I was cruising down the byways of Eagan with Officer Hektor. “It’s raining hard,” I remarked. “The streets are wet.”
“Yeah,” said Officer Hektor, “too bad crime halts during rainfall.”
I turned my head away from the road and gazed at my partner Hektor with a look of concern: “Is that true?” I asked.
“Yes, I think so,” replied Officer Hektor. “What happens is that the criminals remain indoors, to avoid getting wet.”
I thought for a few moments, still driving fast thru the rain without bothering to watch the road; then I said: “But all crime does not take place out-of-doors. There are plenty of illegal acts that one can commit under the shelter of a roof. I’m thinking of embezzlement, forgery, treason… So I wonder why crime would take a dip during inclement weather.”
“Maybe the criminals are preoccupied with watching the raindrops fall on the landscape,” said my partner Hektor. “They’re probably all standing before windows, mesmerized by the view. Have you ever bothered to observe the plashing of precipitation? It’s rather enthralling.”
I turned my head back and looked at the road, to test out this theory that Officer Hektor had advanced. “Od’s fut! you’re right, Hek,” I exclaimed; “a drenched cityscape is maddeningly hypnotic.” And our cop car started to veer into the oncoming traffic. (Luckily, I had forgotten to turn our flashing lights off, so the approaching vehicles noted our presence and made room for us.)
“You’re drifting leftward, Bry,” said Officer Hektor, tapping my arm to wake me out of my sinister trance. “Don’t let the siren song lure you and me to a premature demise.”
“Oh! thanks!” I quickly steered our patrol cruiser back to the proper side of the road. “Wow, I almost crashed us again!”
“Why don’t we take a distress call, to help get the blood flowing?” said Officer Hektor, picking up the hotline.
“Sure,” I said, “if there ARE any dilemmas occurring at present — which I highly doubt, due to the rain.”
“There’ll be something — they may nod off, now and then, but the criminal class never falls entirely asleep,” said Hektor; and then he spoke into the handset: “Hello, Officer Hektor here; I’m with Officer Bryan Ray and we’re looking for trouble. What do you have for us?”
“O! thank you so much for answering,” said the voice on the hotline; “I’ve been trying to call for the last ten minutes, but it just kept ringing. I was worried that this might be some sort of police holiday.”
“The cops never rest,” said Officer Hektor; “now tell me your beef.”
“OK, here’s the deal,” said the voice; “there are some politicians who are in cahoots with all the major credit card companies, and they’re scamming the populace and treating everyone impolitely. They are the loan sharks and we are their prey. How fast can you get here?”
“We’ll be there before you can say another word,” said Officer Hektor.
“Oh, thank you so much,” said the voice. “I’ll hang up the phone and wait for you, then.”
So we parked at the curb of the financial district and donned our bright yellow raincoats; then we climbed out of our squad car’s windows with our firearms drawn. We proceeded with caution; for we knew that we were confronting some dangerous thugs.
Suddenly a great number of politicians appeared walking down the hallway of one of the office buildings, and all of the major credit card companies’ chief executives were standing at the other end of the same hallway and looking dour.
“Freeze!” we yelled, from down on the sidewalk, in the rain. The office building was made of glass and steel, and its interior was well-lit; so, despite our disadvantageous position, we could clearly see what was going on in the hallway:
The politicians all halted in place. But the executives from the credit card companies pulled firearms out of their suit coats and blasted the politicians, slaying them all instantly; then they turned and shot at Hektor and I. Their bullets smashed thru the glass and lodged into my lungs and straight into Hektor’s heart. We cops were now bleeding, so we took the elevator up to the thirteenth floor and arrested all the executives and brought them before a Federal Judge. Then we went to get our wounds treated.
“You’re bleeding everywhere,” said the nurse at the hospital. “The two of you have left a trail of blood behind you, wherever you’ve walked today. I can see that you have come from the courthouse. Did you make a drug bust or something?”
“No,” said Officer Hektor, holding his heart and wincing from the pain, “we just arrested all the executives who own the major credit card companies. They killed all the politicians who were in their pocket; so we brought them to justice.”
“Is that so?” said the nurse, while removing the bullet from my partner Hektor’s heart and then turning and removing the bullets from my lungs. “Jeesh, I’m almost relieved to hear this news, because I’ve been drowning in credit-card debt for a great while now, and it’s hard not to rejoice when a pack of bad folks who are causing you stress get hauled off to jail.”
“Well, they didn’t go to jail exactly, yet,” I said, as the nurse put ointment and bandages on my partner Hektor’s heart-wound and all over my rib-cage. “The wheels of justice spin slowly. I think their court date is eighteen months from now. And anything could happen; they might find a way to bribe the judge to give them a not-guilty verdict. All Officer Hektor and I can do is round up the criminals like cattle and corral them into our paddy wagon and drop them off in front of the Federal Judge’s manor house.”
The nurse put her final touches on our injuries’ dressings and then remarked “Well, if they can lower my interest rate and delete the service charges that they fraudulently added to my balance, that will be great. Or, better yet, if they can simply cancel my debt entirely, I’ll unthaw as a human being and be able to live life again.”
“You really feel so terrified about your debt that it bottlenecks your ability to show lovingkindness?” I asked, as we were walking out the automatic sliding doors of the hospital.
“Yes,” said the nurse.
So I asked her the total amount that she owed, and then I took my wallet out of my uniform’s inner pocket and counted out enough banknotes to equal that sum plus a few thousand more: “Here,” I said, “use this gift to purchase your freedom.”
The nurse began to thank us profusely, but I stopped her and said:
“No, ma’am — it’s YOU who deserve the thanks. For you mended my partner Hektor’s broken heart and then allowed the breath of life back into my lungs after removing all the bullets that had lodged there. If it weren’t for your care, Hek and I would be shades in the underworld: We would have bled to death in the waiting room.”
So we waved goodbye to our new friend, the nurse, while we drove our squad car out of the hospital’s parking lot.
“Shall we take another distress call?” said Officer Hektor.
“Yes,” I replied.
Our second dilemma for the day was a concerned citizen who had called us to report that the county sheriff and deputy were at his front door trying to evict him from his house.
“Wait, let me get this straight,” said Officer Hektor, while caressing the bandage that was covering his heart. “Are you trying to tell me that the sheriff and his deputy are currently standing at your entryway and attempting to remove you from your own abode?”
“That’s correct,” said the distress-caller.
“But why would they do that?” said Officer Hektor, trying to understand the situation.
“Because I’ve been behind on my mortgage payments,” said the caller. “So the bank wants to repossess my house. You see, I lost my job during the latest pandemic, and the government didn’t help me one iota: it sent all the aid money to the cartels and monopolies instead of individuals in need, because corporations have captured all of our social structures and poisoned every charitable organization. So now the sheriff is here to drag me out of my domicile. And he brought his deputy with him.”
“We’ll be right there,” said Officer Hektor.
So I drove our police cruiser to the specified address and we parked directly behind the sheriff’s car. Officer Hektor and I then climbed out of our windows and approached the front entryway, where the sheriff and his deputy were harassing the residents of the abode.
“What’s going on here?” I said.
The sheriff turned and faced me with a look of surprise; then he answered: “What? Why are you questioning us? It should be obvious what we are doing: We’re evicting these people from their house, because they didn’t make their payments.”
“But that’s not humane,” I said. “A number on a bank’s balance sheet should not take priority over an actual person’s life.”
“Listen, Officer Bryan Ray,” said the sheriff, “I have superiority over you, in the police hierarchy, because I am a sheriff whereas you’re just a regular cop. So that’s my first point: I trump you authoritatively. But my second point is the one that I expect will persuade you, because I can tell that you’re a softy whose heart bleeds for the innocent (you probably even care about homeless orphans, widows, and animals) — & my second point is as follows: I have no choice but to evict this deadbeat, because my livelihood depends upon it: you see, I’m the sheriff of this county, and the bank tells me that if I don’t perform my duty by kicking this family out of their abode, I will lose my job; and thus I’ll no longer receive any paychecks, and thus I’ll be unable to put food on my OWN table to feed my OWN family, and I’ll eventually be unable to pay my OWN mortgage, and I’ll lose my OWN house.”
I shook my head. “I’m not convinced. Here’s what we’re going to do,” I put my arms around the sheriff and his deputy: “I promise that I’ll help you guys pay your mortgages and feed your families. Officer Hektor and I will personally dedicate whatever cash we can spare to help you out, if push comes to shove. Also, we’ll establish a more elaborate network of charitable contributions, if the need arises. But we must let this man keep his home. So just turn around and get in your sheriff’s car and drive away. Here’s a few bucks; go attend a theatrical engagement, or take your wife dancing at a ballroom somewhere. Also, please accept this card, which has my contact information printed upon it — feel free to call me if you have any trouble with the bank or any other murderous thugs or terrorists. My partner Hektor and I just arrested the entire credit card industry this morning, and we’re ready to take on the whole rest of the criminal class, if that is what the Lord GOD desires. Now, are you willing to play ball, or do you want me to say a whole trillion more words to change your will? Because I have rhetoric from here to eternity, and it would be my pleasure to flaunt it.”
The sheriff hung his head in shame and admitted that he was in the wrong, and he apologized to Officer Hektor and me, and also to the resident whom he had just tried to evict. Both the sheriff and his deputy begged our pardon, and we all forgave them readily. They explained that they felt like cowards and lowly creeping things to have behaved in the way that they did; but I assured him that it’s only human to make mistakes, and we all shook hands, and the sheriff and his deputy got in their cop car and drove away. They took their wives to dinner and a movie, and then they went out dancing afterwards. And the man who was behind in his payments got to remain in his house, and his family ended up discovering the cure for cancer, because the pressure of losing their shelter had been lifted, and this freed up time for them to do scientific research. (They did not perform any experiments on animals: they only crunched numbers and charted data on graphs.) ...However, eventually, the owner of the bank that held the mortgage of the man whose eviction I stopped called me on my cell phone and yelled irately:
“What have you done!? You interfered with something that was none of your business! I want that scoundrel EVICTED!! What right do you have to bend the rules of law?”
And I answered calmly: “Do you have a family member who is ailing of any disease?”
And the owner of the bank said: “Of course; I myself am in constant pain because of various ailments. But what does that have to do with what we’re talking about?”
“It has EVERYTHING to do with the subject at hand,” I said; “for, lo: the children of the man whom you wished to destroy have cured every type of illness: all colds, flus and diseases — even the upcoming pandemic that you were planning on using to gain control of the world has been rendered innocuous. Doesn’t this news make you happy?”
“Why would I be happy?” cried the bank owner. “Now I am barred from becoming the Master of the Universe!”
This answer gave me pause. I placed my hand over the transmitter and whispered to my partner, Officer Hektor: “The guy has a point — his whole goal, all along, was to grab all the power for himself; he doesn’t give a fig about harmony, when it comes to human relations.”
Therefore Officer Hektor and I constructed an arena that resembled reality, where this bank-owner could act as if he were the ONLY leader of the free world. And, in gratitude, the bank-owner made ME the new sheriff of his pretend universe, and he allowed my partner Hektor to serve as my deputy. And we all lived happily ever after.
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