"The Rules of the Game"

By Alan Strauss

I looked at my watch. 11:15 PM. Alright, he was cutting it close, no surprise. The man had a flair for the dramatic and I could hardly fault him. My closet full of tailor-made green suits--the kind that might make Liberace look twice--wouldn't have stood for it.

The girl was sitting on an overturned packing crate in the corner. She look terrified and very cute. She was still in her school uniform, pleated skirt and white knee socks, her dark hair twisted into two braids.

I pulled over two more empty crates, sat down, and smiled. "Hullo," I said. "How are you feeling?"

Her light brown eyes were big and teary. She thought I was a very bad man, no doubt. This bothered me just a bit, I confess. Unlike some of my contemporaries, that's not the impression I prefer to give. I am not a brute.

"Are you scared?"

She nodded, slow, very cautious.

"You really don't have to be," I assured her with a smile. "I don't want to hurt you. That's not what this is all about. When everything is over, you'll get to go home. It'll be an exciting story you can tell all your friends for many, many years to come."

Clearly she didn't understand how worthwhile a good story can be though. Most people don't until they're old and all they have left are the stories they've accumulated; then of course, they wished the stories were a little better, that there were a few more of them to spread around, but by then it was too late to gain any new ones.

"Well," I said, removing a deck of cards from my pocket, "do you like games?"

She caught herself just before she could nod.

"Of course you do. Everyone enjoys games. I'm especially guilty." I opened the deck and sat it on the box between us. "In fact, I've sort dedicated my life to them, in a manner of speaking."

I checked my watch again. 11:30 PM. Just a half hour left to go, a thin slice of time, and I would win. And the girl--pretty, sweet Sonya Parker who had never harmed anyone--would have to die. Could I kill her, I wondered. Such a horrible, monstrous act, surely I would hate myself afterwards. Yet those were the rules of the game.

"The game," I told her, "will be Crazy Eights. First let me explain to you the rules. The most important part of a game is the rules. They must be followed to the letter or there is no game. Do you agree?"

Sonya nodded, and I smiled approvingly.

"Yes, a very smart girl you are I imagine. I bet you shall pick it up very quickly. Now listen close…"

ooo

"Mr. Nigma, I think something's wrong."

Sonya and I were in the midst of our second set. I had cleared my hands of hearts and diamonds, was working on clubs, having saved my eights for last. It miffed me to be interrupted in the middle of my play.

"What?" I demanded.

Jackson--I think that was his name--shook the walkie-talkie he held and stuttered some nonsense into it. I had nothing but contempt for the man. He was little but muscles, sinews, organs, and a gun. A sort of stupid machine. All of them were the same; they had no minds, no pride, no point behind their baser urges. You could hire them for the price of a hooker or a week's worth of dope.

I hated them. By then what was I to expect? What kind of men let you dress them up like fools--I had them all wear white ski-masks with purple question marks on them, because why not?--or, for that matter, kidnap an innocent child for ransom? Men of zero character. You get exactly what you expect from them.

"Well," I said, "speak up, damn you!"

Sonya was looking from me to Jackson, frightened again. I wondered if they had been rough when they'd grabbed her out of the school parking lot. I bet they had--these sort, that's all they understood. Perhaps I should have gone with them, but I despise that sort of work.

"I said: I think there's trouble. CJ ain't at his post."

I looked at my watch. 11:45 PM. That was cutting it close, certainly. But it was very good, really, very Hollywood.

"Then shouldn't you be doing something about it?"

He frowned, fidgeted a bit, fingering the sub-automatic slung around his neck. "You want us to go check on him?"

"If you can find the time," I said peevishly.

"I was thinkin' maybe we should clear out instead, ya know. It might be the cops or even-"

"Oh. You were thinking?" I laughed. "Very amusing. I enjoyed that. Now go do what I paid you for."

Jackson gave me a look of hatred--it was mutual--but finally blundered off to his job. They would be made short work of no doubt. The idea of them having a few bones broken did not upset me much.

I should, I reflected, probably make my exit soon but technically it wasn't midnight yet. I had a game to finish. I took up my cards and looked to Sonya.

"Your turn, I think."

She played. She switched my clubs to hearts and emptied her hand in three turns. As the last card left her hand, the expression on her face grew wary. Afraid, perhaps, that I would act badly. It is true I am not a good loser--a good loser has had plenty of practice--but neither am I a lout.

"Oh, very good. Very, very good." I gathered the cards in and started shuffling. "One for you and one for me. Now we have a contest."

ooo

Their voices started coming over my radio shortly after that. Just a lot of confused, terrified blather, pretty much what I anticipated. I turned it off soon thereafter and just focused on the game.

Crazy Eights is not, of course, a game of tremendous skill. It has a great deal to do with the way the cards lie in the deck. Nevertheless, as with most games that are true games--as opposed mechanical acts--the player with the greater intellect has an edge. In games like Chess or Bridge, that edge can be considerable; in games like Crazy Eights, rather less.

It is easy to denigrate that element of human intellect. Ask any consistent winner and, if honest, they will admit on any given day that luck played a big role in their winning. Yet it is that element that separates us from machines. It is for this reason that no machine has ever, for example, made a good poker player. Machines cannot replicate the subtle complexities of human intellect, even in an endeavor as straight forward and mathematical as a game of cards.

To make a long story short, I won. I beat a little girl and I probably got lucky. I still enjoyed it immensely.

I placed my last card on the crate and smiled. Sonya looked annoyed, upset even, the terror of her situation momentarily overtaken by the small drama of a card game.

"You were a very good opponent," I said, "and I would have liked to have seen you win. I couldn't let you though. Do you understand why?"

She shook her head.

"Because it is only through failure that we value victory."

I could tell by her face that Sonya didn't understand--well, so what? I hadn't really said it for her benefit. Standing, I smoothed out my jacket and checked my watch one last time. Twelve o'clock, on the dot. "Our hero is late it seems."

As if on cue the door burst open. I sighed, asking myself: should I make some desperate last stand? A little melodrama, perhaps hold a gun to the girl's head, or just go quietly? I decided to let the moment decide and turned to face him.

But something was wrong.

It was Jackson and two of the other men, and they were dragging a limp shape between them. It wore the black cowl, cape, boots, and gloves, I'd come to recognize.

"We got him," Jackson said excitedly. "We fucking got him, Riddler!"

I was completely speechless. What, I wondered, did this mean?

ooo

They were babbling, trying to tell me everything at once and consequently conveying nothing.

"What?" I asked numbly, "happened?"

"I don't know," Jackson said, "we were all fighting and it was dark, 'cause he'd like knocked the lights out somehow, and then he was picking us off one by one and-"

"Tell him what happened to Ty."

"One at a time, please," I said impatiently.

"-and, well, he fell I guess."

"He fell? You mean one of you actually hit him?"

"Sure. Yeah. We hit him a lot."

I looked at the Batman. He was bruised, a bit scrapped about the face, but there was little blood. "He doesn't look dead."

"No," Jackson explained, "I mean after he fell, we worked him over a bit. We didn't shoot him or nothing. Not yet."

"Ah. Then how did he fall?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. I think he was moving around through the rafters and something gave out. Like a bunch of shit suddenly came raining down and him with it. So we dug him out and then, you know, kinda made sure he didn't get up right away…"

"We kicked the shit out of him, man."

I frowned. This was odd, unprecedented even. I'd chosen to hide out in an abandoned steel foundry on the outskirts of Gotham City solely because it fit my riddle so well. It did not make a very good base. It was cold, drafty, full of vermin and rusted machinery that promised tetanus at any misstep. Apparently the support beams that ran across the ceiling had degraded to the point of collapse. The Batman had simply been unlucky enough to step onto a weak spot.

"We didn't kill him, 'cause we thought you might be interested, ya know," Jackson said., "like pay us more for delivering him like this." There was a greedy look in his empty eyes.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out a wad of cash. "Here. We're done now anyways. You can go."

They caught the money as I tossed it and started for the door, eager to be gone before something bad happened. I did not, I suppose, have a very good reputation as an employer. Most of my employees tend to wind up in jail cells sooner rather then later, which is where the animals belong really.

Jackson glanced back before joining the others. "What are ya gonna do with him?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "I don't know."

ooo

I looked down at my adversary. He was a large man, well muscled and strong chinned, seemingly handsome under the mask. His breathing was shallow but normal. No series injuries I guessed, just unconscious most likely with maybe a few broken bones.

What to do?

It would, I reflected, be a perfect opportunity to discover his secret identity. If I cared that is--but I can't say that I did. Knowing it wouldn't serve any purpose to our game and, besides, I was fairly certain I had pieced it together a few years ago. This was during December, too cold for serious crime, and he had been out of town with the Justice League. So I spent a few days figuring out his real identity.

It was not a great challenge, just a rather minor puzzle. A distraction really. As soon as I had the answer, I discarded it, rather then follow up. My opponent was the Batman, you see, not the mundane creature behind the mask.

I reached for the gun I kept in tucked in my waistband and pulled it out. I pressed the chrome muzzle against his forehead.

"What," I asked bemusedly, pulling back the hammer, "is red, white, and dead all over?"

No.

That was stupid. Embarrassing even. This whole thing wasn't right. He had lost, but somehow I hadn't won. He had solved my riddle, beaten me again, and would have arrived in his typical nick-of-time fashion to save the girl and break my nose (he always broke my nose it seemed like, and rather unnecessarily I thought), if not for the ceiling giving out. Pure happenchance foiled him, simple bad luck.

Still. There was always an element of luck in any game, right? You do not forfeit a win simply because you got lucky, do you? I placed the gun back against his head.

But what would I do after he was dead?

I would have to leave Gotham, certainly. There was no one here worthy of the contest. Batman's whelps were of no consequence. They would never in their lifetimes match me at the top of my game. They had no passion for it. They were trained detectives, but they were not geniuses.

What about the rest? None of them played the game, not really. I had tried them before and they always cheated in the end. Once I had decided to do a job in Keystone City, the Flash's stomping grounds. A real work of art I set up too, but he didn't even try to unravel its complexities. Instead he cheated, using his ridiculous super speed to check every building in town until he found me. I suppose he thought he was clever too--a man who would never in his life even know clever well enough to recognize it.

It was the same elsewhere. Superman, Green Lantern, and so on. They were no equals of mine. Just run of the mill idiots with powers that solved their problems for them. There was not one among them suited for me.

And so…

Well. What then?

I didn't know. But if I pulled this trigger I knew I would never win. Batman would go to his grave having been beaten by luck and nothing more. What would the rules say to that? Truth be told, this wasn't in the rules, and so we were no longer playing the game at all.

I eased the hammer of my pistol back in place. Batman shifted slightly below me. I smiled.

"Alright then. Alright."

I couldn't just let him off, I decided. He had, after all, failed to defeat me this time. Admittedly through no fault of his own, but still, there was a principle to it.

I glanced from Batman to where Sonya sat on her box, watching me go through this silent torment with her trusting child's eyes. No, I could not just walk out and simply dust my hands of the affair. I would have to leave him a message at the very least.

The rules may be harsh, but they are still the rules after all, are they not?