The Commissioner drew a ring of arrows on his blotter, all pointing inward. “Remember,” he said without looking up, “when the time comes, my men close the trap, not the Feds, not Interpol, and not you—“
Batman wasn’t listening. A cool breeze was stirring the papers on Gordon’s desk. Batman was gone.
Chapter Three
It was no accident that Batman’s mind filled with maritime metaphors when he thought of the Connection. In this day of fiber optics and instantaneous communications, a good shipping line was still the best way to move contraband. Jet planes were faster, of course, and these days could carry just about anything if the need was great enough, and the buyer cared nothing about cost. Big planes, however, needed big runways and left big blips on radarscopes around the world. Refined drug operations, with their worth-more-than-gold cargoes, made good use of short-takeoff planes. But the Connection moved contraband by the ton, and for that an interchangeable string of rust-bucket freighters, casually registered in Liberia or Panama, and crewed by a motley assortment of nationless sailors, was a necessity.
Batman wasn’t ready to leave the city for his cave and computers. Getting a lead on the Connection with pure legwork, prior to doing data research, was a long shot, but the night was young and his perambulations hadn’t taken him along the waterfront in over a week. He made his way toward Gotham’s deep-water harbor—one of the largest and safest in the New World and still a place where an isolated ship could come and go virtually unnoticed. He detoured briefly, cutting the corner of the East End and sating his curiosity behind the now-deserted and damp ruins of the abandoned building. A swift, but thorough, examination of the alleys revealed the bloodstained impression of a body dropped from above and the muddy stomping of the EMS crew that carted it to the street. Catwoman hadn’t lied. He could put that out of his mind completely, and did.