The Handyman of Mystery

and the Cracked Liberty Bell

1

A Resolute Address

President Martha Kennedy sat at her desk in the Oval Office preparing to give an address to the American people. Her eyes scanned over her speech on the teleprompter making sure that the words appeared how she had written them. She quickly noticed a mistake in the third line where ‘vandalize’ was written ‘vitalize.’ That would definitely not go well with the voters, she thought as she opened her left-side desk drawer to grab a pen and paper so she could write the correction when the drawer let out a loud screech! 

She closed her eyes and said,  “How is it possible that this drawer is still not fixed? I have been the president of the United States for 2 months now. Paul, please have this fixed by the end of the week.” 

“Yes ma’am.” Paul, her secret service agent, said. He was a tall, muscled blockhead of a man with fewer brains than three starfish. She liked him, always formal and polite with his only known vocabulary of ‘Yes’, ‘Ma’am’, and on rare occasions when the first husband was around ‘Sir.’

She grabbed a notepad and pen from the rage-inducing drawer and wrote the correct spelling of the word, for she was not going to trust anyone else writing it correctly.  She flicked the note above her head between her fingers. “Paul, be a dear and give this to Simon.” 

“Yes Ma'am,” He said while promptly taking the note to Simon, the lanky bearded man that was behind the teleprompter. 

She closed the drawer with a small screech and cursed to herself. She had been on edge all day, and now this “Handyman of Mystery” crud gets thrown in her face. It was either incredibly clever or unimaginably stupid how they fixed the homes in Larung Gar in Nepal after the Chinese government said that the land was theirs.  It was hilarious after the Greek god statues lost their fig leaves and regained their ‘members’ as Western media called it. Now, however, they had gone too far. 

A faint buzzing behind her interrupted her thoughts. She turned around and saw a white man wearing a bright orange safety vest and brimmed baseball cap. He was trimming the white house hedges directly behind the Oval Office. He had a grey mustache in the shape and size of a comb, aviator sunglasses, and headphones in his ears. It must have been a great tune because he was bobbing his head and mouthing the words. Clearly, what he didn’t have, was a care in the world.

President Kennedy stared for just a moment and wondered what it must be like to be stuck in your own little world like that man out there. She blinked, shook her head, and said, “Paul” she pointed at the man, “can you please get that man out of here? He will probably be in the shot.” 

“Yes, Ma’am.” He then proceeded to walk to the window of the Oval Office and bang loudly on them to get the man's attention. The man looked up and jumped back, surprised, dropping his trimmer. Paul simply continued to bang loudly on the window, pointed stiffly at the startled man, and then pointed to the right insinuating to the man that he needed to move, now. Kennedy put her thumb and index finger to her eyes, annoyed by this interaction. The man then waved vigorously towards them, mouthed “sorry,” and then saluted. Seriously, where do we find these people? She thought as she turned back to the camera. Maybe it was her tired and old brain that just found everyone else so incomprehensible. 

A tall woman wearing a black suit and jacket walked into the room. Her FBI badge, shined in the dim light of the room as it hung from her belt buckle. Her face showed wrinkles from a stressful job and she had a short haircut that was dyed black. It was obvious to everyone in the room that this woman had seen some wicked things during her long career. Her lips were drawn in a straight line that even a litter of happy puppies, kittens, and turtles couldn’t turn into a smile. She looked at the president and gave her a curt nod that said “hello,” in probably the most intimidating way the president thought possible. 

President Kennedy took a deep breath and addressed the room. “Okay, it looks like we are ready. Let’s get this done and over with.” She looked at Simon and tried, unsuccessfully, to give him a nod similar to the one the officer had just given her. Thankfully, he still understood and started to count down. 

“Okay, we are live in 3, 2...” He held up a single finger for one and in a second the red recording light started on the camera as it began to wurr. She stared directly into the camera lens and started her proclamation:

“Good evening my fellow Americans. Today our nation's greatest relic, the Declaration of Independence, was attacked and vandalized by person or persons unknown. As a nation, we must not condone or allow this abhorrent behavior. These individuals have defaced and terrorized not just our great nation, but the likes of China, Japan, Greece, The United Kingdom, and many more. To counter this attack on our freedom we have the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Diana Cleary,” the FBI agent stepped forward to make the audience aware of her presence, “to lead the investigation against these heathens that threaten the very document that represents our freedom. Please, if you have any information or even an inkling of who may have committed this crime, contact the FBI immediately. Thank you, and may God and Country be with us, working to catch these villains.” 

The red light flickers off. President Kennedy let out a sigh of relief. She always hated those addresses, especially when they gave bad news to the American people. If they couldn’t defend the Declaration of Independence, how in the world would they believe that the government could protect its people? 

“Crap.” she heard Simon behind the camera say. 

“For crying out loud. What is it now?” She said with her fingers rubbing her temples, displeased. 

The spindly man got up from behind the camera, bent down in front of her desk, on the left side, held up her grandson’s remote control toy car, and said, “I think this may have been in the shot the whole time.” 

She let out another sigh of annoyance. Toby, her grandson must have left it in the oval after playing, “Was it super obvious?” She hoped not. 

He went back to his camera and quickly rewatched the footage, then turned to face the president with a frown, “Well! I can barely see the tire sticking out from the bottom of your desk. I doubt anyone will notice!” His voice sounds reassuring, but his face says the opposite. 

She sighed in frustration, that was the last time she let Toby play in the oval. “Thank the Lord it was only the tire I guess. Paul, could you please take this toy to Toby’s room?” She asked. “I need to relax and go to bed after this exhausting day.” 

“Yes, Ma’am,” Paul said the same way he always did and walked out of the room. She then took out the same notebook and pen from the drawer before and wrote a small note to remind her to not let Toby in the Oval again. She ripped the note from the notepad and put it in her purse for later cataloging and put the pad and paper in the drawer and closed it. She was an incredibly organized indi... wait. She opened the drawer again, then closed it, then opened it. No screech. She sat there, flummoxed. She started to rifle furiously through the drawer, throwing things to the floor. No one stopped her, she was the president, who stops the president from doing anything? At the bottom of the drawer, she found what she feared. A single piece of small square paper, their calling card, with the following symbol and words: 

2

The Man. The Myth. The Mystery

Francis Ivo Xavier, the First of Tiverton, England, looked into the screen implanted on his aviator sunglasses that were controlling the camera on a small power wheels car owned by Mr. Tobias Kennedy. Or, at least that is what everyone would believe. Tobias’s actual toy was ‘lost’ in the bushes of the white house lawn a few months ago. Thankfully, Francis, "Henry", as the White House staff knew him, had found it not long after its loss. Tobias even said it seemed to run faster now!

At the moment, however, Tobias’s car was underneath the Oval Office’s Desk’s left set of drawers. The top one made a dreadful screech that just wouldn’t do for the Handymen of Mystery.

 The key to his likely success here was his gloves. He would move one finger and the car would go forward, another it’d go back, and so on. The left-handed fingers controlled small tined appendages, allowing him to make the fix for today. The best part about his attire though was he could still trim these pesky hedges before the president made her address. They would look terrible if caught on camera. 

In his ear, a female voice with a staccato accent said, “Frank, how are you doing?”

 He started to bob his head as if he was listening to a fantastic tune and said, “It’s going well here my dear. The software you wrote for this is incredible. I have almost no delay. Tell Bill that the left thumb tine wedge adjuster is tight. That obnoxious man he had make it has my thumb so thoroughly stifled it may just go and bugger off." 

"Hey!" A rough southern accent came through the headphones. “I made that myself! I fitted it perfectly to your dimensions! Bugger off!? You bugg...” 

“Frank! Look!” A woman with a Japanese accent shouts in his ear. 

A loud bang startled him from his calm conversation and his hands jolted up, almost dropping the trimmer right on his shoes. Thank the heavens it did not hit the hedges. He looked up and saw Paul, the secret service agent banging on the Oval Office window trying to get his attention. This however was not the worst thing to happen. In his surprised state, he accidentally moved the car a foot from outside the left side of the desk. Meaning if the president simply looked away from him she would see it nearly touching her shoes. He had to do something. Paul pointed at Francis and then pointed away, wanting Francis to move, but he had to move the car back into position. The controls for movement were in his right glove, so he decided to wave vigorously to the goliath of a man in hopes of moving the vehicle enough. Bollocks, he thought, the car was still a couple of inches away. Thus, to move it the rest of the way, he stared at the president, mouthed "sorry" and saluted her. The whole ordeal was rather embarrassing, but that salute seemed to have done the trick, for now, the car was out of sight and in the perfect spot for the fix.

With the car back in position, he obeyed Paul’s order and moved away from the windows. He then went to work fixing that obnoxious drawer. His right eye showed him the underside of the drawer and the left showed the president about to give her address. Thankfully, he didn’t need to do much. All the drawer needed was a small shim to stop the wooden screeching from the pure oak Resolute desk. The hard part, however, was finding a piece of wood to use from the HMS Resolute that the desk was made out of. Do you know how hard it is to find a small piece of wood from an 1850s ship? As Francis and his team would tell you, it is, in fact, bloody difficult. However, it needed to be done. That was their motto, to fix and make better. If the whole desk was made from a ship, he wasn’t going to add one piece that did not fit. 

After about 20 seconds, he was able to use the tines of the car to place the shim. “Kill the car Vuyelwa,” he said. The car had a kill switch that slowly released an acid that ate all the materials used to make the fix, and left all the normal workings of the car. The desk was fixed and now he could give the President's speech his undivided attention.  He saw a woman step into the frame and give the camera a stare that would make the devil squeal. “Our competition, my friends.” 

“She looks like a crocodile that is very hungry,” Vuyelwa, the African voice, said sheepishly. 

Bill jutted in annoyed, “What's with this, ‘Vandalized!’ What a load of bull-huckey, more like ‘Vitalized’ if you asked me. We made it look like the day it was written on. She's calling us terrorists! I ain’t no terrorist!”  He huffed, ready to continue his rant, but Francis chimed in. 

“Bill, calm down.” Francis said, “The world does not see good deeds like they did when we were young.” This seemed to have stopped Bill’s raving. 

The president finished her speech as Francis was putting away his equipment. He put the shades, gloves, and headphones in his pocket and began to walk toward the exit. He had been working the landscaping of the White House for nearly six months now. Part-time of course for he always had other things to attend to. 

“Heard you almost made national television Henry!” The guard at the gate, Juan, snickered and smiled at Francis.

“Word travels fast I see,” Francis replied with his horrific American accent. 

“As soon as it happened Jack sent me a text. It’s a shame ole Paulina caught ya. Woulda been awesome seeing that ridiculous stache on stream.” 

“Never, bash the Stache,” Francis chided. “It is the mark of a true man!” 

Francis handed his badge, which stated his name was Henry Smith, to Juan and quickly walked passed him because the desk drawer would be found soon. Once it did, the entire White House would be locked down. After he was through though Juan seemed to putter out the following question, 

“Hey, speaking of Jack. He said that you do carpentry as a hobby? Helped him out with making his kids' swing set. Is that true?” He seemed cautious. 

“Yes, it is!” Francis answered quickly, he needed to get off the grounds as soon as possible. 

“Well, I was wondering, could you help me with a treehouse I am trying to make for mine? They have always wanted one, but  I'm not too great with my hands.” He cracked a pitiful smile as if ashamed to ask the question. Francis knew this was hard for Juan. A man asking another man for help on a project hit their masculinity. Francis hated that this was true for most men, but it was one thing that simply would take a long time to fix. 

“Of course Juan. I’d love to.” He made his tone as sincere as he could. Not a pitying tone, but one of understanding and willingness to help. 

Juan gave a pained smile. “Thanks, Henry.” 

Francis put his hand up to stop him and said, “No thanks required, my dear man, and please. Call me Frank.” He gave him a queer wink, and with that, he was off. As he got to the bus stop he started to hear the sirens locking down the White House. He simply got on the bus and ripped off his insanely large mustache, revealing a smaller, but still fabulous, curly handlebar mustache underneath. Americans can be so unkempt with their facial hair, he thought. He took the bus to a stop near a small “abandoned” house, unlocked the door, and walked inside. 

Their safehouse in D.C. was a single-story home with a large basement. It had all the utilities on even though everyone on the street thought the house was rundown. The true beauty of this house was that the basement was twice as large as the first story, allowing the entire team to work there in secret and never raising much suspicion.

His team was out for the night working other jobs to keep up appearances. That was, all aside from Chiyoko. As usual, she had her face in a book of cartoons called “manga.” Well, he guessed cartoons were maybe the incorrect term. They were books full of pictures and actions, closer to the comic books he read when he was young. 

Chiyoko was 39 years old but looked like she was barely 20 with dark black hair and wore grey sweatpants and a Monster Hunter T-Shirt. She knew he was there, but she tended to talk little and listen much. Only saying what needed to be said, no matter how painful the words were for whoever was listening. It was one of the many qualities why he had asked her to join the team. But right now, he wanted her opinion. 

“How do you think it went today?” he asked. 

She looked up for a split second, then back down at her manga. “Sloppy.” 

“I, unfortunately, have to agree. I should have noticed Paul coming to the window. If you hadn’t spoken up, I don’t know how startled I would have been. Probably would have moved the car directly into the president's leg. That would have put us in quite the pickle.” She nodded in agreement behind her comic, and Frank knew that that was the end of the conversation. 

He tried to go to bed, tossed and turned for an hour, and decided that he needed to do something to help him sleep. So, Frank did what he did best and went to a local lumber yard, broke in, and took some lumber to his truck. He made sure to leave money in the amount of the wood plus 20% on the counter, for he was no sneak thief, and went to Juans to build his kids a tree house.