Chief Harding was sound asleep on his couch, a baseball game playing on the television, when the phone started ringing. The Chief grumbled and rolled over, picking up the receiver from the phone on the end table. He shouted “SHUT UP!” into the mouthpiece and slammed the receiver back down.
Two minutes later, another call came. Worn out from his first call, Harding picked up and said nothing. The chirpy voice on the other end was none other than his secretary, May.
“Chief, there’s an emergency!” she wailed.
“Look, sugar, you can’t keep calling me in the middle of the night because you saw a spider.”
“Chief, I’m calling from the station, and it’s two in the afternoon. There’s a robbery going on at the Third First Federal Bank and the squad needs your help. There are hostages.”
Harding grumbled. “It’s my day off, sweetcheeks. Tell them I’ll be around tomorrow.”
May spoke slowly and sternly. “Chief. It’s a hostage situation. People are in danger.”
“Yeah,” Harding retorted,” I know. I’m being held hostage by the Red Sox and the Yankees’ll be in danger if they don’t score some runs because I’ll drive up there and pummel them myself.”
“You can listen in the car on the way over. Then afterwards you can swing by my place and maybe I can Jackie Robinson your third base.”
The Chief gritted his teeth. “Listen, kid, I woulda hit that home run a long time ago if I’d have wanted to. But now that you’ve got me all wound up, I guess I’ll run to the bank.”
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It was a madhouse outside the bank. Yellow police tape covered everything. There were sirens and megaphones and flashing lights everywhere. And then the police showed up.
When Chief Harding arrived on the scene thirty minutes later, the first to approach him was Sanderson.
“Thank goodness you’re here, Chief.”
“Cut to the chase, Sanderson. We ain’t got all day to listen to you jabber.”
“Ok, well. We don’t know how many people are trapped inside. We got a call about a man in the mask robbing the bank, but by the time we got here, nobody could get in or out of the bank.”
The two approached Maxwell, who was leaning against the side of his police cruiser, drinking a milkshake. Harding snapped his fingers. “What about you, Duncan Doughnut? What else do you know?”
“It’s quiet in there, Chief,” Maxwell replied. He narrowed his eyes. “Too quiet.”
“Well, then what are we standing around for?” Harding asked. “Let’s bust in there!”
No one moved. When the Chief looked at his squad incredulously, Sanderson spoke up. “But what if the criminal is dangerous? We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“How in the world did you graduate from the police academy, boy? You’re always thinking with your head instead of acting with your guts,” Harding snapped.
“Can we use the grappling hooks this time?” Maxwell asked. Harding smacked him on the back of the head, causing Maxwell to choke on a sip of his milkshake.
“Grappling hooks won’t get us inside the building, you chump. We’ll use the battering ram.”
In an explosion of glass and brute strength, Harding, Sanderson, and Maxwell crashed through the front doors of the Third First bank, battering ram in hand. Shattered glass sprayed across the floor, and the doorframe swung idly open.
Harding frowned. “You didn’t even check if the door was locked, did you?” he asked.
Maxwell shrugged. “I mean, the door is always locked. It’s standard procedure.”
After briefly putting his face in his hands, Harding scanned the room for hostages, and saw none. His footsteps echoed as he walked through the marble floor of the lobby. “Are you sure we’re at the right bank?”
“Positive, Chief,” Sanderson confirmed.
“I swear, Sanderson, if we just smashed another door for nothing, it’s coming out of your pocket this time,” Harding began. The rest of his threats were interrupted with a scream coming from far behind the bank counter. “No!” the strange voice shrieked.
Sanderson gasped, “The safe!”
“Sounds pretty unsafe to me,” Maxwell muttered.
Immediately, Harding ran towards the counter and back towards the safe, waving for his men to follow. With a hand on the revolver in his holster, he rounded the corner and stood in the doorway of the giant safe.
A man dressed in all black stood inside, watching all of the hostages that seemed to be gathering money up off the floor. The man in black heard Harding approach, and turned to face him. “Hey, when did you guys get here?” the criminal asked.
“Oh no!” Harding exclaimed. “It’s Cousin Lou from the Pipsqueak Gang!”
“Actually, I am no longer affiliated with any specific gang. I’m a freelancer now,” Lou explained.
“So you mean you’re a hired hand?” Harding asked.
“No, no. I’m working for myself. I find it much more fulfilling,” Lou said. Cousin Lou looked down to his right, then pointed at one of the hostages. “Hey! Did I just see you slip a twenty into that pile of fifties? Don’t you even think about it!”
Harding raised an eyebrow. The hostage rolled her eyes.
“And don’t nobody try to give me any five dollar bills. I hate those things,” Lou announced.
After exchanging a look with his squad, Harding took a step forward. “Lou, what’s going on here? Why didn’t you just take the money and run and leave these bankers alone?”
Lou sighed angrily. “I got this thing, all right? A compulsion, really. I can’t stand it when my money’s not in order.”
“What?” Sanderson asked.
“These jerks tried to give me all the money in one big bag, but I wasn’t putting up with that. I couldn’t handle it. So I told them I wasn’t leaving until we dumped it all out and separated it into different bags by denomination and serial number.”
“Don’t all the bills say, ‘In God We Trust’? Wouldn’t that make them all the same denomination?” Maxwell asked. He had a lollipop from the bowl on the bank counter in his mouth, and four more candies were stuffed into his shirt pocket.
In the time it took for Maxwell to ask his boneheaded question, Harding had his cuffs out and had Lou’s hands behind his back.
Once Cousin Lou was locked up and awaiting trial, Harding and his squad strolled over to the pub around the corner from the station. Harding sat at the bar, drinking a scotch and watching the end of the Yankees vs. Red Sox game on the television. Sanderson and Maxwell sat on either side of him.
“Once again, boss,” Sanderson said, “we couldn’t have done it without you.” He raised his beer for a toast, and only Maxwell took him up on it.
“Yeah, and thanks for letting us smash stuff,” Maxwell added. He clinked his beer bottle against Sanderson’s and then returned to his plate of mozzarella sticks with renewed fervor. Harding was unmoved by their toast.
Sanderson elbowed the chief in the arm. “What’s got you so down in the dumps?” he asked.
Harding sighed and looked down at his hands. “It’s the last thing Cousin Lou said, before I put him in the back of the squad car. I just can’t seem to shake it.”
With his mouth full of melted cheese, Maxwell asked, “What’d he say to you, chief?”
Harding finished off the last of his scotch and answered, “He said, ‘I just wanted to get into some really organized crime.’”
-Ivy Decker, Senior Staff Member, and Matt Warner, Guest Writer