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Chapter 5. After Dinner

Leticia Walker Reed retired to her room on the second floor of Waterwood on the top of the hill overlooking Walker’s Mill.  She actually scampered, she noted, so full was she with girlish enthusiasm.  Her creek-side room offered a view five miles downstream, past the cattle range, over the fields and down into a grove of trees that ran into Walker’s Mill.  The Mill used to grind all the grain from the many farms in Placer County.  The railroads changed the business of the town – that and the fact that every acre of land was owned by a Walker or a Reed and had been for fifty years.  The Walkers, who owned the mill and most of the land around it, gave the property on which Waterwood was built to the Reeds as a wedding present.  This was before the Walkers died, leaving the rest of it to their daughter and son in law.

Except for six seasons at University, Leticia had lived in this room her entire life.  Now that she had taken all the University of California could give her, a Bachelor of Arts degree in Language and a Master of Arts in English, Letty didn’t know what to do.  She knew what her fantasy was: to run off with a handsome, intriguing stranger who would totally devour her.  She hoped that she wouldn’t end up like Darling Emily, too weak and too smart to do anyone let alone herself any good.  She thought she might like to work in the family business but couldn’t really get excited enough about any of it. 

Then she decided that she needed to go incognito, to hide out between the musty pages of a well-written book.  This is what she had always done.  She was 12 or thereabouts before she realized she was rich.  Just after she stopped being Clementine and right after she saw how deferentially the townspeople treated her, her mother and father – and anyone named Walker or Reed the first time she rode to town in her mother’s Brougham. 

Leticia Walker Reed rarely went to town.  Tutors had come from San Francisco to teach James and her.  She was always the favorite, he always trouble maker.  After studies, James would run wild on the property, ride his pony or get someone to take him into town but Letty would retire.  Sink into the depths of leather and language.  All her books were brought by the tutors, many of whom never lasted more than a year.  Then, during her fourth or fifth year of studies, she asked a question Miss Olson couldn’t answer.

“Well.  I’ll have to go into town the next chance I get and order a book on the subject,” said Miss Olson in response to a question on American History.  The fact that there were books that would tell you all you wanted to know – and that you could just go to town and order them – was a turning point in Leticia’s life.  She determined, from that moment on, that she would learn everything there was to learn from every book she could get her hands on.

Then, after an informative ride into town with Miss Olson, and, after she learned exactly how much money for books she had at her disposal, Letty went a little wild on books.  Finally, her parents came to understand how much money was being spent on books – it was after Letty had discovered such things as catalogues and newspapers and libraries.  It was Uncle James who had the idea of putting Letty to work to earn her book allowance.  She did sums for the bookkeepers, filed correspondence, took notes and, finally, wrote all the correspondence for her father and uncle.  When she left for University, Abolphus and James Reed had to hire two secretaries to handle the workload.

The library in Walkers Mill is named after Leticia Walker Reed who insisted, just before she was accepted to the University of California, that the other children in her community have access to the books she did.  Every purchase Letty made from the catalogues at the general store held the twin thrills that of devouring it’s contents and that of giving of the knowledge to untold thousands of people after her.  Her mother taught her that books can live on after she grew out of them and her mother oversaw the building of “Letty’s Library after she went away to school.  Sometimes Letty ordered two of the same book, knowing well in advance that she wouldn’t be able to part with it when the time came.  All of her books – even the duplicates – reside in “Letty’s Library” now.  All except the large black-leather-bound journal she now held.

And what a book it was!

Chapter 4. Dinner

After an hour of discussing finances and reminding the men the difference between debit and credit, Leticia Walker Reed had had enough.

“That’s all well and good but tell me everything you can about the book!”

The story of the book held what Leticia Walker Reed could already fell was a good, even perfect promise.  Like any good story, it began from the point of innocence.  The book was a complete mystery. 

“Mr. Pinkerton couldn’t tell us anything.”  Mr. Pinkerton was a little joke between Leticia and her father.  Each detective that Pinkerton Security sent to the house seemed to be a copy of the next one.  Leticia just took to calling any detective Mr. Pinkerton.

“Where did it come from?  I mean it had to come from somewhere.”

“We got all the assets.  We literally took possession of all the money and everything in all the deposit boxes,” said Uncle James.

“Some of the items on deposit were from failed banks that Wells took over before we came in.  The book’s owner – or the person who rented the box at a small bank near Fisherman’s Wharf – had been dead for years.  Spaniard fella, I think, by the name of Archangelo.”

“Is it important, Father?”

“All we know is that it’s old,” said Abolphus.

“No one could place the age,” said James.  We only know that the book could be hundreds of years old.”

“And what do you want from me?”

“You studied languages.  We want to know if it’s anything important.”

“Father, do you just want me out of your hair while you take over the banking business in California?”

“No.  I want you to find out what you can and share the information with us.  We have a man at Pinkerton you can write to.”

“Really!?”

“Yes and you have to call him Anderson.”

“Not Pinkerton?”

“I don’t think he’ll get the joke, darling.”

“I’ll do what I can,” said Leticia trying to conceal the excitement she was feeling.  It was all she could to do to keep from running up to her room and tearing into the book.  “I might need to do some research.  I might need to go to San Francisco.”

“Write to Mr, Anderson for all your needs, Leticia,” said her mother.

“You can go to San Francisco if you need to.”

“Wowee!” said Leticia.

“Yep,” said Adolphus and James.

“Language,” said Isabella.

Chapter 3. Before Dinner

Letty and her mother busied themselves readying for dinner.  This meant managing a houseful of servants.  Waterwood housed the immediate A. Reed family, Uncle James and his invalid wife – who took all her meals in her room – and 12 servants.  Uncle James occupied third floor, Isabelle and Adolphus the second and Letty and her brother lived on the second floor, which was also the nerve center for the many family businesses. The house could house an additional 25 guests easily and could entertain over 200.  It sat on 10 acres and was surrounded by Old Man Walker’s Orchards to the East and the senior Reed’s Cattle ranch to the South.  The north was a working farm with chickens, cattle, dairy and an assortment of grains and vegetables. 

Adolphus and James Reed did a lot of talking on their rides.  Always had done.  There was something about a long, dusty ride on horseback that lubricated the mind and loosened the lips.  The entire Reed Central California Trust was hatched on one of their last trips back from the shining city of San Francisco to the small town they loved.  It was not uncommon for the family to hear the details of an incredible venture after the men returned from a long horse ride.  More and more those ideas were influenced by the Reed women who always saved their best business ideas for just before the Reed brothers saddled up.  On their last trip to the big city, after three hours in the saddle, Adolphus and James Reed had made a number of decisions.  A visit to the lawyers was in order.

The Walker and Reed Trusts had bet 67 per cent of its total assets, no small amount, on a gamble that people in California would never know about.  They purchased all of the banking assets of both banks and affiliated branches throughout California.  They did not take ownership of Wells Fargo freight, stage line or security concerns.  The family had always preferred Pinkerton Security to Wells never leaked business information to the press. 

The business plan was essentially Letty’s.  She was convinced that most banks in the United States were over extended – and especially in California.  All that “mining money” as Uncle James called it was tied up in a lot of shaky investments – much of it in the New York Stock Exchange.  A minor run on California banks would topple all but those with the cash on hand to ride out an economic crisis.  Letty knew banks with too few liquid assets would fail in the next three years and that they could be purchased for pennies on the dollar by a bank rich in cash and gold. 

The good news, Letty lectured Uncle James, was that a bad economy was compelling enough reason for America to become involved in the war in Europe.  Once that was done, she reasoned, money would start to flow into and out the surviving banks as the best bank customer in the world – our Uncle Sam – needed cash to fund a war.  And most of what the US would purchase was raw material and foodstuffs.  And that was just exactly what the Reed brothers invested the remainder of their holdings on.  They were either going to be richer or fantastically richer in a matter of years..

She was right of course.  But, of course, she would not live to see her fantastic successes and the growing fortunes of her family.

Isabella had managed to keep the book out of her hands before dinner but Letty was able to get a glimpse of a few well-rendered words in a strong, intelligent and – she could only hear the word dangerous – hand.  The words, some Latin-based language, were fantastical.  Bloody and violent on the only page she saw while walking to the stables with her father and uncle. 

Then, intercepted by her mother before she could ask one of the thousands of questions about Wells, Fargo, Pinkerton and the book, she was off to arrange the details of the meal with the staff.  The men shared a meaningful glance.

“Do you think we did the right thing, Jimmy?”

“We’ve been lucky, Dolfus.”

“Luck ain’t got nothin’ to do with it! We gambled millions on this.”

“The legal boys liked it, Dolphus.”

“Yep.”

“She’s smart.”

“Yep.”

“She just has a talent for reading all those articles and reports and books and coming up with a simple plan.”

“So simple!  That’s why I don’t know if – ”

“Dolphus.  It’s always been simple.  Working with Papa.  We pulled metal out of the ground and the men in San Fran gave us money for it.”

“Yep.  Hard currency, though, Jimmy.  Land, we can see.  Horses we can touch.  We gave hard money for hard things. This is just all just so much paper…”

“I know your guts as well as I know my own and we’re going to do well.  ‘Sides, we didn’t bet it all on the banks.  We saved some for commodities and such.”

“She thought of that too.  She didn’t even care one way or the other.  It was just like – what does she call it?  A theoretical exercise?  What the hell does that mean, James?”

“It means you got horse sense and your wife’s got book sense, Adolphus.  And that beautiful, crazy daughter of yours has both in spades.”

“Yep.”

Chapter 2. The Walker and Reed Trusts

The Reed Central California Trust was a newly minted mining company when Ulysses Walker proposed a marriage between Reed’s son and heir Adolphus and his daughter Isabella, long the secret to the success of the Ulysses Walker Trust.  The RCC and UW Trusts combined to become as formidable a company were the two great families.  Isabella kept her maiden name as a reminder that hers was an older and more valuable brand.  The Walker Reeds had two children in quick succession: James named for his bachelor uncle and Leticia named after her Great Grandmother, wife of a Grandee of Spain.  But business was what the Walker Reeds grew.  Spawning dozens of smaller companies, the combined trusts took to buying up everything that California had for sale.  Land, of course, and natural resources and, finally, the very foundation of all business: banks.

“Father!” shouted Leticia Walker Reed throwing her arms around her father.  Because he was still astride his horse, Letty jumped into the saddle by placing her right foot atop her father’s in the stirrup and swing herself up onto his lap.

“Letty!” said her uncle James, is that the only way to get you to ride side saddle?”

“Uncle James, Father promised he’d return in a week and that was two weeks ago!  And he promised to bring me all the new books from San Francisco.”

“They’re on the way from town now, darling,” said Adolphus Reed.  “You know we’d never be able to carry all of them on horseback.”

“You want to kill old Charger?” teased Uncle James.

“I thought you carried gold and silver both on the sires of these very horses in ’49 and ’50!” she replied.

“Grand or Great Grand Sires by now.  Great genes, all of ‘em.  Could go straight over the mountain, too!”  Uncle James was nostalgic for the old days.  He and his big brother were born in a mining camp and had indeed carried millions of dollars worth of precious metals over the mountains on many storied trips across the high San Clemente range.  “No these horses are gentrified now.  Have to keep ‘em in a stable while we take a train.”

“You enjoyed the dining car and the bar car well enough, Jimmy,” said Letty’s father as he lowered her from the horse.  She had manage to pick his pocket.

“You more’n me, Dolfus!  I fear our old horses wouldn’t recognize us.”

“Oh Daddy! For me?”  Though she was 23 years old and the owner of two degrees from the University of California, Letty Walker Reed could still sound like a miner’s little girl.  This even though she’d only heard stories about the trails and camps from her father and uncle, Letty insisted upon being called Clementine until she was twelve. 

“A book for you and a bank for your mother.”

“James!”  Adolphus Reed was not an educated man but he was smart and the smart money didn’t believe women had any sense when it came to business.  Mr. Red didn’t like discussing business in the open air, in the parlor or in front of the women – especially when other men were around.  The Walker Reed women had been advising for years but mainly at the dinner table or, in the case of Isabella Walker Reed, the bedroom.

“Don’t worry, Dolfus.  You’re secret is safe with me.  You and your wife have made me a rich man indeed.  I’ll never let on that she’s smarter’n both of us.”

“Not a tough task, Jimmy!”  The men dismounted and walked their horses to the creek that ran from Waterwood to the mill in town.  On the two-hour, ten-mile ride, the brothers traversed nothing but land they owned.  The mill, Walker’s Mill, had long since evolved into the railroad and telegraph station and the Walker Reeds owned that too.

“A bank?”  Letty was distraught.  She followed the men and horses to the water’s edge.  “I told the both of you that financial equity is a risky investment in the best of circumstances and a zero sum game in the tough times ahead.  That damned dust bowl is still swirling towards us and what it means for the economy is largely unknown.”

Dolfus Reed didn’t like being lectured by his daughter and his face showed it.  The fact that Leticia Walker Reed had spent twelve more years in school than her father was beside the point.  “Letty, darling. You leave the business to the men –”

“Father!  I’ll have you know that I will vote in the next election or at least the one after that—”

“Letty!”  It was her mother.  “Let the men water those horses.  You’ll ruin that dress.”

“And don’t give advice unless you’re asked!” teased Uncle James.  Before the trip to San Francisco, James Reed had spent two hours listening to his niece’s advice.  What she said made sense to him.  Good horse sense!  They spent much of the ride into town three weeks ago discussing much of it.  James Reed left Walker’s Mill comfortable about the purchase they were contemplating though Letty didn’t know the details.  He was also determined to ask the advisors in San Francisco about something called soy futures.

‘We’re going to have a lot of hungry people in this state.  We should invest in nonperishable foods, and farm land before—”

“Now Leticia,” said her mother, “run along and read you book if that is what that horrible thing you’re holding is.”  Then to her husband:  “I can only imagine what witchcraft she’ll learn next.  These books and the ideas in them.”

“What’s in it Father?” 

“That’s just it, Letty.  No one can read the damned thing—“

“Adolphus! Language.”

“Unclaimed bank assets,” said Uncle James. 

“Banks!  There is only one solvent bank in this country, Daddy.”

“Don’t you want to know what bank you’ll end up owning after we kick the bucket?”

“James!” it was Isabella.

“Jimmy gets it all anyway,” said Letty.

“If he lives that long,” said Abolphus of his son.  James Walker Reed had a taste for a life much sweeter than the uncle for whom he was named.  He was currently traveling in Europe with a ne’er-do-well friend from school.

“Adolphus!”

“Besides, your ideas have been sound,” added Uncle James.  “You already own thirty per cent of the bank.  Don’t you want to know what it’s called?”

“James!  What are you men talking about?”  Isabelle was nearly beside herself.  Talking business in the open was one thing but talking about business with women – out of doors – and including women in the asset distribution...  It was nearly too much.

“Unless that name is Wells or Fargo,” interjected Leticia.

“How about both?” said James Reed.

The Walker Reed women could just stare, gate-mouthed.  The Reed men smiled sweetly back.  They had purchased both of what many of the brighter minds in finance believed the only two banks that would come out of the current financial crisis in tact. 

No more was discussed out in the open.  But there would be a nice long talk during dinner.

New story. I put the Cop Comedy on hold because Darling Emily took over.

Darling Emily is about a woman who adores Emily Dickinson, writes poetry and is convinced that she will be totally destroyed by a handsome stranger.  She is right.  Lemme know what you think of the first chapter...

1. Leticia and Emily

Leticia Walker Reed was considerably more attractive than she thought she was.  She had trouble making friends, getting along in society, with self-esteem and, in a later age, would probably be diagnosed with some ailment on the higher functioning end of the autism spectrum.  In short Leticia Walker Reed was odd.  Always had been.  Intelligent, in fact smarter than most of her tutors, teachers and headmasters.  It was odd enough that she had been invited to the University of California and offer still that she was given a full scholarship: her family was one of the richest in eleven western states.

Her oddness was a good thing.  Good for her that she was left alone to study.  Good that she would find many like-minded individuals at University and good for her that she was a citizen of an entirely different America.  The bad part was that women in the early part of the 20th century were rarely allowed to share their intelligence with the world.  College was just a four year respite from family matters and a way to meet the well-bred sons of California industrialists.  But the fact that she got a first-class education and graduated with distinction was a good secret.

Leticia Walker Reed, Letty to her few friends, kept many secrets.  She was well-behaved and knew her place, she kept her council among the people she was smarter than and kept her secrets in a diary that was itself a secret.  Letty was an intense correspondent with the poet Emily Dickinson.  This was a one-way correspondence as Letticia Walker Rees only recently discovered Dickinson and, as the rest of the world did, only after her death. 

As a woman of her time, Letty knew only too well that a woman’s career path could only be as a wife or a teacher.  But she wanted intrigue.  She loved eavesdropping on her father’s meetings with representatives from Pinkerton’s Detective Agency and longed to become involved in crime, either side of which offered more excitement than Walker’s Mill, California.

Even Darling Emily Dickinson had found intrigue.  The toast of the literary world – a published and respected poetess!  Even if it was nearly two decades after her death, at least Miss Dickinson’s case was published.  Letty had nearly as many poems in her own diary but, after reading Dickinson, had grown in her knowledge of poetry to know that she simply didn’t measure up.  Lately the audience to whom she wrote in her diary became the friend she never knew but with whom she had so much in common. 

Letty shared many problems with her dear friend Miss Emily Dickinson of Amhurst.  She was more intelligent than anyone in her immediate family; no one understood her poetry; she excelled at and enjoyed domestic pursuits like baking, sewing and gardening even though she wanted more out of life; and she believed she was destined to be swept up in an intriguing, devastating relationship with a handsome and dangerous stranger.  Of all these fantasies, sadly, only two would come true for Letty.  The first and the last.

Leticia’s diary read like a series of open letters, each of which began: ‘My Dear, Dear Emily,’ or sometimes: ‘Darling Emily,’ and, when something particularly vexed the diarist, simply, ‘Emily’.  The diary, excruciatingly neat in presentation and correct in grammar, punctuation and spelling, was only exciting when it left the mundane world of Walker’s Mill, California and entered the illusory realm of the thoughts, dreams and, fantasies of the diary’s owner.  Modern psychologists, if ever given the chance to read the diary of Leticia Walker Reed, would conclude that she was intensely intelligent, a rigorous grammarian,  possessor of an immense vocabulary but sadly, totally and completely delusional bordering on psychotic.

Of course, the twin facts that a): every neatly-written, well-reasoned word was true and b): the diary had been purloined by handsome and dangerous stranger with whom she’d had a brief, intriguing and thoroughly devastating relationship, made Leticia Walker Reed’s disappearance a perfect crime.  Perfect in that the handsome stranger, Leticia and her diary were never heard from again.  In fact no one even presumed that that the unfortunate circumstance was anything but a disappearance.  Poor little rich girl gives it all up for handsome stranger, one that no one ever saw.

Had the Placer County Sheriff been able to investigate, he would have uncovered the most sensational case in the County’s then brief history.  The nearly limitless Walker and Reed fortunes made sure that those venerable names were kept out of the newspapers.  The family’s more professional and infinitely better funded investigations shed no more light on the case than did the Sheriff’s.

Leticia sat on her bed in the mansion she called Shambala but that the family called Waterwood.  She rote in her diary while waiting, impatiently, for her father to return,  He was now three weeks late.

My Dear, Darling Emily,
Thank you, thank you, darling for your intense verse!  I was kept awake late into the night by the thumping, no, the pounding of your magical, motoric, meter.  It was as if the rhythm your verse took over my heart, mind and body and that your poetry commandeered my very soul and imprisoned my soul.  It was a forced march through your visions, your words and your invention.  I was a most willing captive.  Thank you, darling Emily!

Thanks also for hiding your work until it could be appreciated!  How dare that charlatan tell you you couldn’t write!  How dare that man, impotent, crass and barbaric, destroy your creation – one that he was too simple to understand.  Or could he?  Was he, dear Emily, simply incapable of expressing his awe, as I have in these very pages, because of his stupid, inane and infinitely worthless masculinity?

How desperately I dare to dream that I can sequester myself, heart, soul, body and mind, from the machinations of men as you have! But I fear, dear Emily, that I mayn’t be as strong as you.  Did you love (the guy who told Dickinson she couldn’t write)?  Did he destroy you as totally as I fear I will one day be destroyed?  I look forward to parts of it with a morbid fascination but mostly with trepidation as, Dear Emily, my cannon is nowhere near complete.

I would innumerate on my shortcomings at length but it seems that Father and Uncle James have arrived from San Francisco and are desirous of engaging me in a job for the trust.  Imagine!  Two months divorced from University and degree, and already earning my keep.  More soon!

The household was in a flutter in anticipation of the arrival of James and Adolphus Reed.  The dispatch from the telegraph office in Walker’s Mill had informed Mrs. Reed of her husband’s impending return.  Isabella Walker Reed was a formidable woman.  For years it was rumored that her father owned one half of California and her husband and his brother owned the other.  It was a match made in the real estate office.  There was love of a kind but mostly respect between these two California pioneers.  Respect for each other, for decorum and, above all, for business.

Chapter One: Caution, Bad Words

Chapter 1.  North Inland

In which we meet a Detective and a Captain, each with an unfortunate name

It was a normal day at the San Diego Police Department’s North Inland station.  Everyone called it North Inland.  No one ever called it The Station like they do on TV.  Not the overweight assholes shuffling paper angrily because they were no longer wanted/needed on the streets.  Not the sworn officers and civilian staff alike who were just wishing/hoping for cause to grab a weapon and just shoot some asshole; just shoot and shoot.  Nope.  Normal.

Normal cigarette smoke filtering in from the patio.  A normal phone, not connected to voicemail, ringing and ringing.  Normal acrid, smoky coffee smell mingling with the smoke and the shouts.  And through this miasma of anger, failure depression and anxiety, and vocal calisthenics, sat Detective Dickstein trying to fade into the wallpaper.  A difficult exercise for, as anyone who’d ever worked or been brought in there knew, the walls were painted an institutional lime/puke green.  The term ‘into the wallpaper’ was just a taking of artistic license – one of many thefts to come.

Dicketein wasn’t his real name but a lot of civilians called him this – a rotten joke played on him by his associates at North Inland.  Detective Richard Steen was often introduced as Detective Dick Steen, with as little pause as possible between names, by his associates.  If he applied himself, Dicketein, as he was called, was twice the cop everyone at North Inland was.  So those associates, mindful to keep him down and from making them look bad by comparison, called him Dick to his face and Dick Steen in front of civilians.

He knew they kept him from applying himself but he quit mentioning it to the Police Psychiatrist in his mandatory sessions because she thought it was just paranoia.  Keeping quiet, Steen knew, was the best strategy.  Not that he could get a word in edgewise, Captain Cunt was a yeller.  But keeping quiet, fading into the background, was always Dickstein’s way of dealing with his Captain, Cunt, who had been yelling for nigh on about ten minutes.  This would be a long one, as most who knew Captain Cunt knew: this was just his warm-up.  There were three types of Captain Cunt dressing downs: Short and Horrible, Long and Really Fucking Horrible, and Oh God You Really Fucked Up This Time Horrible.

Steen, hands-down the winner of the most Oh God You Really Fucked Up This Time dressings down, was concentrating on quiet.  His quiet center, something he told no one about; the thing that was the source of his incredible power of recall.  He accesses his quiet center not so he could take in the content of the Oh God You Really Fucked Up This Time dressing down.  Not so he could hear something in the Oh God You Really Fucked Up This Time dressing down that would make him a better cop.  No, Detective Steen was quiet so he could tune out the Captain and concentrate on the grievance he would file with the union the very second he returned to his desk.

Steen tried to memorize everything Captain Cunt was saying (besides “Oh God You Really Fucked Up This Time,” the saying three times of which indicated the nature of the dressing down).  He tried to memorize the words so he could put as many of them as he could fit into the 50-words-or-less space reserved for this on the union’s automated grievance form on their website.

Captain Cunt wasn’t the Captain’s real name, obviously, and 50 words were never enough to describe an Oh God You Really Fucked Up This Time.  Cunt was just how everyone in North Inland referred to the Captain.  Not out loud.  Never out loud.  What are you an idiot or something?  Jesus!  No.  No one ever said it out loud but every time the Captain introduced himself, he said, “Hi I’m Captain Bolunt,” and everyone within earshot said, silently, “rhymes with Cunt.”

North Inland covered the crimes of a strange pancreas-shaped area of San Diego city that managed not to include all the cool spots for crime to happen.  Not the beach, not the mountains, not the valley or the waterfront.  Just the places where people seemed to be pissed off at their neighbors or doing really stupid things for really stupid reasons.  North Inland covered several middle class neighborhoods, like Manila Mesa, Linda Viet Nam, Old Geezer Town, The Dump.  All of those names were North Inland euphemisms except The Dump.  The Dump is just what everyone called the dump.

The cool places to investigate, but not solve, crime were in North Coastal (where the Cougars live), North (where all the rich people live even though the North Coastal assholes thought they were as rich as those in North), and Central (where all the good shit happened).

Not solving crime, in spite of what every cop show in the Universe would have you believe, is the rule rather than the exception.  No one ever solved a crime like they did, or in as little time as they did it, on TV.  And no one in law enforcement was that pretty.  Not even close.  The successes were counted in percentages and those were rarely double digit percentages of cases. North Inland was second best at not solving crimes.  North Inland was second only to South and South was near the border.  Even South East (where the formerly segregated neighborhoods and most of the gangs were) had more crimes solved than North Inland.  And this is why Captain Cunt yelled.

But the yelling would have to be put on hold as Radar entered with bad or worse news.  No one in his or her right mind would interrupt a dressing down for fear of having it turned on him.  There were only three events that would allow Radar to interrupt dressings down: a) a visit by a civilian (bad news); b) a murder (worse); or 3) a visit by brass (worst of all).  Everyone called Sergeant Raymer Radar not because he could read minds like the guy in the TV show M*A*S*H* but because he was the Captain’s lackey like the guy on M*A*S*H*and his name was Raymer so, close enough.  Radar did a knock-and-enter just as Cunt was saying, for the third time, “Oh God You Really Fucked—what is it Radar?”

This was enough to pull Dickstein out of his grievance-composing funk.  “Some President at a complex in Nam has a suspicious death,” said Radar.

“Murder?” said Cunt.

“Probably.”

“Well, fuck!  It has to be better than probably,” yelled Cunt, “or it won’t justify you’re coming in here!”

“Said someone’s floating in the pool and looks like there’s no skin.”

“That works.”

Radar left.

“I’ll just be going, then, Cap—”

“No, Dicketein.  This looks like much more fun than that Little League investigation you’ve been fucking up all to God Damned Hell.”

“But—”

“No buts, Detective Steen!  I need you to get over there and assess the situation.  You need to direct the Investigators, make initial inquiries and draft an IFR.

The use of his real last name by the Captain, not to mention the Initial Finding’s Report, was all Richard Steen needed.  Using his real name and all that FMJ (Force Mumbo Jumbo) meant that Captain Bolunt was already typing Dickstein’s Note-To-File in his head.  Anytime Cunt used real or official words, somebody was about to get rat-fucked.