The Exploding Detective

by John Swartzwelder

  “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 2nd 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.

  “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 kno
w 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.

  CHAPTER NINE

  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: bull
shit, 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.”

  “Shut-up. Both of you just shut-up. Besides, you forget the name of my operation. Operation Overkill. It’s important that I have not just enough, not even more than enough, but too much more than enough. Anything less would not be overkill. See the semantics and grammar that are involved?”

  “Yeah, of course, but…”

  “I’ve been studying super villains of the past. The biggest mistake all of them made was having just enough of a force to take over the world, but no more. They didn’t want to appear gauche, I guess. So what happens? Something goes wrong at substation C, or they lose a handful of men who were supposed to be guarding something important, or one guy doesn’t show up for work at the volcano, and their whole operation falls apart. All of a sudden they don’t have enough to take over the world. And all because they played it too fine.”