Image by Malinaphotocz from Pixabay
“Do you know what the worst sandwich in the world is, sir? Yes, that is what I asked you: do you know what the worst sandwich in the world is?”
“Sandwich? Where?” said five-year-old Lil' Robert Ludlow, only to be picked up – with a profound effort – by his ten-year-old brother Andrew and carried out of harm's way.
“That's an Angel of Death serving of a sandwich – you do not want any of that, Rob!”
Mrs. Maggie Lee didn't know whether to laugh or cry as the surviving bigwigs in the Big Loft Police Department felt the need to sort themselves out for intelligence. Half of them were losing their jobs too – they just didn't know it yet – but the really stupid ones felt the need to call her husband, Col. H.F. Lee, and let him know how happy they were he was losing his captaincy under the reorganization and how they felt about how he had been the catalyst to clean out the corruption that they loved.
“You know,” Mrs. Lee had said to her cousin Margie Lee (married to the colonel's cousin, Hoppy Lee), “at a certain point if people can't realize that Harry killed one commissioner outright, arrested the two deputies, and scared two more to death – I mean, what you do to protect people like this from themselves?”
“You pop popcorn, Maggie!” Margie said. “That little Edwina cousin of yours – she knows what is going on! Hoppy said if he were a betting man, he'd bet on the fact that all these people who want to get it will – they will leave the department and some this earth before Harry walks out on his last day!”
(And, in fact, the department's rank-in-file did have some betting pools around this subject, and everybody on Team Lee was winning good money)
“Look, all of these people would have killed him and you if they knew you were smuggling information to him to help him last year – you gotta harden up a little, Maggie, and let justice and nature take its course. Sometimes you just gotta let them give themselves what they deserve!”
With that in mind, Mrs. Lee was able to permit herself a smile at her husband's dark wit as he eviscerated the latest man who served himself up for the purpose.
“The second-worst sandwich in the world is any variation of sloppy criminal behavior in between two sides of the rankest hypocrisy, because it is so sad when the person serving it is made to eat it. What you were supposed to do, sir, is get your passport, buy your plane ticket, get to the airport, fly to a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States, make some enemies, and then borrow one of their phones to call me so you would then have a ghost of a chance of me not tracing you even with your big mouth – but no, you are at your home, and Lt. Longstreet is at your door with his gun drawn in the front, and Lt. Anderson with his gun drawn in the back, and under orders from me to do precisely what I did to Orton Thomas when he got silly and thought at his age he could still shoot with the 20/2000 vision and the back door unlocked. That is to say, you are in the worst sandwich in the world, right now.
“You go sit up in the county jail, or the pit of hell, and think about your stupidity for a while. Your choice on location – but since I trained my lieutenants how to shoot like the marksman I was in Special Forces, I'd go out with my hands up and confess if I were you, and do it fast, because you know Capt. Crutcher has a day's head start on spilling the beans on all y'all to the FBI.”
Some hours later, one of the more sensible bigwigs called a meeting.
“Look, I'm breaking all the Covid-19 restrictions because I need to tell all y'all in person to get out your phones and LOSE LEE'S NUMBER, RIGHT NOW! This man is melting one of us down every other day! Stop calling him – I don't care how you feel! Do you even want your pensions? Do you want the state superintendent to come in here with the mind of keeping Lee – can't you see that Lee has figured out how to keep a job on the force on our foolishness? Y'all go home and hush! If you are drinking, stop drinking! If you aren't drinking, maybe some good quality alcohol will calm you down! Do whatever you have to do to not to get Lee's attention, and get out of here with your pensions intact! Dismissed!”
But folks were still going out the door – old, proud Southern men who never a day in their lives had taken orders after achieving a certain status – with plenty to say and plenty of counter plans to hatch. Word got back to the rank-and-file betting pools that night, and Team Lee just counted its money in advance.