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

“Don’t be a fool, Tiger,” Batman said, darkening the man with his shadow.

Tiger scrambled backward before getting to his feet. “You got nothing, Bat.” He glanced over his shoulder getting ready to run—but not, Batman noted, toward the pier.

“Tell me about the Bessarabians, Tiger.” Batman played his ace in the hole, just to see what would happen.

“Don’t know squat about the Bess-Arabs. Screw you and the sheepherders, too.” He spun quickly on the balls of his feet and took off down the street.

Batman let him go. His mind was already chewing on new information. He hadn’t expected a direct hit. Tiger had been smart enough to fudge his response to the Connection question, but he’d left himself wide open on the Bessarabians. The Bess-arabs. Maybe they were Arabs. Maybe they were sheepherders. The world was just beginning to wake up to the knowledge that the Islamic cultures were tribal, not national, and eager to fight among themselves in the absence of an infidel enemy.

He listened to Tiger’s footfalls after the man rounded the corner, then heard the sound of a midsized diesel engine and jogged down the sidewalk himself in time to see the receding taillights of what appeared to be an express parcel delivery van—complete with a satellite dish and antenna mounted on the roof.

Tiger caught his breath on the metal steps leading up to the driver’s pedestal-seat. The encounter had been his first with a bona fide Hero. He felt he’d handled the occasion well, all things considered. A boy couldn’t grow up in Gotham City without seeing Batman and his cronies—even if that boy grew up as Tiger did, on the East End streets where a television was something you watched in front of a pawnshop window. Of course, a boy like Tiger grew up knowing that for every Batman, there were a dozen villains. He knew all their name, where they were, what had happened, which few had never been brought down.