Quarentine-3020 (Part 3 of 4)
“Son, wash your hands, count to twenty”, Harold was sequestered in his tidy little home bundled up in his man cave which had autographed pictures of Tennis greats. His weapon arsenal was kept in Cudahy underneath a burger joint at Atlantic and Florence. The weapons were James Bonds level killing machine caliber. He never kept business in his home as a rule he learned from Big Meech. Except he didn’t deal with birds and kilos – he dealt with October murder sprees.
His son was so dispirited missing the adrenaline of a tennis match – the back and forth, the hustle, the precision. He heated being under quarantine watching videos, washing his hands, wishing he could read comic blogs with his best friends down the streets. He felt like he was being punished for being alive – a twelve-year-old Tennis prodigy turned into a germ overnight because of the headline news and governmental discourse.
Harold was perturbed – he messed up one of his kills. The one on October 17th for the Bounty Hunters. It was that night – he had it in his mind where he looked over details that only professionals would care to think of. He always dumps the bodies at the racetracks – any he could get to. The politics were such that at a racetrack the bodies would disappear as soon as they could so that the gambling professionals did not lose their focus and especially the superstitious reasons that lead them to gamble. The racetracks prepared for the slaughter as they called it and they shut out the police using their crack security team and disposers.
Harold remembered something that caused a panic in his heart as he repeatedly washed his hands for twenty seconds and practiced social distancing. He stopped for a burger at the spot off Las Tunas Drive. He saw the one person he feared the most – it was Dick, the security guard, that couldn’t get into the police squad because he was a full-blown Schizophrenia. Dick was a monster at paperwork, a master on his I-pad – he hated two things in this world – gangs and graffiti. He was lax about every other fiendish crime from drug dealing, prostitution, credit card scammers, you name it – but if it involved a gang member or a tagger, this inept security guard became a modern-day Jay Edgar Hoover. Harold saw Dick walking out of the bathroom without washing his hands. Harold remembered that detail and thought that was so unpleasant that with talks of a possible pandemic he would walk away from the bathroom without washing his hands.
Harold brushed away the thought having worked around this Idiot Savant hundreds of times before. However, this time Harold would pay with his freedom as Dick had Harold’s DNA that fateful night. It took many different turns and twists but like they say the FBI always cracks the case – game over!
The next few months were boring and tedious for Harold’s household – the news/blog stand was closed, his son could not play in his tournaments, and their hands got dried out because of obsessive handwashing. There were some highlights when Harold had to drive to Mexicali for toilet paper after the 58 counties of the State nearly ran out. He tried bargaining with his neighbor Jim who had about wall-to-wall supplies of TP. Jim lived alone there after his divorce. He lost his job at Merrill Lynch and got into the lucrative toilet paper racket during the Light Plague. Out of principle, Harold drove to a small market in Mexicali that had Sharman in bulk. He enjoyed the road and what would turn out to be his last trip.
In the year 3020, criminals stopped going on the run physically. The way the criminals tried to escape the law was digitally – erasing social media accounts, answering blog comments that might seem incriminating and creating confusion that his lawyers could exploit. With the right lawyer, the law is always on your side. Harold had a voice in his mind as clear as if God was speaking to him – he was going to finally get caught.
(END OF PART 3 OF 4)
