Asprin, Robert Lynn – Catwoman – Tiger Hunt (With Lynn Abbey)

Killing them is no loss at all.

I take their money and put it to a better use.

But you don’t understand that.

You won’t mind your own business.

So you have to be tricked—for your own good.

While the Bat’s at bay

The cat’s at play.

Batman had crushed the tape player beneath his heel. He would have gotten rid of the message, too—if there’d been any white paint lying around. Catwoman was wrong. Justice must be served, and the end did not justify the means. Catwoman didn’t understand—apparently could not understand—and that, in a tortured way, made her one of the innocents. He suspected she was supporting herself by stealing from the drug gangs, where her crimes disappeared in the statistical rounding. And his own passage through the area had probably forced her hand. It didn’t make what she did right, but it did mean he didn’t have to hurry.

Then Batman heard gunshots. Neither he nor Catwoman carried guns. He had plenty of other gadgets hung on his belt, but so far as he knew, Catwoman had only her claws and her wits. She might be cornered. She might be outnumbered. And she was innocent—at least more innocent than her prey.

Batman headed for the roof. He was standing there, pinpointing the source of the sounds and planning his rescue assault, when he saw her sleek silhouette leap from an upper-story window of the drug fortress. He’d cased out the area earlier. He’d thought he’d known where she was headed, but when he got there she wasn’t. So Catwoman knew this part of Gotham’s jungle better than Batman did. That wasn’t surprising: he knew she lived somewhere in the East End, and that particular hellhole wasn’t more than a quarter mile away as the cat ran, or the bat flew.