Lazy day to learn things

Kara woke to the message on her phone, she looked at it and went to sleep.

*

Alfred came in and opened the blinds. Kara pulled the covers over her head. Alfred reached up and thumbed the ear-rings on Kara and she woke as she fell over a meter to the bed.

“Classes were canceled today…” Kara groaned.

“I am well aware of that,” Alfred said, “However, two thirty in the afternoon is pushing it.”

“Ughhh,” Kara tried pulling her covers back over her head.

“Come on,” Alfred yanked the covers off Kara and walked out of the room.

“Damn it grandpa!”

“Uncle!” Alfred shouted back.

Kara struggled to get up and go shower.

*

Kara looked over the telecommunications gear in her cowl and held the cowl to look it into the mask. The silver domino mask stood out against the black horned bat-cowl.

“You’re a pretty bat,” Kara snickered before turning it back over and looked over gaskets of the lens, “You are getting a little loose however.”

Kara’s phone rang. Kara arched her eye brows as she looked over at the phone.

“Hay Kal,” Kara smiled, “Why did you called? Oh, yeah, I have my earrings turned on. How are you doing? Eh, it’s a riot in Gotham… In many ways it is easier than a normal night in Gotham, just break up the crowds. How is it going dealing with Lex’s BS? Oh, fun. What do you know about his attempts to get a contract with the Army for the Next Generation Machine Gun project? Ok, ah-ha… Any possible alternate sites you can think of that would crank out sub-par knock offs? What? OK, I’ll check my schedule. Love you cousin.”

Kara hung up the phone and looked at it. The sound of the car pulling up brought Kara to look back over at the car. She was mildly surprised to see Bruce was not alone getting out of the run down sedan. Her concerns were alleviated when she recognized Kate in her Tomboy outfit and wig.

“How did it go last night?” Bruce asked.

“I should ask you the same thing,” Kara smirked, “According to the Yard Birds, before Linda Danvers became the center of the fight that kicked off the shoot outs and riots… Nasty Luthor supplied Penguin’s goons with the machine guns used to attack Stromwell’s people…”

Bruce looked at Kara for a long second.

“What did Clark want?” Bruce asked.

“He invited me to have dinner with him and Lois…” Kara said.

“What did you tell him?” Bruce asked tapping his own ear.

“I said I had to check my schedule,” Kara shrugged, “I have a lot of commitments to uphold if I am to maintain the balance of being a rich party girl and an upstanding role model for Gotham.”

“It is so difficult being a flake and while being responsible,” Kate agreed.

Bruce walked over and tapped a switch. Kara shook her head and activated her earrings.

“Paranoid about Kal listening in?” Kara half asked and half accused as she put her pinky in her ear to deal with the residual ringing being inside the noise canceling field, “And I was entirely on the up and up with what I told Kal.”

“Ok,” Kate said, “What does he think Bruce has turned you against him?”

“Yes,” Kara and Bruce responded at the same time.

“Silly question,” Kate said, “Let’s see that security footage and see what clues it gives us.”

Bruce went over to the terminal and brought up the information on the main screen.

*

Regional medical center, Provence of Quebec, sometime in the year 2000…

A blonde man, maybe 6 foot one inches tall, clearly does a lot of exercising, rushed into the hospital and shouted something. A nurse and a clerk at the front desk say something back and the nurse calls around the corner. The man storms back out and then comes back in with a smaller woman, brown hair, maybe five foot six, but hunched over, clearly in labor with a massive belly. Two men come up with a wheel chair and help the woman get in a seat the nurse leads one man and the pregnant woman away while the second stops the blond man and moves him over to the receptionist’s desk. The man fills out some paperwork and is clearly concerned. Once he finishes the receptionist quickly enters it in and prints something out and the orderly takes the man with him further into the hospital…

*

“Looks fairly normal,” Kate said as the video cut off, “Canadian? They had French and then English signs.”

“Quebec, one of the regional hospitals,” Bruce confirmed.

“So why are we concerned?” Kara asked.

“Twelve hours later, Jean-Paul Valley Senior and Jean-Paul Valley Junior are gone,” Bruce made sure to pronounce the names in the French manor, “and the police find out that Anette Patricia Valley doesn’t exist.”

“I am pretty sure I saw a woman in that video,” Jason said as he put a hand on the terminal counter to lean and talk to the rest.

“Yes, the woman was real,” Bruce said, “The identity was fake. The insurance information was fake, the address given was fraudulent. At the time the story got a little bit of notice as a local mystery.”

“You are leaving something out,” Kate said.

“The woman initially called Anette Valley died in child birth,” Bruce said, “The Jane Doe was set to be buried in the local Catholic Church grounds… but then suddenly the Dioses flatly refused to have anything to do with the woman or the case and flatly condemned the woman.”

“That is one heck of a 180…” Kara noted.

“Eventually a group calling it’s self ‘The Charitable Order of Saint Dumas’ came in and claimed the body and interestingly flew it back to Paris to be interned,” Bruce said.

“Flown to Paris?” Kate asked.

“Yes, where the Charitable Order of Saint Dumas is headquartered,” Bruce said, “Or at least on paper they are.”

“Let me guess,” Jason said, “PO box address?”

“Condemned Nunnery Church that was burned out in World War 2,” Kate said looking up from her phone, “Thought that sounded familiar.”

Kate turned her phone around and there was a picture of Kate and another woman posing in front of a sign with a burned-out medieval stone building in the background. The Address and orders to stay out were clear on the sign even if it was in French.

“Still in private hands and not owned by the church surprisingly enough,” Kate said…

“So why are you interested in them?” Kara asked.

“I have a report that Senior is Azrael,” Bruce said.

“How credible is that report?” Jason asked.

“It comes from Phantasm,” Kate interjected.

“The drag-king killer?” Jason asked.

“Jason,” Alfred snipped as he walked out of the elevator.

“What else do we know about J-P senior and junior?” Kara asked looking at the information on the screen.

“Contact was made with Junior,” Bruce said.

“What?” Jason asked.

Bruce hit a key and brought up an application submitted to Wayne Enterprises. It was for an internship. It seemed Junior had moved to the US a while back and now was a US citizen. He had an immigration and Naturalization certificate in the packet of digitized files.

“You checked these against the Canadian records?” Kate asked already knowing the answer.

“It’s a match,” Bruce nodded.

“Geeky, but cute…” Kara noted.

“Keep it up and Babs will get jealous,” Jason snipped.

*

Kara walked up to the apartment building looking very shiny in her latex leggings and biker girl jacket outfit. She was using her powers to listen in on the conversations to gauge the public’s mood. She had helped out a local coffee shop by dropping a fifty dollar bill as payment and tip after hearing the manager in back getting told how much it would be to repair the window. However now she heard another conversation.

“Word is the Owls have passed judgement on the Falcons and the Germans. They are only endorsing the Rose family from now on,” a man said to another as they pretended to watch Kara’s ass.

“At least with the Falcons we could invest in something,” the other man said, “they maintained something close enough to respectable to be able to invest in…”

“Well the Owls think they are no longer able to sustain themselves or be able to keep the secrets…” the first man said before getting up.

Kara didn’t react but wondered what they meant by the owls. Kara reached out and touched the button on the call panel.

“Babs, it’s me,” Kara spoke into the call system.

“Hang on,” Babs’ distorted voice came back before the buzz signaled that it is unlocked.

*

Kara sat across from Babs as they talked looking over the notes.

“So yeah on my over there were two suits talking while staring at my butt,” Kara said, “They said ‘the owl passed judgement over the Falcons,’ and ‘not to invest in the falcons.’ Who are the Owls?”

“That is easy,” Babs said, “Owl’s Nest Securities. They are in Owls Court and the ones that footed the bill for the statue in the center of the court.”

“Ok,” Kara said.

“Yeah they were started by…” Barbara looked up and thought for a second, “Hay dad, who created Owl’s Nest Securities?”

The bedraggled Jim Gordon lurched into the kitchen.

“Colonel Milton ‘Bill’ Finger,” Jim said.

“Yeah,” Babs said, “Wasn’t he a World War 2 Vet?”

“He was a writer before the war, did propaganda in the army during the war,” Jim said, “Got out and was recalled for Korea. Then after he was released after Korea he came to Gotham and started the Owl’s Nest investment group. He was known as a friend of Doctor Bob Kane.”

“Ok,” Kara said taking a sip of her coffee, “Local celebrity?”

“Not that much, was one of the ‘goofs’ of the era before the flush of Gotham,” Jim said, “He died in seventy three… seventy four? Well it was in New York City. Think he had a heart attack while meeting some people from wallstreet. It is marked as one of the turning points in the fortunes of Gotham.”

“Ok,” Kara said, “A lot more than I expecting.”

“Why do you ask?” Jim asked.

“Kara got a tip for the investments class from Owls Nest and was wonder who they were,” Babs said.

“Ah,” Jim said, “What was the tip?”

“Ahh,” Kara said suddenly put under the spot light, “Don’t invest in Falcon.”

“Well that’s public knowledge,” Jim chucked, “All the family are putzs compared to the Roman. For a moment I was concerned about insider trading.”

“Insider trading?” Kara asked.

“I only know two things about Stocks,” Jim said, “Invest in Mutual Funds to spread your money out to as many companies as possible to protect you and Insider Trading is a crime.”

“What’s insider trading?” Kara asked keeping to the dumb blonde act.

“Barbara buys a bunch of stock in Wayne Tech, you come over and tell her about how some government body is snooping around Wayne Tech, so she sells her stock based on your insider information before the government files a lawsuit and she turns a profit instead of a loss for the sale of her stocks. That is the basic idea behind insider trading.”

“So I shouldn’t invest in Wayne Enterprises?” Kara said.

“Well if you sell them right before the stocks tank on bad news it will get very suspicious,” Jim said as he tried to find a coffee cup.

“Aren’t the Falcones all crooks?” Kara asked.

“Yes, but they have some publicly listed companies to make them seem legit,” Jim groaned.