It was 0430 on a Sunday.  I got paged down to Central Holding by Sergeant O’Hanrahan, from Street Crimes, about a 5150 – possible psych case – they were holding for me.  He didn’t have a lot to go by.  I got out of bed without disturbing the floozy I’d brought back from Alary’s last night, and drove down to Central.

I’d worked with O’Hanrahan years earlier, when we’d worked the crimes against literature beat together, so he recognized me.

“Hey, Sean”.

“Hey, Paddy. What’s up?”

“He’s in the isolation cell.  Follow me, and I’ll catch ya up”. 

We walked down the hall, our ears subconsciously blocking out the bedlam of an inner-city police station early on a Sunday morning.

“We got this guy – caucasian male, age 55.  Name on his DL was “Scotty Wombee”.  Arrested around 11PM for walking up to his neighbors and holding a video camera down by his groin and demanding that they…” he ruffled through the arresting officer’s notes “…touch, stroke and kiss his video camera”. 

I’d seen a lot of sick stuff in my hears as a police shrink.  Stuff that’d make a billy boat puke.  This was no great shakes.

“Wow.  About as subtle as a drag queen at a NASCAR race.  Anything else?”

“Yeah” O’Hanrahan said, “even though he was born and raised in Coon Rapids, he did his whole spiel in a German accent”. 

Hmm, I thought.  Don’t see many of those anymore.

O’Hanrahan and I walked to the control desk.  Sergeant Fitzpatrick was on the desk. 

“Hey, Seamus”, I said, nodding my head.  I’d known Fitz years ago, when we both worked the Political Vice detail.

“Hey, Lieutenant”, he nodded back.  “Here to see that Wombee character?”

“Yeah”.

“Whooie.  He’s a piece of work.  All the way back to the station, he kept asking Officers Kelly and O’McMurphy what they were compensating for with ‘za gunz and za handcuffz'”, he said, rolling his eyes.

“Open up Number Six for Lieutenant Cohen”, O’Halloran said, as I signed my roscoe over to Fitzpatrick.

———-

Wombee was about five foot nine, with thick brown hair and ferret-like eyes darting back and forth as he lounged on the chair in the isolation cell. 

“Hello”, I said.  “I’m Sean Cohen”.

Wombee looked me over as I sat.  “Inderezting dot you vould zay zat”, he said, sounding a little like a John Banner impersonator at a “Hogan’s Heroes” fan club convention.  “Vy do you hate your mozzah?”

“I don’t”, I said.  “So what do you do for a living?”

He leapt to his feat and clicked the heels of his worn Adidas together.  “I am a zhurnalizt!”

“A journalist?”

“Jawohl!”

“OK, what do you do for your other living?”

He sat back down and and affected a studied gaze.  “I am a lizenzed ah-kee-tekt”.

“Ah”‘  I riffled through the case notes.  “So the officers who picked you up said you were acting…inappropriately with your neighbors.  You even scared some of the kids”.

“I am a Zhurnalizt.  I zeek only za truze”, he said, pantomiming taking a pipe from between his teeth.

“Right, but why do what you did?”

“I AM A ZHURNALIZT!”, he bellowed, leaping to his feet.

“Right, I got that, you’re a journalist”.  Napoleon, Christ, journalists, Julius Caesar – I’d seen ’em all.  “But why?”

He sat back down, slowly, his eyes taking on that faint glow that I’d seen from so many 5150s; like they’re looking at you, but focusing on something 1000 yards the other side of you.

“I vuz making people avare of zat Legislator zat vaz in ze news”.

“Ah.  OK.  What about him?”

He looked around, and furtively whispered “he hed a gun“.

“Yeah?  And what about the gun made you walk around the neighborhood and, er, do what you did…”

He looked at me, focusing sharply, the way they do when they’re about to make a point they consider too self-evident for other people to miss.  He whispered furtivley:

“He iz kompenzating for somezing”.

“Yeah?”  What?”

He looked taken aback.

“You know – compenzating“. 

“Yep, I heard you.  Compensating for what?”

“Heh.  Everyboddy knows vot zey are compenzating for”.

“Not me.  What?”

“Hah!  For a lack of ze schlong!”

“Right.  And you know this precisely how?”

He leapt to his feet, face suddenly purple with rage.  “EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!  YOU MUST NOT QUESTION EVERYBODY!”.  He’d lost the German accent.

I sat back in my chair.  “OK.  Got it”. 

“EVERYBODY!  EVERYBODY KNOWS IT!  EVERYONE!”

“Right”. 

I turned and knocked on the two-way mirror.  O’Hanrahan walked in. 

“We’ve got a 10-569” – police code for “narcissistic personality disorder with delusions of grandeur and a tendency to reduce all personally-incongruent reality into facile stereotypes”.  Not uncommon, these days. 

I continued “I think he’ll need five milligrans of Nembutol to cool him down and get him through the night in lockup, and perhaps tomorrow we can work on something a little longer-lasting…”

O’Halloran pulled his taser and fired it at Wombee, who dropped to the ground, screaming..

“That’ll do, too”, I mumbled as I walked back to the desk, the faint odor of urine piercing the chilly, concrete-laced air. 

There are a million stories in the naked city.  Me?  I’m just walking my metaphorical beat, trying to get some underwear onto some of them.