The Exploding Detective (8 page)

“Authenticity was
our trademark,” he said proudly. “All our toys and models were authentic down
to the last detail. Our toy police cars, for example, could actually arrest
people. They had that authority built in. That’s the kind of thing kids want,
you know. They don’t want a toy. They want the real thing, just on a smaller
scale. ‘The Real Thing, For The Price Of A Toy,’ was the slogan we had for all
our toys and models. That and ‘If You Truly Love Your Boy, Buy Him A
True-To-Life Overmyer Toy.’ I thought up the slogans as well as doing the
initial designs.”

“I just love
those slogans. And I’ll bet the initial designs were outstanding.”

“It pleases me
that you think so.” He beamed at me.

His products had
done so well, he told me, that the company had gone public and he had made
several billion dollars overnight. But that windfall proved to be his undoing.
Six months later when the newly installed board of directors of this now
publicly controlled company met for the first time, they forced him out in
favor of a younger man who could talk faster.

“So I was out at
52. Finished. I had enough money to do anything I wanted with the remainder of
my life, but what I wanted to do was run my toy company. And that had been
taken away from me. Kill, Maim, Frighten, Destroy!”

He paused in his
story to smash his end of the table to pieces with his fists, his head changing
shape with anger. After the moment had passed, he sat back down, patted his
head back into close to its original shape, and looked at me.

“You were
saying?” he asked.

“You were telling
me your back-story.”

“Oh, yes, that’s
right. So, anyway, I found myself sitting around the house all day, not knowing
what to do with myself, and feeling kind of worthless. We are carefully
programmed by society, you know, to believe that life is about work. Working
for them. If you’re not working for them, life has no meaning, they say. That
all sounded a little too convenient for society to me. A little too pat. I rebelled
against the idea. I didn’t want to be a cog in a machine. I wanted to be a cog
running free, doing what it wanted. Cogging around, having a good time. But I
didn’t know what I wanted to do.

“I tried
collecting stamps. People said that was a fun and instructional way to pass the
time. But once you’ve collected them, what do you have? Stamps! That’s what no
one told me.”

I made a
sympathetic sound. I had collected a stamp once too. Bunch of bullshit.

He smoothed out
the last few bulges in his head, and continued: “I grew angry at a system that
would allow a man to be shoved out of the company he had inherited from his
dad, who in turn had stolen it from someone else’s dad, who had built it with
his own two hands, on land he had stolen from the Indians. It just didn’t seem
right. I looked for a way to strike back at this system, and at the same time
have a few laughs.”

“Good thinking.”

“I bought a
secret island from another secret guy and started building my ‘Fortress of
Revenge’, as I call it.”

“Great name.”

“Thank you.”

“You know what’s
great about you? Everything!”

“Don’t lay it on
too thick.”

“Brilliant note.”

“And soon I will
be ready to take over the world. People say I’m mad. Say it all the time. And
you know what? It’s starting to make me mad.”

I nodded. “I’m
getting angry now too.”

“After all, they
said George Washington was mad!”

“Who said that?”

“They said The
Four Marx Brothers were mad!”

“Well...”

“They couldn’t
have made all those motion pictures if they were truly mad. They would have
fallen behind schedule. See what I’m saying? And now they’re saying I’m mad!”

“First The Marx
Brothers, now you.”

“Could a madman
build a beautiful secret fortress like this? Could a madman hold his breath
this long? Or jump this high?”

“You’re not mad.
Anyone can see that. You jump too high.”

“Right. And
what’s mad about taking over the world, anyway? Somebody has to run the world,
why not me? And once I take over, think of all the good I could do with
unlimited power.”

“And are you
going to do any good?”

He thought about
this. “Well, I probably won’t have time. But the opportunity for good will be
there.”

While we were
getting to know one another, I began to notice there was something strangely
familiar about some of his servants. The one who was heaping green beans and
chili con carne on my plate was a dead ringer for Abraham Lincoln, right down
to the hole in the back of his head. I gave my host a questioning look.

“Yes, that’s
Lincoln,” Overkill said. “I’ll explain later. Eat your cuisine before the ants
get it.”

I went back to my
food, but before the servant left I had him give me his autograph. He signed
it: “Abe Lincoln #906.” Later I tried to sell this autograph through a major
East Coast auction house, but they said it was a fake. Hey, I watched him sign
it. With his own hand. With ink he got out of his own head. Fake, my ass.

As Overkill and I
talked, we discovered we had a lot in common – distrust of the government,
bitterness about our childhoods, teenage years, and adult lives, and a shared
feeling that the world had been created by God in seven days just to screw us –
and I could sense that my host was beginning to take a liking towards me.

After we had
finished eating, Overkill stood up. “Let me show you what I’m building here,
Frank.”

“Lead on, Ovie.”

He took me on a
tour of his fortress and the surrounding grounds. It was an amazing place.
Evidence of fantastic wealth was around every corner, from the solid gold
fireplaces and mink driveways, to the gazebo made of ten dollar bills. He had
more Old Master paintings than the Louvre in Paris. In fact, some of the ones
he had were supposed to be in the Louvre. The Louvre had been looking
everyplace for them, but with no luck so far.

All of these
treasures, as well as the island itself, were protected from intruders and
prying eyes by a wide variety of defense mechanisms. Light could be bent by
powerful machinery so no matter how close you were to the island, you couldn’t
see it. You would just be looking around it. So the island would effectively
disappear. Overkill turned the machine on to demonstrate this feature to me but
turned it back off when I kept bumping into him, for some reason. The island
also could be covered, at a moment’s notice, by a practically invisible glass
shield. It would have been completely invisible, except there were streaks and
smears and bird shit on it. Overkill said he would have that cleaned when he
had time. I said good.

In the unlikely
event of an attack on the island, Overkill had many powerful weapons set up to
defend the place. He showed me how one of them worked.

“Let’s say I
don’t like those condominiums on the shore there. Let’s say they’ve been saying
nasty things about me, and looking at me with their windows.”

“I’m with you so
far.”

“Okay, now watch
this.”

He pressed a button
on a control panel. There was a rumble of shifting machinery from deep within
the island, then a blinding flash. When I could see again, I saw that the
condominiums had been vaporized.

“Laser cannons,”
Overkill said proudly. “They can take out anything within four miles of this
island.”

“Neat,” I said.
“Now let’s say you like those condominiums again.”

Overkill
scratched his chin, then shook his head. “No, once I don’t like them, I can’t
start liking them again. They’re gone.”

I thought about
this. “You’d better be careful with that thing then.”

“You’re probably
right.”

All these
weapons, though very impressive, seemed to me to be a bit of an over-reaction.
I asked him if he was really doing all this just because he had lost his job.
Could there also be some other, more personal problem that was driving him on
to this megalomania? Like most people, besides being what I actually am, I’m
also a psychologist.

He considered the
question for a moment, then admitted that he had just quit smoking. That might have
something to do with it. “You should quit too,” he advised. “The smoke gets
into people’s drapes.”

“The hell with
drapes.”

He looked at me
as if I were mad. I wasn’t mad. I just don’t like drapes.

“Besides,” he
continued, “I’m not a megalomaniac, I’m a master mind.”

“What’s the
capitol of India?”

He hesitated for
a moment, then said firmly: “India has no capitol.”

I started to
argue, but changed my mind. This guy was dangerous. I had to remember that.

“My weapons
aren’t just defensive, you’ll be pleased to know,” he continued as we resumed
walking, “I’ve also amassed an Unholy Army.”

“Good for you.”

“It took awhile.”

“I’ll bet it
did.”

“It’s not easy to
assemble an Unholy Army. Most unholy people already have unholy jobs somewhere
else. It’s hard to find someone who has the evil skills, who is also between
gigs. Recruiting has always been a big problem. You go to high schools and
speak and maybe you’ll get a few bad apples to sign up, but a big organization
needs thousands. That’s why modern super villains never get very far with their
operations. You can’t get the henchmen. That’s where my business sense came in.
If there’s a need, and nobody’s filling it, fill it yourself. Using my
technical knowledge as a professional toy and model maker, I began making my
own henchmen, to my own specifications.”

“You’re great.”

“I use a variety
of lightweight, strong, modeling materials: molded foam, polyvinyl chloride,
balsa and other light woods, titanium for strength, and so on, powered by
anything from rubber bands and clockwork to steam and gasoline. Their brains
are just small computers, running a few basic evil programs. To command them,
I’ve recreated great leaders from the past. I’ve got over fifty Napoleons now,
each one as clever as the original, but even better because they don’t eat or
sleep or give me any backtalk, or get poisoned by the British.”

“You know, if you
put this much effort into something constructive, you could be a great man.”

“Now you sound
like my mother. Here, let me show you how I make my troops.”

He led me into
his factory. It was a huge low building that looked like an airplane factory.
Its floor was covered with endless rows of what looked like oversized copying
machines.

“Right now these
machines are busy making my standard model troops, but they can be programmed
to reproduce just about anything. I’ll show you how it works.”

He walked over to
some bins and looked inside.

“First, we make
sure the raw material receptacles are at acceptable levels, and… they are.”

“Hey,” I said,
“is this why your robberies in Central City were of warehouses and chemical
plants, instead of banks and jewelry stores?”

“Sure. I don’t
need money. But I’m always running low on raw materials. Can’t ever have too
much.”

He sat down at
one of the machines and tapped out a few commands on the keyboard. Then he
stood up.

“The software
will take over from here. The computer directs the making of the creature. I
just have to let it know what I want.”

The entire
process only took a couple of minutes. After the machine signaled that the
operation was complete, a perfect copy of me slid out of the machine and sat
up.

“Huh?” I said.

“What?”
I replied.

I was looking at
an exact copy of myself. We stared at each other with our mouths hanging open.
Then we both smiled. Then we both looked worried. I didn’t know what to think.
And I didn’t know what to think either.

“Say,” I said
slowly, in stereo, “that looks a little like me.”

“It is you. An
exact duplicate. The only difference is in the weight. He’s mostly foam core,
titanium, and elbow macaroni, with a few simple electric motors to make him
go.” He turned to one of his minions. “Dispose of this.”

The assistant
chopped the copy of me up with a hatchet, as the copy said things like: “Hey,
what are you doin’?” and “Oh, a wise-guy, eh?” and “Careful with that hatchet,”
then dumped the pieces into a recycling bin. I winced. Even when you know it’s
not you being chopped up, there’s a part of you that’s thinking: bullshit,
that’s me all right.

“I can see how
you could make a copy of me,” I said, “since you’ve got me here to study. But
how did you make a copy of Napoleon?”

“I’ll show you
that in a moment. First, let me show you my Unholy Army. I think you’ll love
it.”

“I know I will.”

He took me out on
a veranda, pressed a button, and moments later a grand review began.

For over an hour
troops marched smartly by, turning and saluting Overkill as they passed. None
of them saluted me, but a few of them nodded. The majority of them were the
same type of creature I had encountered in Central City, but there were also
toy soldiers, boxing robots, huge battery powered tanks, a platoon of rather
cross looking stuffed bears, and thousands of wind-up goblins and orcs.

“You read too
much Tolkien,” I said.

“You can’t read
too much Tolkien.”

“That’s what I
meant to say when I spoke.”

“I’m glad we
agree.”

“I’m beginning to
think we agree on everything.”

“Good.”

I watched a few
thousand more troops parade by, then said: “It looks to me like you’ve already
got more than enough here to take over the world.”

“That’s what my
accountant keeps saying. But you’re both wrong.”

“Hey, I might be
wrong about something like that, but an accountant, this kind of thing is his
business.”