Whipped cream? First impotency, then premature ejaculation, and now this. It was the final blow to my manhood. Whipped cream!
“It’s a bomb!” Chief Chicken put the telephone down like it was a hot potato. “It’s a bomb, and it could go off anytime!”
“Well, do something!” I suggested.
“Not me! That thing is live! I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole!”
“Hi, everybody.” A police sergeant wandered into our midst. “What’s going on?”
“Hi, Harold.” Inspector Greeknik greeted him. “Everybody, this is my buddy, Sergeant Ripoff of the Burglary Division. . . . What brings you down here, Harold?”
“There was nobody left at Headquarters. I got lonely.”
“Who’s watching the store?”
“Answering service. . . . What’s happening here?”
“Chief Chicken just discovered a bomb.”
“No shit?”
“I saved a nickel bag for you, sarge,” kindly Detective Snowpush told him.
“That bomb,” I reminded them, “is set to go off when the phone rings.”
“No shit?”
“And the phone may ring any second now,” I explained patiently.
“No shit?”
“Blowing us all to kingdom come!”
“No sh-—-”
The telephone rang!
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
There is no Santa Claus. God is dead. Likewise the new God—Science!
The telephone rang, and nothing happened!
So much for Faith. So much for Cause and Effect. So much for Pragmatism. So much for Science.
“Answer the phone,” Chief Chicken suggested calmly.
Sergeant Ripoff answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello. Mother Kelly’s Pizza Parlor?” The voice blared from the phone speaker. “Listen, I want four pies. One with onions and anchovies; one with mozzarella and anchovies, no onions; one with hot sausage and garlic; and one with pepper, chicken fat, and chopped liver.”
“No shit?” Sergeant Ripoff commented. “Chicken fat and chopped liver?”
“No shit. Deliver them to—”
“Ugh!” Sergeant Ripoff shuddered. “You’ve got the wrong number, Mac.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
The speaker clicked and was silent.
Wrong number! “It could have killed us all!” Liberty realized.
“The pizza pies?” Detective Slaughter misunderstood.
“No shit?”
“No. The bomb!” I set them straight. “Why didn’t it go off?”
“The majority of these devices turn out to be defective.” Chief Chicken showed off his expertise. He picked up the executive phone and examined the intricate spaghetti of wires hooked up there.
“You might have mentioned that before,” Liberty told him.
“Well, there’s always those that aren’t duds. I don’t like to commit myself until I know for sure.”
“When do you know for sure? After it explodes?” I inquired.
“Or after it doesn’t. . . . Aha!” Chief Chicken held up the phone so we could see. “Here’s your trouble right here. Somehow these two wires were pulled loose from each other.”
“You must have done that before when you slid the phone down the table with your knees,” Liberty said to me. “If only we’d known! It would have saved an awful lot of worry.”
“Think of the fun we’d have missed.” I was philosophic.
“Yep. These two wires should be connected.” Chief Chicken twisted the two wire ends around each other.
“All fixed,” he announced proudly.
“Well, unfix it before that guy changes his mind about the mozzarella and calls back!” I pleaded.
Chief Chicken set the phone down firmly. “That’s a live bomb!” he informed us. “You don’t catch me fooling around with one of those!”
“Oh, my God!” Liberty found religion.
Her apprehension was catching. “It’s post time,” Inspector Greeknik decided. “Let’s get out of here and take these two down to the station and book them.”
“What’s the charge?” Hartbleed demanded. “You have to have a charge. That’s regulations!”
“Sexual assault,” Lieutenant DeCoi suggested.
“The evidence is questionable,” Dr. Ama reminded her.
“Well, then, indecent exposure.”
That made me a recidivist!
“Illegal possession of drugs.” Detective Snowpush’s choice.
“What drugs?” I asked. “We don’t have any drugs!”
“No?” Snowpush reached behind Liberty’s left ear like a magician and pulled out his rabbit-—-six reefers, four sugar cubes, and a half-filled syringe. “What about these?”
Inspector Greeknik reached behind her right ear and produced a fistful of policy slips. “And these?”
“How about breaking and entering?” Sergeant Ripoff suggested.
“We didn’t break in here. We were forced to come at gunpoint!”
“No shit?”
All this time Detective Slaughter had been deep in thought. Now he spoke. “Attempted murder,” he offered.
“Just who are we supposed to have tried to kill?”
“I don’t know yet.” His brow furrowed. “But I’ll think of someone.”
“How about Luigi?” Inspector Greeknik suggested.
“Yeah. Luigi.” Slaughter brightened up.
“Internal subversion! Threatening the national security! Fomenting revolution! Infiltrating American institutions!” Captain Quisling rattled off.
“What American institutions are we supposed to have infiltrated?” I wondered.
“The Mafia!”
“Phoning in false bomb threats,” Chief Chicken chimed in.
“You said yourself the bomb was live,” I reminded him.
“Planting a live bomb.” He amended the charge.
“Look,” he added nervously, “let’s get the hell out of here and worry about the charge when we get them downtown.”
“Yeah,” Hartbleed agreed as our bonds were removed and we were hustled to our feet and out the door. “You can throw the book at them later.”
Liberty and I were ushered, still nude, into a paddy wagon waiting at the curb. The cop in the van handcuffed us again and told us to sit down on the unpadded benches. As the vehicle lurched away from the curb, he solicitously covered me with a dirty old hunk of canvas that had been lying under the seat. Then he settled back to enjoy the ride on the bench across from us, his eyes riveted on Liberty’s jouncing ebony nudity.
The station house was only about eight blocks away. When we reached it, we were shepherded from the van, down a long hall, and up to a high desk behind which was sitting a police sergeant. At long last. I was face to face with Sergeant Padd.
The arresting officers—the whole motley crew -- vanished through a rear door. Only two patrolmen stayed behind to guard us as Sergeant Padd ran through the procedures. “Print ’em. Mug ’em. Book ’em.” Those were his orders.
He pressed my thumb and fingertips down on an inkpad and then rolled them around on a card he’d prepared. He produced a camera. “Say ‘cheese,’ ” he ordered.
“I need a shave,” I protested.
“If you didn’t, we’d have to wait until you did.” The camera clicked. “Turn your head to the right,” Sergeant Padd instructed.
“That’s my bad side.”
“I noticed. That’s why I picked it.” The camera clicked again. “Now, to list the charges.” Sergeant Padd labored over the form. “Bookmaking . . . possession of drugs with intent to sell . . . sexual assault and indecent exposure . . . suspicion of homicide . . . subversive activities . . . trespassing and suspicion of illegal entry . . . phoning a bomb threat, and/or setting an explosive device. . . . My, you two have been busy little beavers, haven’t you?”
“Considering that we just got into town a couple of hours ago—-” I started to protest.
“Hmm. Crossing the state line with intent to . . .” Sergeant Padd relisted all the charges. “That makes it a federal rap, too,” he explained. “And resisting arrest,” he concluded.