The Exploding Detective (7 page)

“But I have
important information for him,” I explained.

“I’ll give it to
him,” said one of the guards, coming forward and holding out his hand.

“I need to give
it to him personally. It’s in my head.”

“Jeff, get a
knife. Something in this guy’s head.”

I suddenly didn’t
like where this was going. “Uh… wait a minute. I’ve forgotten it now.”

Jeff stopped in
front of me, holding the knife. He frowned. “Nothing in your head?”

“No.”

He shrugged and
put his knife away.

I decided I
needed to get the guards on my side somehow. Sometimes money does the trick. I
asked one of them how much he was making.

“$12.50 an hour,”
he replied.

I thought about
this, then shook my head. “Well, I can’t pay you that much. That’s ridiculous.
How about $7.00 an hour?” Then I added: “For three hours.”

This didn’t sound
all that good to him. He was having a hard time making ends meet on what he was
getting, especially since he had to buy his own keys. I wouldn’t raise my
offer, so we didn’t have a deal. The guards left, locking the door behind them.
So there went that idea.

I sat down with
my back against a wall and pondered my situation. It wasn’t perfect, being
imprisoned forever never is, but at least I was on the island.

After I’d been
sitting there for about an hour, I noticed there were about a dozen guys in the
dungeon with me. It was their loud discussion about how unobservant and ugly I
was that finally attracted my attention to them. I took one look at them and
was amazed. I was locked up with the most famous detectives in the world.

There was Phillip
Manley, the two-fisted film noir detective, who had spent his celebrated career
getting beaten up nearly as much as I did. We rubbed our eyes when we saw each
other.

Then there was
Sherringford Harper, the famous British amateur sleuth. He could tell you your
whole life story just by watching you go by in a train. He was like Sherlock
Holmes, except without all the trademarks. Anybody could write about him.
That’s what I liked about him.

The others in the
dungeon were equally celebrated. Among them were: the fattest detective in the
world, the thinnest detective, the loudest, and the farthest (he always stood
in the back of any room). A lot of them were heroes of mine, who had failed to
send me autographed 8X10s when I wrote and asked for them, so I admit I was a
little glad they were trapped in here. Serves them right, I thought. On the
other hand, hey, I’m in here too.

I asked them what
they were all doing here, and they said they had each been on the trail of the
dreaded super villain Overkill. But he had bested them one by one.

“He’s a devil,
that one,” said the thin detective.

I said I might
have met him then, and described my experience at the Super Villain Club. But
they said that was probably just the real Devil I met.

“How did he
capture you?” asked Harper. “I’ll bet it was something damned devilish.”

“He picked up the
sack I was in.”

They were a
little disappointed by this, at first. “Well, that’s pretty devilish,” said
one, finally.

“Devilishly
simple, I call it,” said another.

As clever as he
was, they still felt they would get the best of Overkill eventually. But they
would have to get out of here first. For this, they had a plan. Actually they
had twelve plans, each starring the detective who had thought of it, with the
others playing demeaning subordinate roles, often with burnt cork on their
faces. No plan had received more than one vote, so they decided to try them
all, starting with Harper’s.

He approached me
to sound me out on the subject. As the others watched the door for any sign of
approaching guards, he knelt down next to me and spoke in a low whisper.

“The safety,
indeed the whole future of the world, depends on what you do next.”

I tried not to
fart, but it was no use.

When we could
hear again, he resumed: “What you do next, is…”

After our ears
had stopped ringing and dogs in the next county had stopped barking from what
must have been the biggest fart of my career, he tried once more, using a
different setup line.

“Listen,” he
said.

As I farted
along, he began outlining their elaborate escape plan, but I stopped him before
he’d gotten very far. I wasn’t interested in getting off the island. I had gone
to a lot of trouble to get onto this island. I wasn’t going to leave until I’d
talked to Overkill. So they could escape if they wanted to, but it would have
to be without me.

“Even if you do
get out of this dungeon, how are you going to get off the island?” I asked.

Harper said they
had spent the last three months constructing a small sea-going vessel using the
only materials available to them.

I looked around
the dungeon. “You made a boat out of ants?”

He hesitated,
then said: “Yes.” He saw my look and bristled slightly. “Ants float, Mr. Burly.
They float beautifully.”

I shrugged and
said I wished them luck, but they could count me out. Harper stared at me for a
long moment, then nodded grimly and went back to the others. I had a feeling
I’d probably never get that autographed 8X10 now.

I woke up the
next morning to find that I was alone in the cell. The other detectives had
apparently escaped during the night. I saw my chance to get in good with
Overkill.

“Guards!” I
hollered. “The bad prisoners have escaped! The good prisoner is still here!”

The dungeon door
flew open and the guards rushed in. They frantically looked around the dungeon,
then rounded on me.

“What do you mean
by frightening us like that?” one of them demanded. “No one has escaped.” He
pointed at a drawing on the wall of twelve detectives, waving. “The prisoners
are right there!”

Well I don’t know
where the phrase “As smart as a guard” came from, but it wasn’t coined to
describe these particular guards. It took me twenty minutes to convince them
that the real prisoners had escaped, which I finally did by erasing one of the
detectives. You should have seen the guards’ jaws drop when I did that. That’s
the first time I ever saw actual exclamation points and question marks appear
above somebody’s head. (In case you’re interested, I felt one of the marks and
they’re made of hair.)

One reason it was
so hard to get the guards to believe there had been an escape was because they
knew it was impossible. The only way to escape from this dungeon was if the
guards stupidly left the door open. Which they had, of course, when they ran
in. And the door had remained open for twenty minutes while they argued with me
about who was still here and who wasn’t. It was at some point during this
argument, I found out later, that the detectives had rushed out of the dark
corner they had been hiding in and ran through the open door to freedom,
carrying their ant-boat.

I told the
stunned guards to inform Overkill that the escaped prisoners were probably
somewhere out on the lake. There might still be time to catch them. And I
recommended that he bring some ant spray.

Within an hour
the detectives had been caught and returned to captivity. They had made it to
about halfway across the lake before seagulls started eating their boat. The
super villain’s security force had re-captured them just before they sank.

“Thanks, Burly,”
said Manley, as the detectives were brought back to the dungeon.

“You are quite
welcome.”

“I was being
sarcastic.”

“Uh… oh, yeah… so
was I.”

The head guard
arrived and glared at the detectives. “So! You try to make me look bad, eh?” He
turned to one of the other guards. “Put these guys in an even worse dungeon.”

“But, boss...”

“Do it.” He
turned to me. “You, come with me.”

To my amazement
he led me through the cell door, up the stairs, and across the lawn towards the
huge fortress in the center of the island.

“Where are you
taking me?”

“Dinner.”

“Welcome, Mr.
Burly! Welcome! At last we meet. Sit down and have some wine. Dinner will be
served shortly.”

I sat down at the
end of a long table and looked at my host, the dangerous super villain
Overkill. He was considerably smaller in real life than he was in my
imagination. Instead of being forty feet high with jackhammers for fingers, he
was about five foot four, with standard fingers. He was fiftyish and somewhat
pudgy. He didn’t seem all that dangerous up close.

I noticed he was
studying me as carefully as I was studying him. I also noticed he had a large
gun on the table next to his wine glass. The guards had their guns out too. And
there were framed guns on the wall, cocked and pointed at me. This guy wasn’t
taking any chances.

Nobody had said
anything for awhile, so I thought it advisable to make some small talk.

“I hear they
won’t let you in the Super Villain Club.”

His face twisted
horribly. He grabbed the top of his head and began shouting: “Kill Maim
Frighten Destroy!”

He began smashing
plates and glasses, tipped over a nearby serving cart, then pulled up a large
stretch of carpet. Then he seemed to get hold of himself. He coughed self
consciously.

“Yes, well, I
didn’t really want to be a member anyway. Bunch of nonsense, kill destroy. Now,
Mr. Burly, I wanted to meet you, because I’m intrigued by your recent actions.
Not only did you not take part in the escape attempt by the other prisoners,
you actually helped foil it. Why?”

“I wanted to talk
to you. I hoped you would see me if I helped you out.”

“Very well. I’ve
seen you. What’s on your mind?”

I explained that
for quite some time now he had been getting entirely the wrong impression about
me. That I was out to foil his plans or something. Few things could be farther
from the truth. Or further from the truth, I wasn’t sure which. Overkill didn’t
know which one it was either. We decided it didn’t matter. I said that though I
had originally been hired to stop him, I was now happily retired. So there was
no need for him to view me as an enemy. I wouldn’t harm a fly. I wasn’t the
enemy of a fly.

“I find this
difficult to believe, Mr. Flying Detective. You broke up one of my robberies
just last week. You captured one of my generals. I have a picture of you with
your foot in his mouth.”

I said it was an
accident. In fact, all of the robberies I’d ever broken up were accidents. I
was never trying to foil any crimes at all. I was just trying to screw the city
out of $1,500 a week. I explained my insurance company metaphor to him.

He studied me for
awhile, then picked up the large gun next to his wine glass, and replaced it
with a slightly smaller gun. He was beginning to trust me.

I noticed he had
a picture of me on the wall. I asked what it was for.

“Ever since you
started meddling in my affairs, I’ve been studying your picture to try to get
inside your mind, to figure out what makes you tick, so I could find a way to
defeat you.”

This was
interesting to me. “What did the pictures tell you?”

“Well, at first
they told me: ‘Hey, this guy is stupid,’ but I knew that couldn’t be. So I got
a different picture of you. A side view, of you looking at something off
camera. That picture gave me a different insight. I looked at that and thought:
‘Hey, this guy sees all.’”

“I’d like to get
a copy of that 2
^nd
picture.”

“I’ll have one
sent to your dungeon.”

“Thanks.”

As the dinner
progressed, Overkill became more and more convinced that he had been mistaken
about me. The gun next to his plate kept getting smaller and smaller until
finally it was replaced by a big knife.

“This is
pleasant, getting together like this, don’t you think?” asked Overkill.

“Very enjoyable.”

“We must do this
every couple of years. You’ll join me for dinner, we’ll talk, then, it’s back
in the hole.”

“Count me in.”

“Friends do dine
with each other on occasion. And I want us to be friends.”

“As do I.”

“Friends do
things for each other, too. I’d like to demonstrate my friendship for you,
Frank. For example, do you like your guard?”

“Well, not
really. He’s poking me in the back with his bayonet. He’s been doing it all
through dinner. It’s probably going to leave a mark.”

Overkill turned
to one of his men and pointed at my guard. “Kill him!”

The guard was
struck down and quietly dragged away. Overkill looked at me. There was only one
thing to say at that point and I said it: “Hey, thanks.”

We went on with
our dinner. The food was good, but it seemed kind of ordinary for a super
villain’s table. I mentioned this in my tactful way, and he looked
uncomfortable.

“Yes, I suppose
the food should be more exotic for a man in my position. Elephant eggs, or
talking caviar or something. I’m kind of new at this - don’t really know all
the ins and outs yet. But don’t tell anybody.”

“You told
somebody.”

“Yes, but I don’t
want you to.”

“That doesn’t
seem fair to me. I want to tell somebody.”

“No.”

“Oh all right.
New at this, eh? How long have you been a super villain?”

“Eleven months.
But what I lack in experience I make up for in perseverance, stick-to-it-iveness
and get-up-and-go.”

“I’m not trying
to hire you. I just wanted to know.”

“Eleven months.”

He told me his
story. He hadn’t started out life as a super villain. He was a toy
manufacturer. The president of the Overmyer Toy Company of Flint, Michigan. He
asked if I’d heard of it. I said it was my favorite.