Rotten eggs mixed with limburger cheese smeared over a dead skunk on a hot summer day! That was the odor which preceded the newcomer into the room. “Captain Quisling, Subversive Squad!” He sported a crumb-clogged beard, an Indian headband, filthy dungarees, and a torn white T-shirt with a decal of Ché Guevara scowling from its back. “This is a raid!”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Slaughter demanded, holding his nose. '
“Got an anonymous phone tip some radicals are going to blow this place up.” Pustulate pimples partied over the beardless portion of Captain Quisling’s cheeks and forehead.
“That was Gino Goldberg,” I told him. “And the bomb is-—”
Quisling ignored me. “Any more subversives here besides these two?” he asked Slaughter.
“Look under the bed.” Detective Slaughter shrugged.
“Where are the others?” Captain Quisling menaced Liberty. “Who’s behind this? How do you get your money in from Russia? Who’s your Cuban contact? Talk, and maybe we can make a deal. Come on. What have you got to say?” A film of sweat shone on his acne.
“Power to the pimples!” Liberty replied.
“Militant Radlib Commie!” He turned away from her, his feelings hurt. “Say, Greeknik,” he asked. “Who took the fifth at Churchill Downs?”
“Man O’ Gore by six lengths.”
“Out of the money.” Quisling sighed. He strode over to me and raised one foot above my wilted sex organs. The dirty sneaker with steel cleats poised threateningly, ready to stomp. “Where’s the headquarters of the Maday Tribe?” he snarled.
“Hold it!” A stocky man wearing a conservative gray suit and carrying a briefcase pushed his way through the room and up to Captain Quisling. “You should know better than to mishandle a criminal like that!” he ‘said.
“He’s not a criminal. He’s a subversive,” Quisling explained.
“Really? His hair isn’t very long.” He got a whiff of Quisling and averted his nose.
“Of course not. That’s how these radicals operate today. They cut their hair, wear ties, even take white-collar jobs. They’re infiltrating everywhere. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
“Why are these people naked and chained like this?”
“They’re dope pushers!”
“Bookies!”
“Killers!”
“Sexual deviates!”
“Anarchists!”
“It’s still against police regulations to chain them,” the stocky man pointed out.
“We didn’t chain them,” Detective Snowpush told him.
“Then who did?”
“They probably shackled themselves,” Quisling suggested. “It’s an old Bolshevik trick to get sympathy.”
“Could be,” Snowpush granted. “Anyway, We found them like this.”
“Well, as long as you didn’t chain them, I guess there’s no infraction of the rules. . . . My name is Hartbleed.” He spoke directly to me, identifying himself. “I’m from the Complaint Review Board.”
“Look, Mr. Hartbleed, if you’d just unchain us,” I pleaded, “it might save all our lives. You see, there’s a bomb-—-”
“I don’t have that authority.” Hartbleed cut me short.
“You don’t understand! This bomb is going to -”
“He’s higher than a kite,” Snowpush interjected.
“I was told someone here wished to file a complaint.”
Hartbleed opened his briefcase and shuffled the papers. “Just what is the nature of your dissatisfaction?” he asked me.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I told him wearily.
“Don’t be cynical. Things are not that bad. Police corruption is not nearly as widespread as the sensationalist newspapers would have you believe.”
“The girls have been asking for you, Poopsie.” Lieutenant DeCoi wriggled over and patted Hartbleed on the behind.
“There’s always a couple of rotten apples, but—”
“Here’s that H you ordered.” Detective Snowpush slipped an envelope into Hartbleed’s pocket.
“By and large, policemen are honest and upright-—”
“Mr. Hartbleed, that sure was a nice parley you hit yesterday,” Inspector Greeknik told him.
“Your average officer is incorruptible-—”
“I hear the take in the Fourteenth Precinct dropped under two G’s last week,” Captain Quisling remarked.
“He upholds law and order --”
“You think that’s bad? In the Twelfth it went under fifteen hundred, and that’s including a bonus split from the Mex fence.” Detective Slaughter sighed.
“So you see, there’s altogether too much talk about police corruption by people who don’t have any knowledge whatsoever of the intricacies and hardships of day-to-day police work. Now,” Hartbleed concluded, “do you wish to make a statement?” ‘
“Support Your Local Police -- one way or another!” I snarled.
“If you do wish to make a statement, it is my duty first to inform you of your constitutional rights . . . if I could just remember what they were.”
“Skip it.”
“Say,” Hartbleed addressed the group at large, “any of you remember what his constitutional rights are?”
Everybody looked blank.
“Never mind,” I told him. “It’s not important. What is important is that there’s a bomb--”
“A bomb? What bomb?” A gray-haired man with fruit salad all over his police chief’s uniform entered. “I’m Chief Chicken of the Emergency Bomb Squad,” he introduced himself. “Now, what’s this about a bomb?”
“It’s attached to the telephone,” I told him.
“You the fellow I was talking to before?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a real Nervous Nellie, aren’t you? The way you were blubbering on the phone, I thought sure that thing would have exploded by now.”
“He’s stoned out of his skull,” Detective Snowpush said.
“He is not!” Liberty protested. “There is a bomb!”
“They’re both flying.”
“She’s an agitator!” Captain Quisling pointed out.
“He’s a killer!” Detective Slaughter chimed in.
“A cop-hater, too,” Hartbleed added.
“And a sex criminal,” Lieutenant DeCoi cooed.
“There’s the proof.” She pointed.
“Eight to five he rubbed out Luigi.” Inspector Greeknik laid the odds.
“Where’s the corpus delicti?” A new voice. A gnome-like man carrying a doctor’s bag appeared on the scene.
“Who are you?” Chief Chicken inquired.
“Dr. Ama. City medical examiner. Where’s the corpse?”
“That’s what I’d like to know!” Detective Slaughter complained.
“Poor Luigi!” Inspector Greeknik shook his head sorrowfully. “Scratched at the starting gate.”
“There is no corpse, doctor, sweetie,” Lieutenant DeCoi informed Ama. “But there is evidence of a sexual assault. Come over here and have a look-see.”
Dr. Ama followed her over to Liberty.
“YOO-HOO!” I shouted. “REMEMBER THE BOMB!”
“You certainly are persistent,” Chief Chicken told me.
“The mark of the professional agitator,” Captain Quisling whispered to him.
“Would you please stand to windward,” Chief Chicken requested. “Now, what about this bomb?” he asked me.
“It’s attached to the telephone, dammit!’
Gingerly he picked up the telephone and scrutinized it.
“I don’t know.” Dr. Ama completed his examination of Liberty. “I can’t be sure.”
“You can’t be sure?” Slaughter stared at him in amazement. “Then how come everybody else is sure?”
“What else could it be?” Greeknik wondered.
Whipped cream?
“Oh, wow!” Lieutenant DeCoi clapped her hands. “What are you doing after the explosion, sweetie?”
Whipped cream?
“And I was trying to watch my diet,” Liberty sighed.