Gang Investigative Unit

The Gang Investigative Unit was housed in a ramshackle building downtown.  Built in the 50s, and spuriously maintained since then, the building exhibited nearly all the signs of urban decay.  A thick layer of car exhaust had blackened the ornate limestone exterior.  The façade had broken windows behind thick metal bars, serving to keep prisoners in, or maybe to keep observers out.  The paint throughout the building was yellowed from years of cigarette smoke and peeling off.  More importantly, the coffee tasted like shit.

Mike Donella was a tough cop, a detective and 30 year veteran of the force.  He remembered the bad old days.  Those were some real tough cops back then.  Nowadays, the cops were just baby-faced kids, test takers and pencil pushers mostly - chasing around these so-called "gangsters" who spend more time posting pictures of dime bags on their Facebook wall than committing actual crimes.  Back then you might end up with a hit on your whole family.  Nowadays a hit is something that happens to a webpage.

"Donella, You've got a perp interview in Interrogation 2," The Captain yelled from his office.

Donella's cheap suit struggled to contain his hulking frame as he lumbered into the interrogation room.  In the dimly lit room sat Ramos, a piece of shit nickel and dime drug dealer, if you could call selling 0.2 grams of marijuana to people being a drug dealer.  Ramos was of slight build, still wearing the same clothes he was arrested in last night.  He looked bedraggled after his night in the bullpen.

"The names Mike Donella," the detective boomed.  "And I'm going to make you talk today."

"What's it? 10 AM?  Plenty of hours left in this day, G-Man."  Ramos cracked a smile.

"G-man implies that you're a gangster.  You're no gangster.  You're a piece of shit!"

"Oh, ho - alright.  Make way for the shit-man!"

Before Ramos could finish laughing, Donella smashed his head into the heavy wooden table.  Ramos was out cold.

As he came to again, Ramos could see the massive cop in front of him again, adjusting his police belt.  Still groggy, he began to scream, "Ah, my ass! My asshole!  This guy tried to fuck me in my ass!"

A few minutes later the Captain came in.  The captain was an ugly, bald motherfucker.  He drank whiskey in his office and when that ran out he would drink cologne or hand sanitizer, whatever would keep the buzz going.  The Captain knew how to fail upwards, and through years of monumental fuck-ups had managed to be in charge of the entire squad of detectives at the Gang Investigative Unit.

"What the fuck is going on in here," the Captain demanded.

Ramos was hysterical and yelling at this point.  "This guy knocked me out and then he fucked me in the ass!"  Ramos pointed at Donella.

"Is this true, Donella?"  The Captain grimaced.

"It's all crap.  You know these guys, they'll say anything."

"So you didn't fuck him in the ass?"

"No.  I hypnotized him to think that I fucked him in the ass so that he would give up the information.  These guys, they do all this bullshit to act tough, to try to be a man.  If you take that away from them, they've got nothing.  They crack easy."

"Maybe your wife believes that kind of bullshit, Donella.  But I don't.  You're getting written up for this.  Your career is over!  Now get the fuck out of here!"

Donella, walked out of the room with his head down, defeated.

The Captain asked Ramos to tell him what happened with Donella.  As Ramos went on, describing the conversation and then the violent incident, the Captain took a container of shoe polish out of his coat and put it on the table.

"What's that for," Ramos asked.

"Well polished shoes are the key to success."

The Captain smiled wryly.

Donella was waiting outside as five or ten minutes passed.  Periodically a scream or a grunt would be heard loudly from inside the interrogation room.  Donella was fuming at the Captain at ending the interrogation on the bullshit abuse allegations from the drug dealer.  Donella balled his hands into fists and threw the door open.

The Captain came out of the interrogation room, his pants unbuttoned.  His face was red and blotchy, and covered in shoe polish.

"What the fuck happened?"  Donella demanded to know.

The Captain stared back like he was looking through a window.  Finger streaks of shoe polish formed black tiger stripes all over his furrowed face.  Still catching his breath, the Captain said calmly, "I hypnotized him to believe that there was a guy with shoe polish all over his face, fucking him in the ass."

Ramos was still inside screaming.

Donella closed the door to Interrogation 2, went to the kitchen and poured himself a shitty coffee.