A New Short Story

Before we get to the short story, a comment about the ongoing debate about raising the nation's debt limit ceiling is warranted.  Over the years, as our government has borrowed to meet its expenses, which include paying interest on its outstanding bonds, it has done so within the framework of a statutory limit on the amount it can borrow,  Congress, regardless of which party is in the majority, has routinely approved such increases throughout history.  George W. Bush increased it seven times.  Only now, has a party sunk to the despicable depths of using its majority in the House of Representatives to blackmail the country over this issue. The Republicans, afraid of losing the support its extreme right wing, are willing to insist on massive spending cuts and no new revenues (taxes or closure of loopholes) before they will vote for an increase in the debt limit.  To them, compromise on this issue is anathema.  The responsibility for this rests with the millions of American voters who listened to the lies the Republicans spewed out during the 2010 election and believed them.  I am certain that they never will be so gullible again and that we are witnessing the end of the Republican Party as we have known it for years.  Right now, it seems that they are more interested in making the President, who is very willing to make compromises, look bad than working for a solution to the problem. 

JL

                      *****      *****     *****     *****

Leon the Cop

Jack Lippman

When Leon Portzkov came to the United States, he brought nothing with him from Uzbekistan.   Widowed for five years, his children had come to New York last year and were living with their uncle and aunt in Brooklyn.  Leon’s sister was very adept at getting the paperwork processed to allow the children to be considered her dependents; both attended public school and were doing well.   So when Helena told Leon to quit his job and come to America, he took her up on her offer.  After all, he wasn’t going to get any more promotions.  How far can a Jewish Detective Inspector expect to rise in the Tashkent Police Bureau where the pay wasn’t so great anyway, he missed the kids and Helena said they had plenty of room in the house they had just purchased in Sheepshead Bay.   So he came here.

With his limited English, the best job he could get, and that was made possible only through Helena’s connections in the Russian community was as a security guard with Prairie Security, a firm that placed unarmed guards wearing official looking uniforms in retail stores, at concerts and occasionally in the lobbies of residential complexes.  Leon tasted all of these assignments but preferred the ones in stores the most.  There was always something going on there.  Weaponless, if he couldn’t handle a problem convincingly, all he had to turn to was a cell phone on which he could call his dispatcher who spoke fluent Russian being from Kiev, or if things really were going sour, he could dial 911.  Oddly enough, if he asked, even 911 would give him someone to speak to in Russian.  But his English was getting better every day.

This week’s assignment was in a discount drug store way up on the upper West Side where the shabby elegance of the neighborhood, of which the jewel was the Columbia University campus, met with Harlem, which while undergoing somewhat of a rebirth, still presented occasional hazards.  Leon stood, or leaned against a counter, near the front door, watching for customers who looked like they had merchandise with them for which they had neglected to pay, or people entering the store who looked like they had doing something like that in mind.  He developed a knack for spotting these people and a few strong words from him and his icy stare usually set things right.  

The store owners liked it when Leon was on duty.  He did his job well.  They didn’t  know of course that Detective Inspector Portzkov, while he was on the job in Tashkent, had run twelve teams of detectives involved in tracking down and nabbing criminals, most of whom were drug dealers peddling the stuff that came into the country from the some of the other central Asian republics and Afghanistan to the south.  Most of the policemen who worked for him respected him greatly, would lay down their lives for him, for he would do the same for them, and loved the way his withering stare was often enough to make a dealer break down and provide the kind of information Detective Inspectors were supposed to get.   Leon suspected that the store owners he now worked for had no idea that Tashkent was a city of two million, with subways and skyscrapers, and all of the problems which such metropolises have.  While he had been a cop there, he hadn’t known anyone who owned a goat.

This morning, Leon noticed that the policeman who usually walked the beat in the neighborhood wasn’t there.  Things like that registered in his mind, as did the two nondescript sedans parked at either end of the block, the drivers of which didn’t bother feeding the parking meters, even though they had been parked there for well over two hours.  The drivers remained in both cars but the other occupants got out and went for an occasional stroll.  Just now, however, he noted that all of the occupants other than the drivers had left the cars and had gone into some of the neighborhood stores or into the hallways of some of the walk-up brownstones on either side of the street.  “Stupid,” he said to himself.  He recognized a police stakeout when he saw one.  He had done this hundreds of times in Tashkent, but he would have disciplined his men for being this sloppy.   Just as he had spotted them, he was sure whoever they were trying to catch would recognize what was going on.  The cars should have been around the corner, out of sight, with one man on the street talking to them by radio.  But then, he thought, maybe the operation was not planned for this street at all, and the cops he saw were actually “around the corner” from where the collar would be made.   

But he knew this was not the case when a shiny BMW pulled up and parked, illegally, in front of the drug store, and a well-dressed man with a briefcase, clearly out of place in the neighborhood, got out.  A minute later, a small panel truck drove up.  A second man got out of the BMW and got into the driver’s seat of the truck, which was now double parked next to the BMW.  The truck driver had gotten out and joined with the man with the briefcase, walking into the drugstore where the briefcase changed hands.

Leon strode up to the men.  “Can I help you?” he asked with the same fixed stare that he had used so often back in Tashkent.   The man in the Italian tailored suit turned to him, and pulling out a Glock from a holster on his belt, replied, “Shut up, Mr. Rent-a-cop and you won’t get hurt.  Stay exactly where you are and keep your fucking mouth closed.”  Before Leon could respond though, all hell broke loose on the street.  

Two police officers in street dress, emerging from a doorway, were supposedly attempting to ticket the double parked panel truck, but hadn’t counted on its new driver turning on them with a pistol and another man, in the back of the truck, leaping out of the sliding side door with guns in each hand blazing.  Within a minute, half a dozen plainclothes men converged on the truck, shooting wildly, and pulling their wounded brothers to safety.  Another man, in the back of the truck, poked an automatic rifle of some sort out of a window at the back and laid down a barrage which kept the officers from getting any closer.  Both sides were taking hits.

Meanwhile in the drugstore, the well-dressed man and the truck driver, who also pulled out a pistol, gathered the employees and the few customers in the store and locked them in a back room.  

“I don’t need to watch over a mess of hostages to get out of here,” he snarled.   “One’ll do and that’s you, Mr. Rent-a-cop.”  

“Call me Leon,” the security guard ventured.  With that the man lifted his gun, holding it by the barrel and swung it at Leon’s face.

“I told you to shut the fuck up!”  Leon saw the opening and responded with a quick kick to the man’s groin.  The pistol fell to the floor and Leon scooped it up and delivered a hard kick to the man’s head, knocking him out.  By then, the other man, returning from locking up the back room, saw what was happening and came out shooting.  Leon ducked behind a counter and raised the gun he had picked up.  He aimed at the man, knee-capping him.  As he fell to the ground next to the unconscious man, Leon jumped on him, relieving him of his weapon.  A quick kick to his head rendered him unconscious too.  Within a minute both were bound with some clothesline he found hanging in the laundry products aisle.

Leon crawled to the door and saw that the three men in the panel truck had enough firepower to keep what was left of the original police team at bay behind the dozen or so squad cars which by then had arrived on the scene, along with some heavy police reinforcements.  But he also saw that their attention was directed away from the drug store.  From his vantage point, he could see where all three of them were in the vehicle.  

Stealthily crawling out the door with the Glock in his hand, Leon made it across the sidewalk to the BMW.  On the floor in the front seat were some clips of ammo for the Glock which he put in his pocket.   He saw there were sharpshooters on the roofs along the street, but they had nothing to shoot at since the three gunmen were safely inside of the truck.  He waved at one of them and pointed to the panel truck toward which he was now sneaking up, having exited the BMW on the street side.  He rapped on its side and quickly, the door opened.  Whoever opened it probably thought it was his well-dressed accomplice.  Leon leapt into the front seat, gun in hand and pointing it at the surprised man, screamed “Freeze, Police!”   He watched him raise his weapon, about to fire, but before he could do so, Leon put a bullet between his eyes.  Hearing the commotion, the other two men momentarily stopped shooting at the police barricade to see what was going on.  This gave the SWAT team, which had been waiting in readiness, the opening they needed to enable them to storm the truck just as Leon was starting to take on the two remaining thugs. Within a minute, they had secured both of them and the million dollars worth of cocaine with which the panel truck was loaded.

“Who the hell are you?” the police captain asked Leon after things had calmed down a bit. 

“I work for Prairie Security and I was in the store watching all of this come down.   I see you got the two guys I tied up in the store and let the others out of the back room.  I suppose the briefcase was filled with cash to pay for the drugs, right?”

“That’s about it, but we couldn’t have done it so neatly if it were’t for you.  You weren’t armed, were you?  Where did you learn your stuff.”

“I used to be a cop back in Uzbekistan, but I quit to come to this country.  I did this kind of thing all the time.  In fact you guys were lucky today.  If I was able to spot your stakeout, any decent criminal would have too, but these guys were stupid.”

“Or greedy,” added the police captain.  “Look, I got a couple of wounded men to take care of, but I will get back to you later, Leon,” he said looking at the security guard’s nameplate.

A few weeks later, Leon did indeed receive a call from the captain who asked him to come down to One Police Plaza, where they wanted to give him a commendation.  When he walked into the room, he was very surprised to see Tashkent Police Bureau Chief Ivan Borsinovitch, his old commandant, standing next to the Police Commissioner.  

“Chief Borsinovitch has told us all about you, and we’re happy to have you here in New York, Detective Inspector Portzkov.  Before we present you with the commendation, I’d like to tell you we have a job for you, if you wish.”

And that is how Leon Portzkov became the New York City Police Department’s official liaison officer with all of the police departments in the countries which used to comprise the Soviet Union, how he became the focus of all law enforcement activities involving Russian immigrants and the man to see when the activities of the Russian Mafia attracted the attention of the Police.  And that is probably why his body was found floating in Jamaica Bay last Tuesday morning.




To send this posting to a friend (or enemy for that matter) whom you think might be interested in it, just click on the envelope with the arrow on it right below the dotted line at the very bottom of this posting.