Harvey Dent settled into the driver's seat, fiddled with the radio until he found a song he liked, and gently pressed the accelerator to the melody.
He rarely listened to music while driving. Clearly, he was in a good mood.
His first day on the job had already yielded some promising results: a detailed plan for taking on the mob and a successfully recruited informant. Well, it was less recruitment than cooperation.
He knew that the man named Will certainly wasn't helping him for the sake of "justice."
But Harvey didn't care. He was a prosecutor. Dispensing justice was the court's job, and stopping crime was the police's responsibility. His job was to gather enough evidence to put the villains on trial.
How he got there didn't matter.
Yes, Harvey was different from those hidebound old men. He pursued justice and glory, not rigid adherence to procedure.
To achieve his goals, he often skirted the boundaries of the law, even quietly crossing that red line when no one was watching.
Coercion, intimidation, false evidence, financial inducements, even teaming up with other villains-these were all methods he regularly employed.
Otherwise, how could a fledgling prosecutor have turned New York upside down?
Many people believed Harvey had been banished to Gotham for offending someone powerful in New York. In truth, he had requested the transfer himself.
There was one thing he rarely told anyone: Gotham was his hometown.
It was also his nightmare.
A cramped basement reeking of mildew, a drunken gambler of a father, a coin tossed high into the air, fists and feet striking his body-these scattered fragments threaded through Harvey's dreams, weaving one sleepless night after another.
He had returned to put an end to it all.
Nirvana's "Something in the Way" came on the radio, and he softly sang along.
Underneath the bridge
In the shadows beneath the bridge
Tarp has sprung a leak
Cracks spread through my shelter from the rain
And the animals I've trapped
The animals I've captured
Have all become my pets
Are tenderly cared for by me
And I'm living off of grass
Yet I gnaw on dry grass to survive
And the drippings from the ceiling
And live by sipping water from the eaves
It's okay to eat fish
Maybe I'll eat fish instead
'Cause they don't have any feelings
After all, they're just as numb as I am
Something in the way~
Some things are simply like this
Something in the way~
Some things are simply that way
When Harvey entered the Senate through the back door, Qin Wei was stuffing a naked corpse into a black plastic bag. A short young man beside him was scrubbing blood off the floor.
"Do you believe he fell down the stairs?" Qin Wei tied the bag shut.
"I do. Misfortune and death spring up in this city every day. What a poor bastard."
Harvey glanced at the bloodstained baseball bat discarded in the corner.
"Then we should be able to discuss the next phase of our cooperation."
Qin Wei described everything that had happened as briefly as possible. Beside him, Harvey's expression shifted several times, from surprise to shock, before finally settling into a knowing smile.
"I think I see what you're getting at. This plan really is insane."
Despite calling it insane, Harvey took off his jacket without prompting and put on the dead man's clothes.
The long, lightweight trench coat was the sort he normally wore, and it fit even better than he had expected. With an odd expression, he pursed his lips, nodded, and took the dead man's phone from the inside pocket.
The phone was full of explosive messages. Aside from the obscene texts sent to a lover, all the remaining messages were addressed to Maroni.
Charlie had already visited more than a dozen bosses, reporting to Maroni by text after each visit.
Harvey skimmed the earlier messages. Three men had been classified as potential risks, two as disloyal, and four as suspicious. The rest were loyal.
"What assessment do you want? Or rather, how does Maroni see you two?" Harvey asked.
"Potential risks or suspicious, probably. Oswald and I have been in contact with Falcone. Maroni should already be wary of us, so we might as well choose an assessment that matches his expectations."
"You want to use a flaw to conceal the truth, but that'll put you both in danger. The fact that he's doing this means Maroni is deeply suspicious right now. Do you think he'll spare anyone he suspects?"
"That's not something you need to worry about."
Qin Wei bit his thumbnail. It was his way of relieving stress.
Oswald had been right. Maneuvering between two mob bosses could turn them into casualties of the conflict with one misstep, and Qin Wei didn't want to endure this nerve-racking existence for even another moment.
If he could, he would have loved to put a bullet each into Maroni and Falcone and be done with it.
Harvey sent the text, and before long, Maroni replied.
-What did Little Penguin say?
-He told me Mr. Falcone had tried to recruit them, but he's still very unsure which side to take.
Following Qin Wei's account, Harvey replied in the impostor's usual style.
It was a dangerous move, effectively exposing the two of them to Maroni as traitors.
Qin Wei had only one chance of winning: betting that the arrogant, conceited Maroni wouldn't touch cards already laid faceup on the table.
Oswald listened, dumbfounded. He couldn't make any sense of what these two Riddlers were saying. All he knew was that Qin Wei had willingly exposed them.
In the past, he would certainly have shouted at Qin Wei and called him insane. But along the way, Qin Wei had proven the accuracy of his judgment time and again.
This time, Oswald decided to trust his friend as well. Knowing he couldn't keep up with their thinking, he chose not to interrupt and simply sprayed the floor with detergent over and over.
Once they had assigned their tasks, all three went outside together.
Harvey, wearing the dead man's coat, went to approach the next boss, while Oswald stuffed the corpse into the trunk.
Now all they could do was wait for Harvey to finish his task and return the clothes. Then they could finally dispose of the enormous problem in the trunk.
"Are we really going to survive this?" Oswald asked anxiously.
"Hard to say!"
Qin Wei picked up the long-cold hot dog beside his seat and started eating, then took a hefty swig of beer. Every move in this gambit held untold danger. The slightest mistake could doom them beyond recovery.
With Harvey's arrival, the situation in Gotham had become ever more treacherous and unpredictable. Qin Wei knew scheming alone wouldn't be enough to keep him alive. He urgently needed to build a force of his own to withstand the waves that could crash down at any moment.
"Once we get through this safely, I'll go recruit people with you."
After leaving the Senate, Harvey's brows gradually drew together, and his once-clear gaze turned fierce and ruthless.
He knew Maroni had hired someone to impersonate him partly to test his subordinates' loyalty. But it also meant Maroni didn't take him seriously at all. Compared with the corpse hanging upside down from the eaves, this was the real insult.
"You son of a bitch. I'll make you pay for looking down on me!"
According to Qin Wei's script, Harvey was supposed to visit a man named Royce.
Like Oswald, he was a small-time operator who watched over a venue, a peripheral figure in Maroni's organization. No one would suspect anything if the fake Harvey's death were pinned on him.
But Harvey wanted to visit someone else.
Dodge Bourbon was one of Maroni's trusted men, responsible for liaising with Mexican drug dealers and flooding all of New Jersey with drugs. He was a vital link in the criminal empire and someone Maroni trusted absolutely.
On the other hand, this visit carried enormous risks-this loyal dog might well lash out and attack.
Maroni knew that, of course, but he didn't care. The fake Harvey was only a tool. Even if he died, he would have fulfilled his purpose.
Harvey knew it too, but he couldn't afford not to care.
"Then let's leave it to God. If it's heads, we'll take the risk."
He took an Ancient Rome silver coin from his pocket. Octavian's likeness was engraved on the obverse, and the Pantheon of Olympus on the reverse.
The silver coin spun as it flew straight up, then he caught it and pressed it onto the back of his hand.
"So that's how it is? What a splendid choice."
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