Rebar for Tootsie Rolls: The Tinkly Shell Game of Atomic Empires

THUD! -I had to admit, it felt strange - SMACK - beating the crap - WHAP - out of Franklin Roosevelt - with a tire iron -BAM - what with him - BIFF - in the wheelchair and -OOF -being the Joe in charge of America. I even had moments of doubt that - UFF- it wasn't the fake Roosevelt I that had located in flagrante-UGH- with a Gilbert and Sullivan soprano and sometime -SCHMITT -Finnish Masseuse named Rosalita Bjeregrensen-PONK!- in a dime an hour Marina hotel -CLAAAANG!, and about the time I cracked a pool cue over his head and stuck the shards in the wheels so they would either lock or make a cool motorcycle noise, he finally stood, where I could see that he was only 5' 3," and was hopping about like a fork in a stuck toaster.

I also couldn't help but notice that my Geiger counter was ticking like like an extra-tickey stock ticker on Black tickey Tuesday. And I could help but notice the 2 inch dent in his head, and the bolts falling off his spats.

"Yes, You have guessed, meaty human- I am Cyclotronic 6B, a Radium Robot-Man! You have damaged me! Must repair! Get vacuum tubes tied!" He was steaming mad, or, simply, steaming.

I knew it! It couldn't be the real Roosevelt who ordered innocent Americans into camps?

He raised his arm to strike, knocking off an appalling painting of two waifs with eyes as big as plates by some guy named Keane that was giving me the heebie-willies something fierce. The Robot fixed his deadly ironic robot gaze at me and fired a small rocket from his cigarette holder, which flew out the window and blew up some Okie's fruit stand. A lucky break for him - he went on to invent the smoothie.

"You have nothing to fear but Me itself!" His spectacles began shooting some kind of ray that turned the wallpaper somewhat more tasteful. But hydraullic fluid was now leaking out of it's nose and pants.

"You can trust your car to the man who wears a star!"shrieked Cyclotronic 6B Radium Roosevelt, rotating his arm like wagon spokes and destroying everything in the room except me and Rosalita and a half empty-jar of Helm's Mayonaisse which I didn't want explained. Feathers flew out of pillows and stuck to Rosalita as she ran around the room away from the deadly Roosevelt Arms.

Hmm. Mayonnaise. That's exactly what it had taken took to get Heinreicha Coulter the Nazi assassin to talk. After five or six hours of threatening, cajoling, bribing and slapping her around with nothing but a set jaw and 28 rounds of Deutchland Uber Alles for our efforts, Dardenella had walked in with an egg salad sandwich and Heinreicha began wimpering like an admonished wiener dog puppy left in a hatbox. Her father had been verbally humiliated by a Dusseldorf deli assistant manager when she was six, over a question of dressing. All I'd had to do was wave the sandwhich at her face.
" Where are they!?"
"Noo...Nein...Noo..."
"Are you sure? Sure you're not hungry....for delicious egg salad??!!"
"Aieeee!"
"With pickle bits?"
"Aaaaach! I vill tell you. Take it away!"

Thus Henreicha lead me to the Marina Coin-Op Auto Motel. Dardenella stuck her with a couple hits of heroin she kept conveniently in her purse, and dragged her to tender mercies of Hoover's FBI for further interogation and make-up tips. Hoover, apparantly, was an autumn.

But in the meantime Radium Roosevelt was chasing Rosalita and me towards the Palace of Fine Arts in the night, leaving a trail of glowing drops on the street and chugging like a 4 cent steam engine. "Have you a towel? You aren't nuts/ to clean up your guts/ that I disembowel/ Burma Shave!!" quoth the evil mechanical man in a questionable electro-New England accent as we ran, me firing a few rounds from my trusty- in the sense of predictably useless -.38 Police Special. This thing was about as special as a sale on week old eclairs. The bullets just enraged Roosevelt still further, polishing him if anything. "Your New Deal is Death!" he promised.

The night air that we ran in a total death panic through was soft and flowery, and the stars twinkling over the end of the pier where were about to meet our doom at the hands of a Radium powered Democrat. Rosalita grabbed me tighter than Rita Hayworth wearing a rubber glove as an evening gown.

"I'll never have the chance to be emotionally undemonstrative again," stated the dedicated Finn at the end.
"Don't worry, Toots, I'll take this metal monster down," I said, raising my $15 ball point pen with a hope of jamming it into Roosevelt's UV joint, if I ould find it in time. He HAD to have a UV joint. Right?

Steaming, arms rotating at about 200 RPM, one glowing red eye hanging down by a spring, collar unsprung and tie askew, the robot came closer."This is a date which will end in tragedy!" it said, and then, the arm rotation slowed down, and it became unstable, wobbling like a Wobblie wasted on wood alcohol. A shredded hydraullic hose popped out , and sprayed gallons of glowing fluid on the pier. Then, the infernal contraption simply cried "Fireside Chat!" and fell into the water, leaving a column of bright green steam to rise into the night.

But this begged a bigger question. Assuming this wasn't the real Roosevelt, what had those palookas done with the President?