After looting the casino, Hugo Strange did something almost absurd.
He laundered a portion of the stolen money, pulled out enough to cover his overdue payment, and sent it to Maroni.
Clean bills. Polite delivery. A repayment he couldn't afford the day before.
It was a provocation wrapped in courtesy, and under normal circumstances Maroni would have responded to it immediately. But the casino massacre had him occupied, and Strange's little gesture went unanswered — for now.
Word reached him that the two missing men from the security detail had been found. Maroni straightened his tie, picked up his cane, and walked to the study.
Will finished the last page of the comic at almost the same moment.
The story had continued past the massacre: Batman, invited by Gordon to survey the scene, followed the entry point down through the bathroom floor into the sewers. There he found traces of hair and the torn remnants of specimen bags marked with biohazard labels. Back in the cave, he ran the evidence and identified Hugo Strange. He moved to infiltrate Strange's laboratory.
Then the pages went blank again.
Will frowned at the empty paper.
The casino had been a death trap he couldn't avoid. But the lab infiltration — was that also a fixed point? Was the comic telling him that was where this was going next?
He didn't get the chance to think it through.
Footsteps in the corridor. The study door opened.
Maroni walked in with his gold-combed hair and his expression like a closed fist. He shrugged off his tailored grey suit jacket, tossed it aside, and raised the cane.
He swung it across Oswald's jaw.
The crack of it was clean and sharp. Oswald hit the Persian carpet and didn't get up, coughing blood into the dark fibers, his body curling tight against the pain.
Maroni turned and looked at Will.
"Anything you want to say?"
"We didn't do this." Will kept his voice level.
"I know that." Maroni's nostrils flared with something close to contempt. "If you were capable of doing this, I'd be the one on the floor."
He swung the cane again, this time across Oswald's back. The tip was sharpened. It split the suit jacket and opened a long gash across the shoulder blades.
"Then what do you actually want from us."
"Ideally, the name of whoever's responsible." Maroni brought the cane down a third time. "But if you don't have that, I'll settle for an explanation."
Oswald had stopped making noise. He'd gone limp.
"You should hurry," Maroni said. "He's not going to last much longer."
Will looked at Oswald on the floor, then back at Maroni, and understood.
Maroni didn't actually care about justice. He cared about the money. The massacre was an insult and a loss — what he wanted was restitution, and he wanted someone standing in front of him right now to point at a name.
Will had a name.
"Three days. Give me three days and I'll get your money back."
Maroni's cane stopped mid-lift.
The corners of his mouth shifted into something cold.
He turned the cane and wiped the tip clean with his thumb.
"Why would I believe you'll actually find it, and not just run?"
"Because I know who did it." Will pushed forward before he could second-guess himself. "Hugo Strange. He borrowed from you and couldn't repay. He hit the casino to take the money instead. The things that did the killing — they're likely augmented men from his research."
Maroni's expression didn't change. But something behind it recalculated.
"That's a specific story," he said. "Where did you get it?"
He already knew about the augmented men — his police contacts had reported the forensic findings from the scene. Which meant the sourcing mattered. If Will couldn't explain how he knew, the cane was going to find a new use.
Will bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood.
Everything he knew came from a comic book. He had no evidence. No witness. Nothing.
"I don't have proof," he said. "But earlier tonight, before it started, Richie Panto mentioned something to us. Said Strange had monsters in nutrient tanks in his lab. Oswald was standing right there. You can ask him when he's conscious."
Maroni said nothing for a moment.
"You said Panto and Carlo..."
He was already half-believing it. He'd sent those two to collect from Strange just yesterday. And the casino's security footage — the silent black-and-white reel — showed Oswald and Panto in conversation before the chaos started. That much was verifiable.
What actually tipped the scales was something Strange had said when he delivered the repayment.
Please pass my regards to Mr. Panto. And tell him to stop flicking cigarette ash into my specimen cultures. Though I suppose he won't have the opportunity anymore.
So it really was that son of a bitch Strange. And he'd paid today with the casino's own money. Paid Maroni back with Maroni's stolen cash, and smiled doing it.
Will saw the shift in Maroni's face and pressed.
"The bills he sent over — there's probably a way to check them—"
"Get me that box Strange delivered. And a UV lamp." Maroni didn't need the rest of the sentence.
His men brought both. The washed, dried bills went under the light one by one.
"Boss. This one has blood on it."
"This one too."
"The whole back half of this stack."
Maroni's eyes narrowed to a line.
The culprit was identified. The only question now was how to handle it.
Bringing in the police wasn't an option — too many eyes watching the Romans right now, and the department was unreliable on a good day. This had to be settled internally. But Maroni had seen the aftermath inside that casino. Sending men after Strange directly, backing him into a corner, risking those three augmented monsters getting released in close quarters — that could cost him more men than the money was worth.
His gaze settled on Will.
This one was different from most of his people. Kept his head under direct pressure. Reasoned his way to the right answer from almost nothing. He was worth more pointed at a problem than standing on a corner.
Will felt the attention on him like something physical and already knew what was coming.
"Three days," he said, before Maroni could speak. "I'll do my best to recover the money."
He had no intention of going anywhere near Strange's laboratory. What he needed was three days to get Oswald out and put distance between them and this room.
Maroni may or may not have understood that. Either way it didn't change his calculus.
The way you got someone to work for you in Gotham was to own something they couldn't afford to lose.
"Talking to a smart man is refreshing."
He reached out with one shoe and hooked it under Oswald's cheek, tilting his face up toward Will.
"Whether he lives or dies is on you. And don't think about skipping town with the little Penguin — I have good eyes and better ears. You won't make it out of the financial district, let alone Gotham."
Will almost let it go.
"Sorry. What did you just call him?"
"The Penguin." Maroni said it the way you say someone's job title. "That's the name that follows our dear Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot everywhere he goes. You didn't know?"
Will closed his eyes.
The warm, tobacco-heavy air moved in and out of his lungs.
Something in his head went very quiet.
He let it settle — the weight of it, the shape of it. The man bleeding on the carpet, the one who'd broken him out of a holding cell with a gold watch, who'd named a rotting tenement the Senate and meant it, who'd looked out for him through three months of Gotham with a patience that didn't seem to cost him anything.
Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot.
The Penguin.
The man who would climb over Maroni. Who would step on Falcone's empire on his way up. Who would sit at the top of Gotham's underworld someday and make it look like it had always been his.
Will started, slowly, to accept it.