Bad Crime and Raunchy Shorts
“Sunny old England”. That’s what the brochure says. Except it isn’t. Not today. Today it’s grey, like an old man’s underpants. Like my old man’s when Ma hung the fuckers on the line. Grey old England. Home to knights and dames, maidens, I guess they call ’em here. Huh, funny old language. I screwed up the brochure in the pocket of my mac. “Just like Columbo!” laughed my old lady, her glass eye looking up as it always did. How does she do it, married to me, the force, the god-damn…shit of it.
Constable Bunnykins handed me a cup of fucking tea in what looked like a priceless china cup decorated with some kind of multi-dick sex scene from India. Crazy fuckin’ Brits. Hell, even the French do coffee good. Ce va, I guess. I only been to Paris once. “Gay Pa-ree!” said Bunnykins when I asked for a French roast while surveying the scene in this quaint chocolate box sleepy cricket pitch village.
In case you’ve not figured it out, it’s me, Bazowski, again. I got asked by Bunnykins, he’s a sergeant now, to send in some case file shit for this crime series ‘cos I’m from across the pond and some crazy Yankee shit would go down well with the old ladies here in Snoozebottom Row, UK, England. I guessed the fellas here were just all neck and no elbows. I was wrong. The quiet ones do crazy shit too, that’s a muthafucking fact right there.
Seven days of drizzle and not a single lead on a god-damn case can send a guy to the moon if he ain’t careful.
I inspected the pitch. I didn’t know my soccer from my ass, let alone god-damn cricket. Slower than baseball, if you can believe it. I guess the war here was worse than it was for my ol’ man stuck in the sticky sweatbox mailroom of the USS Suzannah-Sue anchored up in Honolulu. They’d shoot dingers from the deck straight into the ocean.
Anyway, the US Embassy in London called me up. Said there was a case of possible homicide of a US sailor from SHIca-gooooo on British soil in, you guessed it, Snoozebottom Row, Norfolk, England. Bunnykins was the first cop, or “Bobby” they call ’em here, I met.
‘What’s the scoop?’ I said. Bunnykins looked like he’d sucked a lemon outta my ass. ‘What happened?’ I said. Maybe Bogey hadn’t made it this far north outta Casablanca.
‘Of course! We’re still getting used to your gruff American phrases here in our sleepy little old Hamlet.’
‘Shakespeare, guy, huh?’
‘Pardon? Oh, no. Hamlet. Just another of our dinky little words for a village. I suppose you live in a city, or town as you probably call it?’
‘Sure. So what’s the rub? I mean the fix. Hell, I’m sorry. Too many years on the can. Whaddya think happened?’ I pulled out a cigarette. Bunnykins had a look as though I’d just fucked his broad. She was a funny broad. Kept laughin’ an’ winkin’ every time she mentioned how much she loved the “Norfolk Broads”. I hadn’t a clue what she meant until she introduced me to some of her girlfriends. They all looked kinda twee but kept lickin’ their lips at me like they’d just eaten a doughnut. I was that doughnut, and, gee, sure was a swell time there in the UK, England. I felt sorry for Bunnykins. But not too sorry. Those ol’ churchyards sure are a fun place for a hardass cop to let loose. Crazy broads. Bunnykins told me the deal. I decided to pay a visit to the vicar.
I’ve been around long enough to smell shit even when respectable folks try to cover their shit. “You gotta nose for it, Bakowski,” I remember my chief said. I noticed the vicar’s adam apple kept bobbing up and down like a Halloween bucket full of apples for kids. He tried. But I knew. The stupid son-of-a-bitch kept the cricket stumps in his office. I knew there should be three. There was two. And the missing one was stuck up the postman’s ass sprawled on the village-green-cricket god-damn pitch. Warm beer and crazy old England!
