The Exploding Detective (11 page)

I didn’t have him
thrown in the dungeon. I’d seen enough Fred Foster Secret Agent movies to know
that a super villain, which is what I was now, I guess, was supposed to treat
enemy agents like honored guests. Give them a fancy room, let them hobnob with
your beautiful women, and get a good long look at all your defenses and secret
plans. I didn’t know why this was so - it made more sense to just kill them, or
at least lock them up - but this was the way it was supposed to be done, so I
did it that way. For awhile, anyway.

As a house guest,
Foster left a lot to be desired. I’d have him for dinner to exchange witticisms
and clever barbs, for example, and he’d either pass out mid-barb, or suddenly
leap at me, knocking me and my babes over, and then start pounding on us with
his fists.

He kept trying to
get me to tell him my plan so he could foil it and get his reputation back. I
kept telling him I didn’t have a plan, and didn’t care about his stupid
reputation anyway, but that just seemed to make him surly. He’d drink some more
and tell me I was insane, but I usually couldn’t understand most of what he was
saying because his mouth was so far down in his drink. I’d mostly just hear a
bunch of bubbles.

His presence in
the fortress got more annoying every day. He kept opening, and answering, all
my mail before I could get to it, stealing diagrams of my defenses that I
needed to show to repairmen, and keeping me awake half the night, every night,
telling me I was nuts. He was the one who was nuts, if you ask me.

I could have
killed him, I suppose, but he seemed so pathetic it didn’t seem sporting. Plus,
he might be an insurance policy I could cash in later. And, I almost forgot,
killing is wrong.

But after he had
jauntily tossed himself onto my hat rack for the twentieth time, and I had to
once again stop what I was doing to get him down, I decided I’d had enough of
the guy. I locked him up in the dungeon with the detectives. It wasn’t the way
you were supposed to treat secret agents, I knew I would probably get letters
about it, but at that point I just didn’t care.

Even locked in a
dungeon he found ways to cause me trouble. He insulted one of my guards so much
the guard quit and went to work for some other maniac. And after I had finally
gotten the detectives calmed down into a nice sullen silence by putting a
television in there, Foster got them all riled up again by changing the
channels too much. After a couple of near riots, which caused $150 worth of
damage to my dungeon door, I finally had them all chained up. And I put double
chains on Foster.

Well I don’t know
how you can fall out of a dungeon, but I guess if you’re drunk enough you can
do it. Foster did it. Suddenly he was just out, staggering across the island,
and into the water. He struggled his way out of the water and flew in a
hang-glider across the island and into the water on the other side. Then he
went by again, this time on the hood of a runaway Aston Martin. Finally he
began bouncing grimly towards the fortress on a pogo stick. I don’t know where
these secret agents get all their gadgets from at a moment’s notice. If I wanted
to fly around in a hang-glider or bounce on a pogo stick at somebody, I’d have
to go downtown and buy those things, then wait for them to be delivered to my
home. Secret agents just suddenly have them. How do you beat somebody like
that?

Before my guards
could get to Foster he had bounced into the island’s power station. A few
moments later he re-emerged and started speaking into a microphone he had
apparently secreted away in a false back to his head. I didn’t like this. I
didn’t know who he was talking to, but he seemed a little too sober all of a
sudden.

My alert guards
rushed up and grabbed him, tearing off the back of his head and dashing it to
the ground. I signaled them to bring him to me.

“Too bad,
Overkill,” he smirked as he was thrown down in front of me. I was surprised to
note that, for the first time since I had met him, he wasn’t slurring his
words. He had obviously dried out partially in the dungeon. “Your operation is
finished.”

“I’m still not
Overkill,” I reminded him. “And what do you mean my operation is finished?”

As if in answer,
the lights suddenly went out all over the island.

“I’ve killed your
island, Overkill. It’s dead. Your power plant, your cloaking device, and your
laser cannons. They’re all out of commission. And I’ve jammed your invisible
shield so it can’t be closed. There’ll be a government fleet here in a few
minutes, and they’ll be able to walk right in with nothing to stop them. When
they do, I’ll be handing you over to them personally.”

He pulled a
cigarette lighter out of his pocket and snapped it open. It quickly transformed
into a miniature machine gun. He had it pointed at himself instead of me, but
it was still a dangerous situation. Guns can be turned around. I had to think
fast.

“Have
a drink?” I asked.

Once he had
accepted the first martini, it didn’t take long to get Foster successfully
re-inebriated and safely locked back up in the dungeon. I put a half dozen
chains on him this time, as well as a granite slab and a small guard. Then I
took a moment to consider my situation. It didn’t look good.

If I had really
been Overkill, I probably wouldn’t have been worried about a government attack.
I’m sure a real super villain would have known exactly what to do - who to
kill, what cities to target for annihilation, what threats to yell over a
bullhorn, and so on. I didn’t know any of that stuff. So I figured I’d better
pack.

Before I could
get the first Rembrandt smooshed down into a suitcase, the fortress began to
shake and plaster started falling from the ceiling. I ran to the nearest window
and looked out. The island was being pounded from all sides by federal gunboats
and police cruisers. They were really socking it to me. Even worse, almost
every shot was blowing up something I had just gotten repaired at great
expense. It would take weeks to get repairmen out here to fix them again. I
found myself muttering kill maim frighten destroy under my breath.

I used a
signaling device to contact the fleet and let them know that there was no need
for all the fireworks. I told them I wasn’t Overkill, and anyway I was
quitting. They responded that I certainly was quitting. “Quitting to prison.” I
signaled back that they should get some new writers.

The shelling
increased. I kept signaling frantically and with growing incoherence,
suggesting a truce, a peace conference, an armistice, every euphemism for
surrender I could think of. I even, in my desperation, advanced the idea that
maybe if the U.S. government’s theme song were combined with mine into one beautiful
song, then maybe we could be friends. Or maybe if I married the government’s
daughter, it would unite the two warring sides forever more. They ignored these
signals, and by this point I wasn’t paying much attention to them either. When
I noticed that I was signaling that the attacking ships should go screw
themselves, I stopped signaling entirely. Those kinds of signals don’t solve
anything. They just make things worse.

Since they didn’t
want to talk, and there was nowhere for me to run, it looked like I was going
to have to fight. Fortunately, I had thousands of Unholy Army men at my
disposal.

After a brief
strategy conference with Napoleon #47 and U.S. Grant #6, I ordered my fighting
forces out into battle, for the glory of good old Unhappy Island, or whatever
the hell it was called.

This is when I
found out that I was supposed to be regularly maintaining my troops. The ones
that ran on batteries shuffled out of the fortress to do battle, rather than
charge. And many of them just stood there and made clicking sounds. Some of the
steam powered ones had clogged pipes and blew up when they were switched on. A
great many of the wind-up ones had misplaced their keys, and lied to me about
it, saying they had never been issued keys. And I lost track of how many vital
rubber bands had snapped through neglect.

I could see why
Overkill had wanted to get those advanced fighters from the future. They were
self-maintaining, and… you might think me dense, but it wasn’t until I was
thinking about this that I remembered The Time Nozzle, and the future fighters
waiting to be transported to the island.

I raced into the
laboratory where The Time Nozzle was located and turned it on. Overkill had
told me that the machine was already set to receive a half million fully armed
fighters as soon as he agreed to the health and pension benefits the fighters
were demanding, so I looked around for an “I agree” button on the console. This
was no time for economy. I’d screw them out of their pensions later. I couldn’t
find a button that said “I agree,” so I just started hitting every button in
sight that had an agreeable look to it.

Nothing happened.
Fortunately, I know how to handle balky machines. First you say “Aw, come on!”
then you bang on the controls, then you throw small objects at the machine,
then you give it a good swift kick in the slats. Then the machine is repaired.

I had to hurry
though. The government troops had landed and were making rapid progress across
my lawn. So I banged on the controls furiously, then started throwing things
into The Time Nozzle to see if that would get things moving. I threw coffee
mugs, staplers, ashtrays, and some books from Overkill’s collection of first
editions: “A Clockwork Orange,” Orwell’s “1984,” and “The Life of Lincoln.”
They were all pretty valuable, I guess, but I didn’t have time to count the
cost. I needed to get that machine going. Unfortunately, nothing happened.

I heard the
sounds of battle move inside the fortress itself, past my scandalized butler,
and up the stairs. Now I really didn’t have much time.

I kicked at the
entrance to The Time Nozzle, but that didn’t do anything. So I raced into its
spirally interior. There didn’t seem to be any machinery I could kick in there,
but those stripes looked like they might be the problem, so I started fiercely
kicking them.

Suddenly the door
to the laboratory burst open and Fred Foster came roaring in. He spotted me in
the middle of The Time Nozzle and charged in after me.

As we were
wrestling around on the floor of the machine, one of us must have accidentally
kicked the right stripe, because all of a sudden thousands of eight foot tall
fully armored fighters from the future began streaming through the tunnel past
us - the rockets on their shoulders gleaming, their ten inch metal fangs bared,
and their fierce faces wearing the contented looks of death machines who knew
they had medical insurance they could count on. I guess one of those buttons I
had hit on the console must have been the “I accept” button I was looking for
after all. I was delighted. My elite troops were here! Now I could fight back
against the world that had been causing me so much trouble! Kill Maim Frighten
Destroy!

As the last of
the troops hurtled by, Foster and I began to be pulled slowly in the other
direction, farther into The Time Nozzle. I tried to get up and get out of
there, but Foster continued to grapple with me drunkenly and wouldn’t let go,
reminding me all the time that I was insane, that my plan would never work, and
that I was mad.

Our
speed through the tunnel increased and then suddenly we were pinwheeling around
against a weird colored background, still fighting. Finally we disappeared with
a couple of angry pops.

I shot out of the
end of what seemed like a big sewer pipe. A moment later Foster shot out of the
same pipe and began drunkenly grappling with me.

“You’re mad,
Overkill,” he said, as he slugged away clumsily at me, somehow, in his
struggles, managing to step on his own face, and kick two of his own teeth out.

I threw him off
of me and kicked him in the back of the head for luck just as a police officer
hurried up.

“Here! What’s
going on?” He demanded. “Stop that, you two!”

I looked the
policeman over. There was something odd about him. I didn’t know what it was at
first, then I realized it was that Lincoln beard of his. Hardly regulation, I
thought. Oh well. I’m not running the department.

I pointed at
Foster. “There he is, officer.”

“Who?”

“The guy who’s
been causing all the trouble around here.”

The policemen
picked up Foster by the collar. “Are you the one?”

Foster stopped
singing and eyed the policeman, then told him his plan would never work.

“Right,” said the
policeman grimly. He began roughly dragging Foster off, telling him he was
taking him to jail, and no, they wouldn’t be stopping at a liquor store on the
way, and it didn’t matter who was buying.

With Foster out
of the way, I took a moment to assess my situation. I didn’t know where I was,
as usual, but wherever I was it had to be better than the place I’d just left.
It just had to be. I made sure nobody could follow me by kicking the end of The
Time Nozzle to pieces. I knew I’d never regret doing that. Kicking things to
pieces is the kind of thing you never regret. (But see Chapter Sixteen!)

I started walking
towards what looked like the center of town. Judging from the streamlined
office buildings and the tramps with fins on them, I figured I must be at some
point in the future. The past didn’t have any streamlined buildings that I
could recall. And the buildings I remembered as being new in the early 21
^st
century were now quite dilapidated, and
full of finned tramps.

Another tip-off
that I had passed into the future was the strange kind of outfits everybody was
wearing. They looked like something out of “A Clockwork Orange,” except with
Lincoln style hats and beards. I also saw a flashing time and temperature sign
that said it was May 23, 2265, and a huge banner that said “Welcome To The
Future,” though on closer inspection I found out the banner was just part of an
ad campaign for salted nuts.