“I tried to get into show business once,” I confided to Larry one day, after we’d gotten to know each other pretty well.
“You went to Hollywood?”
“No.”
“Show business is in Hollywood.”
“Yeah, well, the way I figure it, they should have discovered me here in Central City. At my house. That’s what talent scouts are for. To scout around, looking for talent wherever it might be. If they were looking for talent, they should have looked in that chair in my living room. The one in front of the TV. That’s where I was. If I’m not in show business it’s the talent scouts’ fault. Not mine.”
“Do you have any talent?”
“Huh? Uh… probably… what do you mean?”
“I mean, have you mastered any kind of craft that would be useful in the entertainment industry, in case the talent scouts ever do find you?”
“No. But I guess I could master a useful craft easy enough, if I had to. I’d have to see some money first.”
He nodded. “Well, you’ve got the right attitude to be in show business, that’s for sure. I’ll see if my agent can find something for you.”
“Hurry up. I don’t have all day.”
Usually I did a pretty good job of protecting Larry from all the people who recognized him on the street and wanted to run up to him and beat his brains out, but sometimes a rock or a bullet or a tomato would get through and nail him. This usually happened when I suddenly doubled over with laughter because I just remembered one of his great jokes. He would always complain when this happened, but, hey, it’s not my fault. Quit making me laugh.
Every once in a while I would see something that made me think that maybe Larry Laffman wasn’t really the top dog in the Organization—that there was someone above him. That office on the floor above his, for example. And the way he ran his finger around his collar when he got a memo from that office. And his code name: “Number Two”. I asked him about this, but he denied there was anyone more important at CrimeCo than he was. And since he never lied to me unless there was a good reason for it, unless there was something in it for him, I dropped the subject.
Then one day when I reported for work I noticed that Larry seemed kind of nervous. I asked him why. He said he had been summoned to see the Big Boss. This made me laugh because, hey, he’s the Big Boss. We’d already established that. We’d already had this discussion. I said great, now let’s have another joke. You’re in great form today, boss. But he said he wasn’t joking. There really was someone above him in the Organization, though he usually didn’t like to admit it. And he had to have a meeting with this guy right now. I could hardly wait to meet someone more important than Larry Laffman. He had to be the funniest guy in the universe.
Larry had me in stitches all the way to the meeting, pretending he was scared and didn’t want to go. I tried to get him to do a funny imitation of the Big Boss, but he seemed nervous about the idea, and said no. The way he said it made me bust a gut.
I was still laughing when we arrived at a door marked “Mr. Theremin”. Larry paused for a moment, ran his finger around his collar, then my finger, then opened the door and we went inside.
Seated at the desk in the middle of the office was a cloud of energy in a suit. Small lightning bolts moved around its “body” periodically, and there was a smell of burned wiring in the air. The cloud of energy was dictating a letter.
“Yours of the 15th inst. received, bzzzzz,” it said.
“What the…?” I said.
CHAPTER FOUR
I might as well admit right now that I don’t understand electricity. Spit, I understand. And dirt. And enriched flour. Those three things. Not electricity. If you can’t hold it in your hand, or get it on your pants, I don’t get it. And if I did understand electricity, I wouldn’t understand electricity that was wearing a suit.
“You sent for me, Boss?” asked Larry, nervously.
“I did.”
Larry lit up a cigarette and started puffing on it. I could tell he was nervous. He wasn’t a smoker. And he didn’t have any cigarettes. I guess it just shows what you can do if you’re nervous enough. I reminded Larry out of the side of my mouth that I was here. If things got rough, he could count on me. He told me to be quiet, for God’s sake. I said I would. You got it, boss, I said. Quiet it is. Quiet quiet quiet.
Mr. Theremin started giving Larry hell about something he’d done wrong—some big operation that hadn’t worked out right, or too much overtime being paid out in the third quarter—something like that. I didn’t pay much attention. It wasn’t my business. Pretty much nothing is. But I didn’t like seeing my boss taking it on the chin like this.
I sidled over to Larry. “You want me to slap him around a little, boss?”
“No!”
“Okay.”
I went back to where I had been standing before and put my brain back on hold. It began humming “The Girl From Ipanema”, as usual. I’m starting to get tired of that song. And yet, it’s kind of catchy.
When I started singing the song out loud, Mr. Theremin seemed to notice me for the first time. He asked Larry who the big lug yelling in the corner was. Meaning me. Larry said I was his new bodyguard, and that my name was Frank. Mr. Theremin and I shook hands. I giggled uncontrollably as we shook.
Theremin asked me if we had met before. I was pretty sure we hadn’t. I would have remembered a ball of lightning in a suit, I’m sure. Usually when people say “Didn’t I meet you somewhere before?” to me, I get cagey and say no. But in this case I really didn’t remember meeting him before, so I didn’t just say no, I yelled it.
Mr. Theremin gave me one more searching glance, then resumed chewing out Larry, screaming so loud at one point during his tirade that Larry did a spit-take.
Theremin frowned. “I told you not to do that in my office.”
“It’s my trademark. It’s funny.”
“It’s funny on your carpet. Not on mine.”
Theremin got up from his chair and cleaned up the area around Larry. Then he looked at me. “Let me vacuum up that dandruff. Fart out the window, please.”
“Yes, sir.” I moved over to the window as requested and stood there quietly, wiping my nose on the drapes.
Now I understood why there were recycling cans all over the building. And why everybody had to take their turn pushing a broom around the neighborhood. This guy was a real neat freak. The fussiest guy I’d ever seen. The sooner I got away from him, the better I’d like it. I’m not comfortable farting out of a window. I feel like an idiot.
When the meeting was over and we were walking back to Larry’s office, I said: “I notice the Big Boss is made of electricity.”
“Yeah. 200,000 volts. More, if he’s mad.”
“He’s not from around here, is he?”
“Him? Naw. He’s from outer space.”
I wasn’t too surprised to hear that. Most people from this planet aren’t made of electricity. We’re made of meat or something. Pork, I think. And most of the electricity we have around here can’t—or won’t—talk.
“He’s doing pretty good for somebody who wasn’t born here,” I observed. “For a foreigner, I mean.”
“I’ll say. Self-made man, too, or so they say. I heard he came to this planet with nothing. No money. No clothes. Didn’t even have a shape. Got his start as a burglar, getting into people’s homes through power lines. He used the money he got from that to start CrimeCo. Now he’s one of the richest formless alien entities in the state. He still burgles occasionally, to keep his hand in, but he mostly just does executive stuff now, like yelling at me.”
I was stunned. I suddenly realized I had just solved the case of “The Amazing Electric Thief”! My batting average had just rocketed up to .017! I briefly considered quitting the crime game and going back to being a detective. Maybe I was on a roll. Maybe I’d solve them all from now on. But after catching a glimpse of my dull witless face in the mirror, I decided this was probably just a fluke.
Something that wouldn’t be repeated.
“The only other thing I know about him,” Larry continued, “is that he doesn’t like being called ‘Buzzy’. So when you call him Buzzy, make sure he’s not around. When he’s around he’s ‘Mr. Theremin’ or ‘Boss’. Not ‘Buzzy’ or ‘The Buzzmeister’.”
“Gotcha.”
I’d like to say that that was the end of that, and that I thought no more about what I had seen in the Big Boss’s office, and lived happily ever after as a crook, with this being the happy ending of the book, or maybe the start of some great crime adventure of mine—“The Unfired Crook Strikes Again” or something like that—but it didn’t turn out that way. Much as I tried to fight it, my detective training eventually kicked in. I found myself getting curious about this space alien who lived among us and controlled all of our crime for us. Just because I wasn’t a detective anymore didn’t mean I had stopped being nosy.
So, despite the fact that it was none of my business, and no one was paying me to do it, and it could bring me nothing but grief, I started to investigate. Discretely, of course.
“May I help you?” Buzzy asked, when I snuck into his office and began creeping along the floor on my belly towards him.
“Is the elevator broken?” he asked, when he saw me scaling the side of the building and looking in his office window with five pairs of binoculars.
“Did you lose something?” he asked, when he found me with my head in his car.
I always had a glib answer to these questions, of course. You know me. But none of them were very convincing. Just glib. After awhile I got the feeling Buzzy was beginning to suspect me a little. But I didn’t have time to worry about that. I was too busy snooping.
During the course of this snooping, I noticed a secret inner office Buzzy had behind his regular office. It had all sorts of odd looking furniture in it—furniture with no fixed shape and plenty of extra plugs—and there were some paintings of electricity on the wall (relatives, probably), and a poster I couldn’t quite read from the window sill I was clinging to. I tried to gain access to this office, first by telling Buzzy’s secretary that I was a Secret Inner Office Repairman, then, when that didn’t work, by claiming to be part of the office. That didn’t work either. I finally decided the inner office wasn’t important.
I began making discrete inquiries about Buzzy among the other employees. “Have you noticed anything odd about the Big Boss?” I would ask them. “Anything worth snooping into?” Most said no, but one guy said he had seen something.
“Well, now that you mention it,” he said, “I’ve noticed that he’s been spending a lot of time investigating you lately.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, he’s got us doing all kinds of background checks on you, questioning your neighbors, and watching you pretty much around the clock.”
Well, that was news to me. And pretty ironic too, when I thought about it. All the time I had been investigating him, he had been investigating me! And it had been done with such subtlety I hadn’t even noticed it. I noticed it now though—now that it had been pointed out to me.
Now, when I looked around a corner to snoop on Buzzy, I noticed all the faces looking back around that same corner at me. With all of us taking notes and trying unsuccessfully to be quiet.
And on my way home, if I turned around quickly, I could see the whole company following me. They were taking up most of the street back there. Couldn’t miss them, if you knew what to look for.
Now, you would think that this general lack of trust on both sides would have indicated that my job might be in jeopardy. But no such thing, apparently. A month after I started my investigations I was surprised to discover that I had been selected to take part in the Organization’s biggest job of the year!
We were planning to knock over the Central City Mint, the place where they make all the Yogi Berra Quarters. And I was told I had been hand-selected by Mr. Theremin himself to play a key role in this caper. This surprised and delighted me. I was confused and proud.
Everyone involved in the caper got packets that contained their individual instructions, detailing the parts they would play in the operation. Mine said “Fall Guy” on it. I hoped it didn’t mean that literally. I hoped it was just a code name for something else. I was pretty sure it was.
All the guys at work looked sad when they found out I had been selected for the job. Some busted out crying. I wondered what it was all about. I asked one of them but he just cried louder.
Shifty said it was nice knowing me. And I said it sure as hell was. It was about time somebody noticed how nice it was knowing me. I didn’t think to ask what he meant by that until months later. It was too late by then.
So that’s how, on the day of the robbery, I found myself standing outside the Central City Mint, as the rest of the gang ran out of the building carrying sacks of shiny new quarters. As they passed me they handed me whatever incriminating evidence they had on them—masks, notes, guns, even fingerprints somehow. I put the fingerprints in my pocket. This was my chief role in this caper—to collect everything in one spot so that in the event our men were caught they wouldn’t have any incriminating evidence on them. It would all be on me. And I would be safe too, because… because… I took out my packet and read my individual instructions again, frowning.
After the rest of the guys had all gotten safely away, and I found myself still standing there alone holding all the incriminating evidence, shifting some of it occasionally so I could hold it better, and looking through my instructions again, it occurred to me that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. They had carefully briefed me up to this point, but either they hadn’t told me what to do next, or I had forgotten it. And my instruction packet didn’t mention anything about me getting away at all.
By this point the police had begun arriving on the scene, and the guys who worked at the Mint were all jumping up and down and yelling and pointing at me, so I figured I’d better do something, even if it wasn’t strictly according to the approved plan. It looked to me like I was going to have to start improvising at this point. I hated to do that. That wasn’t the way we did things at CrimeCo (formerly Crime & Sons). But I didn’t know what else to do.
I turned and started to move away from the front door of the Mint. I figured that would be a good start. To get away from here. Go stand in front of some other building—one that hadn’t just been robbed. But before I could go five feet I stepped into an open hole in the pavement and fell for a half a mile. At least, it seemed that far. Might have been less. There had been a large water leak the day before and it had eaten out a lot of the ground under the sidewalk. The city hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet and had just put a traffic cone there to warn people—a cone that would explain the whole thing. I guess it was this cone that I had tripped over. I wondered, as I fell, if I was setting some kind of record. I mean, what was the record for falling to your death before this? Then, suddenly, I stopped wondering about anything. Then I hit the bottom.
When I regained consciousness and realized where I was, and what had happened to me, I started looking for a way to get back up the shaft. I saw a handhold about forty feet above me, but I couldn’t quite reach it, not even after I took off my coat and stood on it. I was still thirty four feet short. I thought of yelling for help, but then I remembered there were only cops up there. I didn’t want their help. Not today, anyway. Anybody but them.
While I was thinking over my predicament, the police started looking down the hole and shouting at me to come out of there. I didn’t think they could see me—it was pretty dark where I was—so I decided to play possum. Pretend I wasn’t there. Or that I was dead. Maybe they’d go away if they thought I was not there and dead. I tried to be as quiet as I could. I even shifted over a little to my right where it looked like it was darker and quieter.
“Did you hear something?” asked one of the policemen.
“Probably just a possum,” said a voice from far away.
That’s when they started shining lights down my hole. I tried to edge a little closer to the side, and, even though I was already at the bottom, I somehow managed to fall another twenty feet. More lights shined down the hole. More playing possum.
After they hadn’t heard any noise from me for awhile—I had quit shifting around to better spots by then, and my burping fit had stopped, and my stomach had stopped growling—some of the cops started wondering if I was still down there. The bottom of the shaft might connect to the sewer or the subway or something. I might be long gone by now. I could be anywhere—maybe even sitting in their offices with my feet up on their desks making long distance telephone calls, or sitting in their living rooms watching TV with their wife and kids, while they were wasting their time here looking into empty holes.
It was finally decided to see if I was still down there by dropping rocks down the shaft. Over the next two hours they dropped hundreds of them, of varying sizes, waiting and listening after each rock had been dropped to hear if I yelled. But I didn’t make a sound no matter how many rocks they threw down, or how hard they threw them. This wasn’t because I wasn’t there. I was. And it wasn’t because I was a man of iron will and discipline. I wasn’t. It was because the first rock had swollen my mouth shut.
CHAPTER FIVE
I finally managed to climb out of the hole several hours later, after almost getting to the top a half a dozen times, only to fall all the way to the bottom each time and then having to start back up again. I guess it would have been pretty comical if it had been happening to somebody else. Some other slob. Seeing them get almost to the top and being so happy, and then suddenly down they go again, end over end, screaming their guts out. I guess it was funny. I dunno. I’d have to watch somebody else do it and see if I laugh. I probably would. Anyway, like I said, I finally got out.
Earth vs. Everybody Page 3
