The Exploding Detective

by John Swartzwelder

  The public was fascinated by this raid. For one thing, only chemicals were stolen, when the company payroll was there for the taking. And the robbers themselves were even more intriguing: with their expressionless faces, the mechanical way they went about their business, the RC antennas and smoke stacks some of them had, and the way they would occasionally stop to change each others’ batteries, or take their heads off and use them to bang open a crate. These weren’t the kinds of robbers Central City usually got. These robbers were something new.

  But the thing that fascinated, and vaguely worried, the public most, was the presence of Napoleon Bonaparte at the head of this criminal gang. It had been their impression that Napoleon was dead, and had been dead since 1821. With everything else they had to worry about in their daily lives, they didn’t expect to have to worry about dead guys too.

  The tabloids had a field day, of course. “Dead Midget Menaces Central City!” “Frenchmen Won’t Stay Dead!” and “Everybody From 1821 Returning From Grave!” were some of the milder headlines.

  Apparently emboldened by his success, “Napoleon” began raiding Central City’s industrial district on an almost daily basis. Soon, businesses in the area stopped bothering to unload their shipments. They just left them on their pallets outside for the raiders to pick up. It saved time. They could go out of business faster that way.

  The police did their best, but there was nothing they could do to stop the raids. Napoleon not only outmanned and outgunned them, he outmaneuvered them every time. He made monkeys out of them. And nobody likes paying big tax dollars to be protected by monkeys. Nobody does. Complaints about the lack of adequate protection began flooding into City Hall.

  Mayor Happy Safeton (born Pernell Slyme), who had just been elected on his promise to “Keep Our Town Safe And Happy With Happy Safeton” (a slogan that had fascinated voters because of its cleverness and double – some said triple – meaning), was very unhappy. A crime wave like this made his administration look bad. It made a mockery of his slogan. He wasn’t going to get re-elected if this kept up. And it wasn’t even his fault. It was the Police Commissioner’s fault.

  He stormed into Police Commissioner Brenner’s office, waving a fistful of citizen’s complaints and demanded the Commissioner do something about the whole mess. The Commissioner said he would, and promptly stormed into the Police Chief’s office and yelled at him. And so on. Eventually somebody stormed into my office, and I went and yelled at the old guy who ran the elevator. I don’t know who he yelled at, but I do know that eventually the buck ended up being passed back to the Mayor, which didn’t make him happy at all.

  Everybody in town was demanding action, but nobody knew what to do. Then one day they got an idea. The idea they got was me.

  It happened during one of Napoleon’s daily raids. Just as the last getaway truck was pulling away, loaded with propylene oxide, red dye #6 and lithium batteries, I suddenly fell out of the sky from 4000 feet and exploded in front of the truck, tipping it over. The creatures inside the truck got away, but the cargo was saved.

  A crowd quickly gathered around my smoking remains.

  “Hey! It’s the Exploding Detective!” said one wag.

  “Flying Detective,” I corrected him, slowly and painfully rising to my feet - though I had to admit his description of what I did was better than mine.

  Everybody was surprised to see that I had survived the fall, and the explosion, and the truck rolling over onto me, and all the people in the crowd stepping on me so they could see better, but I’d been hurt a lot worse than that before. I guess they thought they were dealing with an amateur.

  I groggily looked around for the letters I had been taking to the post office, but most of them had been incinerated in the blast. Grumbling, I walked over and laid down on a gurney and waited for my life to be saved.

  My spectacular foiling of the big robbery caused much excited comment and speculation around town over the next few days. Who was this Flying Detective anyway, they wondered. What was his story?

  Everybody had seen me around, of course. I was nothing new. In fact, nearly a tenth of the population had stamped me out at one time or another. But a growing number of people were beginning to think that I might be something more than I appeared to be. The way they had it figured out, any normal man who flew like I did would have been dead long ago. And yet I still lived. Maybe I wasn’t just some old idiot in a jet pack. Maybe I was secretly a genuine super hero, with super powers that would make your eyes pop out. After all, didn’t Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne seem like blundering fools? And didn’t they always deny being super heroes? And yet they were the greatest of them all. That might be what was happening here, too. It was the only thing that made sense, when you thought about it in a certain way, and overlooked a few things.

  The newspapers picked up on this idea and expanded on it, not only speculating about my super powers, but actually confirming them, and listing them. The Tribune said I could run faster and jump higher than lightning, and crush a piece of coal into whatever you want. The Chronicle said I could out-smart a battleship. The Post said I was half man, half rattlesnake, and half nuclear bomb, explaining that I was the happy result of a man and a snake screwing a box of dynamite. These sensational new revelations about me greatly excited the public.

  You’re probably wondering what I thought of all this super hero stuff. Actually, I hadn’t heard anything about it. I had been in the observation ward at the hospital since my most recent crash and had just gotten out. I noticed people were looking at me strangely all the way home on the bus, but I assumed it was because of the bones that were sticking out of my cheek.

  When I got to my office I decided to sit down and take stock of my situation. It was time for me to figure out, in actual dollars and cents, exactly how this Flying Detective gimmick of mine was working out so far. When I totaled everything up, I was staggered. The numbers were staggering. I was losing a staggering amount of money. I was doing even worse as The Flying Detective than I was as Frank Burly.

  I ran the numbers again, and now I was doing even worse! I decided that that was it. I wasn’t going to run those numbers ever again. And I was going to send the jet pack back to Nazi Germany tomorrow. No more gimmicks for me. I was through being The Flying Detective.

  As I made this decision and was starting to erase “Flying” from my business cards, letterheads, and complimentary calendars, my door opened and two men walked in. It was the Mayor of Central City and the Police Commissioner. I wondered what I’d done now, and if I should make a run for it.

  “How do you do, Mr. Burly,” said the Mayor. “I’m Happy Safeton. Perhaps you’ve voted for me.”

  “Nah.”

  His smile tailed off a little, then rallied back. “I understand you’re a super hero, with powers and abilities beyond my understanding.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone told me. We all know about it. It’s true, isn’t it? You can tell me. I’m the Mayor.”

  Before I could think of a nice way to tell a Mayor that he’s stupid - while I was still trying to remember what Emily Post had said about that – Commissioner Brenner broke into the conversation: “There’s a job in it for you if you are a super hero.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes,” said the Mayor, “We’re looking for someone to save Central City.”

  “From what?”

  “From the gang that’s been terrorizing the industrial district. And from this nut case who’s been leading the raids who thinks he’s Napoleon.”

  “At what rate of payment?”

  “What?”

  “How much does this job you’re talking about pay?”

  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.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  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 p
ublic 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?”