Free Wayne of Gotham by Tracy Hickman Page B

was a concept car—the car of the future—and his father had financed a second version of it from the Ghia plant in Turin, Italy, when it was being built two years before. It had the opalescent pearl-white finish that could only really be appreciated in person; the long, flat back deck and the forward and rear fins were dramatic, but it was the clear Plexiglas double-teardrop top that always turned heads whenever he drove it. It was both an icon of the age and of its problems: the Plexiglas roof acted like a greenhouse under the sun. Worse, it was designed to seal the passenger compartment so tightly that a microphone actually had to be mounted in the center of its “futuristic” circular radio antenna on the back deck so the driver could hear sounds coming from outside the car through a speaker placed behind and between the bucket seats. A safety feature made it so the bubble top could not be opened unless the automatic transmission was in park, which meant there was practically no ventilation inside the car. The air conditioner was always faulty and never quite kept up with the ant-under-a-magnifying-glass interior. Worse, the stylish exterior restricted airflow around the engine, constantly causing it to overheat. Still, such practical matters hardly impacted the thinking of Patrick Wayne; anyone could purchase a production Lincoln, but to spend a quarter of a million dollars on one of only two hand-built cars of the future? It was not simply transportation to the senior Wayne; it was a demonstration of power and wealth that could not be ignored. Giving it to his son provided more than a photo opportunity for the press; it was Patrick’s way of saddling his son with the responsibilities of being a Wayne and pushing his boy to acknowledge the superior and unquestioned authority of his father.
    Thomas had responded to his father’s most impractical gift by taking a screwdriver and a wrench to the unique concept car and removing the automated section of the roof. It improved the airflow considerably, he liked the convertible aspect it gave to the otherwise enormous car, and it simultaneously demonstrated, in Thomas’s small way, an act of defiance.
    This early morning, however, with the dawn just breaking over the ocean to the east, the long vehicle was a bit chill even for Thomas. He reached over to the left of the steering column—with its unique speedometer sitting inside the hub of the wheel—and pushed back the cover on the heat controls. They slid back into the console like a jet-aged rolltop desk. He adjusted the knobs to pour heat over the floorboard and glanced across the center console between the bucket seats to the form snoring softly on his right.
    Thomas reached forward, turning up the volume on the radio dial. The close-harmony male duet sang louder about the troubled reputation of two teenagers falling asleep at a drive-in movie.
    Thomas glanced once more at the voluptuous, makeup-smeared mess sprawled next to him that was Martha Kane.
    Her dark hair was piled over her face. Her lipstick was smeared, and her mascara had made her eyes reminiscent of a raccoon. She lay as she had been put into the car, Thomas doing his best to put her form into some semblance of a passenger and failing utterly. She was a restless sleeper, and it had been all he could manage to keep her arm inside the car while he closed the door.
    Thomas reached over casually, trying to push the hair out of her face as he drove. The wind whipping through the open top of the car, however, prevented any success in that either, and so he gave up. Martha would have to remain wild … as he had always known her.
    From the bridge, he turned right at the northern exit and followed the coast highway a short distance around Breaker’s Point before turning between the brick pillars that supported the gold-painted iron arch fixed with a single K in the center. He sped up the private road, a few rebellious leaves