No matter how many people he asked, nobody that Nap Lapkin spoke to on the topic could remember any Sesame Street episodes that involved a serial killer. He could recall sitting in front of the TV like it was yesterday, watching as the various characters stumbled and bumbled through their investigation into each grisly murder. Because the deaths involved being trampled to death, young Nap would yell at the screen that it was obviously the work of one Aloysius Snuffleupagus, the large elephant-like creature that only Big Bird ever saw. Obviously, Big Bird would be implicated as well. In fact, Nap had wrestled with the idea that “Snuffy” didn’t even exist and that Big Bird would put on a pair of round feet to commit the heinous crimes himself.
Some pretty cold-blooded shit for a beloved children’s character to be involved in.
Eventually, he stopped trying to convince people that he wasn’t delusional and these episodes existed and just kept the memories to himself. Shows brought to him by the letter A. “Ass” the silhouette on the left would say and then the silhouette on the right would add “assin.” They would continue to repeat their parts, the pause between the two getting shorter and shorter until finally they were both saying “assassin.”
Then recently these memories came flooding back as he was assigned to look into a series of brutal
“ass” “assignations”
“ass” “assignations”
“ass” “assignations”
“ass” “assignations”
Assassinations.
Assassinations where the victims were
“tram” “pulled”
“tram” “pulled”
“tram” “pulled”
“tram” “pulled”
Trampled to death. (Ok, that’s enough of that.)
“So it sounds like when you were a kid, you watched “snuffy” films,” joked Madonna Axion as Nap tried to explain again the Sesame Street flashbacks he was having.
“There has to be a connection,” he insisted.
“Between a series of high-profile political killings and children’s TV shows that, for the record, never really happened? Well, tell you what, I’ll go to the latest crime scene and look for actual evidence while you get down to the local PBS station to see if you can beat a confession out of Mr. Hooper.”
Nap turned and walked out, not bothering to inform Madonna that Mr. Hooper had died 40 years ago. In fact, just the thought of the “Farewell, Mr. Hooper” episode had him incapable of mounting a coherent rebuttal and he’d be damned if he’d give her the satisfaction of seeing him get all misty.
A few hours later, Nap’s phone let him know someone would like to speak with him. It did this with a few short bursts of Hells Bells, courtesy of his AC/DC app.
“How do you do it, Lapkin?” asked a seemingly perturbed female that he quickly recognized as Madonna. “Do you know what the lab found at all of the crime scenes?” Before he could wager a guess, she barreled on. “Of course you don’t. You’re combing the streets of Sesame Street for clues while the rest of us are out here working.”
He began his reply with a question. “Did you know that Sesame Street has been called the longest street in the world?” Before she could hazard a guess, he barreled on. (It should be noted that if you engage in a conversation with either of these parties, you should be ready for a lot of barreling.) “It’s true. While not actually the longest street, it got that reputation because it’s educated kids from around the world.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. In addition to barreling, long pauses are also not uncommon.
“Are you done?” she finally asked.
“Yonge street,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“Yonge street?” she replied.
“That’s the longest street in the world. Almost 35 miles. In Toronto. When you hear Yonge, you probably assumed it was in China or somewhere East… but nope. Toronto.”
She barreled into a very a significant pause. A pause that would lead most casual listeners to assume she’d disconnected, but Nap knew better. He was a veteran of such pauses, having been on the receiving end of a large number of them in the past.
“Don’t you want to know why I called?” she finally offered.
“Of course. I am waiting with baited breath.”
“If you attempt to tell me the origin of the phrase ‘baited breath,’ I will hunt you down and kill you,” she warned in a tone so icy, Nap could actually see his breath for a few moments.
“The thought never occurred to me,” he said innocently.
“Anyway, proving beyond any doubt that you are either the luckiest or most demented man on the planet, the lab got back to me with something very interesting. Hairs. Hairs at the scene of every crime. Hairs that, as unbelievable as it seems, belong to an animal that has been extinct for 10,000 years.”
“Dinosaurs had hair?” asked a stunned Nap Lapkin.
“No, you idiot! A woolly mammoth.”
“I see,” he said. He didn’t. Then he did. A big, hairy elephant-like creature. On the other end of the line, Madonna waited patiently to for him to put the pieces together.
Finally Nap replied, “Does that make me Big Bird?”
The line went dead. Nap laughed and then busied himself with looking up the origins of the phrase “baited breath.”
Meanwhile, at that very moment the man who occupied the unnecessarily shadowy office in Washington D.C., which true Nap Lapkin fans have come to expect to make an appearance in every story, was on vacation. Thousands of miles away from the aforementioned office and in no way involved in what was about to unfold.
Why mention his office at all then?
Because I know what the people want (“the people” being the fictitious fans of Nap Lapkin I’ve created in my head). I know they would feel empty without a reference to the unnecessarily shadowy office in Washington D.C.
What they could never expect is that only a few moments later, a cleaning woman who had only recently been hired walked into that very same office and did what had not been done in well over fifteen years; she opened the curtains and let daylight stream into the office.
Somewhere in Belize, a pale tourist suddenly sat up with a worried look on his face. He sensed that something was terribly wrong.
Seconds after the curtains were opened, the man’s assistant ran into the office and closed them. He scolded the new cleaning woman and made clear what would happen to her family should she ever touch the curtains again.
The man in Belize sighed and returned to a prone position on the massage table.
If this last chunk of the story didn’t have your pulse racing, try rereading it with the theme from Mission Impossible running through your head.
A quick search of Interpol revealed that absolutely no thefts involving woolly mammoths had occurred at any museum or archeological site across the globe. Just feeding that request into the database made Madonna feel stupid, but it was the only lead they had. Across the hall, Nap was finishing up a conversation with Matt Vogel that was also a dead end.
“Who the hell is Matt Vogel?” asked Madonna as they compared notes.
“He’s the guy inside the Big Bird costume on Sesame Street,” Nap explained.
It took a few moments for Madonna to absorb the information, until finally her head tilted ever so slightly and she said “Of course he is.” She debated drawing her service revolver and putting two into the empty head of her co-worker, but instead decided to pretend she didn’t hear his response.
“I know, I know, pretty stupid, huh?” chuckled Nap. “Like Big Bird was going to tell me anything relevant.”
Madonna laughed and nodded in agreement.
“Obviously, I needed to be speaking with Martin P. Robinson, but I couldn’t track him down.” As soon as the words left his mouth, his gaze returned to some distant horizon where the answers must lie.
Madonna sat slowly clenching and unclenching her fists. He couldn’t be serious, could he? Martin P. Robinson couldn’t be the man she feared he would be. She couldn’t bring herself to ask Nap. If in fact the Martin P. Robinson he was referring to was the guy who was in the Snuffleupagus costume, she would have no alternative but pull out her service revolver, place it in her mouth, and pull the trigger. She closed her eyes and began to take long, slow breaths to calm herself.
When she opened her eyes, she saw that Nap was staring at her. As he was about to speak, she leapt forward and pinched his lips together.
“Don’t say it. Please for the love of all that is holy, don’t say it.”
He didn’t say it. Instead, he comforted himself by believing that Madonna would have no idea if answers would lay on a distant horizon or lie on a distant horizon, the question he was about to pose to her. “I think it’s lay,” he concluded to himself before starting to wonder when Madonna was going to let go of his lips. He noted that given her finger strength, she must have a drawer filled with worn out stress balls.
It’s at this point that you’re probably waiting to see who is responsible for all the high-profile political assassinations (and relieved to see I didn’t make “ass/assignations” a running joke).
Without further ado, let me introduce you to Hans von Oofnik. Despite a modest start in the pharmaceutical industry, everyone who ever heard his name knew he was destined for bigger and more terrible things. He was on a number of 30 Under 30 Villains to Watch lists before he’d even graduated college. By the time he got the first of many PhDs, he was already recognized as a leader in the field of DNA and was a familiar face at industry trade shows until he suddenly quit his high-paying job in Big Pharma and disappeared to parts unknown.
That is, until a bad guy with deep pockets approached him with a request that was just crazy enough to be the premise of a marginally entertaining spy thriller.
Slipping by security at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, NY was child’s play for a seasoned spy like Nap Lapkin. Dressed in black from head to toe, he moved in and out of the shadows and hummed a melody without realizing it. When he realized that there was nobody to hear him, he began to sing quietly to himself; “Come and play. Everything’s… A-OK. Friendly neighbors there. That’s where we meet.”
A short time later, he found himself strolling down the middle of the lot where they filmed Sesame Street.
He kept waiting for some machete-wielding puppet to come lunging out of a trash can or some dark figure to pass in front of one of the many windows, but none materialized. He wasn’t sure what it was he was hoping to find, but he couldn’t help but feel that there was a connection between the recent murders and his childhood recollections. He had trusted his gut on a number of occasions and it had never led him astray.
Except when it did. And even those times, it usually, against all odds, seemed to work out fine.
“Sunny Day. Sweepin’ the clouds away. On my way to where the air is sweet. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street…”
He wandered off the main drag, through the prop department, and into the dressing rooms. The smell of makeup and Ben Gay hung in the air. There were large closets on wheels and a few rows of lockers. Above one of the lockers, the name Martin P. Robinson was written in black marker on masking tape.
Nap saw there was no lock on it. All he had to do was lift the handle and he would see if his hunch was right or Madonna had been right all along.
He hesitated.
“It’s a magic carpet ride. Every door will open wide.”
He lifted the handle and the door opened wide.
He looked inside and smiled. “I knew it.”
“Mr. Oofnik,” said the large man in a white lab coat, “there was somebody nosing around the Sesame Street lot.”
“I see,” said Hans von Oofnik. Typically, Hans would have cursed and expressed his anger at the security team he’d installed at Kaufman Astoria Studios to avoid just such a scenario, but since the shooting, he was very aware that his henchmen were a bit on edge. In his defense, it was common knowledge that he hated puns, but when one of the newcomers to the lab had been told what it was they were doing in the secret facility and replied that it seemed a “mammoth undertaking,” Hans had pulled the Ruger Mk II he always kept hidden in his jacket and shot him right in the face.
Since then, the mood within the complex had been a bit tense.
“What did they want?” he finally asked.
“We don’t know for sure. He walked up and down the street for awhile and then went into the dressing rooms.”
“Did he go into Martin’s locker?” inquired Hans through clenched teeth.
“Affirmative.” The large man in the white lab coat thought briefly about mentioning the fact that the intruder sang “every door will open wide” before opening the locker, but reconsidered. While not technically a pun, it definitely seemed a bit too quippy to risk a repeat of the “mammoth undertaking” incident.
Hans von Oofnik did not take the news well.
“Why didn’t someone detain him?” he asked.
At this point, the man pulled out a notepad in order to make sure he relayed the information accurately. “Apparently, the two guards got a ‘bad feeling’ from the guy. They said he had a ‘bright red frog sitting out in the open in the jungle’ vibe. They couldn’t explain it any better than that.”
“I see. Well, fire them both immediately. I want to know who this mystery man is by this time tomorrow. If not…” and he glanced down at the inside of his jacket. If there was a word that means equal parts casually and menacingly, I would have used it right there when describing how he glanced down. I appreciate that having a word for every possible combination of two other words is a lot to ask from a language. “Reach out to Martin and tell him I have another job for him.”
“Yes sir,” and with that, the man pivoted crisply and walked out of the room.
After looking around to confirm he was now alone in the room, Hans von Oofnik said, “A mammoth undertaking,” and allowed himself a small chuckle. “That’s pretty good.”
“I know my worth. I embrace my power. I say if I’m beautiful. I say if I’m strong. You will not determine my story. I will. I’ll speak and share and fuck and love, and I will never apologize for it. I am amazing for you, not because of you. I am not who I sleep with. I am not my weight. I am not my mother. I am myself. And I am all of you.”
Nap didn’t know how to reply. Even for Madonna, it was quite an opening salvo.
She finished opening the door and held up a copy of Amy Schumer’s book The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo as if it would shed light on her greeting. Much to her disappointment, Nap seemed unfazed and hurried past her and into the depths of her apartment. Something was clearly on his mind.
“I was right,” he said when she caught up to him in the kitchen. She knew from experience that these were his favorite three words in the English language.
“You’re not the only one who found a good book,” and with that, he produced an owner’s manual for a CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing system.
Clearly unamused by his callous entrance, Madonna replied with a terse, “That’s the one from Oprah’s book club, right?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me where I found it?” asked Nap.
“I have the feeling you’re going to tell me either way.”
“From the locker of… wait for it… Martin P. Robinson.” He said it in a very “the defense rests” kind of way. When she didn’t gasp in a very “he cracked the case” kind of way, he continued. “The guy in the Snuffleupagus costume on Sesame Street.”
Still no gasping from Madonna. Nap wondered briefly what it takes to get a gasp these days.
“What are the odds that his literary preferences happen to be exactly the kind of thing that would have wooly mammoths sprinting around the tundra again? There has to be a connection.”
Madonna had to admit that the evidence was compelling, but she didn’t want to. She also didn’t want to admit that only Nap Lapkin could have made the connection. Honestly, she was in no mood for admitting anything.
“So what did you think of my little speech at the door? It’s from Amy Schumer,” she said trying to change the subject.
Nap’s forehead scrunched up in the way it does when he is trying to recall someone. Eventually, it unscrunched and he said, “That’s the fat comedian right?”
“Listen, I’m sorry about calling Amy Schumer fat,” said Nap when he saw Madonna the following morning. “She’s not exactly fat. Just… oddly thick in some places.”
“Stop trying to apologize. It just makes it worse.”
Nap nodded and then stood as if waiting for something. Seeing that Madonna was in no rush to offer anything further on the topic, he asked, “Isn’t there something you’d like to say?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t want to apologize for anything?” Nap asked incredulously.
“What would I have to apologize for?” she snapped back.
“You drew your weapon and pointed it at me.”
“I needed you to leave,” said Madonna slowly and firmly. “The fact that your Snuffleupwhatever hypothesis seemed to be correct was more than I could take. If you would have made one more Sesame Street comment or suggested that Amy Schumer is quite capable of trampling someone to death with her large calves and thighs, somebody was going to get shot. Which brings me to ask how the fuck are a bunch of high-profile trampling deaths connected to a make-believe character on a children’s TV show?”
“Yeah. Crazy, right? I tried to locate Martin but he’s been off the grid for months now. He obviously doesn’t want to be found,” said Nap, donning his best it’s-time-to-get-work face.
“Maybe we can get him to come to us,” suggested Madonna.
“My thought exactly. When I was walking down Sesame Street, I couldn’t help but feel I was being surveyed.”
“Maybe it was Elmo,” Madonna said sarcastically, “or Cookie Monster.”
Nap ignored her and he continued to finish his thought. “I go back, under the guise of returning the book to Martin’s locker. They’ll be expecting something like that and I’ll no doubt have the opportunity to take a few prisoners and then question the living shit out of them.”
Madonna laughed. More of a snort really. “That means you’ll have to leave a few of them alive. Are you sure you can do that?”
“Simple,” he replied, “I won’t bring a gun.”
“Brilliant, Lapkin. No gun. What could possibly go wrong?”
Later that night, a large man in a white lab coat approached Hans von Oofnik. Before he could speak, Hans said, “I trust you have the name and address of the man that broke into Martin’s locker?”
“Better. He’s back. He just entered the facility and I have my best men ready to grab him when he goes onto the Sesame Street lot.”
“Tell them not to engage. Just make sure he doesn’t leave before Martin arrives. It’s time we take care of this mystery man.” He then let rip with his best diabolical laugh. He’d been working on it for quite some time and felt it was an opportune time to debut it. He glanced over to the large man in the white lab coat to gauge how it had gone over.
The man was smiling, his head slowly bobbing up and down in appreciation.
“Nice,” Hans thought to himself, his head slowly bobbing up and down for being appreciated. All the hard work and hours in front of the mirror were paying off handsomely.
“Maybe nobody is going to show,” thought Nap as he made his way down Sesame Street. The hairs on the back of his neck told him otherwise. As if to accelerate the proceedings, Nap began to whistle the Sesame Street theme. He walked unmolested to the dressing room and placed the book back into the locker. As he strolled back into the area where they kept the larger puppets, he began to casually knock things over, each bang and crash getting progressively louder.
Back on Sesame Street, a large shadow began to make its way towards him. Nap felt the heavy footsteps before he even turned the corner. He reached for the gun he didn’t have and then froze. Listening and looking around for something to use as a weapon, as he already understood that what was coming wasn’t someone he could disarm or disable.
The heavy breathing was getting closer and Nap was relieved to find a sword and shield leaning against what appeared to be a knight costume. “That’s convenient.”
He scooped up the former and walked to the middle of the street.
That’s when he met Martin.
Sort of.
What was making its way towards him stood nine feet tall, more mammoth than man. Standing on two legs and covered in thick brown fur, it sported two massive (I almost said mammoth) curved tusks and a long trunk. Its feet were round like an elephant’s and the hands consisted of two large fingers fused together. It radiated anger, as if its very existence was cause for violence.
It was at this moment that Nap realized that the sword he held was made of rubber.
The man in Belize who typically occupied the unnecessarily shadowy office in Washington D.C. grudgingly finished packing his suitcase and called down to the front desk to arrange transport to the airport. His vacation was almost over and the next morning, it was time to return home.
There were no screeching kids running around hotel room nor was there a nagging wife looking to discuss what odd jobs needed to be started around the house upon their return.
Instead there was only the bottle of The Macallan in Lalique 65 Years Old single malt Scotch whisky sitting on the bar next to four glasses.
Then came a light knock on the door. He smiled. “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” He softly articulated the mantra that, for better or worse, kept both his oars in the water.
The hookers were right on schedule.
“Ok, big boy, time to dance,” said Nap Lapkin through clenched teeth.
His earpiece sprang to life. “Dance? Are you thinking of fighting this monstrosity with a sword?” asked Madonna. She was hurrying along a catwalk high above the street, clutching her trusty M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle.
“Funny thing actually; the sword is made of rubber. I was hoping it might scare off this thing.”
Madonna laughed. “It doesn’t appear scared. In fact…” and with that, the creature roared and rushed Nap, its huge tusks slashing back and forth.
Nap rolled to his left and narrowly avoided getting gored, briefly taken aback by the ferocity of the attack. Then he felt something grab his ankle.
It was the monster’s trunk.
“Holy shit,” he exclaimed, “This thing is a handful!”
“Disengage,” shouted Madonna, “I can take him down. Get out of my shot, Lapkin.”
“I can’t do that,” and he sent a flurry of punches in the direction of the beast’s mid-section, none of which seemed to have any effect whatsoever.
The beast swung its tusks again and then stomped a huge foot down, narrowly missing Nap’s head. In order to dodge the foot, he opened himself up to the returning tusks and one of them seemed to have a rather nasty effect (whatsoever?).
He went flying.
“Nap, are you ok?” asked Madonna, readying her rifle.
“Of course,” he replied, rather unconvincingly. He sprung to his feet, pivoted sharply, got behind the monster and launched himself. Once on its back, he attempted to wrap his arms around its neck, his feet at least three feet off the ground. After a few seconds of hanging there, he said, “It doesn’t appear to have a neck per se. Not ideal.”
With that, the beast roared and began to spin around wildly. Nap stayed with it for a few spins but then reached an unspoken agreement with centrifugal force to depart the animal and go flying off in a random direction. Thankfully, a brick wall was there to cushion his landing. The beast let out a triumphant snort to confirm that it felt it was time for the trampling to commence.
Cue the gunfire.
Short bursts that caused the monster to roar again and look around wildly, trying to find the source. When it realized that it was beyond its ability to reach, it turned and stomped away. The growling and sounds of crashing and chaos slowly receded into the distance.
“Nap,” screamed Madonna, louder and more panicked than she’d intended (the only thing keeping me from using an exclamation point being that many veteran writers advise against it. But if you read it as “Nap!” it’s completely understandable). She sprinted along the catwalk until she finally found a way down to street level.
When she finally reached Nap, he wasn’t moving. Out of respect for how out of character it was for her and the embarrassment she later felt, for the next few minutes I won’t go into too many details about how she behaved and what she said; suffice it to say there was some concern shown for Nap’s condition, the word “please” was uttered a few times, and even a few bargains offered up to any deities that might have been in attendance.
Finally, Nap stirred.
“Oh, thank goodness. What the fuck were you thinking, Lapkin? You and your male pride. Always with the ego. Why the fuck would you try to fight that thing? You should have been killed,” Madonna rambled.
It took awhile but eventually, Nap was able to reply, “I had to get close enough to plant the tracker on it.”
“What self-respecting criminal would have his lair on Staten Island?” asked Nap with an almost-offended look on his face.
“How do you know it’s a lair as opposed to a hideout?” asked Madonna.
“If we were on the trail of a couple bank robbers in 1880, it might be a hideout. It’s not a legitimate company so it can’t be a headquarters and anyone who is engineering super-assassins certainly isn’t holed up in a bunker,” he explained.
“Lair it is. And on the topic, I hope you can appreciate in retrospect how nice it was that I disabled a few of their mercenaries prior to your throwdown with tall, dark and hairy. There is something to be said for zip ties over bullets. They were happy to give us the location of the… lair… and you wouldn’t have needed to wrestle with that thing in the first place.” She tried to offer the advice in the least patronizing tone she had in her arsenal of tones.
Seemingly oblivious to her sage advice, Nap turned the conversation to next steps.
“So now that we know where this Hans von Oofnik is, how do you suggest we take him out?”
“Are you seriously going to pretend you’re going to do anything but march right through the front door?” inquired Madonna, selecting a slighter more patronizing tone. It went from a 2 to a 4.
“I wanted to include you in the decision-making,” replied Nap, his insincerity stuck where it always sat, at 10.
Madonna smiled and stretched. “I appreciate that. Well, crawling through ventilation systems or pretending to be computer repairmen are right out. How about we just march right through the front door?”
Nap felt something stir in his chest.
And his pants.
Heading into any situation that might involve conflict with Nap always filled Madonna with a potent mix of exhilaration and trepidation, and if she was being completely honest with herself, any number of other words that end in “tion”.
She was convinced that he truly believed he wasn’t going to die. It wasn’t confidence or even arrogance. It was the greatest, and perhaps only, example of true belief she’d ever come across.
Early in his career, Nap had been ordered to attend psychiatric counseling due to what his superiors (the greatest example of a misnomer that she’d ever come across) considered his reckless behavior in the field.
Madonna had engineered an opportunity to casually speak to his therapist after a few sessions to get her take. After only a few drinks, the woman violated any number of psychiatrist/patient confidentiality laws, but a little Sodium Pentothal introduced into a beverage will have that effect.
“When I suggested that his behavior has led a number of his colleagues to conclude that he wasn’t all there, he said the strangest thing by way of an explanation,” she began. “He said the problem was that he was the only one who was all there.” She took another sip of her drink. “The way he said it gave me an odd chill.”
Madonna knew that chill all too well.
“He started off by saying that having a hunch was fine, but to never ever have an inkling. When I asked him why he thought he’d been able to escape so many perilous situations in such a short time, he suggested I read up on Siddhartha Gautama. I had no idea who that was and he laughed and said I’d know him better as a Buddha. Of course I pressed him for details and eventually he told me about a cat that is stuck way up in a tree. At the very top. Holding on for dear life. Finally after a long struggle, it lets go. Once in the air, it relaxes as it falls and is able to turn its body so it can land safely on its padded paws. Paws designed for just such an impact. It walks away, unscathed.”
Madonna leaned forward, feeling like some vital bit of information was about to be shared.
“I leaned forward,” the therapist continued, “feeling like some vital piece of information was about to be shared. He looked at me with the most serene look on his face and said ‘I’m always falling.’ I only have a few more sessions with him and I’m afraid I’m going to have to suggest that he be removed from the field. I believe he poses a danger to himself and the agents he works with.” She then began making a circling motion with her index finger at her ear, universally recognized as the cuckoo sign.
Madonna briefly smiled with a faraway look on her face and then, returning to the task at hand, leaned forward, feeling like she wanted to make sure that the vital information she was about to share would be fully understood. “If you do that, I will play the recording of the chat we are currently having and you will lose your license. On top of that, I will arrange another meeting between us that will end with you unable to chew solid food.”
The security at Hans von Oofnik’s secret lair had been briefed to watch all ventilation shafts with particular interest and shoot on site anyone claiming to be a computer repairman. What they had not been expecting were two people casually walking through the front door. Nap and Madonna strolled in and except for the numerous weapons on their persons, it would be easy to mistake them for a couple of scientists reporting to work.
The lobby of the building was enormous and currently populated with a number of men in matching uniforms.
“Wow. Nice lobby,” noted Nap. “Is this Atenea White?” he said looking down at the marble beneath their feet.
“I believe it is,” replied Madonna.
A stocky guard began to reach for his walkie talkie until Nap caught his eye. Nap shook his head slowly from side to side and the man’s hand moved away from his walkie talkie. The man then turned and went to change out of his security guard uniform and begin his new life as anything but a security guard.
“As lairs go, this place is really well done,” said Madonna as they made a beeline for a bank of elevators on the other side of the sprawling atrium.
Suddenly, there was a burst of gunfire and an unfortunate man wearing an EZ FIX Computer Services hat slumped onto the reception counter and then fell to the floor. The men in the matching uniforms hurried over to make sure he was dead. It was particularly bad timing on the part of the soon-to-be-corpse for him to have stopped in to introduce himself to the company’s IT department.
Nap mentioned how much Madonna’s outfit reminded him of Kate Beckinsale’s outfit in Underworld as they waited for the elevator to arrive. As it was the look she was going for, she appreciated him saying so. After they doors opened and they stepped inside, Nap noticed there were only two buttons: Lobby and Subterranean Research Facility. “That’s handy,” he thought to himself and pressed the latter. How Deep is Your Love by the Bee Gees played quietly overhead.
“I wonder why they always put the place they do the research so deep underground,” wondered Nap, trying to make small talk during the prolonged descent.
“No idea,” said Madonna.
When the elevator finally stopped and the doors opened, they were both relieved to see that most of the men in matching uniforms were busy looking at the numerous ventilation ducts that seemed to populate every wall.
“Ventilation seems to be a real priority for these guys,” Nap said offhandedly.
It was. That and very expensive laboratory equipment. The placed was choked with it. As far as the eye could see. Scientists in white lab coats scurried around and many of the machines featured flashing lights and made beeping noises.
Everything a secret lair could wish for.
The two of them strolled towards the center of the room in the hopes that eventually someone would notice them.
Eventually, someone did. None other than Hans von Oofnik. While he wore the same type of white lab coat that the other scientists sported, he had added some gold tassels to the shoulders, like military leaders of Third World countries are inclined to do, in order to stand out. He wanted his outfit to pop. “I see we have company,” he said loudly, in the hopes of momentarily shifting the attention of the men watching the ducts.
It worked. Heads pivoted and the sound of guns being cocked filled the room.
“Nice tassels, Hans,” Nap said. “Now if you will come with us, we can avoid any unpleasantries. And by that, I mean the two of us having to kill all of your henchmen and possibly some of your scientists.”
The scientists in attendance did not take this news well. In fact, after a few seconds of digesting the information, they all began to run hysterically for the exits.
Just the distraction Nap and Madonna were hoping for. They both leapt behind desks just as the gunfire began. True to his word, they both began killing all the henchmen with ruthless yet elegant efficiency.
Watching Nap in action filled Madonna with the feeling a female peacock gets when she sees a particularly large and colorful male spread his wings. “Nice plumage,” she said to herself.
Watching Madonna in action filled Nap with something that would probably cause a particularly large and colorful male peacock’s head to explode. “Nice tits,” he said to himself.
Watching Madonna in action filled Hans von Oofnik with the type of thoughts that would cause a female peacock to wish that there was such a thing as a human resources department for birds so that she could report him. “Nice tits,” he said somewhat unnecessarily.
It wasn’t long before Hans realized he had not gotten his money’s worth with his henchmen and it was time to bring in his ace in the hole. “Martin,” he bellowed (again, you’ll be forgiven if you read that as “Martin!” or even “Martin!!”).
At the far end of the facility, a door opened. Nap immediately recognized the vibration the floor was now making. The nine-foot tall creature with the tusks and whatnot entered the room. Even though he had seen him before, Nap was still a little shocked at just how big the thing was.
“Is that Martin P. Robinson?” he yelled at Hans.
“Half of him anyway,” replied Hans.
“What happened to the real Martin?” asked Nap.
“I had to shoot him,” explained Hans. “He made a bad mammoth pun.”
“Understandable,” shouted Nap.
The beast roared and began to crash towards Nap and Madonna. It was not weaving between obstacles so much as charging through them or pushing them out of its way. Equipment that weighed thousands of pounds slid easily across the room at its nudging. Watching this display of power did not fill Nap with enthusiasm for another round of hand to hand combat. Instead, he stepped out from behind the desk he’d been crouching behind and put his pistol in its holster.
“I don’t want to do this again, big boy,” he began. He raised his hands in the air. The mammoth-man (manmmoth?) continued forward. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“What are you doing?” asked Madonna.
“Trust me,” he replied.
The enormous creature slowed its approach.
Nap pointed at Hans. “That’s the guy you want to trample. He’s the bad guy in all this. I know you don’t want to be here. He’s the one that made you.”
The creature stopped and then slowly turned to look at Hans.
“That’s right,” Nap continued. “He’s the guy you want to trample, not me. I mean, who puts tassels on a lab coat?”
For a few tense seconds, the monster debated the merits of the argument Nap was making and decided that he was correct. It was probably the tassels that did it. It began to move towards Hans.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” exclaimed Hans. “Just shoot the damn thing,” he yelled at his remaining henchmen. Which they did. Which goes to show the upside of hiding behind desks. “Now kill these two interlopers… I have a plane to catch.”
Despite not knowing exactly what an interloper was, his henchmen decided that he was referring to Nap and Madonna, so once they were done filling the mutant mammoth thing with lead, they turned their attention back to the so-called interlopers.
I won’t describe the death-throes of the nine-foot tall hairy creature as it took far too long and I like to keep things moving along. Suffice it to say it was poignant and a metaphor for a number of topics such as science, progress, and man’s continued search for meaning.
Now that bullets were once again flying, Nap ducked back down behind the desk.
“Go after Hans,” yelled Madonna, “I’ll clean up the rest of these guys.”
These words seemed to hit a chord with him. He was suddenly beaming. Oblivious to the bullets whizzing around his head, Nap slowly stood up and looked at Madonna. “I know your worth. You are amazing for me, not because of me.”
Some of the henchmen came to the conclusion that an interloper must be an intruder who says beautiful things.
“Not now, Nap,” screamed Madonna, “Go get Hans before he escapes.”
So he did.
And before Madonna resumed the gun battle, she allowed herself a broad smile.
Being in top physical condition, Nap was able to make up the distance between himself and his quarry in no time flat. The two men ended up standing in what appeared to be a large conference room with no other exits than the one they had come through, so there was no need to point out there was nowhere else for Hans to run.
“There always seems to be a fly in the ointment,” snarled an animated Hans von Oofnik.
Nap briefly thought about returning serve with the ol’ “I’m rubber and you’re glue” defense but wasn’t sure if the fly or the ointment would be rubber. “I know what you are but what am I?” faced a similar hurdle. This was not the time to risk mixing metaphors.
Instead, he took a slow, deep breath and exhaled. “This is my favorite part,” he began, “the big reveal.”
Oofnik just stared at him.
“Come on Hans, I know you’re dying to tell me everything. You can’t help yourself.” With that, Nap gestured to Hans that he had the floor.
Hans couldn’t help himself.
“You want me to try to explain my work to a cretin like yourself? You expect me to give you the details of a twenty-year journey of discovering and untangling and connecting five billion base pairs of the Mammuthus primigenius genome?”
“Only if you want to,” replied Nap.
“Do you think I’m just a mad scientist caricature who will spill his guts at the slightest provocation?” the mad scientist caricature thundered.
“Um… yes?”
“Look at this place,” Hans spilled, “It’s a technological marvel. A temple. Devoted to pushing the boundaries of science and human evolution. While the dullards were splicing mammoth DNA with Asian elephants under the guise of reversing climate change, I alone had the balls to combine these hairy relics with a human. And then came the eager volunteer who shared my vision, Martin P. Robinson.”
“And how did that work out?” asked Nap in a mocking tone.
“Science is a process,” snapped Hans. “I would have been able to perfect that process if it wasn’t for your meddling.”
“Perfect?” It was Nap’s turn to thunder a little. “Did it ever occur to you that human DNA contains a lot more than information on constructing a person? I can’t speak for mammoths, and I know Richard Dawkins might disagree with me here, but human DNA also carries the collective unconscious. Thousands of generations of experience. Thousands of generations of altruism.”
Thundering was a lot more exhausting than Nap had counted on. He needed a few seconds to collect himself before continuing.
“What I’m trying to say is that there’s a reason that people in a stadium do the wave.”
Hans von Oofnik took a moment to digest what Nap had said before responding. Nap looked at him for his reaction, perhaps hoping that’s he’d understand and even appreciate the point he was struggling to make.
He did not.
“You are a fucking moron,” was his assessment.
Nap drew his gun and asked Hans if he’d ever heard of Oliver Sacks. As Nap walked slowly towards him, Hans indicated that every scientist worth his salt had.
“Well,” said Nap as he raised his pistol, “he once noted that if a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye, but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.”
“And Nietzsche cautioned that whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” countered Hans.
“That shipped sailed a long time ago.” With that, Nap pulled the trigger and Hans fell to the floor, a small hole between his eyes beginning to ooze the red stuff.
“Was that really necessary?” asked a feminine voice behind him.
“How long have you been there?” asked Nap.
“Long enough,” replied Madonna.
“If we sent him to some asylum for the criminally insane, he would eventually break out and start all of this up again,” stated Nap.
“Are you thinking of that place that Batman sends criminals to? I’m not sure that’s how it works in the real world.” A small grin crept onto her face. “Oliver Sacks? Really? I would have bet money that you were going to hit him with your boy Jeff Goldblum’s quote from Jurassic Park. What with it being an extinct animal and all.”
The blood drained from Nap’s face. His body swayed ever so slightly. The words “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” formed on his lips but he couldn’t bring himself to say them aloud. All he could get out after a few pained moments was “It would have been perfect. When am I ever going to get to use that quote again?”
“Relax, Napkin, with all the new cloning technology, I have a feeling you’ll get your chance,” Madonna said in a consoling tone.
The next morning, the man who typically occupied the unnecessarily shadowy office in Washington D.C. walked into his office and froze. Something was different.
His assistant materialized next to him. “Something’s different,” said the man who typically occupied the unnecessarily shadowy office in Washington D.C.
“It was one of the cleaning staff. She was new. She opened the curtains before I could stop her. I didn’t want to spoil your vacation with the news.”
“I trust she’s been re-assigned?”
“She has. It won’t happen again.”
The man who typically occupied the unnecessarily shadowy office in Washington D.C. replied with a curt “It better not.” Although later, he’d wish that he said, “See that it doesn’t.”
“Welcome back, sir.”
Nap turned his head on the pillow and gazed at the glistening and exhausted woman lying next to him. Madonna, sensing he was looking at her, turned her head to meet his gaze. She waited, ironically with baited breath, to hear what sweet nothings were about to pour forth.
“I’ve been thinking about that Oofnik guy,” he began. She rolled and faced the other way.
“You know that Arkhum Asylum place I was talking about?” Madonna did not answer.
“Well, it got me to thinking about the Joker… the guy Batman is always fighting. His name to be specific. In a deck of cards, the joker is the most powerful card. Most of the time it’s not even used in games. But when it is, it’s the card everybody wants. The thing is, it’s only as powerful as whatever card it is representing. It has no value unto itself. Even a pair of jokers is just a pair. It only wins when it teams up with other cards.”
Madonna continued her impression of a woman in a catatonic state.
Nap mulled over the implications of this observation when it came to Oofnik. Whether or not he could dig up an overarching point to it. He completely missed the opportunity to examine the analogy in respect to himself and/or Madonna. “Interesting name for a villain then, huh? The Joker?” he asked the motionless body next to him.
She grunted.
He felt he’d better step up his game.
“Did you know that the full name of Arkham is the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane? Before it was used in DC Comics, it appeared in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. Bet you didn’t know that.”
If Madonna could have taken back her previous grunt, she would have.
Nap continued to fall.
“And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.”
― Robert Penn Warren