“The coffee is cold. By the way, where did you get these yummy brownies?”
“Light the Primus, sybarite. Mister Coyote does not like cold coffee! We waste all my salary on kerosene, you know? And about the cookies, I am not telling you. Your Mom will be jealous… OK, just kidding. But I must swear you to an absolute secrecy. It's a dark secret.”
“OK, I swear. Policeman to policeman.”
“Accepted, partner. So if instead of racing on your bike, somebody rides sensibly, on a skateboard, with two nice wooden blocks, once upon the time… OK, OK, I will make the epic saga short! Just in front of our Beat, yesterday I stumbled upon a one-legged vet with a vendor cart. He bakes these wonderful brownies and sells them hot. For me he even gives a special discount, because I have one leg less… than him! If you behave, I'll buy more of these brownies, promise. By the way two options of our version-three are gone. Do you see the third?”
“I don't.”
“And if you look a bit more?”
“I still don't see it. By the way, presently I'm looking at the Primus, so our coffee doesn't spill.”
“OK, listen in. Don't turn, watch the Primus. The third option is: instead of dragging your dead body out, our two men place it inside some large container. But this container must be of a decent size, such as a wardrobe or a chest.”
“Can they dismember the corpse?”
“Does not work for us. There will be not just few drops of blood as Tan said, but all the floor covered.”
“I agree. Hey, I like the wardrobe idea! But in our slums… Not very often people move furniture.”
“Today in the China-Five, did anybody move?”
“As I understand it, no. Although, we must double-check. The trainees probably missed it altogether.”
“Woxman is a buffoon. Why did he send the trainees to talk to the neighbors? Wait, there is a fourth option.”
“What is it?”
“I've slipped some drug in your coffee. Those magic mushrooms. While you're off, I punch a hole, drain enough blood on the rag, then stitch and bandage your wound. You wake up, but still under influence. I make a hypnotic suggestion that the screwdriver hole is such a wonderful thing to have. You're under hypnosis…”
“Bullshit. Option five. You dial a flying saucer on your mobile phone and your alien friends drag my body out through the fifth dimension.”
“Yeah, total garbage. Most importantly, if I arrange the cover-up with the little green men, I don't need to run to the Police. The fourth option is also eliminated. The conclusion, Watson. My pipe didn't help much. We have no working versions, except maybe those movers with a wardrobe.”
“The conclusion, Holmes, coffee has boiled. Let's finish it and go to bed. I have to get up at four tomorrow morning.”
“I thought Tan is on-duty tomorrow. Or did you give him a day-off? For his screwed-up birthday?”
“Tan's birthday is still screwed-up. He will be on-duty at the Beat. And I have to go and search for the missing body. Woxman wants me to assemble two hundred volunteers by seven-thirty. We must perform some massive area search, he said.”
“Your Woxman is positively a buffoon. How do you collect two hundred people on Saturday morning and with no prior notice?”
“He's not my Woxman. He's Woxman for life. Mister Deputy Investigator knows how to spell ‘impossible’. But its meaning he hasn't grasped yet.”
“Hey, can you take me tomorrow? As a volunteer?”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Firstly, there will be Woxman. I don't want you two to meet. He is already unhappy about you, because you've called the Dispatch, and so he has ended up with this case in his capable hands. Secondly, if I bring a skate-bound legless vet and try to pass her as a volunteer, I will get a demerit.”
“A demerit – you're getting it anyhow. Where are you going to find two hundred people?”
“I will manage. If there is no choice, I will gather some teenagers. It's Saturday, so they're not at school. Let say, from ten-year-old and up. The instructions say nothing about using the kids, so it must be legal.”
“And you will have ten-year-old girls running around and looking for the dead body?”
“Well, I admit the ten-year-old girls don't fit quite well in the picture. But the ten-year-old are still more useful than legless.”
“You're a low-extremity racist! This is profound discrimination! On the basis of legless.”
“No discrimination, whatsoever. You're a child of concrete jungles. And as such you constantly forget that here in Houston we have a well-developed agriculture. The search will be commenced at the fields, including all the irrigation ditches and the rice paddies. No way your skate can work in such places – physically. Do you want to crawl on your hands, neck-deep in mud? By the way, it's the perfect time to tell you one thing every slum policeman must know. The! Dark! Secret! Of! Houston! Naturally, I have to swear you to an absolute secrecy.”
“The Dark Secret of Houston? Wonderful. OK, I swear. As Road Runner to Wile E Coyote.”
“Accepted, Runner. Listen in. The farmers in Houston have a conspiracy.”
“A conspiracy?”
“Yes. They developed a secret weapon, all-mighty concoction, which will eventually consume the city… with all the suburbs… turning us all… into agricultural zombies. They call it ‘organic fertilizer’… But really it's… shit! Mostly human shit. Tons and tons of shit. Are you scared?”
“OK, I'm scared and I surrender. You're not a racist, despite your profound low extremities. I let our well-developed all-agricultural kids deal with the ‘organic fertilizer’. Wandering barefoot in shit is not my dream job.”
Kim shifts the dirty dishes to the side and spreads his futon on the floor, “Let's catch some sleep, Runner. And don't even dream about being agricultural tomorrow…”
Kim Den Gir, Deputy, Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
Tan and I meet at the agreed spot on the highway. My partner is going on-duty, so he has arrived properly dressed and with the full gear: his baton, his gun and everything else. In striking contrast, my attire consists of a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and from the Police uniform I have only a cap. On my neck I put a plastic water-tight box with my badge, the cell phone, and some money. The back pockets of my shorts hide the rest of my law-enforcing equipment: brass knuckles in the right and handcuffs in the left.
I've selected the shorts for one reason. Collecting two hundred adult volunteers on Saturday morning is not just difficult, but totally impossible. All more-or-less fit adults in the Asian slums have something slightly more important to do than helping the Police to look for a missing person. For example, trying to earn enough to feed the family in the evening. Fortunately for us, on Saturday the kids are not at school, so I hope to enlist the local children. Now imagine that you wake up at six AM. At the door, there is a policeman in full uniform, with a baton and a gun, who asks if your kids can volunteer. Naturally, your son will be more than interested to check my Glock-17 and the rest of my equipment. But you, being a responsible parent, will immediately find some urgent chore for your kids. Guns? Batons? Handcuffs? Chasing criminals? Better be safe than sorry. To make the recruitment successful, the local deputy must come without any visible weapons, and wearing shorts instead of the uniform. Nothing out of the ordinary, simple and boring search through the fields. If it's so safe, why don't we help our Police?
For few seconds I ponder how to assign our single Walkie-Talkie. It would be logical to have it with Woxman and me at the China-Five. Without the cell phone coverage, having a radio is very convenient. On the other hand, Tan may be called to some emergency, in one of those ‘temporary unavailable’ GRS areas, and he may need the radio way more than us. If there is no obvious reason to do one way or another, the officer must follow the Standard Operational Procedures. Some brass (no finger-pointing) even believes that the officers must follow the Procedures always. Mrs Reason must shut up, she has no rank in the Police Force. I sigh and surrender our old Motorola to my partner. Simultaneously, Tan receives my strict instructions not to be our radio operator. If somebody calls Woxman don't even think jumping on your bike to play a delivery boy. Call a pedicab to the Beat and send with a message. Woxman can find fifty bucks for the pedicab driver, no sweat. After my fully-instructed and fully-equipped partner departs to the Beat, I ride towards the Chinamerican Patches.