THIS is the city

My name is Friday.
I carry a badge.
It was cold in Los Angeles. I was working the graveyard shift in burglary. Scheduling mishap according to my captain.

The night shift sure is long. At 1:47 A.M., with no calls and nothing coming over the teletype, I wandered downstairs into the evidence cage. A lot of strange, bizarre articles carefully preserved in there. All of it tagged and neatly stored on shelf after shelf - a dusty magpie single nailed to a hunk of wood, two left clown shoes, a mannequin with jockey shorts wrapped around its head - stuff like that. One item, not on a shelf but leaning against the wall, sent a cold chill through me even though I’d already drunk two pots of coffee and was hallucinating. It was a stick. Yeah, that’s right, some fancy cane. A cylindrical piece of wood. Tag says June 14th.

June 14th, it was a clear day in Los Angeles. My partner, Frank Smith, was on the phone sitting across from me in homicide, laughing. He hangs up, tells me the story. A lady wants to report a murder. We get that a lot. A lady wanting to report a murder. But this one is different. It was 11:23 A.M. when we arrived at the address. We talked to the landlady of the Willow Manor Apartments. She tells us there’s a guy tap dancing in room 7 on the 3rd floor. Yes, Ma’am, we’ll go look. Sure enough, it sounds like a guy tap dancing on the other side of the door of room 7. We knock and there’s no answer. But now there’s a slow wooden tapping sound. We knock louder. The tapping continues. Frank wants to go get some donuts. He loves donuts. I say we should stay. My watch says 11:32. I kick in the door, 38 drawn.

A man and an orangutan, both dressed in top hat and tails, dancing canes over their shoulders in unison, are in the middle of the room, furniture pushed back up against the walls. Record player is blasting Puttin’ On The Ritz. The man looks horrified, eyes ablaze, face the color of bones. The surprised rang shows its teeth. I fire one slug into the ceiling, cheap plaster rains down. The man jumps through the window. Frank runs down three flights, moves pretty good with that donut belly, cuffs him winded. I look at the rang and it dejectedly looks at me and drops this cane. I reach for my cuffs, then change my mind.

Charge: a 922b, Section1 Felony, unlawful possession of a rang within city limits.
I shiver and my palms are sweating. It’s 2:11 A.M. and at least the coffee’s fresh. I can still see that rang’s teeth. The fact is…not sure if it was a smile, grimace, or the relief of being freed from learning to tap dance. The phone is ringing. It's 2:13 A.M.