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.
