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

He studied their failures, because he was never going to make their mistakes. The time was coming when there’d be a new name front and center in all the media. The Tiger. Him. It was his life’s ambition—the only thing that had sustained him during the lean years before he met the man in back. When he had tried too hard, rather than smart, and ran afoul of a no-name bookie with a coil of razor-wire and a grudge. Those days were behind him. If Tiger had had any doubts, he purged them while he chiseled his encounter with Batman into his memory, enhancing the good parts, smoothing over the bad moments until they were gone.

He was Tiger. He’d been rousted by Batman—who only rousted important guys. He hadn’t cracked, not the way some punks did, spilling their guts the moment they saw that mask and cape. He’d told the Bat off, fought him to a draw, and left in the time and manner of his own choosing. He’d lost his weapon. That was hard to enhance or smooth over, until he decided that a hook wasn’t a weapon, it was a tool, and tools were designed to be discarded once their usefulness was gone.

The man in back had taught him that.

The driver wheeled the van onto one of the uptown avenues. He used its tanklike bulk to commandeer the middle lane and picked up speed to get in synch with the traffic lights. They were bouncing through the potholes at about twenty-five miles an hour when the van erupted with an earsplitting whine. Gripping the wheel one-handed, the driver wrestled bright yellow foam earmuffs over his head. Tiger ground his teeth together, winced, and held on for dear life as the van bucked and shook.