The Exploding Detective (6 page)

“You’re very
observant, Miss…”

“Hemple. I would
have seen more but it was dark. And he knocked me down when I tried to get his
underpants off.”

“And you only saw
him that one time?”

“Yes. He doesn’t
come down this block anymore. He goes around it.”

So I had one lead
already. But I wasn’t sure I was going to bother to follow up on it. It didn’t
sound like the guy with the blue underwear was the guy I was looking for. Super
villains don’t usually let themselves be manhandled and stripped by old women
like that. It was nice to know somebody else wears underwear like mine though.

I spent the rest
of the afternoon checking around in one of the rougher areas of the industrial
district, to see if I could turn up anything useful there. I ended up learning
a lot: I learned that I should mind my own business, that I was asking for it,
that I didn’t seem to be getting the message, that if I didn’t think they meant
it I was sorely mistaken, and that the same thing would happen to me again if I
ever came back. It wasn’t the kind of information I was looking for exactly,
but at least I hadn’t wasted my day entirely. I’d picked up some useful tips.
Tips about me.

Then a crook who
owed me a favor – it was my confused testimony on the stand that had saved him
from the chair and gotten him elected Lt. Governor – told me that I should
check out a certain unlisted building on the South Side. He wouldn’t tell me
any more than that. Just said I should check it out. Then he went back to
ripping off the public and vomiting on our freedoms, like he had been elected
to do.

When I got to the
mysterious building he had mentioned, I found all the rooms and offices locked
and apparently empty, until I got to the penthouse. There was sinister music
coming from inside, so I opened the door and walked in.

I was immediately
intercepted by a white haired impeccably dressed old gentleman.

“Good afternoon,
sir,” he said. “May I have today’s password, please?”

“I don’t think I
know today’s password,” I replied. “Yesterday’s either.”

He nodded amiably
as if I had said the right thing, but began loading a small silver pistol. “I’d
have a stab at it, if I were you, sir.”

“Shoehorn.”

“Very good, sir.
Come right in.”

I tried not to
look as surprised as I was. I followed him into the room.

“You don’t have
to keep saying ‘shoehorn,’ sir,” he told me as he hung up my coat. “Once is
sufficient.”

The main room was
like one of those Gentlemen’s Clubs you read about in long novels. High backed
chairs, thick rugs, antique weapons and sporting prints on the walls, small
discrete signs that said “No Loud Talking” and “No Pepper,” and so on. All very
traditional.

What was
untraditional about this particular club was its members. The snatches of
conversation I heard as I walked through the room told me exactly where I was.

“Where young
super villains go wrong,” one was saying, “is they kill everybody. You’ve got
to leave somebody alive to pay you.”

Another was
reliving an old battle from his past. “An entire army against me and all I had
was my weather machine and my lust for gold.”

“What did you
do?”

“I kicked their
ass, that’s what I did.”

“Gosh!”

“You’ve fallen
into my trap!” giggled one of the younger members, as he wrestled with his
neighbor.

“No, no, you’ve
fallen into my trap!”

Another had a
handful of maps and charts he was showing to the man next to him. “So after I
make it snow, you make time stop moving.”

“Gotcha.”

“With everybody
stopped and wet, we can make our move.”

“Oh boy!”

They were all
super villains. I was in the Super Villain Club.

I made the rounds,
shaking hands with the various members and telling them “shoehorn.” They asked
if I was a new super villain in town, as they had not seen me around before. I
said I was new to the club, but not to the business. I had conquered the planet
once already, when I was younger. That raised me in their estimation. Not many
of them had done that.

I sat down next
to one of the older members, who was snoozing in a leather chair by the fire.
His legs were moving, as if he were dreaming he was running away from good
people. I coughed discretely to attract his attention, which unfortunately set
off a fit of severe coughing that made all of my guns fall out of my pockets.
This attracted everyone else’s attention except his, so I moved away to talk to
someone else.

I saw what
appeared to be the Devil sitting in the corner of the room looking bored and
flipping souls into a hat. They made an “oh woe!” sound as they flew through
the air. I went up to him.

“Devil, eh?” I
said, a little uneasily. “Do I get three wishes now? I forget how it works.”

“You’ve got me
confused with someone else.”

I nodded. “I do
that a lot.” I watched him flip a few more souls into the hat.

He lit a
cigarette with his breath and looked me over as he puffed.

“You’re a
detective, aren’t you?”

I couldn’t admit
that, of course. I was here incognito. “Yes, I’m a detective,” I heard myself
saying. “And a rotten one I am, too.”

“How would you
like to be the greatest detective in the world? To be able to solve the most
complicated crime in seconds, run like the wind, and shoot like Aaron Burr?
Would you like that, Frank?”

“Hell, yes. Wait
a minute, though. Is there some catch?”

“You would be
required to do some small services for me - talking people into being bad,
badmouthing organized religion, collecting a few stray souls for me - just
small things. The rest we can discuss after you’re dead.”

“Now you really
sound like the Devil.”

“Sounding like
the Devil is not the same as being the Devil. Not in this state, anyway. Read
the law books if you don’t believe me. I’m just an ordinary super villain, like
everyone else. I am not the Devil.”

“Oh no, of course
not,” I said. “Anybody can make me run faster.”

I thanked him for
the offer, but said I guessed I’d pass on it for now. He shrugged, lit another
cigarette, and opened his pocketbook to examine the wailing moth-like creatures
he had in there. I recognized one of them. It was my Uncle Phil.

“Hi, Uncle Phil.”

“Hello, Frank.
Would you like to make a nickel? Get your Uncle Phillip out of here and he’ll
give you a shiny new nickel.”

I turned to the
Devil. “Does he have any money in there? Nickels or anything?”

“No.”

That settled
that. I continued around the room talking with the various super villains,
always making it sound like I was a new member who was just making
conversation.

“Have you been
trying to kill me?” I would ask, casually. “I’m just curious. Or we could talk
about the weather, if you like. The weather’s been trying to kill me too. Is
that your doing? My name’s Frank, by the way.”

All of them denied
being the man I was looking for, but suggested it might be one of the other
members: Professor Kryptonite over there, or Colonel Awful, perhaps.

I excitedly
checked out each new lead, but kept coming up empty. Finally, when I started
being pointed back to the same people I’d already talked to, I gave it up and
started to leave.

The aged
doorkeeper helped me on with my coat and said he couldn’t help overhearing the
question I’d been asking, since I had asked it so many times and with such
growing anger, and he hoped I wouldn’t mind him taking the liberty of sticking
in his two cents, but the person I was looking for might be Overkill.

“Who?”

“Professor
Overkill.”

I looked back
into the room. “Which one is he?”

The doorman shook
his head ruefully and explained that Overkill wasn’t a member of the club. He
had been denied membership on numerous occasions.

“The members
don’t agree with his methods, sir. They feel he tends to overdo things. They
feel his work is too broad. So his many applications have been rejected.”

I asked where I
might find this Overkill, pressing some money into his aged hand to help him
remember.

“His application
forms state his residence as Revenge Island, sir,” he said, throwing the
quarter away. “That’s right out in the middle of the lake. The island that
appears to be frowning.”

I thanked him and
asked if there was a special word I had to say to get out of there. He said
there wasn’t, so I left.

I spent the next
few days trying to get to Revenge Island. It was easy to find. It was the only
angry looking island in the lake. But it was impossible to get to.

There were no
boats for hire, so I tried swimming there, but remembered after I had gone 50
feet, straight down, and had been lying face down on the bottom for awhile,
that I couldn’t swim.

My jet pack could
have gotten me to the island easily enough, of course, but I couldn’t approach
the super villain that way. It would look like The Flying Detective was coming
to get him and wring his filthy neck. That was the last thing I wanted him to
think. So that was out.

I tried
chartering a plane, but apparently the super villain was one step ahead of me.
Once the plane got up in the air, it started buffeting around violently and
then went into a dive. I worked my way forward to the cockpit. The pilot was
gone. I couldn’t figure out the controls, didn’t even know where to start, so I
went back to my seat and read a magazine until the plane crashed.

After doctors
took the casts off my legs, and worked the tubes out of my nose, and hammered
my rear end back into shape, I tried mailing myself to the island in a package.
I had a buddy who worked down at the post office help me with the operation.
But I wouldn’t pop for first class postage, so I had to go junk mail. I got to
the island before the end of the month, but they tossed me out unopened. I was
in a garbage can for almost a week before a truck picked me up.

All these
attempts were made more difficult because I had to constantly keep my eye out
for the super villain’s minions. They were still out looking for me, as
determinedly as before, but, to my relief, there had recently been a change in
tactics. Now they weren’t trying to kill me, they were just trying to capture
me. I guess once you’ve tried to kill somebody 138 times and he’s still not dead,
it’s time to try something else.

So now all the
time I was trying to find a way onto the island, I had to avoid a series of
clever Rube Goldbergian traps. Remember that game “Mouse Trap”? It’s like I was
living in one of those. The Deluxe Version. I’d start to open a door, for
example, and the minute I turned the knob, the door would swing up and
everything around me would start moving, and baskets would start being lowered
onto me to trap me. I’d have to drop the cheese and make a run for it.

Fortunately, the
traps were all a little too clever. They seemed to be designed to trap a
mastermind. I wasn’t a mastermind. I just wanted that piece of cheese. So they
didn’t work on me.

Then it suddenly
occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t be trying so hard to avoid the people who
were trying to capture me and take me to where I wanted to go. That didn’t make
much sense, when I thought about it. If I would just let them capture me, it
would help everybody out. We could all stop working so hard.

I tied myself up
in a gunny sack, and left me in the middle of the street. Nothing happened, so
I wrote “Burly” on the sack and got back in.

After a couple of
days, the super villain’s creatures spotted me. They walked up to the sack,
read what it said, looked at each other, shrugged, then picked me up. I offered
no resistance.

They began
carrying me off, but I weigh more than I look, so they ended up, as so many
people do, dragging me. They took me on a long, circuitous journey. I don’t
think I’ve ever said “Are we there yet?” so many times in my life. Eventually
we got to a high cliff face. They began to climb, pulling me along behind them
on a rope.

“What happens if
we fall?” I asked, nervously.

“What do you
think happens?”

“I’d rather hear
it from you.”

“Quiet in the
sack,” said the leader.

I’d swear that
during our journey we went up that same cliff at least twice more. But I can’t
be sure. I tried to leave a trail of bread crumbs, but the crumbs just stayed
in the sack with me.

Finally we ended
up at the 1
^st
Avenue Pier,
which isn’t very far from where they had originally picked me up.

While we were
waiting for the launch from the island to come get us, I asked why we had spent
all that time going up all those cliffs and jumping over those secret chasms.
Why hadn’t we just taken the bus here like I always did? They said because they
don’t do things that way, that’s why.

When we got to
the island, my captors dragged me off the boat, across a couple acres of lawn,
up and down a flight of stone steps a few times, then emptied me out into a
dungeon.

“How long do I
have to stay here?”

“Forever.”

“No, seriously,
how long are we talking about?”

They
didn’t answer.

I demanded to see
the super villain who owned the island. I insisted that I be taken to him immediately.

“You’re not
running this dungeon,” said one of the guards.

“Wait a minute,
Bob,” said one of the other guards, as the first guard was slapping me silly.
“Maybe we better check.”

They went away
and came back fifteen minutes later. “You’re not running this dungeon,” they
said, and resumed slapping me.

Between slaps, I
told them that I really needed to talk to their master. It was important. They
explained to me that Mr. Overkill didn’t talk to prisoners. He had more
interesting people to talk to. Guards, for example.