Cop Super Squad No. 29: "Sewer Monkeys ..."

"Yo, Gerald ... what the hell is that thing?"

Officer "Tank" Jernigan was new to the job and the gritty, nasty, slimy, miserable, streets of Seattle. I'd been in this muck for too long. My name is Lieutenant Gerald Sims, and I've been lead detective of Cop Super Squad No. 29 for 12 years. Sure, other cities have "super squads", but the Seattle unit has combined several techniques together to build a powerful squad of maniacs that keep the streets clean ... you know ... using fear and intimidation.

The early morning sun was barely peeking over the Cascade Mountains, and the water had a silvery hue to it - it was overcast and their was a light mist, drizzle. The salt air, down on the waterfront, had a musty aspect to it - as if you were smelling the blood and pus and pain of every horrible crime committed in this foul and wretched city.

"It's weird ... it looks like a monkey or something ..."

The body was floating down by pier 70, just off the docks, the Seattle Harbor Patrol was pulling the body out of the water when we arrived. We wouldn't know much more until after the autopsy, but it looked like a small hairless, rather pale, monkey.

Sgt. Jernigan, my partner, was our latest recruit to the 29th Super Squad - but I could tell, this job would be too much for his delicate psyche.

We drove back to headquarters - our super squad HQ was located in an abandoned building in Northgate. We had an indoor garage and the Seattle Police Department owned the whole thing, the whole building, most of the offices went unused. The whole 29th Super Squad only had 20 team members - each specializing in something awesome, like mind reading, or dousing, or karate or kung-fu ... every member of the super squad had to carry 15 Shuriken at all times, plus 3 switchblades, 2 pistols (minimum), a tazer, and one molotov cocktail.

We parked the car, a cherry red 1968 Pontiac GTO (with tri-power), and made our way to the main office.

"Waddup G, I heard you guys hook'd a floater this morning?", quipped Tommy Houston, our flame-thrower expert.

"Where is everyone?"

"Oh, there's some kind of mess in the U-District ...", the U-District or University District, is the region surrounding the University of Washington (Huskies).

"That 'Greek Row' shit again?"

"You know, Sir, I believe it is Greek system related ... bunch of frat boys were keeping strippers and whores hostage in their basement ... seems like they were using Craig's List and an old abandoned farm near Concrete Washington as the drop point ... really creepy shit ... one of the dudes was pre-med and he'd been carving up the 'leftovers' and selling body parts, organs ... crazy ass shit man ..."

"That sounds worse than the floater."

"It does."

Tommy was sitting at his desk, feet up on top, coffee cup in his hand. Sgt. Jernigan was shaking his head and sipping on the flask of whiskey he kept hidden in his jacket. I didn't care. I'd seen all sorts of atrocious shit since I'd been in charge of the super squad ... hell ... our squad once, accidentally, blew up a school bus filled with nuns and children and pregnant women ... fuck ... I cried that night, for 13 minutes. Then, I got drunk and screwed a hooker from the back pages of the Seattle Weekly.

"Why don't we head over to the city morgue and talk to the coroner about our hairless little friend that got fish'd out of the harbor?", I motioned to Jernigan.

"Hey, can I come along?", Tommy was bored, needed some action.

"Sure man, but bring your pack ...", since Tommy was the flame-thrower expert for our team, his "pack" meant bring the flame thrower. You never know when you're going to need one of those damn things.

We piled into the GTO, her throaty engine, guzzling gas, dripping with power, she wore the streets like a nightgown.

On our way to the morgue, we saw all kinds of violent crimes and shit ... we did nothing ... we all did meth in the car.

At the city morgue, before going in, we all did a few more lines of meth in the car, then, jaded and red-eye'd, we made our way to the coroner's office.

"Doc ... what kind of flora or fauna is this?"

Dr. Jan Voort was a Dutch pathologist who moved to Seattle and became coroner. He was well known, especially on the West Coast.

"This isn't a monkey."

"You have to be kidding Doc, that looks exactly like a monkey, with no hair ..."

"It's not a monkey, it's a small boy ... it looks like another one of the 'sewer monkeys' I'd been seeing ..."

"What do you mean, 'sewer monkeys'?", I was confused and high and not at all able to focus ... 'sewer monkeys'??? This was insane.

"Are you high?", Dr. Voort asked. I shook my head.

"Listen lieutenant, there are families, in N. Seattle, who can no longer afford their flashy, hipster, special-Tesla-driving-and-vegan lives ... they're house poor and crap ... they're living from one HELOC to the next ... and, to save money, they are starting to toss their kids into the sewers ..."

This is a terrible place, Seattle. So many murders go unsolved here, so many crimes. I'd seen the dark and ugly underbelly of this fucking town - and now I'd seen it all ... moms and dads, tossing their kids down storm drains, to save a little extra money ... just so they can drive their Tesla cars and own their fancy homes.

"Jesus Doc, fuck ..."

"Here's something that might help."

The Doc gave me a picture of the boy's arm - he carved into it, with his fingernails, his name "Alan Prentice".

"Yeah ... we can look that up ..."

We finished up our meeting with the Doc and then headed up to Tyler Court - Tommy had found the parent's address using the SPD database.

At the residence, because ... fuck ... we'd been doing more meth ... well ... I just had Tommy set fire to the parent's house with his flame thrower ... we shot the parents as they fled, on fire, from the burning home ...

"It's rough in super squad, isn't it boys?", I said to Jernigan and Tommy ... they were good kids, but who knows what amazing adventures lay ahead for any of us. I just observed the Prentice' home burning, the corpses black and scarred, the smell of pork in the air ... yeah, this life is hard.

Fuck ... too damn hard ...

THE END