You wanna know who the Black Bat is?

The police were wondering the same thing.

"Did you write this?" they asked, holding out the letter.

The Black Bat sat in the back of the school bus when an idea came to him. The idea was a good one, in the way ideas seem good when no one is asked if they’re any good at all.

The idea required a random house with a random address, and so he looked out the window and randomly chose one as the bus passed by.

The Black Bat wasn't the Black Bat just yet, but he would be very soon.

A few years earlier, the Black Bat and his older brother were staying in a hotel room. They had room service and the TV while their parents had dinner and socialized with friends downstairs.

The hotel phone rang.

“Are you . . .” Heavy breathing, in fits and starts. “. . . all alone?” the voice inquired.

The voice called back thirty minutes later. “What . . .” it moaned. “. . . are you doing?” The voice was muffled, like it spoke through a cereal box into the back of an oven.

Terrified, we dialed the front desk, which contacted hotel security, who found our parents. Everyone clustered in our hotel room: adults in evening clothes, us in our pajamas sitting on one of the queen beds.

The hotel security guard had on a tie. “Did they say their name?” he asked us, as if he was playing Clue.

“Did you recognize the voice?”

My parents' friends lingered in the hallway. Then the man leaned into the room and, laughing, said it was him - he was the one who was calling.

Just a little prank, some fun with friends, sneaking off to make phone calls from the lobby phone in between dinner courses.

Well everyone thought that just a hoot - even hotel security, who liked a good ribbing as much as any, but don't let it happen again, okay?

The man extended my brother and me handshakes and head pats before everyone left and we locked the hotel room door, which is what precipitated the Black Bat arriving.

Just a prank. Something funny.

The Black Bat tore a sheet from his school notebook. On it, the Black Bat wrote a letter in pencil. It said:

“In Two weeks you will be Dead by \\\\scratched erase mark\\\\ a Dagger or shotgun.”

Then a fat, crude arrow: “Dagger.”

A handgun with an extra-long barrel: “Shotgun.”

"Ha Ha" and then, below, a signature:

"The Black Bat"

In the morning, the Black Bat mailed it to the address.

A few days later, the police arrived.

He's just a boy, they said.

At the bus stop, years later, the Black Bat waited impatiently. A car passed, then pulled over. A man in a beige suit got out, walking slowly, carefully. He opened his trunk and began rummaging around.

The Black Bat ran home: "There was a man taking my picture at the bus stop."

"Did you get a good look at him?"

"Can you describe him?"

The police were called, who scratched on their notepads. The Black Bat said the man took his picture, but maybe he wasn't so sure.

But he didn't admit that to them.

And they never asked if he was the Black Bat either.