Free The Other Teddy Roosevelts by Mike Resnick

killed a man, and now you’re going to stand trial for it.”
    “If you persist in threatening me, I may have to take that gun from you and destroy it.”
    “I wouldn’t advise it.”
    “When I want your advice, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Demosthenes, taking a step toward him, “you may rest assured I shall ask for it.”
    “That’s close enough,” said Roosevelt ominously.
    “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Demosthenes.
    Roosevelt fired his pistol point-blank at the tall man’s chest. He could hear the thunk! of the bullet as it struck its target, but Demosthenes paid it no attention. He advanced another step and Roosevelt shot him right between the eyes, again to no effect. Finally the tall man reached out, grabbed the pistol, and bent the barrel in half.
    “Who the hell are you?” demanded Roosevelt, as he tried to comprehend what had happened.
    “I am the man who is going to clean up your city for you,” answered Demosthenes calmly. “I have been doing so privately since I arrived here last year. Now I shall do so at the instigation of the Commissioner of Police. Keep your money. I will extract my own form of payment from those criminals whose presence we will no longer tolerate.”
    “Don’t use the word ‘we’ as if we were partners,” said Roosevelt. “You killed a man, and you’re going to stand trial for it.”
    “I think not, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Demosthenes. “I sincerely think not.”
    He turned and walked out of the office. Roosevelt raced to the doorway, spotted a trio of cops at the far end of the corridor, and yelled to them. “Stop that man! Use any force necessary!”
    The three men charged Demosthenes, who knocked them flying like ten-pins. Before they could gather themselves to resume the attack, he was gone.
    “Who the hell was he, sir?” asked one of the cops, spitting out a bloody tooth.
    “I wish I knew,” answered Roosevelt, a troubled expression on his face.

    ***

    All right , thought Roosevelt, sitting at his desk, where he had been for the two hours since Demosthenes had left. He never saw my gun in the Bowery. Edith would have told me if we’d had a visitor at the apartment. The next time I saw him was right here, so he couldn’t have disabled my weapon. He knew it worked, and he knew it wouldn’t harm him.
    And what about the three officers who tried to stop him? He brushed them aside like they were insects buzzing around his face. Just what kind of a man am I dealing with here?
    There’s no precedent for this, and if any member of the force had seen him perform similar acts, word would certainly have reached me. Yet he implied that he’s been killing people for a year now. Probably the criminal element; those are the murders that no one bothers to report.
    But what’s going on here? It’s easy to label him a madman, but he doesn’t strike me as deranged.
    Roosevelt stood up and began pacing his office. Suddenly he felt almost claustrophobic. It was time to breathe some fresh air, to walk off some of his nervous energy. Maybe just getting out and exercising, taking his mind off Demosthenes for a few minutes, might let him come back to the problem with fresh insights.
    Suddenly he heard half a dozen gunshots and an agonized scream. He rushed down the stairs to the main entrance in time to see four of his policemen clustered together around a fifth, who lay motionless on the pavement. A few feet away was another body, as pale as Pascale had been.
    “What’s going on here?” he demanded, striding out into the open.
    “I’ll be damned if I know, Mr. Roosevelt, sir,” said an officer. “Some tall guy, I mean real tall and skinny as a rail came out of nowhere and dumped that body in front of the building. We confronted him and demanded that he come inside to be interrogated, and he refused. Jacobs walked up and grabbed him by the arm, and he threw him against that lamppost. Jacobs weighed about 200 pounds, and the lamppost was twenty feet away.” The