
by
fencing, barb wire at the top, attack dogs looming, security cameras, motion 
sensors, and
metal plated windows.  The whole place seemed to say, “Go Away!”  But Batman 
would
not.  Batman swooped onto the roof.  After deactivating the window’s alarm, 
he was hit
with shrapnel from the motion sensing bomb he set off.  His chest armor 
protected him,
but he was blown off the ledge and down to the dogs.  The blast had been 
muffled
somehow, by some unknown means so as not to draw attention to the blast.  
The dogs
attacked him and he gave them his arm to chew on while he slipped the 
sleeping gas
from his utility belt and knocked them out.  Denied entrance on the top 
floor he settled
for the skylight.  It was dark inside, presumably no one was inside.  He 
double checked
the skylight entrance for traps and lowered himself down.  About ten feet 
from the
skylight, there was a loud CLICK followed by the skylight shutting and then 
a CLANK as
the metal sheet covered the skylight and cut his rope.  He started to fall 
and shot out his
grappling hook.  It caught into something and he hung still there.  He 
switched on his
heat vision goggles and saw nothing but red.  It was only then he noticed 
how hot it was.
It felt like his summers in the Caribbean as a child.  And that was a 
hundred degrees.
Batman lifted his goggles and lit a flare.  He would give up his cover of 
darkness to find
this killer.
        The sight was terrifying.  On a bench in front of him, Robin laid with his 
costume
on, but cut down the front.  His body looked as though an autopsy had been 
performed.
Ghastly images shot through Batman’s head of Jason Todd, the second Robin 
dying in his
arms.  He moved towards the corpse when it suddenly jumped at him!
        It was only a dummy that had been launched from a spring.  Batman had had
enough, “WHERE ARE YOU, RIMSHOT?”
        The lights blasted on and Batman now saw the entire room.  He was on a 
court of
some kind with doors along the walls.  Above him was a cage when a voice, 
presumably
from that announcer’s cage, came over the system.  “I’M RIGHT HERE BATMAN.”

        Batman looked up at the cage and readied his grappling hook when the voice,
distinctively Gaggy’s, bellowed again, “I WOULDN’T DO THAT IF YOU WANT THE
INNOCENTS TO LIVE.”  Batman looked as one of the doors opened and a metal
birdcage with three people came out on a rail.  Batman heard the hum of 
electricity in the
rail and quickly assumed that Gaggy held a switch to electrocute the cage 
and the family.
        “Now, Batman,” the voice stopped booming, “Now that I have your attention, 
you
can play a little game I call, ‘Death of the Dark Knight’.”
        Batman bit his lip and said sarcastically, “I love the title.”
        Gaggy’s image now appeared on a big screen next to the announcer’s cage, “I
thought you would.”

--------EPILOGE
        Gaggy took a step out from the alley and left his tools and bomb making 
utilities
in the sewer drain.  He cautiously walked forward to survey the wreckage 
with the other
onlookers and rubbernecks.  A second explosion, probably some gas fumes, 
spooked
everyone, but Gaggy found solace to look inside and see the charring corpse 
of his
enemy.  He had lost a lot of robots to kill him, including his own body 
double, a robot so
good that the world’s greatest detective couldn’t tell it was fake.  Gaggy 
retreated to the
shadows and turned on his radio to contact his employer.
        He spoke into the microphone, “Mission accomplished.  We have a body visual 
as
requested.  The target has been eliminated.  You are in no way suspected.”
        There was a pause and static filling the speaker until the employer spoke 
in a high
pitched squeal, “YEA!  Now Mr. J will have more time for me!  Over and out, 
Roger
Wilco, and 10-4, little buddy!”
        Gaggy turned off his radio and threw it under a passing truck so the buffer
couldn’t be traced.  He then set about the task of collecting the 13 major 
contracts,
totaling one hundred and fifty three million dollars, for the death of 
Batman.  And also
there was the task of finding all his old employers and telling them he was 
back.