The Exploding Detective (3 page)

The two men were
taken aback by this question.

“We naturally
assumed,” said the Mayor, “that a genuine super hero would do this for the
honor of the thing. For the Truth and the Justice involved.”

“That isn’t my
business model,” I replied. “I want Truth, Justice, and $1,500 a week.”

The Mayor and
Commissioner Brenner exchanged glances, then excused themselves and moved off a
ways to discuss the matter in private. I ambled over in their direction,
pretending I was straightening a plant, so I could listen in.

“$1,500!” said
the Mayor. “That’s more than I pay my nephew!”

“You don’t have a
nephew,” said Brenner.

“What’s that got
to do with anything?”

“And this guy
isn’t a super hero.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Well, look at
him. He’s fat and stupid, and he’s not even that strong. When we shook hands, I
should have been the one that yelped in pain, not him. He’s just some clown
with a jet pack.”

“The papers say
he’s a super hero.”

“The papers say
we’re honest.”

The Mayor’s
excited smile faded a little. “Hey, yeah, that’s right.” He thought for a
moment. “Well it doesn’t matter anyway. Maybe he’s a super hero, maybe he’s
not. But either way, the public wants him. If we get him on our team and he
succeeds, we can take a lot of the credit. If he fails, he can take the heat
alone.”

The Commissioner
looked at him with respect. Happy Safeton (Pernell Slyme) hadn’t made it all
the way to the Mayor’s Office on his good looks and charm.

“That makes
sense,” he admitted.

The Mayor noticed
I was very close to them now, pretending to wash the windows. “Should we be
talking in front of him?”

Brenner
considered me for a moment, then nodded. “Sure. He probably doesn’t understand
most of what we’re saying anyway.”

He was wrong
about that. I didn’t understand all of the multi-syllable words, of course. But
I got the gist of what they were saying. They were saying something about me.
Finally they finished their discussion and turned back to me.

“All right,” said
the Mayor. “$1,500 a week, minus the usual 10% agent’s commission for Commissioner
Brenner and myself, of course.”

This confused me.
“Are you guys agents too?”

“We’re everything
that gets paid,” said Brenner.

“Oh, I see.”

The Mayor looked
around my office. “Where’s your super hero costume? You don’t fly around in a
suit and tie, do you?”

“It’s at the
cleaners.”

“Oh, I see. Well
then, I’ll hold off the press conference about you until next week. Will your
costume be back by then?”

“Sure.”

“Excellent!
Welcome aboard, Mr. Burly. Or should I say Mr. The Flying Detective! From now
on, Central City is entirely in your capable hands.”

I shook their
hands. “When do I get a check?”

“When you’ve done
some work,” said Brenner.

“Fine.”

When people start
calling you a super hero, you don’t look at yourself in the mirror the same way
anymore. Now you look at yourself in the mirror and say: “Are super heroes
supposed to look like that?” And you’re not sure. But you don’t think so.

I got a pile of
old comic books and started making notes about what super heroes were supposed
to look like - their costumes, hairstyles, any special crime-fighting gadgets
they might carry around with them, and so on.

Their costumes, I
found, were pretty varied. Some super heroes wore red, some blue. Some had
capes, others cowls. They all had one thing in common, however. All of their
costumes looked like long underwear. I didn’t like this. I didn’t particularly
want to parade around the streets in my union suit, with kids and old women
giving me the horselaugh. But, in any kind of business, you’ve got to give the
public what it wants. And in the super hero business, the public wants
underpants.

Borrowing design
elements from all of the super heroes, and adding a few personal touches of my
own, I designed a costume that, in my opinion, was as good as any of them. It
was bright orange, like an explosion, with a blue shield. In the center of the
shield were the initials “TFD” (The Flying Detective), along with the smaller
initials “TM” (trademark). I decided on a cape, like Superman’s, because it
drew attention away from the fact that I was practically naked. The whole thing
looked pretty damned impressive to me when I finished the design. A local
costume shop said they could have it made up for me in a couple of days, if I
was sure I really wanted it. So that was taken care of.

As for the
crime-fighting gadgets I might need, once again the comic books were
indispensable. I sent away for a set of Junior Grappling Hooks, an Instant
Disguise Kit (“Just put face in box”), Disappearing Handcuffs, and X-Ray
Glasses, so I could see through criminal women’s clothes. I also sent away for
a 24 week course that would, once I had mastered the special techniques
involved, allow me to throw my voice through a steel door. Total cost for the
whole getup? Maybe ninety bucks. I could afford that now, easy.

Unfortunately,
when the gadgets arrived they didn’t work as well as the comic books and I had
hoped. The X-ray glasses didn’t work at all at first because I had them on
backwards. I couldn’t see anything and everybody could see into my head. I took
them off and stuck them in my back pocket. Now they could all see up my ass. I
threw them away. The Instant Disguise Kit just tore my face up something awful.
And I lost the disappearing handcuffs the first day. I decided that maybe I’d
better be one of those super heroes who doesn’t have any gadgets.

I went down to
City Hall to show the Mayor and the Police Commissioner my costume and let them
know that I was ready to go, and was officially on the clock.

“Wonderful!”
enthused the Mayor, as he looked over my costume. “You look like Superman, or
Batman, or… god dammit, you look like everybody!”

“There’s a price
tag on your cape,” said the Commissioner.

I took it off.

“Now, is there
anything you need?” asked the Mayor. “Or are you ready to start saving us right
now?”

I said I was all
set, but suggested the Police Commissioner might want to install a “Flying
Detective Signal” in his office. That way, he could shine a smiling outline of
me in the sky that could be seen all over the city when he needed my services -
when he couldn’t handle his job himself. The Commissioner was dubious. Those
16,000 watt signals, he told me, cost money. Plus, he didn’t particularly want
to advertise his incompetence all over the city. Enough people knew about that
already without putting it up in lights. But the Mayor thought it was a
crackerjack idea. The signal would be installed at once.

“Do you have a
catchphrase?” asked the Mayor. “Like ‘Up, Up, And Away!’ or something like
that? We’ll need it for our press releases about you.”

“‘Up, Up, And
Away’ sounds good,” I said.

“No, you can’t
use that. It’s taken.”

“How about ‘Up,
Down, And Away’? Anybody got that?”

The Mayor and the
Commissioner exchanged glances.

“I don’t think
you need a catchphrase,” said Brenner.

“Fine.”

“Gilding the
lily,” agreed the Mayor.

“Gotcha.”

The next day was
the day of the big press conference. The Mayor introduced me to the roomful of
reporters, with a cleverly worded disclaimer that seemed to say that I was his
personal discovery and best friend if all this worked out well, but that if it
didn’t, he had never heard of me, and could prove it. Then he nudged me up to
the microphones.

There was
tremendous applause. The media was plainly all fired up. They had heard a lot
about me, from themselves. I was barraged with questions.

“What super
powers will you be using to protect our city?”

“Uh… all of
them.”

“What is your
costume made out of? Why does it look so new?”

“Wool.”

“Do you need a
sidekick? I could be Newspaper Boy.”

“Next question.”

“What is your
favorite crime?”

“Murder, I
guess.”

I answered all of
their questions as well as I could, but I’m not much of a public speaker, and I
don’t know the answers to too many questions, so pretty soon the press
conference started to drag a little. At the one hour mark, a couple of
reporters in the back started to go to sleep. Awhile later, so did I.

The Mayor heard
the snores and decided it was time to wind up the press conference. He began
handing out slick press information packets about me. Each packet contained my
bio, pictures of my father (a rattlesnake) and my mother (a box of dynamite), a
list of the worlds I had already saved, (I never even heard of some of them.
Where’s “Benny”?), and publicity photos of me posing before an American flag,
taking the Central City Oath, and a gag photo that made it look like the Mayor
and I were friends.

The reporters
snapped up the packets eagerly. Some even had me autograph them, saying it
wasn’t for them, it was for some smaller reporter. I graciously complied with
all these requests, adding “Up, Down, And Away!” to some of the signatures. So,
all in all, my first press conference ended up being a rousing success.

Then the Mayor
hustled me over to a TV studio so that everyone in Central City could see me.
I’m told that my TV interview was almost as boring as my press conference.
Something about charisma. Too much charisma, I think they said.

“Our viewers want
to know,” the interviewer began, “the source of your great powers. Are you from
a different planet?”

“Yes, I am from a
different planet, Lyle.”

“Were you ever
bitten by a radioactive insect?”

“Yes, Lyle, I
was.”

“Did ancient Gods
give you your powers?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you come from
a race of super heroes?”

“Yeah.”

“So… you got your
super powers from just about everyplace then.”

“Pretty much. Are
these fruits on the table here decorative? Or can I eat these?”

“Decorative.”

“Fine.”

“Now, our
stagehands have set up some things here in the studio to allow you to
demonstrate your super powers for our audience: a lump of coal you can squeeze
into a diamond, a steel girder you can melt with the heat from your eyeballs,
and a convicted felon for you to disintegrate. Are you ready, Mr. Flying
Detective?”

“Uh… actually,
Lyle, I feel I should save my super strength for my fight against evil.”

“Oh. I see. Well
then… I told you you couldn’t eat those.”

“Oh, okay.”

“They’re wax.”

“Fine.”

When the
interview was over, the Mayor said he thought that was enough public
appearances for me for one day. I was glad. I wasn’t looking forward to that
three hour concert at the stadium anyway. As we were leaving, he said the next
time I was asked how I got my super powers, I should just say I got them by
voting for him. I said I would.

Now, you would
think, wouldn’t you, that a super hero could sleep in as long as he wanted in
the morning. A guy like that should be able to make his own hours, I would have
thought. I was informed that this was not so late the next morning. I was
awakened by a loud banging on my door at around eleven o’clock.

When I opened the
door I found the Police Commissioner and Mayor Safeton standing on my doorstep,
pointing at their watches.

A half hour later
I was in costume, standing on a street corner, yawning, and keeping a bleary
eye out for crime.

I quickly
attracted a lot of attention. Everyone stopped to gawk at my costume and check
out my superness for themselves. They felt my muscles, punched me
experimentally in the stomach, jabbed me in the side with pen knives, and so
on. I had anticipated this, so I was wearing a great many extra pairs of
underwear under my costume. This not only cut down on the pain, it also made me
look stronger than I really am.

Some of the
people in the crowd wanted to see me demonstrate my super human strength for
them by wrecking something. Fortunately, wrecking stuff doesn’t require super
powers. Not if you’re clumsy enough. I could wreck things Superman would have
had trouble with. It’s genetic, I guess. My grandfather wrecked North Dakota
without doing anything. Honestly. He was just standing there.

So I ripped
mirrors off of parked cars, knocked over stop signs just by leaning on them,
derailed a trolley, even broke a guy’s leg. The crowd was amazed. I was kind of
amazed too. I’m always amazed when I destroy something without any effort. It
just shows what you can do if you’re not balanced properly.

Little kids were
fascinated by me. They were always coming up to me wanting me to crush things
for them - their homework or their little sister - or to sign autographs for
them. I did whatever crushing they wanted done, but I told them the autographs
would cost them $150 each. I was a big-shot now, I informed them. The value of
my signature had gone up. And the expense would have to be passed onto them,
the nation’s kids. Otherwise the economy wouldn’t work. The ones who already
had my autograph were pleased about this. The value of their collections had
just gone through the roof. The rest of them thought it was bullshit, though
they couldn’t say so until they were older.

But I didn’t get
to stand around looking pretty all day. There was work to be done, the Mayor
informed me. He said I wasn’t just there to protect the city from super
villains. $1,500 bought more than that, even these days. I was there to protect
the city period. He said I should re-read my contract if there was any
confusion about this. I was getting kind of bored just standing around anyway,
so I started patrolling the city - crashing into small time crooks, sliding
sideways through gambling dens and auction houses, getting dead cats down from
trees, changing street lights that had burned out, and so on.