"Ellison-SensibleCity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

this criminal bastard was than he was. Yeah, fer sure. That was Gropp's fav'rite
part, that he always pulled out some poor nekkid sonofabitch was twice his size.

"That's how four of these guys he's accused of doin', that's how they croaked.
With Gropp's sausage 'round the neck. I kept my mouth shut; I'm lucky to get
outta there in one piece."

Frightening testimony, last of thirty-seven. But as superfluous as feathers on
an eggplant. From the moment of superimposition of phantom face over reflection
face, Police Lieutenant W.R. Gropp was on greased rails to spend his declining
years for Brutality While Under Color of Service -- a serious offense-- in a
maxi-galleria stuffed chockablock with felons whose spiritual brethren he had
maimed, crushed, debased, blinded, butchered, and killed.

Similarly destined was Gropp's gigantic Magog, Deputy Sergeant Michael "Mickey"
Rizzo, all three hundred and forty pounds of him; brainless malevolence stacked
six feet four inches high in his steel-toed, highly-polished service boots.
Mickey had only been indicted on seventy counts, as opposed to Gropp's
eighty-four ironclad atrocities. But if he managed to avoid Sentence of Lethal
Injection for having crushed men's heads underfoot, he would certainly go to the
maxi-galleria mall of felonious behavior for the rest of his simian life.

Mickey had, after all, pulled a guy up against the inside of the bars and kept
bouncing him till he ripped the left arm loose from its socket, ripped it off,
and later dropped it on the mess hall steam table just before dinner assembly.

Squat, bulletheaded troll, Lieutenant W.R. Gropp, and the mindless killing
machine, Mickey Rizzo. On greased rails.

So they jumped bail together, during the second hour of jury deliberation.

Why wait? Gropp could see which way it was going, even counting on Blue Loyalty.
The city was putting the abyss between the Dept., and him and Mickey. So, why
wait? Gropp was a sensible guy, very pragmatic, no bullshit. So they jumped bail
together, having made arrangements weeks before, as any sensible felon keen to
flee would have done.

Gropp knew a chop shop that owed him a favor. There was a throaty and
hemi-speedy, immaculately registered, four-year-old Firebird just sitting in a
bay on the fifth floor of a seemingly abandoned garment factory, two blocks from
the courthouse.

And just to lock the barn door after the horse, or in this case the Pontiac, had
been stolen, Gropp had Mickey toss the chop shop guy down the elevator shaft of
the factory. It was the sensible thing to do. After all, the guy's neck was
broken.

By the time the jury came in, later that night, Lieut. W.R. Gropp was out of the
state and somewhere near Boise. Two days later, having taken circuitous routes,
the Firebird was on the other side of both the Snake River and the Rockies,