Police Seeking Hard-Boiled Cop to End Sniper's Spree

sniper operating in the region of outer-Washington, D.C. continues his random assault on citizens, adding more to his bodycount which includes a cross-section of the entire community with no apparent connection to each other. Nine have been victims of the sniper, seven of those have not survived. As the crimes continue to escalate, investigators are desperately seeking a brilliant-but-self-destructive hard-boiled cop to end the nightmare.

"At this point," said FBI liaison on the case Match Tidwell, "we are sorting through a list of D.C.-area-based detectives with personality issues who can unite the search for the sniper and make the case personal. Preferably someone who drinks a lot to forget the past case, say, a sniper shooting he failed to prevent 5-10 years ago. We are examining former cops and 'washed-up' investigators especially."

When asked what they were doing about the sniper, Tidwell rolled his eyes and said, "Were you not listening?"

Speculation that the new lead investigator, when chosen, would have a partner could not be made by the department at this time.

"There's always a possibility," said some cop in a general's outfit standing next to Tidwell, "say, a grizzled old veteran. I would personally prefer to assign a green young recruit straight out of the academy, someone who's still hung up on the rules and would make for a nice by-the-book personality to off-set the lead investigator's self-destructive behavior. But we're playing this by ear. It's always possible the cop chosen will insist he work alone—it's personal."

No names on the short list of officers or former investigators were given.

The plan is the latest to quickly resolve the string of attacks by the unknown sniper, dubbed by the media, or perhaps just this reporter, as "Oswald's Ghost." The necessity for a different kind of cop was realized Monday when police found a "Death" tarot card with the message to cops saying, "Dear policeman, I am God" scribed on it. At this point the investigating force of city and county police, state troopers, and FBI realized they are more than likely dealing with a very cliché-killer personality type, and to offset the awful TV-mentality violence they needed a cop to match his wits.

Brock Johnson, an expert on cinematic crime investigations and salad bars at the University of Ratsass, Maryland, painted a vivid picture of the man, the cop, sought by the police.

"What they need right now is someone who can take a cursory look at the crime scene and determine how the victims are connected," Johnson said. "Something like, 'Christ! Why didn't we notice it before? They're all wearing Members' Only jackets!' Not that, of course, that's stupid, but you get what I'm saying. There must be a common link that we're missing if the cliché—what did you call him? 'Oswald's Ghost'? That's good, he'll love that. I'd call him the Turd Burglar, but that's just me."

The police's choice to find a new, more cynical and emotionally-burdened investigator was a correct one in Johnson's opinion.

"You're not going to catch this guy with good old-fashioned police work and canvassing the area. He's apparently got a score to settle, let's say his father sexually abused him or his overbearing mother had an anal fixation and used to administer suppositories, something real fucked-up to explain his behavior. This new investigator the police are seeking, let's call him Coyote for now—he should be haunted by the failure to save someone in the past, preferably by another sniper. If he can have a personal history with the suspect, that would be fantastic, but we're not counting on it. Mostly, we want a big finish to the case where, shortly before catching the perpetrator, Coyote smacks a hand on the desk and stands up with the deadly utterance, 'Shit! There's two of them. We're looking for a pair of snipers.' That would completely rock."

Rock indeed. What a glorious day for news!

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In the interest of full disclosure, I'll start this story off by saying I don't know how I got to Las Vegas. These things just happen, and you either roll with the punches or you pull on a t-shirt that says "BIG, WHINY BITCH" and play the part. Since I was already wearing a pretty stellar Midnight Run tee, I decided to do Vegas like I'd gone there on purpose.

First thing's first, I've got to say the 9/11 tribute at New York, New York that you've been hearing about is a definite can't-miss. Every night at 9:11pm they fly a remote-control plane into the "twin towers" wing of the hotel and set off a shitload of fireworks and explosives, and Omar Bricks isn't ashamed to admit he got a little choked up standing on the sidewalk with all the other Vegas losers, clapping and cheering as the hydraulic towers went down and they shot some spare change and clothing fragments into the crowd and some of those Cirque du Soleil freaks did backflips off the roof. Leave it to Vegas to remind us what it's all about.

As far as the other casinos go, I still say the Mirage hasn't been the same since Roy had his nuts bit off by that tiger. Now they're advertising "Sigfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat," which sounds like about as much wild fun as a hysterectomy. I do understand the pussy move to less-threatening stage animals, but I don't think it's working out too hot since when I wandered into the show, one of the dolphins had just pulled Roy into the tank and was thrashing the shit out of him while Sigfried half-heartedly slapped at the beast with an oar. Funny shit, but probably not what Roy'd had in mind when they cracked open the full-body cast before the show.

I hear they're thinking of trying out ground sloths next, since that's one of the only animals Roy isn't afraid of now, but I'll bet you ten bucks one of those things finds its way into their hotel suite in the middle of the night and beats the shit out of Roy in slow-motion while he's sleeping. I tried to get the Mirage to give me odds on that, but they're not taking any more Roy-abuse action until he gets out of the hospital, out of respect and all that noise. But I'm thinking the Luxor might take my bet, those Egyptian hardasses have held a grudge against the Mirage ever since the Luxor-Mirage employee rumble back in 1998. I think they're understandably upset since the gaming commission ruled that they couldn't keep the Mirage employees as slaves after winning the rumble.

Speaking of the Luxor, I spent the better part of one night trying to sneak into the hotel pyramid's elevator, since I heard the crazy fuckin' thing goes sideways, down into the center of the earth. You know Omar Bricks had to see how that shit goes down. Too bad for the lame-ass truth: Turns out they guard that thing like the Pentagon men's room, you can't even get in without a room key or a much better grasp of the Vulcan neck pinch than I can take credit for. I won't lie and say it's the first pyramid Omar Bricks has been thrown out of, but at least in this one they let me out on the ground floor.

I've always thought that Vegas is basically large-scale mini-golf with beer, though they'll usually kick you off of the mini-golf course for bringing in hookers. Advantage: Vegas, there. This time I decided to test my theory and golf the strip, like in that video with the guy who sings like Elmer Fudd. You kind of have to make up your own par, since it's not posted, or if it is, the sign's been plastered over with titty posters and plans to build a new casino on the sidewalk in front of some existing casino. That's the downside of a town with no rules: the course etiquette blows.

Now nobody would claim Omar Bricks is a world-class golfer, maybe the class of the commune offices, but that's like winning a beauty pageant in a burn ward. Mainly I just swing hard and wait to laugh, if you hit the ball hard enough, something funny is almost guaranteed to happen. Especially if you're blindfolded, sounds are even funnier when you have to imagine who's making them. So I don't know where this cop got off suggesting that I was the one who hit a golf ball into the penthouse at Caesar's Palace. If I had that kind of aim, I'd be shanking that shit on ESPN. Not to mention having Nike paying the big bucks to put their logo on every piece of clothing I'm wearing and shaving it into my hair, like Tiger Woods. I don't know how golfers get away with that shit; if porn stars had those kind of commercial cajones they'd have condom brand logos tattooed on their balls.

Long story short, I had just hit a nine iron up the Eiffel Tower at the Paris when a cop asked me if I had a permit to hit golf balls into a crowded hotel. The dude scared the shit out of me since I'd just been ignoring him standing there; I thought he wanted an autograph or advice on grips. I showed him my ski pass from Vail Mountain, which usually gets the job done since most people don't like to read. But this guy was some kind of bookworm freak and he figured out the pass didn't say anything about playing the Bellagio fountain as a water hazard, so I spent the rest of the day ducking the cops and hitting the casinos in an oversized Ronald Reagan mask.

If you do go to Vegas some time soon I'd recommend checking out the Treasure Island boat show, if you can throw a baseball hard enough you can spend your Saturday night being chased by guys dressed up as pirates, which is good for at least a few months of local fame. A word to the wise though: those phony fucks don't hold themselves to any kind of real pirates' code when it comes to street fighting, and they're not above calling in some hard-hitting showgirls when the going gets rough. Bricks out.

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"GET UP!"
screamed the miter
(a miniature mote)
who'd grown up in the bottom
of the back of a boat.

"RISE!"
cried the tiny little segmented man
whose hat was bright purple,
but his body was tan.

"HUZZAH!"
he repeated, at the top of his lungs
the very tip top,
so loud it rattled his bung.

"GOOD MORNING!"
he shouted.

"MOOD GORNING!"
he out-snouted
through the reverberant caverns of his nose
as he screamed and he scramped
and he ripped off his clothes.

"BRRRRRANT!"
on his bugle he bugled the note.
Then he honked out a ditty
that he'd recently wrote.

Into his mega he phoned
and he bellowed and moaned
as he screeched and he warbled
like a boy band on fire
and he pierced the sky with high notes
like a castrated choir.

He jumped and he leaped
as he stomped and he beeped,
making such a racket as to wake up the dead
who would wake with a ring and a buzz in their heads.

But even when threw a drum kit down the stairs
and gave untuned tubas to the back-country bears
and told the hyenas a side-splitting joke
and he banged on his gong till his gong-banger broke,
on his chalk board he screeched a quarry's worth of chalk
and he gave the loud-talkers a license to talk
and he shoved a canoe through a tight leather shoe
and he told teenage girls they were bathing in poo
and he amplified a donkey to the power of six
and he beat the complainer at a game of pick-up sticks,
he alarmed an alarm
and he pantsed a school marm
and he dropped twelve ball bearings on an aluminum barn
and he crept into the pope's bedroom and he screamed "DARN!"

still

Roofer McGoofer McGoo
slept
and he slept.


Goddamn dog.

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