The Exploding Detective (10 page)

They let me off
at the 1
^st
Avenue Pier and
asked if they should wait for me. Or maybe follow me. I told them that wasn’t
necessary, to go back home. I would tell Overkill what a fine job they had
done, and recommend them all for important promotions. They saluted again and
pushed off back to the island.

I don’t think
I’ve ever run so fast as I did for the first half a block. Then I don’t think
I’ve ever laid down on the sidewalk for so long. I decided to walk the rest of
the way home at a more leisurely pace.

For the next few
days I was a little jumpy. I kept expecting someone to come looking for me. But
no one did. This surprised me, because usually when you kill somebody, lots of
people come looking for you. They want to talk to you about what you did. But
that didn’t happen this time.

After awhile, I
started to relax. Then I started to get bored. Nothing was going on in the
city, crime-wise. Overkill had monopolized crime to such an extent that all of
the city’s original or “classic” criminals had either moved away or retired.
Now, with Overkill out of the picture too, there wasn’t much for a detective to
do.

I put small ads
in the paper that said I was “At Liberty,” but nothing happened. Except someone
finally put a small ad next to mine that said: “Good.”

I was hired
briefly to take pictures of a guy’s wife in a compromising situation with
another man. I got the pictures, but it turned out the guy who hired me wasn’t
her husband, after all. He was just some guy who collected pictures like that.
The police were pretty understanding about the whole thing and I only spent a
month in jail.

Finally, just to
ease the boredom and get a little cash coming in, I looked up that guy I met at
the Super Villain Club who kept saying he wasn’t the Devil. He wasn’t at the
club, but I finally tracked him down. He had a house in a lake of fire, though
he said that didn’t prove anything. I told him I wouldn’t mind doing a little
part-time work for him on a free-lance basis, nothing permanent, if he had
anything he wanted me to do.

So that’s how I
found myself prowling the streets in my car late at night looking for souls and
trying to talk people into being bad. It wasn’t very difficult work. I’d see
people buying something in a store, for example, and point out they could save
a lot of money if they stole that object instead of buying it. It would
represent a 100% savings. A lot of people had never thought of that. After talking
to me, they put their money back in their pockets, along with a lot of other
stuff. Or I’d make some old guy a successful baseball player overnight, and
he’d ask how he could ever repay me, and I’d say funny you should mention that,
and start hauling out the burning contracts.

I felt good that
I was helping people out and getting business for my employer, and making a
little money for myself besides. But overall life was pretty dull for me now,
especially dull when I compared it to the kind of lifestyle Overkill had had.
That guy really had it made.

Thinking about
Overkill’s great life reminded me that I’d stolen his wallet. There hadn’t been
much money in it. Just a few bucks. Hardly worth desecrating his body for,
really. When am I going to learn? But I hadn’t bothered to look through the
rest of the wallet – all the little compartments and secret flaps. Maybe there
were some credit cards or IDs I could use. I could pretend I was him at a
store. Get some stuff for free. I started to look through the wallet with this
in mind, when a thought struck me. I looked at my hand. On it was the shiny
black ring I’d stolen from Overkill’s hand.

I suddenly
realized how I’d gotten off the island without being challenged. And why all
the creatures had called me Master. And why two of them had approached me
seeking raises in salary. Overkill’s ring was bigger and shinier than the
similar rings his creatures were wearing. This must be the Ring of Power. The
One Ring That Rules Them All. I told Overkill he read too much Tolkien, but he
wouldn’t listen to me.

If it was a Ring
of Power, that meant that as long as I wore it all of Overkill’s creatures
would treat me as if I was him. So I could, if I dared try it, take Overkill’s
place on the island, and live in luxury like he had been doing, happily ever
after, like he did. The more I thought about it, the more I began to think I
could pull it off. I knew it was wrong, but I also knew it would work. I knew
two things about it.

I was still
hesitating – it was a risky move. There’s a downside to doing anything that’s
really wrong – but then I got the afternoon mail. It contained a gas bill, a
jury summons, fourteen assorted other bills, and a letter from someone I’d
never met in my life saying I was an asshole. I guess he found my name on a
list of assholes or something. That decided it. I tossed the mail in the trash,
put on my hat, adjusted my Ring of Power, and headed back to the island.

When I stepped
off the boat, I held the Ring of Power up high so everybody could see it, and
walked cautiously across the lawn towards the fortress, ready to turn and run
for it at the first sign of opposition. A number of eyes turned my way, and
some teeth, but no one tried to stop me.

The guards I had
told to wait in Overkill’s laboratory were still there. Most of them were
asleep on their feet, but a couple were reading or exchanging anecdotes of the
“you think this is a long time to be standing here doing nothing? You should
have been around for Oktoberfest last year” variety. The moment I entered they
snapped to attention.

I hesitated. This
was the moment. “Are you still waiting for orders from me?” I asked.

“Yes, New Worried
Master.”

“Good. Uh… resume
your normal duties.”

They acknowledged
my order with something a little too close to a Nazi salute, for my money. I
didn’t know if they were being wise-guys or not, but I made a mental note to
change that salute to something a little less controversial. For the time being
I just returned the salute and said “sieg heil.”

I found
Overkill’s desk and looked through his papers, to see if I could get a better
idea of how this place worked, and what exactly his plans had been. He had told
me some of it, but I needed to know more if I was going to take his place. I
picked up a few stray bits of information, here and there. Overkill’s first
name was Orville, for example. But most of what I found I couldn’t understand.
There were sheets full of numbers, which can mean anything, of course, and maps
with countries circled and the word “Destroy” or “Use Plan 9” stamped on them,
and sheaves of legal papers that seemed to be trying to justify what he was
doing by claiming it fell under Section 3 of The Homestead Act. Finally I gave
up. I just didn’t get what it was all about. Oh, well. I’ve never really known how
the detective business works either, and that hasn’t stopped me. Just made me
bad at it.

I spent the rest
of the afternoon looking around my new home. It was an improvement over my one
bedroom house in Central City, I’ll say that for it. This place had everything.
All the comforts of home: moats, parapets, you name it. And everything was
huge.

The master
bedroom had a massive bed in it that Overkill said used to belong to the 7
^th
Cavalry. It had about a dozen beautiful
mechanical dames reclining on it, oiling each other. They asked if there was
anything I wanted, and I said there certainly was, and outlined my wants in
detail for them. They slapped my face, like all women do. But they looked
scared after they had done it. That was an improvement anyway. I decided I was
going to like being a super villain.

Everywhere I went
in the fortress I was confronted by anxious creatures who asked me what they
should do now. They needed more orders. I just told them to keep doing what
they were doing, and don’t bother the boss. They obeyed instantly, which is
what us bosses like. So I guess that’s how I ended up with all those weather
machines and bowling alleys. I had thousands of them.

When all the
detectives in the dungeon found out I was running things now, they demanded to
be let out. I started to let them out, with them saying come on, hurry up
stupid, pointing out that they didn’t have all day, when I suddenly decided
maybe they had better stay in there for awhile. I wasn’t completely sure which
side of the law I was on now. And I was starting to see Overkill’s point of
view. Maybe the world would be better off if it was controlled by one evil man,
instead of many. It was a thought worth thinking about, anyway. In the meantime
the detectives would be safe in the dungeon, I told them. No one could get them
there. They said that wasn’t the point. They weren’t worried about someone
getting them. They were… but I didn’t hear any more, because I had already
slammed the dungeon door.

They made several
attempts to escape from my clutches after that, using the only materials
available to them, but I stopped that by spraying ant poison around the outside
of the dungeon. That ant robot of theirs was stupid anyway.

I don’t believe
I’ve ever had a better time than I had over the next couple of weeks.

I roamed the
island wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Magellan’s helmet, smoking a big cigar,
with a can of imported beer in one hand and an unresponsive mechanical babe on
the other.

There were plenty
of things to do to keep yourself occupied. You could swim in the pool, make the
invisible shield go up and down, play tennis with Joan of Arc, make an example
of somebody, anything. And I did them all.

All good things
must come to an end, they say, because that’s the way this crappy world of ours
works. But I didn’t expect my good thing to end so soon. All of a sudden things
started to go wrong all over the island: dungeon leaks, laser cannons going
dead and needing to be recharged, parapet trouble, and so on. The usual
homeowner problems, but on a much grander scale. I found I was spending all
day, every day, making repairs and trying to get parapet repairmen and moat
cleaners from the mainland to show up when they said they were going to.

Then one day I
had to shut down the island’s cloaking device because it had started
malfunctioning and I couldn’t find my way to the bathroom or see myself in the
mirror anymore. I didn’t worry too much about it being off, because there was
no real need for it right now anyway. It’s not like I was hiding from anybody.
It’s not like there was anybody after me. It’s not like that.

That night I was
having dinner with some of my mechanical babes and the real Woodrow Wilson.
Overkill had brought him forward in time to make slipshod treaties with his
enemies that would look good on paper and then turn out to be crap, and he
hadn’t popped back to his own time period yet.

He was telling me
how he did too keep us out of war, he kept us out of war for months, and I was
telling him to shut-up and eat, when suddenly there was an earsplitting crash
and glass shattered onto the table from the skylight. The glass was followed by
a drunken man in a shabby tuxedo. The man groaned for a moment, then struggled
into a crouching position in the chili and leveled a Luger at me.

“Hands
up, Overkill,” said the world famous British Secret Service Agent Fred Foster.

I had heard of
Fred Foster, of course. Everyone had. He was Britain’s most famous and
successful “double-oh” spy. So famous he wasn’t a very good spy anymore. It’s
almost impossible to sneak up on an enemy when you’re surrounded by screaming
fans and writers waving spec scripts. Try it.

And he wasn’t
much use as a spy anymore anyway, even without the fame. The fabulous Cold War
lifestyle he had led all those years had finally caught up with him. His liver
was shot – one drink and he would completely lose control of his motor
functions – and he couldn’t lay in wait successfully anymore because of his
smoker’s cough, (“I think the coughing is coming from behind this bush,
Alexei”). And his eyesight was starting to fail him, but he was too vain to
wear the giant clown glasses his eyes required.

Foreign agents
were well aware of all these faults, of course. They no longer feared Foster.
To them, he was just a joke. Eventually even the British Secret Service became
aware of his physical problems, when they captured some enemy jokebooks.

He was sent to
rehab several times, but it never did any good. He just came back drunker and a
bigger and funnier joke than before. And every time he was sent out on an
assignment, the British Empire got smaller.

Finally his
license to kill was suspended, and he stopped getting the plum assignments. To
his mortification, he watched younger agents with better functioning livers and
bladders getting all the glamorous assignments, while he was reduced to opening
the door of MI5 for them as they bowled off on their next action-filled
adventure.

I found out later
that he had begged as a personal favor from his old friend Z, who ran the
Secret Service now that the rest of the alphabet was dead, to give him one last
chance and let him handle the Overkill matter. That favor had been reluctantly
granted, and now here he was standing in my chili.

“I’m not
Overkill,” I said.

“Maybe not, but my
supervisor won’t know the difference. Hands in the air.”

I was aware of
his current reputation. I held my arms straight out from my sides like I was
welcoming my wandering boy home. “You mean like this?”

“No,” he said,
raising his hands high in the air, “like this.”

He overbalanced
badly and fell backwards onto the table where he instantly fell asleep in the
forks. I snapped my fingers and my guards picked him up and carried him away.