Yes, I know, the What If...? series. I'm having trouble picking out issues, so I'm still open to suggestions in case you guys have any.
Okay, in the third edition of Daredevil Noir... The normal cover has DD busting up a guy with a pool cue — with a firing range target behind him. the variant, which I think is the better of the two, sees Daredevil lounging on a statue of Lady Justice... who has a bullseye painted on her forehead in red.
The Kingpin is smug upon hearing mention of Eliza. Moving on to another topic, he says that he had guessed Daredevil's identity and figured the murder of his father to be a sore spot for him. All he needed was a name. He quotes Archimedes (and theorizes that Daredevil's never even heard of him), saying "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it... and I shall move the world."
Flash back to the night of Battlin' Jack's murder. Matt narrates that he only saw the killer's face in shadow. The way he sees everything now. Except, that is... for Eliza. We see Eliza walking down the street at night, in the rain but without an umbrella, as boys play stickball and run errands. Matt profiles the other pedestrians pounding the pavement. From the tensing of his muscles, the irregularity of his heartbeat, and the pheromones in his sweat, he spots a sexual predator. We see all this from above, so Matt's probably "looking" out his window again. He goes on to identify a drunk and a crooked cop... but he can't get anything from Eliza. "What about that person who is perfectly one in mind and body? How do you know her?"
From the moment they first met, he'd wanted to be her guardian angel. But it was more than that. He had to know her. He'd fallen... blindly, for wont of a better word, in love with the idea of someone he couldn't know. We see now that Matt has been following her as Daredevil. No doubt he justifies this to himself as watching out for her or gathering clues or something. As he leaps from roof to roof, he thinks about how hard he went for her. "Thin ice over black water. I fell in. And the ice closed over my head." He sees Eliza walk into the Landmark, which as you'll recall is one of Fisk's establishments (and a real historic tavern in Hell's Kitchen!). He hears gunfire and a loud "BOOM!"
When he swings in to investigate, he finds everyone inside with knives and forks sticking out of them. Rasping lungs, slowing heartbeats... they're all dying. And no Eliza. Daredevil hears a guttural hiss from behind the bar, and finds the bartender with a corkscrew sticking out of his throat, who identifies the Bull's Eye Killer as the culprit here before dying. Daredevil narrates that this is the last straw as he bursts through the window and leaps into the night. He wonders if Halloran's made his move. Well, iff he has to take down every gin joint in the Kitchen, he'll find out. After his Super Window Jump, some cars start up and tail him. Soon he arrives at one of Halloran's places, the very one he had staked out at the beginning of issue #2. This, he narrates, is where the reconnaissance pays off.
He slips in through the fire escape and gets down to business by launching a wicked kick to one stooge's head. This place is full of Halloran's enforcers; "His knife-fighters, his leg-breakers. The ones who kill cops more often than they brush their teeth." Real tough guys. They aren't afraid of anything. Yet. The dead-enders pull out their gats. In narration, Daredevil complains about the sound of gunfire just as the enforcers open fire on him. He hates the smell of gunpowder. He's too fast, and they're too slow; the gun-toting baddies are on the floor in no time. He hates this, too. An older, heavier man stands up from the bar and tells Daredevil he's a dead man. One knock-down punch later, DD's sitting on his chest demanding to know where Halloran is. The guy tells him to go to Hell. Too bad; he already did. He starts up a Punctuated Pounding, reiterating his question. The pummeling gets more vicious with each blow, until he's got blood all over his gloves and mask. He thinks maybe this guy doesn't know. But someone will.
Next stop is a local pool hall. Daredevil narrates that he'll find them where they play, and as we can see, he has, with guys splayed all over the tables and on the ground. He asks one of the battered billiards enthusiasts about Halloran. He'll find them where they live, as he assaults several men in their own apartment building, asking once again, "Where's Halloran?" Where they pray, even. We see Matt in a confessional, where he asks the priest, "Where's Halloran?" The priest leaves the booth and turns off the light without answering. He'll get them where they hide... and one of them will tell him eventually. This last guy, who he found laying low in a dingy apartment and strangled with the wire connecting the sections of his club, apparently spilled the info he wanted, because the next morning Matt reports to Foggy that he knows where Halloran is, and that he has Eliza. He knows for sure the info he got is right. His sources wouldn't lie to him.
Matt leaves; he'd only dropped by to let Foggy know. Foggy says that a lot of people have been put in the hospital in the last 24 hours. He thinks Matt made his point, and has another job for him tomorrow if he's up to it. Matt says he's not quitting until this one's over with... until he has Eliza back. Foggy counters by saying he isn't so sure he ever had her in the first place. Matt just leaves, but notes in narration that Foggy has a point. He heads to the location given to him by that bum, a warehouse full of barrels, which are in turn full of liquor. He opens a door to find Halloran waiting for him, sitting at a table for dinner and surrounded by henchmen. Daredevil smells that sense of satisfaction. That hood who got off in the first issue had it, and Halloran has it right now. Halloran jokingly invites him to sit down for a bite to eat. All Daredevil can think about is the fact that this is the man who killed his father.
DD accuses him of telling the Kingpin that he iced Battlin' Jack on purpose, because he wanted to be the one to put him away. Halloran applauds Daredevil's deductive skills. Daredevil's tired of playing games, and just wants to get this over with. He wants to see what Halloran's going to throw at him. That's when he smells a familiar perfume and Eliza walks through the door with a "Hello, Matt." He tries to talk to her, tell her she's in danger, still ignoring the obvious conclusion even when it's staring him right in the face. "No one can lie to me.", he thinks. "But a poison truth..."
He'd been played from the start. Halloran killed his father. He told Fisk, who then told him. It doesn't matter if it's true, because if Fisk thought it was it would read as truth to Daredevil. And one of them sent Eliza to Foggy. He's not sure which one; who's smarter, Halloran or Fisk? "Thin ice over black water. I fell in." But that's not all. He starts to factor in the fact that Eliza can lie to him, Halloran cuts in to properly introduce her as his number one hitman — the Bull's Eye Killer. Daredevil tells Halloran that she's not on his side, that she's the Kingpin's girl. Halloran laughs at the suggestion, especially after the Landmark massacre. He asks Eliza if she can believe this. She tosses what looks like a knitting needle into his eye, killing him instantly. Yeah, she can believe it. She crouches down to inspect her kill and looks up at Daredevil. "They do say love is blind, don't they Matt?"
At the Kingpin's penthouse, the big man asks Daredevil a favor. He says there's a certain beauty in a plan well-executed, and to his chagrin he missed the most beautiful part of this little plot. With a wry smile on his face, he tells Daredevil that he'd like to know what it felt like? Daredevil's mask is obscured by the shade. He doesn't answer.
End of issue 3.
Sheesh, this was a short entry. Am I getting worse at this, or something?
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