But I did finally find a way back home. All I had to do was look across the street at the right moment.
I was in the middle of one of my humiliating day jobs, pigeon cleaning duty for the city - I especially hated brushing their filthy little teeth and combing their ratty fur. And where were their wings? That’s what I wanted to know - when I looked up at the right moment to see an elevator suddenly appear on the sidewalk and Big Al Pellagra get out and start walking purposefully across the street. Under his arm was a figurine of justice holding the scales.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I dropped the pigeon I had been spit-shining, rushed over to the elevator, and stepped inside. The briefcase was there! Excitedly, I started fiddling with the dials, then I stopped. I couldn’t just hurtle off through time and leave the figurine here. I was being paid to recover it. In theory, anyway. Also, I was a little curious. Why would Pellagra have traveled 62 years into the past to where I was, carrying the figurine I was looking for, and walk right past me with it? Coincidences of that magnitude make me stiffen slightly. And what was Pellagra planning to do with the figurine now that he was here? I had to find out.
I stepped out of the elevator, put the briefcase in a stray dog’s mouth and told him to “stay”, then thought better of it and put the briefcase back in the elevator. Then I started to follow Pellagra.
I kept behind him, but at a discrete distance until he walked up the steps into the police station. I decided to wait outside. There were policemen in there. After a few minutes he came back out, no longer carrying the figurine. He looked around at all the old cars and the unfamiliar skyline with a slightly bemused expression, then saw a diner advertising a strictly 1940’s Italian dish called LaSpaghettiloni. He licked his lips, looked at his watch, smiled as if realizing it didn’t really matter to a time traveler what time it was at any particular moment, then went into the diner and sat down. I headed into the police station.
I walked up to the desk sergeant and pointed at the figurine which was perched on the desk next to him.
“Can I have that?” I asked.
He said I couldn’t have it. It was important evidence. “Who are you anyway, and what do you want?”
I said I was a friend. A friend who wanted that thing that was on his desk. I offered to buy it. His whole attitude changed.
He said I couldn’t have the figurine, but just about everything else in the police station was for sale. He started showing me stuff that I could buy and quoting me special prices that he felt were a real steal for evidence of this quality, but I insisted I only wanted the figurine. We were at an impasse.
I asked to see my lieutenant friend, the one who liked the future even more than I did. He would go to bat for me and help put this deal across. The desk sergeant said the lieutenant was on extended leave. He had embezzled the police pension fund and bet it all on the Red Faces to win the 1941 World Series, as per the list I had given him. The Red Faces, hampered by the fact that they didn’t exist, did not win, and the lieutenant’s star had faded here at the station.
While the desk sergeant was telling me all this, I slowly tried to steal the figurine. My hand inched ever closer to it, but just before I got hold of it, the desk sergeant picked it up and handed it to another policeman. “Put this in the evidence room,” he said.
The policeman took it and walked off. After he had gone I looked at the desk sergeant.
“Where’s the evidence room?” I asked. “Is it near here?”
He didn’t say anything. I pointed. ”I know it’s down that corridor. Then should I turn left or right?”
“Hey, who are you?” he asked.
“You want my real name or my other name?”
“Take your pick.”
“Burly.”
Two big cops hustled me out of the building and threw me down the steps. “Get out Burly,” one of them said.
I picked myself up and started heading back towards the elevator. I figured I’d given it my best shot. Now to get back to 2003 where I belonged. At least I could tell Mandible where the figurine was, so I had accomplished part of my mission.
I got into the elevator and activated the time machine. The elevator started to shimmer but just as it was beginning to disappear into time, Big Al Pellagra stepped in.
We looked at each other, startled. But before we could react to each other’s surprise presence, the elevator began heading for home. Pellagra and I looked straight ahead during the journey like two strangers on an elevator should. Our eyes strayed towards each other occasionally, but then darted away.
The elevator arrived in 2003 and the door opened. Both of us got out without saying anything and we went off in opposite directions. I had the presence of mind to keep hold of the briefcase.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I arrived at my office building and immediately ducked behind a parked police car. There were dozens of police cars parked all around my building. Some of them with their sirens howling. Sgt. Dodge, who was in charge of the operation, was walking around trying to find out whose police cars those were and get them to shut their sirens off.
“This is a covert operation, people!” he shouted over his bullhorn. “Covert!”
About 35 cops were crowded into the front entryway to my building, looking sharply around for any signs of me. Hundreds more were on the roof. And a couple of cops were climbing up and down the face of the building - walking a very tough beat if you ask me.
It had been so long, I had forgotten the cops were trying to get that time machine away from me. It hadn’t been a long time for them. Only half an hour had gone by for Sgt. Dodge since he had battered down the door to my office and watched me disappearing into the past, so that disappointment was still fresh in his memory.
One of the cops saw me crouching behind his car and yelled at me to get out of there. This was a restricted area, he informed me. Police personnel only. I was about to tell him that I had a perfect right to be here because I was the guy the cops were looking for. I was a real major player in this drama. But I decided it would be wiser to remain silent. I’d let him win this round.
I backed away from the building without being seen and yelled at more than two or three more times, then stashed the time machine at my house, and went off to see Mandible.
I gave a complete verbal report of what I’d done over the past eight months to Mandible and his new junkie secretary, who was taking frantic and self-destructive notes of the meeting. Mandible was fascinated by my story whenever the figurine or Pellagra was mentioned, but didn’t seem interested in the rest of it - my months of hardship, the binge drinking, the moments of self-doubt, and so on. I thought those were the most interesting parts of the story, and sort of acted out some of them, doing all the voices, but Mandible just made “hurry up” motions with his hand during those parts of the story, which he characterized as “drivel”, and told me to “skip on down” to the important stuff.
When I had finished my report, Mandible seemed satisfied. He wasn’t upset at all that I hadn’t gotten the figurine, he said, because I was going to go back there right now and get it.
“Bring it back here, or destroy it,” he said. “Either way. It doesn’t really matter.”
This confused me. “Hey, do you want this thing or not?”
“I want it. But if I can’t have it, I don’t want anyone to have it.”
I could understand that. I feel that way about everything. But I didn’t fancy the idea of going back to 1941. It had been a bad year for me. So I said no, I’d remain here, if it was all the same to the universe, if space and time didn’t mind.
Mandible insisted. He said if I didn’t do what he wanted he would horsewhip me. I asked where he was going to get a horsewhip at this time of day? All the horsewhip stores were closed. He must have realized the truth of this because he changed his tack. He started pleading with me to go back, pointing out that he was an old man, a pathetic figure with a whiny insistent voice. I should have mercy on him
and do what he wanted or he’d by God horsewhip me.
I told him I wouldn’t even consider going back unless somebody told me what this whole thing was all about. When you’ve been played for a sucker as many times as I have, you start to get a sense of when it’s happening again. It’s like radar or something. There was something missing from this story, my sucker-sense told me. Mandible seemed like about the least sentimental guy I’d ever met, and I’ve met some people who have been dead for a week. So why did he really want this figurine so much, if it wasn’t sentiment? I wanted the whole story this time. And even if I got it, I cautioned, I wasn’t promising anything. I wasn’t either.
He blustered for a little while longer, referring back to the horsewhip once or twice, then finally relented.
“No one outside the family has ever known the full story,” he said. “You must swear you’ll never reveal a word of what I’m about to tell you to anyone.”
I said sure, you got it, Ace. And I meant it, too. But the thing people should know about me when they swear me to secrecy is that I don’t have a good memory. The first thing I forget is that it’s a secret. The second thing I forget is who told me this secret. The third and final thing I forget is the secret itself. So if you tell me something in the strictest secrecy, you’re guaranteeing that eventually everyone in the world will know this secret except me.
I probably should have mentioned this to Mandible, but I really wanted to know what was going on, however briefly. So I said he could rely on my discretion. He took a deep, reluctant breath, then began telling me the story.
His grandfather, he told me, was Thomas Dewey Mandible the 1st. Tom Mandible had only done one bad thing in his life. But that one bad thing had made him a fortune.
He had been a low-level building inspector for the city, when he was approached by the Pellagra Crime Family and offered a series of gigantic bribes to look the other way and whistle when building permits were issued to a group of disreputable firms that were secretly owned by the Pellagras. These firms were known for their faulty construction techniques, shoddy building materials, and spectacular profit margins.
Their buildings were dangerous, stupid, and surprisingly inexpensive to construct for something so stupid. Among their most infamous creations were the futuristic looking, but doomed to collapse, Skyscraper Of Cards, which was made entirely of giant slabs of playing card material which were just kind of leaning against each other hopefully, and the Balloon Building, which was made of 100% balloon alloy. Their claim that balloon material was 50% stronger than tempered steel, which explained why they had to charge the city 80% more, was 0% true. In the three months following its dedication, the building kept slowly getting smaller and losing its shape, until finally somebody stepped on it.
The Pellagras were at the forefront of what has been called the Golden Age Of Criminal Architecture. Their buildings didn’t stay up for long; some only lasted a couple of days before the wind knocked them over, or some wise guy kicked the first story out from under the building. But that didn’t bother the Pellagras. They’d already gotten their money. And it certainly didn’t bother Thomas Dewey Mandible The 1st. He just took the money, stamped the permits, then chuckled all the way to the bank. But not to a bank constructed by the Pellagra family.
He became very rich very fast. After this, he never did another dishonest thing in his life, partly because he didn’t have to, but mostly because of vanity. Now that he was rich, he wanted to be respected, even beloved, by all.
So he built libraries, gave the city art museums, erected statues of honest and semi-honest Americans, turned worthless slum areas into money-making parks, and of course, made sure to put his name on everything; Mandible Park, Mandible Library, Mandible Police Station and so on.
And it worked. The people loved him. He led every 4th of July and Founders Day parade, usually riding in a big red fire engine. And when the people cheered, they weren’t cheering American Independence or our city’s founding fathers, they were cheering him.
The only flaw in this idyllic picture was that the town that loved Tom Mandible was an imperfect town. Crime was rampant. It wasn’t safe to walk through Mandible Park at night, and you couldn’t visit certain sections of Mandible Library without getting shot.
So, he decided to single-handedly clean up the city. He used some of his ill gotten gains to finance his election to the position of District Attorney. With the millions he had to spend, his election was a walkover. His honest opponent bribed as many people as he could, but he never really had a chance. Mandible’s pockets were too deep.
He then used his powerful position to vigorously prosecute criminals of all kinds, sending them away for long stretches in prison. He especially enjoyed prosecuting members of the Pellagra crime family. He couldn’t get them for bribery in his case, because that was a secret, shh!, but he could get them for everything else they did. And they were into everything. In one memorable month - February 1941 - they had committed every crime in the United States.
1941 was an election year in our city, and with Tom Mandible up for reelection to the D.A. post, both the criminals and the opposition politicians were howling that he was almost as crooked as they were, and shouldn’t be reelected. Tom wasn’t worried. He was the most revered man in the city. No one would believe these slanderous accusations against him. And he knew his opponents had no proof of his previous indiscretions. There was proof though.
He had always been a meticulous man. He kept exact records of everything, including the bribes he had taken. He had even had forms printed up to make the record keeping easier and more precise. The forms had blanks for “Amount of Bribe Offered” “Bribee” “Briber” “Bribe Accepted By”, “Magnitude of Crime” etc. All carefully filled out. His opponents knew that someone as meticulous as he was would retain those records, even though they could be a danger to him. They decided to get their hands on them and expose him.
On the weekend before the election, the four sneakiest and stupidest members of the Pellagra family broke into Mandible’s office and hunted for the evidence, looking in the filing cabinets under “C” for “Crooked politician”, “R” for “Our Agreements”, and “L” for “What We’re Looking For”. They didn’t find what they were looking for.
When Tom Mandible came in to his office on Monday morning and saw the whole place trashed, and all the file cabinets rifled, he immediately realized what had happened and what the criminals had been looking for. He took the evidence out of the “B” drawer, toyed with the idea of burning the papers, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. They were all filled out so nice and neat, with no empty blanks or anything. So he decided to keep them, but to disguise what they were.
He took the papers to an origami shop and had them fashioned into a figurine of justice holding the scales. They were then covered with a light coat of gold enamel. You could still see the words on the folded papers, but no incriminating words were visible unless you took the figurine apart. There was a sign forbidding that next to the figurine.
He put the completed figurine on his desk and kept it there for the rest of his life, sometimes toying with it or having it fight other figurines, but mostly just letting it sit there out in the open, incriminating as hell. It amused him. Every time someone was in his office, toying with or looking at the figurine, not realizing its significance, he would laugh to himself. He became known as The Laughing To Himself D.A.
The family should have destroyed the figurine after Tom died, but they liked his little joke as much as he did, and didn’t see how it could hurt anything now. Not unless somebody invented a time machine and took the evidence back to 1941 and gave it to the cops, which they regarded as, at best, an 8 to 1 shot. So they kept it on the mantel in the family mansion and laughed so uproariously when people looked at it that people stopped looking at it.
But then a time machine was invented and crooks did get hold of it. This happened during what started as a routine burglary at Mandible Manor. One o
f the burglars, the current head of the Pellagra family, Big Al Pellagra, found the figurine on the mantel. He noticed his grandfather’s name, still visible under the gold enamel, realized the figurine’s significance, and then used the time machine to take the figurine back to 1941 and destroy Tom Mandible.
“And it did destroy him,” said Mandible the 3rd, handing me an old yellowed newspaper clipping. I glanced over the story.
It told how Tom Mandible had lost his reelection bid by a wide margin, and was jailed for his now-revealed crimes. And the scandal did more than just ruin Mandible. It threw the entire anti-crime movement in the city into disrepute. Everyone in 1941 figured, well law and order doesn’t work, let’s let crime give it a try.
“That’s why you must go back to 1941 and get that figurine before it’s handed over to the police,” Mandible said. “Otherwise you’ll doom me to a life in the gutter, and I don’t think you want that, and this city to a half century of rampant crime.”
He waved a hand at the city, inviting me to look and see how the city had changed now that his grandfather was not there to bust up the crime syndicate.
I said: “I don’t see anything different. Are we looking at the same thing?”
Mandible sneered at me for being an unobservant oaf, which, as I said before, I plead guilty to. There’s not much that happens around this town that I notice. He said he would take me on a tour of the town himself and show me what he meant.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Mandible took me around the town, showing me what had happened to it now that his grandfather had never been in a position to nip the criminal syndicate in the bud, an amusing thought occurred to me. I have this humorous side to my nature. I guess this is as good a time as any to mention that. I had noticed that Mandible was sort of like the Ghost of Criminal Future! Showing me around, and so forth. I asked him if he’d read Dickens. He told me to shut my mouth. We didn’t talk about literature any more after that. But I still think it was an amusing reference.
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