“Yes, sir. No problem. I’ll get right on it.” Konowicz shuffled out of the office.

“I know you will, and you’re gonna bring her back here safe and sound, in one piece, so I can talk to her! Not a mark on her, you hear!” Konowicz didn’t acknowledge. He kept on rolling out the door.

Schueller shook his head, a temple-pounding headache coming on. He recalled a book he read back in the 80’s called The Peter Principle, about employees having a tendency to rise to the highest level of incompetence. The book described how people hit the ceiling of their careers due to the inability to competently manage their responsibilities. Schueller had become convinced that Dr. Lawrence J. Peter was a prophet. The good doc must have foreseen the life and times of Scott Konowicz when he wrote his book.

This was the defining characteristic of Konowicz’s life, incompetence. He considered Konowicz a shining example of the golden age of mediocrity celebrated across America today. His exquisite failures reached into every facet of his life, leaving no stone unturned, no accomplishment untainted. His spectacular divorce and lack of children was a shining trophy on the mantle of failure he donned upon his shoulders each day on his way out the door to work (after spiking his coffee with the cheapest bottle of rum available at the corner liquor store).

Konowicz ate, slept, and drank of ineptitude to such excess that it rivaled his alcohol consumption. When Schueller confronted Konowicz four years ago about his alcoholism, trying to offer the idiot some help, Konowicz replied, “No Alcoholics Anonymous for me, no sir. That shit’s for quitters! The only twelve steps I need are the steps leading from the car to the checkout counter of the liquor store!” The idiot had laughed it off. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Schueller watched through the blinds of his office window as Konowicz approached his fat sidekick, Oberman. They couldn’t be more different looking, and yet they were two sides of the same coin. They matched each other nearly point for point. Their lives were like mirror images of one another. They damn near finished each other’s sentences.

Both detectives shared the same tendency for corruption and bribery. This was the primary reason Schueller had pared them up as partners six years ago. Better to let two bad apples rot together rather than watch them pervert others on the force with their corrupt influence.

Schueller sighed, rubbed a hand across his face and mumbled to himself, “They’re poster children for labor union reform. If the union can make allowance for their continued employment, it must be fundamentally flawed.”

Schueller was well aware that both detectives spent their unproductive days skating on the minimum effort required to keep their jobs. They played the Rodney Dangerfield role, I get no respect! He also knew they spent their lonely nights shaking down pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers for a little bonus pay, a few hundred here, a few hundred there. Both having hit the limits of their careers years ago, they took it upon themselves to get ahead the old-fashioned way: threats, blackmail, extortion, and coercion.

Schueller sincerely hoped he could finagle a signed statement from this mystery blonde and put an end to both their careers. It took a lot of dirt to get rid of an NYPD officer, but those two had been pushing the limits of tolerable police behavior for far too long. The office of internal affairs had a dossier on both of them longer than most criminal rap sheets.

* * * *

Detective Konowicz was not a happy man. Every time he spoke, turned his head, tried to eat or drink, his nose spiked pain throughout his skull, causing a series of throbbing waves of misery. His Oxycontin pain pills kicked in with a nice buzz, but the catcalls and teasing from his fellow officers left him with a foul attitude.

“Hey, Konowicz, is it true you had your ass handed to you by a hundred pound bimbo?”

“Hey! We should put the bimbo on The Jerry Springer Show with Konowicz and Oberman. After she’s done kicking their asses all over the stage, she can do a number on the stripper pole!” This knee-slapper had them all busting a gut, tears streaming down their faces.

“I heard she zapped Oberman right in da freakin’ nuts wit’ your piece. You gotta give her points for originality on that one!”

“I bet the chief had their balls for breakfast over that shit!” The legend of their confrontation with the blonde grew with each retelling.

“Everybody’s a fuckin’ stand-up comedian,” Konowicz grumbled under his breath so as to avoid inciting further comment. The incident with the little blonde cunt was the most recent humiliation he’d endured, but it was a symptom of a much larger problem. This event sat atop a heaping list of embarrassing disappointments. The list stretched back over the decades, extending throughout twenty-two years of an unrewarding and meritless police career.

Life had not been good to Konowicz, but his police work provided a nice outlet for the anger and frustration. Out on the streets, he and Oberman didn’t take any crap from criminals unfortunate enough to land in their path. Especially the prostitutes. Bust a few heads, shake down some whores, collect a few dollars, grab onto some new names and do it all over again. Whether by cash or services rendered, the girls always paid. Konowicz had the unbreakable power of the law behind him. Nobody dared to defy him. Nobody but this bimbo.

Saddled with a broken nose for all his co-workers to see and appreciate had enraged him to the point of murder. Konowicz planned to get that little bitch one way or another. It wasn’t just business, it had become a personal vendetta. She’d never see the chief. There would be no signed statements. He wasn’t a fool, and he surely wasn’t going down for some hot piece of tail with a bullshit complaint of extortion.

Konowicz fantasized long and hard about horribly unspeakable things he might do to her before he killed her. Oh, how she would beg and plead. She’d do anything he wanted. Anything. She’d probably try to pay him off first. That’s how it usually went when things got rough. He might even let her scrape up some money before he finished the job … drag it out a little longer. Konowicz got down with some serious planning. He put more effort into his plans for revenge than his own career.

He needed to be certain Oberman would go along with it. Konowicz approached Oberman privately during lunch at the greasy spoon diner they frequented.

“Hey … we gonna fuck dis chick up when we find her? We ain’t takin’ no prisoners right?” Konowicz spoke in hushed tones, his plugged sinuses added a nasal whine to his voice.

“Yeah, no problem. This bitch is gonna wake up dead in a dumpster by the time we’re finished,” Oberman confirmed with a malicious gleam in his eye.

Konowicz had expected as much. They were both on the same track. Business as usual. “You get the artist’s rendering yet?” Konowicz whined.

“Yeah, it looks close enough. Where do you wanna start?”

“I was thinkin’ we could hit up Talco. See if he knows anything about her.”

“I bet he knows somethin’. We’ll catch him tonight. He owes us one after the last stunt he pulled.”

“Gotta figure a package that sweet turns a few heads. We’re gonna find her real soon. She must be workin’ with somebody. Chick like that ain’t walkin’ the streets alone.”

Konowicz nodded. With the network of pimps and prostitutes they had access to it was only a matter of time before they found her.

* * * *

Talco stood at the entrance to Chandler’s Bar and Grill waiting for the arrival of Oberman and Konowicz, a.k.a. Los Demonios. Everything involving those two A-holes equated to a deal with the devil. He wondered how he’d ever rid himself of their tyrannical influence on his life. He couldn’t imagine anything short of killing them that would free him, and he wasn’t a murderer. A pimp, a bastard, a felon on probation, he fit all these descriptions, but not a killer. Not yet.

“It’s about fuckin’ time you showed up. Been waitin’ for twenty-five minutes, mane! You think I got nothing better to do?” Talco complained in his heavy Puerto Rican accent.

“Relax, sit down, have a beer. Ain’t you ever heard, patience is a fuckin’ virtue?” Konowicz gestured to a corner booth in the bar. He continued, “You’re too high strung. Look at Oberman here, that’s what happens with too much stress.”

“Yeah fuck you too. Your ugly mug ain’t winning any beauty contests,” Oberman retorted at Konowicz.

Talco looked at Oberman’s scratched face and Konowicz’s broken nose. He prayed to the Blessed Virgin he would never allow himself to deteriorate so badly that he resembled either of them. His sleek, fit, twenty-seven year old, golden-tanned Puerto Rican body was in its prime, and he intended to keep it that way for years to come. To Talco, Oberman’s overweight fifty-plus years of bulk with heavy bulldog jowls and beady eyes was the worst condition a man could be in. Konowicz, although trim, was plenty undesirable in his own gaunt, balding way.

They looked like a wicked version of Laurel and Hardy with Brooklyn accents, heavy drinking problems, and noses for smelling out nasty business. Somehow, their indecent ventures always seemed to find a way from their hands into his lap.

Los Demonios ordered rounds of beers and burgers. I’ll be paying the tab. Those putos didn’t ask for separate checks.

“I got somethin’ here for ya. Look at this.” Oberman handed the artist’s rendering of a blond woman to Talco. “You recognize her?” Talco looked over the drawing for a moment and shook his head.

“She’s workin’ the streets. She’s been seen in the last week by Palmetto and 60th. Claims to be workin’ alone, but she’s a hot little bitch, and it don’t make no sense that she’d be out there on her own.”

Talco sensed something personal involved in this. He got a really bad feeling. There was more to this girl than they were telling him. He speculated she had something to do with the scratches across Oberman’s face and silently praised any woman brave enough to fight back. The sad part, this chick was already fucked. She just didn’t know it yet. You do not go head-to-head with NYPD, a serious mistake.