Rebar for Tootsie Rolls: Chapter .22 Rimfire

The only real light in the Precinct interogation room was the bulb in the fridge. If it hadn't been full of donuts I wouldn't have seen anything.

"Brain! Brain! Brain! Snap out of it!"

Capt. Kornwalski pasted a meaty paw right across my talkhole, with a side of vegan contempt. I peered up at him, his smug cop face beaming down at me like the searchlight of a Nazi helicopter over a sinking box of kittens.

"Brain!" Then came the bucket of ice water on my head, complete with empty bottle of champagne.

"Brain!" Then, a refreshing lemonade and light snack.

"I ain't talking, Kornwalski. " My head felt like a family of badgers had moved in and were fighting over the last strip of caribou jerky. "Why don't you talk to your momma's Pilates instructor?"

"You saw Jenny yesteday, about 3; a man fitting your description was with her."

"At lot of people visit City Hall, and then have sex with Jenny in City Hall."

"Don't tell me the mayor didn't recognize a pair of edible panties on the desk."

"Vanilla or Blueberry?"

That did it. That cop goon of his, Martha, who'd been standing menacingly in the corner knitting, tied me to the chair and beat me with an 800 pound crab pot full of fresh Dungeness crabs. I started seeing more stars than the Hubble telescope. My right eye swelled up like an overinsulted horse jockey. What wasn't dripping on the floor was spotting the walls. And then Martha really went to work. I'd never felt so much pain since I was shot in the kneecap at a Celine Dion concert. Another man might have broke, but I was philosophical. Some men pay good money for that sort of thing.

After I was swept up and the 5-0 Doc stapled me together in a sort of a impressionist collage of a human being, my attorney Abu arrived and sprung me with the $3.34 bail, pleading that I was not a flight risk and could never be under my Delta mileage plan.

He picked me up from the Precinct in a horse-drawn Gypsy wagon, where he lit some incense and went over the charges:

"Guy, they're throwing the law library at ya. 2 counts of 2nd Degree Murder. Felony assault. Kidnapping. Misdemeanor Smelling. Impersonating a better actor. Felony phone solicitation. Felony Mp3 downloading. Felony couch relaxing with intent to order pizza. Felony Got-Your-Nose. Three hundred thousand counts of federal utility fraud. "Abu looked puzzled, shuffled a couple of papers. "Sorry- that's Ken Lay. Hmm. I was wondering where that was."

The cart jerked. A huge black Cadillac rammed the side of the wagon, trying to drive us off the cliff downtown, across from Nordstrom's. Dozens of tarot cards flew through the air. I pulled a .45 Abu kept hidden in the pantry and popped off a couple of rounds through the Queen of Swords. It was louder than a coked-up rock star at a high school party. The horse dropped dead. Mental note to check sight on gun. Then a crash and the Cady knocked us over on our side. My hand hit the ground and the .45 flew across the street. I lay there, with three or four broken ribs and a dead horse on my leg, wondering whether "lay" or "laid" was grammatically preferrable.

The car door opened. Out walked Jenny. Standing in that light, she looked sexier than two sexy patties in sexy sauce on a Brazilian sexy bun.

"You got a light?" She asked.