Dead Men Scare Me Stupid (3 page)

“The thing is,
we’re a little busy down here at your local police station right now, Mr. Burly,”
he said, politely. “We have a lot of real crimes to deal with, and
unfortunately that means we have less time than we would like to deal with
screwballs.”

“Well, crap…”

“Tell you what,
why don’t you come down and file a report – better yet, why not mail us your
report? That way the ghosts can help you fill it out. You could even include
one of the ghosts in the envelope as evidence, if you like. And the other ghost
could be the stamp. Say! That would get rid of your ghost problem, wouldn’t
it?”

I was beginning
to lose patience with this polite, but less than helpful, underling. “Get me
your Ghostbusters Unit,” I demanded.

“We have no
Ghostbusters Unit.”

This started a
different argument. I said I’d seen the movie personally several times and knew
all about the department’s celebrated Ghostbusters Unit. He said he’d seen the
movie as well, and it was his impression that the Ghostbusters were a private
concern that had nothing to do with the police department. At least, not
officially. I said that wasn’t the way I remembered the plot of the film. He
said I should see the movie again, and pay more attention this time. I said I
would when my schedule permitted, but suggested that it would save time if he
would just connect me with his Ghostbusters Unit right now. At that point he
transferred me to someone else in the department, who spent ten minutes trying
to talk me off the ledge he thought I was on. Finally I hung up. I’m not on any
ledge.

As I hung up the
phone, the two ghosts came in the door carrying a new lamp to replace the one I
had punched to pieces, some windows they had found on the floor below, and a
large sack of money. Ed handed the money to me. I asked what it was for.

“We figured a guy
who runs a cut-rate operation like yours, and dresses and smells like you do
must need money pretty bad. So we got you some.”

“Hey, thanks.
Where’d you get it?”

“Bank.”

“We dropped some
on the way here,” Ed admitted. “But most of it is still in there.”

I looked out the
window. Policemen were slowly following a trail of money that led from the bank
to my building. Fortunately, thanks to passersby picking up souvenirs, and the
wind picking up and carrying away even more, the end of the trail had been
blotted out just before it reached the door to my building. When they got to
the last bill, the policemen had to just stand there scratching their heads,
and leaning on my doorknob. So I caught a break there.

“Hey, look you
guys,” I said, “You’re going to get me into trouble if you’re not careful. Bank
robbery is a crime in this state.”

“We’re way ahead
of you,” said Ed. “We left a note at the bank clearing you of any involvement
in this. In fact, we left lots of notes.”

Fred nodded. “We
wrote your name all over the place. Even on the walls. With the guard’s blood.”

I spent the next
twenty minutes trying to hit them with the sack of money. You’d think I would
have learned after the first blows went right through them without harming them
that the next three hundred would too, but I didn’t. I wasn’t thinking, I
guess.

While I was
hammering away at them with the sack, a potential client entered my office.

“Mr. Burly…?”

“I’ll be with you
in a minute,” I said, smashing Ed with the sack, and firing a bullet through
Fred’s head.

The man stood
there watching this for a moment, then slowly backed out the door and down the
stairs. The last I heard he was in Ohio, still walking backwards. So there went
that job.

Finally, I gave
up. I won’t say I had learned my lesson, I won’t go that far, but I did stop.
It had finally gotten through to me that the sack wasn’t doing anything.
Nothing I had done to get rid of the two ghosts had done anything. I decided
that it would be easier to just get rid of me.

So, while they
were looking through the closet for other things I could hit them with - they
were helpful, I’ll give them that - I fled. They wouldn’t be able to help
someone they couldn’t find. Nobody can do that. Nobody’s that helpful.

They already knew
where I lived and where I worked, but I was confident that they didn’t know where
I hid.

My usual place to
do that was in a dumpster in an alley a few blocks from my office. Dumpster
Number 7 had always been a good spot for me. People would find me in Dumpster
Number 3. Easy. Might as well have been sitting on top of it. And they’d
usually drag me out of the other dumpsters after a half hour or so. But they
never found me in good old Number 7. It was lucky for some reason. I had hidden
there so often in recent months, I was starting to get credit card offers
there. And that’s not a joke. Credit card companies don’t send you offers like
that just to be funny. They want your business too much to make jokes about it.

Five minutes
after I had arrived at Number 7, and gotten myself settled in, and was looking
around for something to eat, I noticed I wasn’t alone.

“This place is
even worse than your other place,” said Ed.

“We’re going to
have to fix this up too,” said Fred, with a trace of annoyance.

They began
discussing ways to spiff up the interior of the dumpster. Fred thought a velvet
painting on the lid might help. Ed thought a couple of throw rugs were the key.
As for the rats, Fred was for throwing them out, while Ed felt brushing their
teeth would be enough.

I didn’t hang
around to take part in this discussion. I was off and running again.

Over the next
week, I guess I must have hidden just about everywhere you can hide in Central
City: In out-of-the-way motels, where the bellhops who carried my bags up to my
room turned out to be Ed and Fred; in hobo jungles, where the mulligan stew
kept saying “Hi, Burly”; in Dumpster Number 7 again, where there wasn’t room
enough for all three of us to sleep - we finally had to hook two dumpsters
together; in the city sewer system where I hid under an unusually large turd,
which turned out to be Fred; and so on - from one great hiding place to
another. Did you know there’s a small rusted out hole half way up the
suspension bridge over the Central City River that you can wedge yourself into?
There is. And did you know there are ghosts in there waiting for you? There
are.

I tried
everything to throw the ghosts off my trail. I even tried changing my
appearance. But the cut-rate plastic surgeon I went to didn’t do anything
except put both my eyes on the same side of my face. That didn’t fool anybody.
Just grossed them out.

Everywhere I
went, Ed and Fred were always there too. Usually they got there around the same
time I did, or a little before. Sometimes they showed up later, complaining
about the traffic. But whenever they found me, they always immediately went to
work, doing everything they could to make my life better.

The first thing
they did was make sure that money was no problem for me in my travels. When I walked
down the street, everyone around me had their pockets picked, with the money
miraculously floating through the air and into my pocket. Sometimes cash
registers would float out of nearby shops into my waiting arms. And armored
cars tried to follow me home. I like money as much as the next guy, but this
way of getting it made me uncomfortable. I knew it didn’t look good.

People kept
asking me for explanations for these strange events. They wanted to know how
they happened – the physics behind them. I told them I didn’t owe them any
explanations. They said no, but they’d appreciate an explanation just the same.

Finally I figured
out a way to stop the constant questioning. While they were still gaping at the
sight of their life savings floating slowly into my hand, I’d instantly demand:
“How did that happen? What did you just do there?” Get the jump on them, see?
Take control of the situation. They’d stammer out something like “Well I don’t
know.” And I’d say “Well you better figure it out, because it looks pretty
strange to me.” Usually they’d just mumble something about sunspots or
something and hurry away. So that’s how I solved that problem.

Another problem
that the ghosts inadvertently caused me was when they tried to get my detective
business some free publicity.

“Look,” said
Fred, handing me a copy of the Central City Times, as he and Ed were helping me
hide from them under a toll road, “we got your name in the paper. That’s got to
be good for business.”

I looked at the
paper. It had a small picture of me, along with the caption: “Local Detective
Suspected In String Of Robberies.” There were other articles about me on the
inside pages, most of them in connection with hold-ups, kidnappings,
burglaries, and other major crimes. Practically the whole paper was about me.
Okay, publicity is good, I acknowledge that, but I was worried this was the
wrong kind of publicity I was getting. But try to explain that to Ed and Fred.

My two ghostly
helpers even took a crack at pepping up my love life for me.

“You seem to lead
a pretty lonely existence here behind this mailbox,” said Ed, with concern,
after he had found me hiding from him behind it. “That doesn’t seem right, a
big good-looking guy like you.” He looked around the street for a moment, then
spotted what he was looking for. “You like that woman?” He pointed at a tall
blonde crossing the street.

“Well, sure!”

“We’ll get her
for you.”

“Say, hang on
now…”

Ed and Fred faded
from sight. Then, working invisibly, the two ghosts tipped my hat at the woman,
filled the air with wolf whistles, rearranged my face into a leer, and unzipped
my pants. The woman walked over to a nearby policeman, talked to him for a moment
and pointed at me. As he began walking towards me, I began tipping my hat at
the policeman, my pants zipper going rapidly up and down. The only “date” I
ended up getting was a “date” in “court”. My ghostly friends didn’t seem to
realize it, but they were causing me a lot of trouble with these stunts of
theirs. They were hurting me more than they were helping me.

All the time I
was on the run from the ghosts, I kept trying everything I could think of to
get rid of them once and for all.

I tried dynamite,
flamethrowers, hand grenades – I guess I must have blown up about a quarter of
my neighborhood before it was all over. But none of the blasts bothered the
ghosts in the slightest. I think they kind of liked them, if the word “wheee!”
is any indication.

I called in ghost
hunters and said “There’s two”, but they just got scared and ran away. Some
ghost hunters.

I tried nailing
the ghosts in a box and shipping them to someone I didn’t like, but all I got
out of that was a phone call from the guy saying “Hey, thanks for the empty
box”.

When I couldn’t
think of anything else to try – when I was drawing a blank - Ed and Fred
quickly chipped in with some ideas of their own.

“Try spraying us
with acid,” suggested Fred.

“Does that work?”

“No.”

“Why did you
suggest it then?”

“We don’t like
seeing you running out of ideas like this. We want to help.”

“Oh, I see.”

“How about
dropping an A-bomb on us?” said Ed. “The flying wing could carry it.”

I looked at him
dubiously. “Any chance of that working?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe a signed
petition would work,” suggested Fred. “Ever think of that?”

“I’ll sign that
petition right now!” said Ed, enthusiastically.

Finally, after
the A-bomb from the flying wing thing didn’t work, I gave up. I couldn’t hide
from them. I couldn’t destroy them. I couldn’t do anything.

I headed back to
my office. At least I could do that. At least I could head places.

When I got there
I noticed that my office looked a lot better than it usually did. The ghosts
had apparently been working on it all the time I was away. Not only was it
decorated nicely, with all sorts of velvet paintings and throw rugs, it was
jam-packed with all sorts of detective stuff I’d always wanted, but could never
afford: an FBI-quality surveillance setup so I could do my stakeouts in the comfort
of my own home or office; a real professional magnifying glass – one of those
glass jobs, not the cheap plastic things I always use; an electronic footprint
database that had every foot in America in it; Mickey Mantle Model Handcuffs;
everything. Most of it wasn’t new - it had been stolen from other detectives in
the area - but it was still serviceable.

And I noticed my
waiting room was filled with dozens of new clients, all bound and gagged and
ready to hire me, all apparently kidnapped from other detectives’ offices.

I started to
rethink my position on all this. What exactly is wrong with people helping you?
When did that become a bad thing? What am I, nuts?

The capper was
when my girl came to visit later that day.

“Are these your
friends, Franklin?” she asked when she saw Ed and Fred bringing in the next
bound and gagged client for me to interview.

“No.”

The ghosts looked
hurt. “We’re not?” asked Fred.

“Well...” I
thought of all the great new stuff they’d just gotten me, “…in a way, maybe,
but…”

She looked at
them and sniffed. She plainly didn’t think much of my new friends.

I haven’t told
you about my girl, Myrna, because… well… I’m kind of embarrassed about her. She
looks awful. And her language would embarrass a sailor. And I don’t mean a
regular sailor. I mean one of those sailors who don’t embarrass easily. But,
beggars can’t be choosers, the Good Book says. That’s how I ended up with
Myrna.

Anyway, by the
end of the day the two ghosts had managed to inadvertently insult her more than
I had in my entire life. They called her a “broad”, engaged in playful
wrestling matches with her, poked her in the ass with the wrong fork during
dinner, yelled obscenities up her dress, and kept advising her, as one friend
to another, to take the mask off because Halloween was over.