Cereta's Web: Criminal Negligence

Criminal Negligence
by Lucy Gillam

It had been a quiet night: three averted muggings and a robbery that ended with the interested parties hanging by their ankles from a lamppost, but very little evidence of the chaos that had plagued the streets only three nights before, the same chaos that seemed to erupt every few months in Gotham. Most of the major instigators of that mess were back home in Arkham, securely locked up for the moment. It couldn't last, of course, but Batman had learned to take his peace where he could get it, and tired as he was from the latest round with Two-Face, he wasn't going to question a little quiet.

At least tonight no one had tried to steal the hubcaps from the Batmobile.

Batman shifted his balance on the building's projecting cornice, scanning the streets below, his gaze always resting for a moment on Leslie's clinic. Slow night, indeed. If there were to be trouble, this area would be a good bet for it.

The sound was almost imperceptible, a bare rasp of concrete and rubber, the faintest slide of a gloved hand on stone. Batman remained perfectly still, tensing only what he would need to move quickly when the attack came.

"You should watch that block to your left." The voice was deeper than the last time he'd heard it, but only marginally. "It's about to crumble."

"I know." Batman stood slowly, using the same motion to return to the safety of the roof. The boy was perched on the ledge of the building's higher section, about four feet above the roof, crouched with a relaxed grace that made balancing on a ledge that could not have been more than ten inches wide look easy.

He'd grown noticeably since Batman had last seen him. A quick appraisal told him it would probably be the boy's last growth spurt: he'd lost what little adolescent gangliness and disproportion he'd had.

His outfit was different, too, the boots sturdier, the black fabric almost reflective in places where it stretched over muscle or joint. Selina's influence was obvious, not just in the goggles that showed under the tumble of black hair, but in the sleek, minimalist lines of the costume, the way it clung to his body in ways that were both functional and...distracting.

"Bit off your normal territory, isn't it?" Batman said.

Grayson shrugged, a ripple of movement that shouldn't have been possible in that crouch or on that ledge. "Never hurts to be unpredictable once in a while," he said with a crooked grin. "Shake things up, as it were."

Batman folded his arms, answering only with silence. In the year since Catwoman and her protégé had begun making reappearances in Gotham, he'd seen enough of Dick Grayson's work, and the aftermath of his work, to know that he hadn't fully internalized his mentor's playful nature. He was less likely to do something just for the thrill of it. After their last conversation, and Batman's last attempt to convince him to choose another path in life, he'd been cautious, choosing mostly low-profile targets. There were certain hallmarks Batman had learned to recognize, but even he wasn't sure he knew everything the boy had done. He knew that "Richard Johnson" was living in Gotham, and had even taken two classes at Gotham U, but Grayson had stayed pretty thoroughly off Batman's radar.

If he were here, deliberately bringing himself to Batman's attention, there was a reason.

The young man sighed. "Honestly, sometimes I don't know what she finds so fascinating about you." He slowly looked Batman up and down, his grin reappearing. "Well... Okay, yeah, but really, I wonder sometimes if that grim exterior is a cover for that fact the you're actually very boring underneath."

Grayson lifted himself into a handstand, and then flipped forward down onto the roof. In anyone else, it would have seemed like showing off, but this young man... Batman had noticed it before; it was like Dick would rather dance than walk, if he could. He walked forward until Batman had to fight the impulse to step backwards. He'd apparently been taking lessons in personal space from Selina. He grinned again. "Are you really boring?"

"Is there a point to this?" Batman ground out, deliberately stepping forward until his face was inches from Grayson's.

The grin faltered a bit, and the young man cleared his throat, stepping back again. "There's a rumor going around that you recently deposited a kid in the Gunn School for Boys."

Batman frowned. He'd told the boy to keep quiet about their meeting, although even he knew that was asking a lot of an eleven-year-old. Still, it was a bad sign when it had traveled quite this far in three days.

As if sensing his consternation, Grayson waved his hand dismissively. "It's not common knowledge, but I know some guys who used to live there, and they still have connections to the place. Is it true?"

"What if it is?"

Grayson reached into the small pouch slung over his shoulder and pulled out a manila envelope, handing it to him. Batman took it, but made no move to open it.

He could almost sense the answering eyeroll through the reflective goggles. "The school is a sham. The lady who runs it takes the boys with a talent for thievery, trains them, and runs them." Grayson frowned. "Actually, I'm kind of surprised you didn't know that." He nodded toward the envelope. "I took some pictures. Figured you might need more than just my word for it."

Batman's frown deepened. He didn't need to ask how Grayson knew about the school. The investigation he'd done into the boy's life between his parents' death and his disappearance off the Social Services radar had not revealed much information, but enough that his knowledge of such a place was not unusual. In fact, a recommendation that he be sent to the school had been placed in his file right before he'd been listed as a runaway.

That long? A place like that had been operating in his city that long, and he hadn't known about it?

"She's careful,"Grayson said, as if reading the thought on his face. "Never runs more than a few kids at a time, keeps them on small-time stuff, recommends they go back to foster homes, and then starts them working. Kids know it, street kids, system kids, but who listens to them?" His tone should have been bitter.

Batman ruthlessly pushed down a familiar burst of shame, and instead allowed himself the anger that always followed: anger at Selina for planting the seeds of that shame, anger at this boy -- no, this man, for being here as a living rebuke, a living reminder. Anger at himself for everything.

"Why?" he demanded. "Why take so much trouble? Why risk coming to me?"

"Well, for one thing, I'm not exactly on speaking terms with anyone in authority," Grayson pointed out with that disconcerting grin. "You, on the other hand, could actually do something about it." He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. "But that wasn't what you meant, was it?"

"No."

He fidgeted for a moment, looking as if he wished there were a convenient structure to climb or flip over. Then the grin was back, and Batman ignored the sudden warmth in his stomach.

"Aw, you're not going to make me get all sloppy and sentimental, are you? One kid you could save, been there, blah blah? Call it a thank-you present for those two days you gave Selina five years ago. Anyway." The young man stood. "I gotta go. If you're going to chase me, be sure to grab the pictures first. I put a lot of time into the angles."

Dick casually dove off the ledge, and Batman looked over to see him use a flagpole to flip to a lower ledge and take off running around a corner. He could pursue, but there were no outstanding warrants, and what evidence he himself had of past robberies was just sketchy enough to make pursuit pointless. Batman tried not to think about just why his own evidence was so uncharacteristically sketchy.

Instead, he picked up the envelope. The pictures weren't of the best quality, and they weren't enough to hold up in a court as evidence of anything but possible mismanagement on the school's part. Pictures of boys from the school picking pockets, one stealing a stereo off a truck, a picture of the same boy taking the stereo into the school's back door. The school itself could claim ignorance of their activities. It was enough to shut them down, but not enough to convict Ma Gunn of criminal activity.

That he would have to do on his own.

He felt a momentary twinge at the thought of the boys thrown back into a system that hadn't known what to do with them in the first place, now with even more criminal activity under their belts and on their records. There was no question this time which was the lesser evil, but he wondered if, once again, he would be intervening too late.

He looked down at Leslie's clinic. Batman might not be able to help them, but Bruce Wayne, with the resources of the Wayne Foundation behind him, could. Leslie would have ideas, perhaps a way to set up an alternative, a school that genuinely focused on giving the boys a future.

Batman carefully tucked the envelope into the back of his belt, using a clip he had there for just such occasions, and prepared a jump-line. It was time to go to work.