If All Else Fails (16 page)

No need to punch it
up for me. Instant execution. Filed and verified by Central. Routine situation when we catch them
in the act. It's the little criminals that give us the trou­ble. We can't always burn them down
on the spot. The big ones are the easy ones—total burndowns and no busy-work punching up their
files. It's better that way. A cop shouldn't have to mess with too much tape work. Let the
computers handle it.

Computers are a
cop's dream come true. A wombcop like myself can patrol a hundred city blocks for an eight-hour
shift. God, when you think of the waste the way they used to do it. And all that legal nonsense
that used to turn crimi­nals loose. None of that kind of thing now. We catch the
criminal in the act and his videotape is all
the trial we need. And wombcops like myself are all the judges we need. We don't pamper
criminals. We make short work of them around here.

"
Position
," the computer clacks. I punch in monitor 6. It's a female, Negroid.
Walking past the monitor. Out of range. I punch in. Curfew violation.

"Follow and
detain."

Mobile unit moves
forward, scanners set on her. Tape be­ginning to file. I punch in audio.

"Stop." My voice
sounds good booming through the mo­bile unit's big speakers. Usually that one word is enough. Not
this time. She keeps walking. The mobile unit flashes the emergency panel. My console lights up.
Sector 7 queries, "
Assistance
?" I delay. I repeat the message. "Stop.
This is Mobile Unit 6. You are ordered to stop. Failure to stop will be considered resisting
arrest."

She must be made
out of stone. She hasn't looked around once and she's picked up her pace. Monitor 7 lights up as
Mobile Unit 7 moves into sector 6 on an intercept pattern.

"Stop. This is
Wombcop Stevens. Stop. This is a direct order." What the hell is wrong with her anyway? Is she
try­ing to get burned down? This time I damn near yell it at her. "Stop!"

She just keeps
walking.

"You dumb whore!" I
curse, forgetting that the linkup to the mobile unit is still on.

It's over in a
flash. Total burndown. I panic. Punch up the data. What a screwupl They just burn her down for
prosti­tution on my say-so! I punch in some questions. I get this horrible suspicion. Like maybe
the woman was deaf?

The computer reads
out, "
Negroid . . . female . . .
234-84-3722-4 . . . willis, mary lena . . . director . . . police
unity league . . . handicap . . . deaf. no arrest, no convictions
."

That tears it. What
to do? I punch a quick hold on the filing of the tape. A temporary solution at best. This is
going to be a real stinker. I've got to think my way out of this. Hell, no way. They'll dock my
pay for a week at least

What will be, will
be. Have to get back to work. Send it in, file it, forget it. Make the next shot clean. These
things happen. Can't let it sour me on this job. I love my work.

The buzzer rings.
It's time for my break. I punch in the automatics and sit back for a smoke and a tube of
coffee-chew. I flip the learning module down in front of me and settle back into the chair for a
little cramming. The screen flips on. I punch in a random number. My idea of relaxation is
studying police methods. Like I say, I love my work.

The learning module
comes on with a program on crimi­nal facial characteristics. A series of mug shots, typical faces
of thugs and murderers. Interesting. A footnote suggests criminal composite studies. I punch in
the coordinates. A face forms on the screen. The face on the viewer, says the tape, is that of a
demented killer, chosen from the files as the criminal facial type most often
replicated.

I study the face.
Code letters that identify it are not crim­inal codes. Pity the poor guy, some slob private
citizen who's got the perfect example of a criminal face. I'd hate to be in his shoes. God, that
guy looks familiar. Think I knew some­one like that back in school. My curiosity gets the better
of me.

Mug shots hardly
ever look like the real tapes of a guy. Everybody knows that. Just for the hell of it, I punch in
his code, ask for identification tapes. Be interesting to know what the man with criminal facial
characteristics does for a living. It'a a police-file code and not an identity code.

The computer reads
out, "
Working . . . Restricted . . . Public Servant . . . Delay . . .
Delay.
"

That figures, and I
have to laugh. With the perfect crimi­nal face, what else but a public servant? The
computer
hooks in with Central to get an
ok on the check. Central opens a line to me. I have to identify myself. "Wombcop 345-45 Stevens,
Roger Davis, security clearance, code 298-76."

"
Confirmed and cleared.
" Central goes off the line.

The computer opens
up monitor 4 and the audio goes up automatically. I hook in and wait. The screen bursts into
life. God! Who has the perfect face of a killer?

"
wombcop 345-45 stevens, roger davis,
" clacks the com­puter.

I was once in love
with Jesus Christ. It didn't work out like everybody thought it would, but I did learn something
from the experience. Experience. I learned that there is an anti­dote to losing at love, perhaps
winning at sex. I say "Per­haps" because I don't mean "Evidently." (Sex is a properly organized
two-car funeral.)

My only complaint
was that Jesus Christ didn't love me back. There was something cold and alien about her. She was
always trying to get me to go back to the reservation and see what was being held in reserve. She
was always winking at hoods and vice with versa. She didn't love me, but she insisted that I
should love her out of anything like false modesty. (She often said she was chosen to play the
part of Jesus Christ because it was type casting.)

Throughout the
entire affair, between the entrances and the exits (of which there were several), there was only
one tragic flaw in an otherwise perfect scenario. She just plain didn't love me back. She didn't
love me and that was a cure and a caution. It was a cure for which there is no disease and it can
be fatal. Whole tribes have caught the cure and died out. I couldn't let that happen to me. My
legs would
never stand for it. I don't
mind dying. I just don't want to die out.

It wasn't a
question of faith because I know my own mind. I've read about my mind extensively. I know how it
functions. I know exactly what it's thinking even when it isn't. I can prove I know how my mind
works by citing an example of a time when it did work. For instance, although I was deep in the
lap of love with Jesus Christ, I was still ra­tional enough to cancel my subscription to the
resurrection. I had a subscription and a program book because I made the mistake of briefly
belonging to the church of my choice.

Shall I tell you
how I came to belong to the church of my choice and tell you who chose it for me?

I was born in
Wounded Knee, South Dakota, population thirty-seven. Wounded Knee has twenty-four buildings.
Twelve and one half of those buildings are churches. Per­haps you will be fascinated by the
statistical one half? (You amuse too easily.) Why not call it thirteen unlucky churches and let
it go at that?

It's a long story.
It is. It has something to do with good and something to do with evil. Good and Evil. It has
some­thing to do with the forces of darkness and something to do with the forces of light. Them
too. Perhaps, I should skip it. I want to talk about Jesus Christ. Why clutter up the discus­sion
with inessentials?

Jesus Christ, whom
I first met in the summer of 1968 (it was a bad year for everybody) on a back road in New
Mex­ico, has, being the Jesus Christ that Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ of, always fascinated me.
Always. I regard Jesus Christ in the same light and with the same regard one usu­ally reserves
for amputated arms, decapitated heads, and dis­emboweled children. There is, if you follow me, a
certain something about Jesus Christ. Call it charm, call it high-pressure hype, call it venereal
disease, what do I care what
you call
it. I am me (and I have been more so, lately) and what you call it has nothing to do with
it.

How did I fall in
love with Jesus Christ? What first at­tracted me to her? I rolled rocks in front of her tourist
eyes and three days later, like an especially virulent, Sunday Af­ternoon Radio Gospel Swing Time
Jubilee United Revival Fires Jumping Kilowatt. (I only get to breathe in the parentheses) 100
Percent All Singing, 100 Percent All Talk­ing, 100 Percent All Dancing, 100 Percent All Shouting,
Yelling and Foaming at the Mouth, I Believe It Lordy, In­deed I do, Jesus Christ, she pulled the
leeches of her love off her arms and came swarming out of the radio-station cave like the motel
owner who discovered I really had fifteen naked Puerto Ricans hidden in the trunk of my car, some
of them women and all of them children.

I could simplify
this by simply saying she fell out of the sky and crashed through the roof of my outhouse but
some­how, telling it like that, just doesn't seem dignified. It has the personal touch, I admit;
but, somehow, out of a God you always expect something a little more flashy. You always ex­pect a
little more out of a God. If God passes air, one ex­pects it will be essentially, operatic.
Perhaps a cantata from Lohengrin. If God picks his nose, one will expect it to be Enrico Fermi
and the cyclotron, goosing atoms like chorus girls and having a high old time on an atomic scale.
With God you expect more and always get too much. Something like that.

I had a hard time
at first believing she was real. Mainly because Jesus Christ had this way of wearing her nose
tilted at an angle so she could look down it at people who didn't know her. If anyone would have
asked me, I would have told them she had a fake nose. (You can forgive anything in a God but a
tendency to dress up in lampshades and wear false noses.) She was real enough, though, of that
there was little doubt. Her presence had been prophesied. We pretty

much figured she'd
be along, by and by. The prophecy said and I quote, "Things are gone hell and gone get worse, by
and by."

And sure enough,
she showed up. You can't tell me there's nothing in this' business of prophecy. I've seen it
work. Oh there were intimations, to be sure; there were hints scat­tered around. You almost had
to buy tickets in advance in order to get a seat. We'd seen her footprints (size thirteen, triple
A) all over Plymouth Rock (and we scrubbed and scrubbed and we still couldn't get those
footprints out. We wore our little cleaning arrows down to the feathers and the footprints still
wouldn't come out. She had big feet and they really sunk in deep).

She came riding up
in a kiddie car, whooping and holler­ing like a two-dollar drunk in front of a five-and-dime. Her
fenders were shiny, made of prefabricated martyrs, and she got a lot of miles to the Spanish
galleon. We recognized her right away. (The ones who didn't, died.) She stood out like a pregnant
whore in a male police lineup. She carried her breasts in her hip pocket like either the old
rugged cross or a pocket flask. (Like all religious stories, we are open to inter­pretation. Or
as the scholars would say, if forced to tell the truth, what happened is anybody's
guess.)

Jesus Christ was
lurid with limbs, liberalism, and Daddy's car. She had a sick headache and always walked with her
legs crossed. She was also full of five-by-six publicity glossies but I was able to overlook that
shortcoming because of my great love for her. After all, this was my red zoo and she seemed
sincere about everything being everything (what a sweet-tongued promiser she was) and when you're
in love, the whole world is a tourist attraction. She was the tourist and I was attracted. We
spoke to each other at first, exclu­sively with our crotches. We didn't mean to get so deeply
religious like that right off the bagatelle but that's life. Or is it? I forget which it is. I
may not know what is but I know
quite a
lot about what isn't. And, socially, I've met all the people who shouldn't be.

Which myth brought
her to the reservation that week, of all weeks? Was it sexually linked with the Protestant work
ethic? Did it make me spin in the grave years before I am buried? Did it center on Geronimo and
body contact with horses? Perhaps I will never know. Maybe I will never care one way or the other
either. (Was it to dispel the rumors that Billy Graham doesn't have a swivel to blow anything out
of and that his mouth works as a food substitute?)

I don't want you to
think I hate her, that I'd like to take a contract out on Jesus Christ. It's true I did sleep
with her once but I'm not the type who carries grudges. Besides, per­sonal degradations and hoof
and mouth roll off my back like oil spill off a seabird's back. Besides I've been insulted by
professionals and one night of harmful vapor and frantic bending down on your knees (the worst
position in the Kama Sutra for ethnic minorities) isn't enough to get a rise out of me. I worked
at it, gave it a thought or two, but it's hard to hate a girl, a woman, who, for a fat woman,
per­spired less than any other fat girl, fat woman I ever knew. I mean that as a compliment. (The
only one 111 ever give her.)