The phone rang. I sat up in bed, disoriented, not knowing where I was. I hadn’t spent much time in my own bed lately and it took a little getting used to again.
I grabbed the phone after the fourth ring, “Yeah.”
“Get down to the clubhouse; we are about to brace Big Maxie Greenbaum.” It was Harry.
“Who?”
“Big Maxie Greenbaum,” he said before hanging up.
Big Maxie Greenbaum was a low life, a low-level thug, who was a tough guy wannabe whose body odor could best be described as smelling like a backed up sewer. I hadn’t heard his name for a long time. The last time I ran across him was down in Beloit where he was arrested for trying to unload a truckload of stolen shoes.
By the time I arrived downtown it was already 2:30 p.m. I saw Lieutenant Marshall and Detective Paulie Menjou, hanging around the coffee machine speaking in low voices. Harry saw me walk in and threw his cup in the metal waste basket and motioned over his shoulder with his thumb telling Paulie to get lost. Paulie nodded his head and threw his half finished cup in the basket and left.
“How are you, Harry?” I asked.
He turned and looked at me, “My balls are sagging and I found out I’m asthmatic and I can’t hold a whole note while I’m singing in the shower like I used to and my prostate is so large when I take a pee I have to wear rubber boots; otherwise, I feel like shit. Thanks for asking.”
“Don’t mention it. So, what’s up?”
“What’s up? Come on, I’ll show you. This is something you just have to see and even then you are not going to believe it.”
We walked back to the holding tank, where they kept the newly arrested nonviolent offenders. There was a group of six teenaged boys with their heads between their legs sitting along the back wall of the cell. They looked up as we approached.
Harry said, “This group of porch climbers isn’t smart enough to play dumb.
“They broke into a north side home and took a bunch of stuff, including jewelry, some silver flatware along with, are you ready for this? The cremated remains of the victim's father which they mistakenly assumed were narcotics.”
Harry started to laugh, “According to this report,” he said as he shook a piece of paper in my direction while continuing to look at the boys, “these mopes were caught tasting and sniffing the cremated remains thinking it was cocaine. The two uniforms who were called to the scene found their footprints in the muddy backyard and followed them to a vacant building about a block away where they were drinking beer while smoking and sniffing the vic’s old man. They were playing like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs for the uniforms to follow and this was before they started sniffing the old man up their nose. The patrolmen said the kids were talking like they were brain dead versions of Maynard G. Krebs, you know, that Beatnik from that TV show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis?
“That’s Dobie, yeah, I watch that show once in awhile. Dobie lusts after young women. An all-American boy,” I said smiling. “Maynard is largely clueless but he is kindhearted. Where are these kids from?” I asked.
“Your hometown, Brookfield. You know, the city with the best school system that money can buy? One of those Einsteins,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the six young men, “After being told that they were smoking a guy named Curtis Smith, said, ‘I thought that cocaine was a little sticky.’ Shit, I hit him upside the head and it still didn’t knock any sense into him.”
“Didn’t they run into any bone chips? I thought there were little pieces of bones left in the remains once someone is cremated.”
Harry