By the time Bruce's words aired on the news for the third time, Gotham Commercial Bank's compliance department had stamped the first "on hold" on a settlement statement from Falcone Imports.
The second went on Maroni Cold Chain Transport's.
Neither sum had been confiscated or vanished into thin air. The bank merely required them to provide complete documentation of the goods' origins, actual shipping records, and the recipient companies' details.
In the past, people inside the bank would have filled in those gaps.
Now no one dared touch them.
Bruce Wayne was competing for the chairman's seat, reporters were camped outside the bank, and Harvey Dent's reopened organized crime investigation had not stopped either.
Anyone who supplied a forged document for the old families at a time like this might find their name in the news the next day.
The Iceberg Lounge's payroll account, however, passed without a hitch.
Kitchen purchases, meal deliveries, and temporary positions all had genuine contracts. Once the bank cleared it, Oswald immediately ordered finance to pay the wages a day early.
He also had someone add a line beneath that day's accounts.
Legal business operations.
The words had to be bold.
The unlucky penguin show had finally gone off the air, and Penguin was more than a little delighted.
What gambler lost every day? What penguin stayed unlucky forever?
When Sal Maroni received the hold notice, the Crown Street photos were still on his desk.
Spider-Man lifting a tow truck.
Spider-Man catching two sedans carrying reinforcements.
Spider-Man standing beneath the Maroni Family's freshly painted emblem, looking up and asking whose cars those were.
The man in charge of finance stood beside the desk.
"The bank requires us to submit transaction records from the East End's Seventeenth Branch."
"There are no records."
"The bank says