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Jason notices the offness first.
He stops in the middle of the paved brick walkway leading up to the Manor, left hand drifting near the pistol in the waistband of his hip as he takes account of the front yard. It’s daylight, and the wide-branched magnolia tree and potted laurels don’t offer much cover for intruders. Is the house too quiet? Does the door look tampered with? Surely someone would have called him if something were wrong.
He takes an uneasy step forward, cataloguing the freshly cut lawn, the mulch across the front of the house, the ancient pink roses that guard the door.
Jason stops and looks down. The bare, empty doorstep greets him. Unease brews in his stomach, and he opens the door and steps inside.
“Alfie?” he calls warily. “Bruce? Who’s home?”
“In here, Master Jason,” Alfred replies, and Jason makes his way quickly into the kitchen. Alfred is moving a lamb shoulder from the oven to the island counter, and it smells of tarragon and glistens with onions. Alfred doesn’t ask him to help, and Jason doesn’t offer it, but two apples and a pomegranate sit in the fruit bowl, and Jason automatically searches in the refrigerator arugula for a salad.
“So,” he starts, setting a chef’s knife at the base of a head of cauliflower. “Where’s everybody?”
“Various places,” Alfred says simply, and there’s nothing but truth in his tone. “Master Bruce is in his office, doing the Wordle where he thinks I won’t notice. Master Tim is on Season 4 of ‘Spirit, Riding Free’ on Netflix and has not left the living room since eight this morning. Master Damian, I believe, is in a vicious Pokemon gym battle. Master Dick should be here by six-thirty.”
“Oh,” Jason says. “Nothing…I don’t know… odd, going on around here?”
Alfred’s methodical chopping of the almonds stops. “Odd, Master Jason?” There’s a lilt to his voice that demands explanation, which, to his credit, odd can mean aliens, Catwoman, or a different postman than usual.
“Have you been working in the front yard?” Jason asks him. “I didn’t see Alfonso on the stoop.”
Alfred makes a small noise in his throat. “Yes. Alfonso.” He lays his knife aside and looks at Jason somberly. “I’m afraid something has happened, Master Jason. Sometime during the course of last night, Alfonso has been stolen.”
There’s a beat where all Jason hears is the roaring in his ears, and then the all-too-familiar call of the Pit, licking green at the edges of his vision. He sets his knife down fast, his fists curling at the edge of the cold countertop.
“Stolen,” he forces through his teeth.
Alfred sighs. “Yes.”
“Don’t we have security cameras?” Jason blurts. “A laser maze? A fancy video doorbell? Anything?”
“The laser maze proved to pose an insurance issue,” Alfred says. “It was removed in the late seventies.”
“Alfie.”
“There are security cameras, of course. And video doorbell caught a twelve-second clip of someone taking Alfonso from the doorstep. They were in a blue hood, and that’s all I know.” The butler returns to chopping almonds, his knife hitting the cutting board with a series of solid tapping. Jason cuts the base of the cauliflower off with a crack.
“It’s a stone alligator,” Jason says. “What do they think they’re gonna do, sell it for drug money? Couldn’t they have stolen something else? This is the Wayne Manor Estate. There is literally an antique lamp in the window probably worth, like, a gazillion dollars. Why didn’t they break the window and steal that?”
“I rather prefer the manor with all its windows intact,” Alfred says.
“And all the brats’s tablet thingies,” Jason presses. “He leaves his iPod or Nintendo or Wii Sports Resort lying about everywhere. It’d be harder finding eggs in a toddler’s Easter egg hunt.”
“Considering it’s only a garden alligator stolen, I’m sure it was only some children doing mischief,” Alfred says. “We’re lucky no one decided to intrude. I might have been the only one in the house.”
“So?” Jason asks. “You’d make sure someone never tries again.”
Alfred gives him a sly smile. “I know, Master Jason.”
“This is spicy,” Dick whines.
“It’s a leaf, imbecile,” Damian replies.
“It’s spicy.”
“It’s arugula,” Time explains. “It has a high concentration of glucosinolates, which also explains the hotness found in horseradish and mustard.”
Dick makes a face and stabs his fork in an apple slice instead.
“You know what?” Jason says, dropping his silverware by his untouched plate and scooting back from the table and standing. “I’m done with this.”
Everyone stops what they’re doing to stare at him. Bruce sets his fork down carefully, eyebrows drawing in like Jason is a mystery Catwoman brought in. “Done?” he says, voice laced with confusion and concern.
“Yeah,” Jason says. “Done.” He throws an arm out in the direction of the front door. “I mean, are we really not going to talk about this?”
“The wallpaper?” the World’s Greatest Detective asks dumbly, like a thief hadn’t just waltzed up to his front door last night and stolen a prize possession from his doorstep.
“No!” Jason exclaims. “Alfonso.”
Bruce is still looking at him like he has no idea what Jason’s talking about.
“The alligator,” Tim says.
Bruce turns on Damian. “When did I let you get an alligator?”
“You didn’t,” Damian says sullenly. “The idiot’s blathering on about the stone one on the doorstep. It got stolen.”
“I thought it was a crocodile,” Bruce says, and shakes his head at Jason. “Her name is Joyce.”
“No,” Jason says, like he’s talking to a small dog with an empty peanut butter chew toy for a brain. He presses his hands together to avoid stabbing the table with a butterknife or something. “He is an alligator, and his name is Alfonso. And he was taken from us.”
“He’s right, Bruce,” Tim says. “The thing’s an alligator. You could tell by the snout. U-shaped. Crocs look like this.” He puts the heels of his hands together and mimes a crocodile’s snapping jaws. “Killer Croc, you see, should actually be Killer Alligator, but some people prefer a snappy onomatopoeia to political correctness.”
“Just!” Jason sputters. “Snatched! From the front step! He’s been gone since last night. Hasn’t anyone looked for him?”
“I did, when I came in,” Dick says unhelpfully. “He’s definitely gone.” He glances at Damian on his left and frowns. “Dami, no Pokemon at the table. Jason’s trying to convey his emotional distress.”
“Nope, bye,” Jason says, snagging his plate off the table with one hand and waving the other behind his head. “Exiting the premises.”
Dick lets out a startled laugh. “Jay—”
“I’ll come back when Alfonso does,” Jason snaps, and leaves without getting any lemon tart, but that’s fine, he doesn’t really feel like any desserts, anyway. Desserts feel like celebrating, and there’s nothing to celebrate, especially when he storms out the front door past the empty space where Alfonso should be.
He stares up at the ceiling of his safehouse and watches the tilted ceiling fan drone around and around.
Alfonso.
He doesn’t know when the alligator showed up on the doorstep, but he’d been Robin, then. Young, innocent, going to school and not legally dead. He’d crouch and pat him with his right hand on his way out the door, and with his left on his way back in. The snout had been rubbed smooth over the years, and he’d brush away leaves and dust away snow off his carved scaly back. His tail had been playfully curved to the left, as if about to leap to life to be wrassled.
Jason throws an arm over his eyes and pounds his fist on his side table.
“Moping won’t get your alligator back,” Damian says, and Jason startles and falls off his bed.
“That was on purpose,” he says as Damian looks down at him in his full Robin uniform. Seriously. Katana and all. “What the hell are you doing here, brat?”
“I’ve come to help you in recovering your alligator,” Damian says. “Someone has deigned to steal from Father. They cannot go unpunished.”
Jason gets to his feet and grins. “You are so better than Timbo.”
“I know,” Damian sniffs, and then adds threateningly, “Ruffle my hair and consider my offer of aid rescinded.”
“Noted,” Jason says, retracting his hand to slap his palms together. “Well, brat, the first forty-eight hours are crucial. And I’m gonna need to see those security tapes.”
“Oh, you’re back,” Tim says boredly, playing Minesweep on the Batcomputer.
Jason returns the greeting with a curt “move” and shoves Tim out of the way. Damian lurks over his shoulder as he inserts the security camera’s microSD card into the computer.
“You pushed me,” Tim says.
Jason doesn’t look away from the monitor. “Yeah? Whatcha gonna do about it?”
“I dunno. I feel like you should apologize, or something.”
“I’m not gonna.”
“‘Kay. I just feel like. You know. You should.”
“Could you be literally anywhere else?” Damian asks Tim. “We’re on an important mission.”
“It looks like you’re being voyeuristic to the possums,” Tim says.
“We are not—Todd, those animals are doing unspeakable things on our front porch! What are you doing?”
“This would have never happened if Alfonso were there,” Jason affirms. “This is at four a.m. Alfonso must have been stolen before then.” He moves the cursor over the video progress bar with careful precision until a flash of blue catches his eye.
“That’s it,” Damian says.
“Oh-two-twenty-seven,” Jason reports. He clicks the video to play and leans back in his chair. “Alright, folks. Let’s see what kind of criminal we’re dealing with.”
Twenty minutes later, and “These tell us nothing,” Jason moans. He’s seen the same black hoodie approach the front door, all confident and arrogant, and manhandle Alfonso before disappearing out of view fifty times. But whole thing lasts less than twenty seconds, in slow-mo. The thief doesn’t even helpfully look at the camera so Jason can have a face.
He rounds on Tim, still sitting a few feet away where Jason pushed him, with his dirty socks propped up on the console while he picks a stray thread in his sweatshirt. “Aren’t you smart? You tracked Bruce in a goddamn time stream. Can’t you track Alfonso in the neighborhood?”
Tim lets go of his sweatshirt and swivels in his chair to raise an eyebrow at him. “Are you comparing a traumatic event in my life to petty porch theft?”
“Are you saying you’d lose an organ for Bruce, but you won’t lose one for Alfonso?”
Tim stares at him for another moment before his mouth twists into a scowl. “You’re right. This is an atrocity.” He leans back in the chair and sighs. “The thing is, big crimes are easily followed. They leave traces. But stealing things like packages and patio furniture? The only thing the police will do for that is file away paperwork. If that.”
“Well, we’re not the police,” Jason protests. “We’re going to make this fucker pay. I hope karma slaps him in his boily pizza ass.”
“This ‘fucker’ is probably just, like, some nasty eighth grader that probably destroys kids’ jack-o’-lanterns ‘cause he thinks its fun. You can’t beat them up.”
“I never said I’d beat them up,” Jason argues, and adds darkly, “But he should go to jail.”
“He’s not gonna go to jail,” Tim says. “Who knows? Maybe it’s just a girl who thought it was cute.”
“ She should go to jail,” Jason says, and Tim holds out his hand like he’s going to argue, but then shakes his head.
“The thief should at least lose a finger,” Damian says. “To mark them as a thief and make sure they never commit such a heinous crime again.”
“I’m only going to help you because I don’t think it’d be responsible to let the two of you solve a problem together,” Tim announces. “Look. We’ll get the alligator back, okay? No maiming involved.”
Damian scoffs. “And how do you suppose we get the creature back, when we don’t even know who took it, much less where to find them?”
“We don’t need to figure out any of that,” Tim says. “It’d be practically impossible. But maybe instead of going to the thief, we get them to come to us.”
“And then they pay,” Jason says.
“No,” Tim repeats forcefully. “Well. Yes. But in a business deal kind of way. Look, people take things because they want them for whatever reason: money, entertainment, kleptomania. So we have to look at this economically.”
Jason looks over his shoulder at Damian, who crosses his arms.
“We waste precious time, Drake,” he says. “If you have an idea, present it plainly.”
Tim draws his feet off the console and back onto the floor. He’s smiling, but it’s not a Robin grin, but something wild. Something unraveling. Something coming loose. “We make an offer they can’t refuse.”
“Boys,” Bruce says, aggrievedly.
It’s nightfall, two days after the robbery, and there is a lawn jockey where Alfonso should be. It’s in a green suit and holds out a ringed fist instead of a lantern.
“Get in the game or get out of the way, B,” Tim remarks, taping the requirements of the bargain to the Green Lantern’s hand.
Bruce goes inside.
The next morning, they regard an Alfonso-less, Green Lantern-less doorstep once again.
Tim puts his hands on his hips. “So maybe I didn’t think this all the way through.”
“You should write them a note,” Dick says. “Explaining how much Alfonso meant to you, how you’d be really grateful if whoever stole him returned him.”
“I’m not gonna spill my heart out to a criminal,” Jason says.
Dear Criminal, give him the fuck back hangs on the front door for three days before Alfred finally removes it.
A week passes, and Jason lays on the mats in the Batcave and says to the ceiling, “You know, maybe I should just let him go.”
“That sounds like a good decision, Jay,” Dick says supportively.
“We should build a moat,” Damian says. “Around the whole manor. With real alligators. Then only the most worthy of criminals makes it to our doorstep.”
“Maybe no real alligators, Dami,” Dick says. “But we can get another garden friend. Like a gnome. Jay, wouldn’t you like a nice gnome?”
“Fuck gnomes,” Jason spits, then softens. “A gnome’s not gonna replace Alfonso. Nothing will.”
“Oh my god,” Tim says, throwing a training staff to the ground. “You know what, I can’t stand this anymore. Catch.”
He chucks his phone at Jason, who just manages to sang it from the air before it hits him in the face.
“I was waiting until you apologized for pushing me,” Tim explains annoyedly. “But you’re never going to, and I’m tired of your tortellini. You only make tortellini when you’re sad. I put a tracker on the Green Lantern lawn jockey. Whoever stole it might have stolen Alfonso. Track him down on my phone and for the sake of all our sanity, stop making sad tortellini.”
Jason looks at the little blinking tracker light. It’s last ping came from only a street over.
He pushes himself to his feet, walks up to Tim, hugs him, then pushes him to the ground.
“You pushed me,” Tim says petulantly from the floor.
“So, whatcha gonna do about it?” Jason throws over his shoulder, as he jumps on his bike and roars out of the Cave.
Jason arrives at one Thora Welch’s house at three thirty in the afternoon. He hops the stupid wrought iron gate into her back garden, where she sits dumbfounded in somebody’s stolen patio furniture with a cooling cup of tea.
He finds Green Lantern under a dogwood tree. He finds Alfonso among the zinnias.
“Stick it, Thora,” he says, marching backwards to the fence, hiking the jockey under one arm and Alfonso under the other so he has both hands free for the bird.
“Oh,” Bruce says on his way to Wayne Enterprises. The morning is bright and clear, promising a nice day. He leans down and pats the small stone alligator on the head. “Hi, Joyce.”