"I didn't know the undertakers were holding a convention. What do I do with my prisoner, Pete?"
"Ask Virginia."
~Virginia, brother, are one's name Virgin and "Well, how angel here?"
"Bring her in. Tell her to sit down."
"Come on, Angelica," Willis said, "have a chair. Angelica! Oh, Jesus, that breaks me up. She just slit a guy from ear to ear. A regular little angel. Sit down, angel. That bottle on the desk there is nitroglycerin."
"What you mean?" Angelica asked.
"The bottle. Nitro."
Nitro~ You mean like a born'?"
"You said it, doll," Willis answered.
"A born'?" Angelica said.
"Madre de los santos!"
"Yeah," Willis said, and there was something close to nwe in his voice.
huh?" Willis burst out laughing.
?~~Jfl we getting them today.
You know what this is?
Angelica! Virginia and Angelica.
The the Angel!" He burst out laughing again. about it, Virginia? What do I do with my
From where Meyer Meyer sat near the window typing his D.D. report, he could see Willis lead the Puerto Rican girl deeper into the squad room to offer her one of the straight backed chairs. He watched as Willis unlocked the handcuffs and then draped both wrist lets over his belt. The skipper walked over and exchanged a few words with Willis and then, hands on hips, turned to face the girl. Apparently Virginia Dodge was going to allow them to question the prisoner. How kind of Virginia Dodge!
Patiently, Meyer Meyer turned back to his typing.
He was reasonably certain that Virginia Dodge would not walk over to his desk to examine his masterpiece of English composition. He was also reasonably certain that he could do what he had to do unobserved especially now that the Puerto Rican bombshell had exploded into the room. Virginia Dodge seemed completely absorbed with the girl's movements, with the girl's string of colorful epithets. He was sure, then, that he could carry out the first part of his plan without detection.
The thing he was not too sure of was his English composition.
He had never been a very good English student. Even in law school, his papers had never been what one would call brilliant.
Somehow, miraculously, he had received his degree and passed his bar examinations only to receive a Greetings from Uncle Sam, advising him that he was to serve in the United States Army. After four years of trudging through muck and mire (Hello, Muck! Hello, Meyer!), he'd been honorably discharged. By that time, he'd decided that he didn't want to spend the next ten years of his life building a practice. Cubbyhole offices and ambulance chasing were not for Meyer Meyer. He had joined the police force and married the girl he'd been dating ever since his college days, Sarah Lipkin. (He could still remember the fraternity house banter:
"Nobody's lips kin like Sarah's lips kin."
The banter had never disturbed him.
Patiently, he had smiled and listened to it.
Patiently, he had continued dating her.
Besides, the banter was true. Sarah Lipkin was the kissin'est fool he'd ever met.
Maybe that was why he married her when he got out of the Army.) His decision to leave the law profession startled Meyer. It startled him because he was usually a very patient man, and certainly it would have taken extreme patience to sit out the next ten years waiting for a client to step into the office. And yet, tossing patience aside for the first time in his life, he quit being a lawyer and joined the police force. In his own mind both professions were linked. As a cop, he would still be concerned with law. Patiently, doggedly, he did his job. He did not make Detective 3rd/Grade until he had been on the force for eight years. That took patience.
Patiently, he worked on his English composition now. His patience was an acquired skill, nurtured over the years until it had reached a finely honed edge of perfection. He had certainly not been born patient. He had, however, been born with the attributes which would later make a life of patience an absolute necessity if he were to survive.
Meyer's father, you see, was a very comical man. That is to say, he considered himself something of a wit. Half of this consideration was perhaps erroneous. In any case, he was a tailor who played practical jokes on friends every now and then, to his vast enjoyment and their vast annoyance. When his wife, Martha, had already seemed past the age when she could have any further children, when-in fact she was experiencing change of life, nature played its own practical joke on Meyer's father. Martha, of all things, was going to have another baby!
The news did not sit too well with Meyer's father. He thought dirty diapers and runny noses were all behind him and now, at this late stage of the game, another baby.
He accepted the news with faintly disguised distaste, suffered through the pregnancy, and meanwhile plotted his own practical joke in retaliation against the vagaries of nature and birth control.
