The Time Machine Did It (4 page)

I went down to Broadway & 4th
to talk to the underworld characters who normally hang around there socializing
with each other between crimes, practicing the various skills necessary to
being a successful criminal; picking each other’s pockets, playing dumb at each
other, and so on, and betting with each other who can talk the most like a
Damon Runyon character.

I leaned up against a wall next to
one of them and chewed a toothpick as he was doing until I felt we had formed a
loose bond. Then I said: “How’s the life of crime going?”

“Not too good,” he said. “I been
under the weather. I missed a bank robbery last week. Had to call in sick. The
bank president didn’t know what I was talking about. I think it’s the climate
that gets me. How are you?”

“Okay.” I chewed my toothpick for
a thoughtful moment. “I’ve got a ten-spot here needs a home.”

“You interest me strangely. What
are you asking for in exchange?”

“Information about a time
machine.”

His face suddenly got wooden. He
looked away from me and spoke in a stilted manner. “I - do - not - know - what
- you - mean - sir.”

I tried again, saying the same
thing using different words, spoken at different volume levels, but he didn’t
bite. Finally I turned to another crook.

“Let’s play word games! How about
‘Word Association’? I’ll go first: TIME MACHINE!!! THEFT OF!!!”

He didn’t want to play. In fact,
none of the crooks were interested in talking about time machines. The more I
talked about time machines, the more they left. The last one to go was carrying
a briefcase that said “Prof. E. Groggins” on the side.

“Professor Groggins? I asked.

“Yes?”

“There seems to be a lot of people
in this town with that name.”

“Yes. We had quite a laugh about
that, me and them.”

He followed the others, and I was
alone with as many unanswered questions as I had had before.

I decided to talk to Handicap
Harry, who had been known to have information for sale from time to time.
That’s not his real name, of course. Good parents don’t give their kids
gangster names anymore. Handicap Harry is more of a nickname the other guys in
his social set gave him. And not because he liked to bet on the ponies, but
because he had a wooden leg, a hook for a hand, a toupee, a glass chest, and
all sorts of other replacement parts. He’d had a tough life, I guess.

He didn’t answer my knock so I put
my shoulder to the door, gave it my trademark Burly Shove, and walked in. Harry
was on the bed, just a bald head on a pillow, with all the rest of him
carefully stowed around the room.

“Get outta here,” he said.

“I just wanted to ask you some
questions, Harry. Then you can ask me some. There are probably all sorts of
things you’d like to know about me. We can take turns. Back and forth, kind of
fair like. I’ll get the ball rolling by asking you about time machines. Then
you can ask me something. Then more time machine questions.”

“I said get outta here. Or I’ll
bite your brains out.”

Well I didn’t want that to happen,
that would be awful, so I left. But I was a little peeved that he wasn’t more
civil to such a welcome guest as me so, and maybe I shouldn’t have done it, I
put my mouth to the keyhole and yelled “Fire!”, trying to give the impression
that the building was burning. I could hear consternation and thrashing around
inside, then I heard a head roll off the bed and thump on the floor. Like I
said, I probably shouldn’t have done that.

Then I tried something I always
try at least once in the course of an investigation. I put on a ten gallon hat
and adopted the persona of my alter-ego Billy Bob Burly, a loudmouthed Texas
oilman, and tried to con some useful information out of a crook I saw hanging
around outside a cigar store.

Like always, my impersonation
wasn’t perfect. My accent kept slipping from Texan to Swedish, and my cowboy
hat kept falling off. But I kept plugging away. You’ve got to give the scam a
chance to work. But I wasn’t conning much information out of this particular
mark. In fact he wasn’t saying anything. He was just looking at me like I was a
train wreck. Pretty soon, as usual, I was forgetting my lines and having to
start over, until I finally just tore up my script, jumped up and down on my
cowboy hat and sat down on the curb to brood, telling the mark to get away from
me or I would shoot him.

Now I’ve seen detectives on TV
work that same con with 100% success. It works every time for them. I’ve tried
to talk to statisticians about my unbelievable 0% success rate - I mean what
are the odds of that? - but they say they’re not interested. Even though it’s
their specialty! That’s what’s wrong with America today, I guess. Something
like that. I know something’s wrong with America. Maybe that’s it.

Next I tried a good old-fashioned
stakeout. I like these because they’re easy. You’re not trying to outwit
anybody. In fact you’re not trying to do anything. You’re just sitting quietly
and comfortably for hours at a time waiting for some other poor slob to do
something. I’m great at that. And all the time you’re sitting there you get to
quietly listen to your car radio, and eat all kinds of stuff: donuts, salted
snacks, you name it. Anything goes on a stakeout. I didn’t know what to watch
for exactly in this stakeout, so I just parked where I had a good vantage point
of things in general. When I couldn’t see out of my car anymore because of all
the parking tickets that had been slapped on my windshield, I figured it was
time to call it a day. It was another failure, intelligence-wise, but like I
said, I like stakeouts.

On the way back to the office I
stopped and questioned a burglar who I happened to see robbing a house.

After a half dozen questions, the
burglar became impatient. “Hey look, Burly, if you’re going to keep asking me
questions, at least give me a hand with some of these bulkier items.”

I helped him carry a stereo out to
his getaway car and tie up and gag the homeowner, while I questioned him some
more. He said he didn’t know anything about any time machine. He said I should
ask H.G. Wells. I wrote down the name.

By the time I got back to my
office, I was dog tired. I’d put in a long day and found nothing. I asked my
secretary if she’d seen either a figurine or a time machine lately. You never
know. It doesn’t hurt to ask. Maybe she was sitting on them or something.

“Just get away from me,” she said.
“You make me sick.”

Normally, I wouldn’t let an
employee talk to me like that. But she’s quit so many times neither one of us
remembers whether she’s working for me right now or not. Since I wasn’t sure of
her current status, I changed the subject by asking her why I couldn’t get into
the office this morning. Where was she at 11 am?

She bristled. “Look, do you want
me to show up on time, or do you want me to do my job right?”

“Either one, I guess. I’ll take
what I can get at this point.”

“Stop shouting at me. My ear
hurts. I’m going home.”

I guess I should treat my
employees better. If she is an employee.

That evening an
elite group of the city’s most influential criminals met to decide what to do
about me. I’d been asking too many questions, they felt, and not giving them
enough time to think of witty answers before moving on to the next question.

After various solutions to the
so-called “Burly Problem” had been advanced, they finally decided to just try
warning me off the case first. It would be the simplest, cheapest way. The
organization’s ammo bill last year was through the roof. Things had gotten so
bad that they had to let some pickpockets and rapists go just before Christmas.
So, since threats are cheaper than bullets, they decided to go that way.

Not long after this decision was
made, my doorbell rang. I went to the door and opened it. Two men were standing
there. One was pointing a gun at me.

“Oh no!” I said.

The guy with the gun sneered at
me. “Aren’t you glad to see us?”

“Of course not.”

The criminals came into my
apartment. One was very tall, the other was very small. Actually, they were
both about average height. I was using artistic license there. I’m told this is
the thing to do, as it makes the story more interesting. If one guy is the size
of a refrigerator and the other one is the size of a thumbtack, this conjures
up a vivid picture in the mind. It’s like you can see the one guy being smaller
than the other, and this interests you. Readers get bored if everybody’s the
same size. Anyway, these two guys came into the room in their various sizes and
looked around. I hadn’t expected visitors, so the room wasn’t looking its best.

The smaller crook said: “Geez,
what kind of guy would live like this? It’s like a pig lives here.”

I frowned. “I’m already mad about
you breaking in and pointing a gun at me. Don’t make it worse.”

The smaller crook covered his
mouth with his handkerchief. “I gotta get out of here, Boss. The dust and the
mold is getting to me.”

“Have you taken your medicine?

“Yes, but it’s not helping.”

The guy with the gun turned to me.
“I’ll have to make this short. We just stopped in to give you some friendly
advice, Burly. There are some things going on around town right now that don’t
concern you, things involving time machines and other advanced scientific
concepts understood by few. Our friendly advice to you is that you keep your
nose out of these things, or you and your nose are dead men.”

When guys get tough with me like
that, I usually try to make some kind of tough sounding wisecrack, but tough
sounding wisecracks aren’t as easy to think up as you would think. I mean, if I
was good at wisecracks, I’d be working for Milton Berle, not you.

They waited for a few minutes for
me to come up with a wisecrack, while I just stood there thinking and staring
and sweating, then they left. I would have thought of one.

I had another group of unexpected
visitors the following morning. They were in my office waiting for me when I
arrived. Detective Sgt. Dodge and his merry men from the 4th Precinct.

My secretary, Elizabeth, looked at
me accusingly. “What have you done now?”

“I don’t know.”

“If they want me to testify
against you, I’ll do it.”

“You are a gem,” I said.

I wasn’t particularly happy to see
Sgt. Dodge. No one ever was. He had a disconcerting habit of pinching your face
between his thumb and forefinger when he was talking to you, so he could be
sure you were paying attention to him. I didn’t like that approach. Nobody did.
Not even the Mayor.

I walked over to Dodge and asked
him to what I owed the extreme pleasure?

“Just a friendly warning from your
friendly local police department,” he said. “The friendly warning reads as
follows: Dear Friend. If you continue your current investigations, we of the
police cannot guarantee your personal safety.”

“What’s different about that?” I
asked.

“I didn’t say it was different. I
just said to watch out.”

“I see. Well, thanks.”

He let go of my face, pocketed a
couple of items that caught his fancy and left. This was two friendly warnings
I had received in one 24 hour time period. A personal best. But friendly
warnings aren’t always as friendly as they sound. That night I wrote the word
“yikes” in my diary.

Nonetheless, I went back on the
streets to continue my investigations. It might seem stupid to you that I did
this, but probably my whole job seems stupid to you. What it comes down to is
the only way I know how to make a living in the detective business is to be
tenacious, tough, and something else that begins with T. The three T’s. If I
let people scare me off a case, word would get around and they’d scare me off
all my cases. Then they’d probably scare me out of town. Maybe all the way to
Germany. I couldn’t let them scare me that far away. It wouldn’t be good
business.

That evening I checked out a
nightclub that was known to be frequented by criminal types, and was in fact
run by criminals. It wasn’t the most pleasant place to spend an evening; the
food and drinks were terrible, and the entertainment wasn’t much better. I
guess it’s hard to find criminals who have really mastered big band
instruments. But it was a place an investigator like myself could pick up some
leads. I hung around the bar, listening to the various furtive conversations
that were going on around me. A couple of guys near me were planning a big
heist, apparently. After awhile, they noticed I was listening in, partly because
I kept asking them to repeat things. I’ve got to quit doing that. That’s a real
tipoff.

One of the crooks finally glared
at me. “Do you mind? We’re trying to have a private conversation.”

“Not at all,” I said. I moved
away, but then leaned back in so my ear was actually a little closer to them
than it was before. Then I made the ear widen a little. They probably wouldn’t
have noticed, except I lost my balance a little bit there and my ear went into
one of their drinks. They picked up what was left of their drinks and went off
to a table in the corner. I didn’t bother waiting for them to invite me to join
them. I wasn’t picking up any information here anyway.

The next day, a dead turtle was
left on my doorstep as a warning. I couldn’t figure out as a warning for what,
and I guess whoever was watching me picked up on that, because the next morning
there was another dead turtle, but this one had several sheets of paper glued
to it’s back leg. The pieces of paper contained a long footnoted explanation of
all the symbolism involved. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The turtle was
the “turtle of inquisitiveness” and the cheese smeared on it’s shell meant
something, and the little cowboy boots on its feet meant something. Everything
about this animal meant something apparently to whoever sent it. I still didn’t
get what it was all about. The next morning there was no turtle. Somebody just
shot at me from the bushes.