The Adventures of Gavin Pepperdeck

Part 1: The First Taco

April 4th, 1995

The sky sharted on my head as I exited the cab, but when I looked up, I saw that it was just the week-long raging thunderstorm. I went up to my apartment where I’d left the TV on Channel 6 (hoping to round my cable bill to an even number), and saw the Chief of Police being interviewed.

“A body was found at the Metro station. We believe he drowned in the flooding,” Hanen said. “It appears to be an accident.”

I didn’t buy it, and neither did Phillips. Phillips had been my boss since day one of working at the SFPD. She taught me everything I know, and everything I don’t.

As soon as Hanen’s press junket was over, I dialed Phillips. “This is Phillips,” she said.

“It’s Pepperdeck.”

“Great, Poopdeck. Meet me at the office as soon as you can. And bring The Bucket!”

I rushed to the door, grabbing my raincoat and peaked hat, pulling on my boots as I stumbled out, prepared to do whatever it took to escape the mediocrity of rookie-hood. The Metro route was shut down, and my cruiser was in the shop, damn Jeeps, so I had to hail a cab.

“This weather, sonny,” said the driver as I ducked into the backseat, leaning away from the hairless cat tearing up the seatbelts beside me. “It ain’t good for business. But the Metro fiasco, that’s booming business.” I smiled politely but didn’t reply.

The cab ride took twenty minutes, plus another ten for a Taco Bucket drive-thru. The driver swung into the SFPD parking lot. It was nearly empty except for the black and whites and Phillips’ red hatchback covered in conflicting political bumper stickers.

I raced up the front steps, slipping a bit in the rain. In my haste I had forgotten an umbrella so all I had was the pulled up neck of my coat. I shoved open the door and shook off the rain inside. I found Phillips in her office, way in the back of the station.

“Ah. Poopdeck,” she said Britishly. “Shut the door, will you?” She shuffled through the stack of papers on her desk and motioned for me to sit in the chair across from her.

“So what do you—”

“Here’s the deal, mate. I think it was murder. I searched the lad up, he’s no John Doe. His name is Allen Boobdick. He was a pharmacist, and they’re always involved in some horsefoolery.”

“Horsefoolery? Of what kind?”

“Delinquency,” she said, slamming her fist. I gasped and Phillips widened her eyes at me knowingly. “He worked at the pharmacy at the end of Blitch, and everybody knows that’s where the horsefoolers like to congregate.”

“So you’re thinking this was a crime of passion?”

“No, I think Boobdick’s killer hated him. I think that he was cutting pills and got scared. He got called in for questioning a few weeks ago. His file says it was about a fender bender, but it’ll take more than a police record, security footage, and a witness statement to convince me.”

“So, what’s a crime of passion?” I asked, since what they described sounded an awful lot like a crime of passion.

“Screw your head on tighter, Poopdeck! A crime in the heat of the moment!”

Phillips continued and explained her theory: “Allen Boobdick went in for a normal day of work on March tenth. Around noon, he was brought in for questioning. Somebody called in about some horsefoolery and a rookie cop was placed on the case. Along the lines of solving the case, Boobdick was murdered, and the case was escalated to me.”

“Hold up,” I said. “If he was cutting drugs, why would somebody want to kill him?”

Phillips went on: “Boobdick probably owed somebody money and was cutting drugs to make up for what he wasn’t able to pay. He probably wanted out, thought Officer Rainsword was getting too close and got scared. But the buyers flew off the handle and badda-bing-badda-boom, here we are with a horsefooling murderer on our hands!”

“It seems like you know this case like the front of a Taco Bucket menu,” I said. “What do you need me for?”

“I need you undercover.”

“Why me? We have a whole undercover division.”

“I need somebody even more unrecognizable than those guys. I couldn’t think of anybody better suited for this job than you.”

My basic white boy face had gotten me my first undercover cop gig. I peered out the window. The rain had finally begun to clear up and the bright canary orb in the corner of the sky was beginning to show again.

“Just give me a fake name and send me on my way.”

Phillips opened the folder on her desk and slid it over to me. It spelled out my fake name. G-A-B-E-C-I-L-A-N-T-R-O.

“You start tomorrow. You’re filling in for Boobdick at the pharmacy. Your coworkers will do everything, just act high, but don’t really be stoned or you won’t pass the wizz quiz. Whatever happens, befriend this guy.” She pushed a polaroid towards me. The man in the photo was tall, dark, but not handsome.

“Who is that?”

“Eric Del’ight Dental Sparrow West the Third,” Phillips said. “DDS is the name he uses with his friends. If he lets you call him that, you’re in.”

Part 2: The Quest

April 5th, 1995

During my first day undercover, I was as nervous as a nelly. I had no training in pharmaceuticals. A fake ID and a company car were not enough to make me feel like a real scientist.

“Here’s where we keep the big boy drugs,” said Dr. Dopey as he completed my tour of the facilities. “Don’t worry about these babies. Only I have the key.” He pulled back his lab coat and shook his hip at me, jingling his key ring. I noticed a bright watermelon keychain.

“I like your keychain,” I said, trying to make nice with the man upstairs.

“Thank you,” he said. “My family owns a watermelon farm so I wear it for some shameless family promo. Hashtag:supportlocalfarmersandallthat. Also, here’s your nametag.”

GabeCILANTRO.

I pinned the badge to my Party City™ lab coat with pride. Dr. Dopey returned to his office, so I snooped through the drawers. Each staff member had their own pens, business cards, and stash of office supplies. I took a pen with Boobdick’s name engraved on it. I bet Phillips could have pulled the prints right off this thing.

When a patron finally entered the shop, it was, to my delight, Eric-Del’ight-Dental-Sparrow-West-the-Third. He wandered the aisles and took hold of an unsuspecting Snickers™ bar and a bottle of vodka. He put them on the counter.

“GabeCilantro,” he said, reading my name tag aloud with a heavy southern drawl. “Yer fillin’ in for my boy Boobdick.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Late again.”

“He’ll be late for a long time,” said Eric-Del’ight-Dental-Sparrow-West-the-Third. “He’s dead. My boy bit the dust harder than a good ol’ American cowboy during a Mexican standoff.”

“Oh,” I said, faking a solemn tone. “My condolences. You knew him well?”

“Yeah, buddy,” he said. “We used to hang. Parties and such. Dr. Dopey dropped by occasionally. Haven’t been so close to ‘im lately. Tonight we’re hostin’ a makeshift memorial for ‘im. Fancy joinin’ us?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Swell! Now, ring me up.” He pulled a notepad from his coat and scribbled on it, with the pen chained to the counter, the address of the memorial. I handed him his goods and he left the store.

When my shift was over, I swung by the SFPD station to drop off Boobdick’s pen and today’s notes with Phillips in case she thought anything I’d noted could be a lead.

“Nice going, Poopdeck. There’s some good stuff in here.” She paperclipped the note into the case file and ran to the copier to make a copy of the address of the memorial as well as a handwriting sample for Eric-Del’ight-Dental-Sparrow-West-the-Third.

“See ya,” I said. “I’m off to the memorial.” I bussed home and changed out of my undercover daytime costume and into my undercover nighttime costume: a crisp button-up and khakis. It was almost seven when I left, and since the memorial started at seven, I was almost late.

“Ah, Mr. GabeCilantro,” called Eric-Del’ight-Dental-Sparrow-West-the-Third when he saw me enter the house. It was a nice home with a grandmotherly feel due to the floral couches covered in plastic. “I’m so pleased you could make it.”

“Thank you for inviting me, Eric-Del’ight-Dental-Sparrow-West-the-Third.”

“Call me DDS. We’re on friendly terms now.” He motioned for me to follow him into the living area where people were sitting around and sharing stories about Boobdick.

“This one time,” started a middle aged bottle blonde in a pink Juicy Couture™ tracksuit, “Allen and I had sex at work, right on the counter. Even though that was my only encounter with him, he put my needs first.” She began to weep and blew her nose loudly into the neck of her shirt.

“Thanks for sharing, Tiffany Valencia. Would anybody else like to share?”

“I would,” piped up DDS. “Boob-D and I went way back, so far back that you couldn’t even see it. We met in our youth and stayed close even after we got indoctrinated in that sun worship cult. We were the best of friends and I know that he’d do anything for me… anything to keep me safe. It’s a shame we’d grown apart.”

To keep him safe? What an odd thing to say at a memorial.

Boobdick’s family was there, all of whom took great care to thank Dr. Dopey for being a great boss, saying that Boobdick loved his job more than anything, and that he always appreciated when Dr. Dopey brought watermelon for the breakroom.

At the end of the service, I was left alone with the Boobdicks. They asked me how I knew their son and I employed the acting skills I learned from my police academy elective: Acting for Rookies. “We met at work, not long before the accident. He was so kind, truly a soul taken too soon. Another tragic victim to the hands of the weatherman, mispredicting storms again.”

The Boobdick family nodded in sympathetic appreciation. They had metaphorically bought what I was metaphorically selling.

Part 3: The Suspicions

April 7th, 1995

I went to work the next day, hoping that DDS would return so I could grill him. By that, I mean slyly ask him questions, not skewer him like shrimp on the barbie.

I snooped through the punch cards before Dr. Dopey arrived. According to his last weeks, Boobdick had been coming in at eleven. I also noticed that two days ago, the night of the murder, he had not come into work at all, a perfect window of time for horsefooling.

Since nobody was in the pharmacy, I put up the closed sign and raced against myself up the stairs to continue my investigation, beating my personal best of four flights in three minutes. Dr. Dopey’s office was locked. I was foiled, or so I thought. A rock stood out against the linoleum floor. Bingo! I snatched it up and flipped it over, removing the false bottom and unearthing a key! I opened Bud Dopey’s office and closed the door quietly behind me.

I went behind his desk and opened all the drawers. Nothing seemed too suspicious, but there was a large Ziploc™ bag full of white powder and pills. I noticed one of the drawers was full of phones. I turned a few of them on, but they only had a few messages exchanging contact information and meet-up arrangements.

After I finished searching his office, I returned downstairs, flipped the sign to open, and took my place behind the counter. Dr. Dopey arrived soon after.

“Hi there, GabeCilantro,” he said, swinging his briefcase around. “It was nice to see you at the memorial. I didn’t know you knew Allen.”

“Oh, not well. I was mostly there as moral support for DDS.”

“He lets you call him DDS? I’ve known him for five years and I still full-name him.”

“I’m sure it’s not personal,” I said, knowing very well it was personal. “How did you know Boobdick?”

“From work. But we became good friends and then he introduced me to Eric, etcetera.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Interesting?”

“I mean, cool,” I said, covering my cover. I heard a beep and rushed to the fax machine, which was spitting out papers. What could be so urgent somebody sends this much information at once?

The papers were from Phillips, multiple copies of the same message, carefully encrypted to prevent interception. She was using a special language that only we knew: Spanish.

VENGA A LA ESTACIÓN INMEDIATAMENTE.

“What’s all that?” asked Dr. Dopey.

“Just some prescriptions. Basic ones, I’ll fill them. Why don’t you go up to the office? I’ve got it handled here.”

Dr. Dopey nodded curtly and went upstairs. As soon as he was out of earshot, I put the closed sign back up and fled the scene. I hailed a taxi and told the man to speed to the station. I shoved cash into his hands without counting and raced to Phillips’ office.

I burst in. “Phillips! What’s the 4-1-1?”

“Mr. Wündertaker has just performed the autopsy on Boobdick. It’s something we both need to see.”

Part 4: Mr. Wündertaker

Still, April 7th, 1995

“Pepperdeck, Phillips,” said Mr. Wündertaker as we stepped into the morgue. “What I have found will shock you to your very core. The information I have unsheathed from this body provides ample motivation for his accidental death. Take a look.” Mr. Wündertaker pulled a large white sheet off the body and revealed to us a horrifying sight.

“I know, his penis is wild,” said Mr. Wündertaker, motioning towards the beanpole. “But that’s not the most shocking thing I found. Notice how his stomach has a huge swelling. I felt around and deciphered there was a huge firm object inside him. Here’s what I discovered.” Mr. Wündertaker lifted a Bankers Box™ from beside the table and opened it, inviting Phillips and I to take a look. We gasped.

The box contained a whole watermelon wrapped in clear packing tape. I looked at it, and by the looks of it, it must have been a fifteen pounder. I noticed a sticker on the watermelon. The brand was Dopey Family Farms.

“I know where this watermelon came from! Dr. Dopey worked at the pharmacy with Boobdick. It’s his family farm.”

“Good sleuthing, Detective Poopdeck,” said Mr. Wündertaker. “I had my guy from the lab do a watermelon-topsy and inside of it, there was no watermelon. It has been hollowed out and packed with oxycodone.” Using his gloved hands, he cradled the watermelon and opened it, unearthing little plastic bags of various pills and white powder.

“But Mr. Wündertaker,” Phillips started. “If the watermelon is so girthy, how could Boobdick have swallowed it? His stomach shows no marks of being cut.”

“Ah, yes,” Mr. Wündertaker said. “That’s where the truly horrible part of my work comes in. When I turned over the body, I noticed his asshole was destroyed. A rocket could have shot out of it and left less of a mark! But it appears that the watermelon was shoved up his asshole and into his colon and squeezed through his intestines all the way back to his stomach. My guess is that the fool used too much lube and it slipped right up there.”

“And that’s why they killed him!” I shouted. “If the drugs went as far back as his stomach, it would be near impossible to get them out. I bet Boobdick was a drug mule, cutting and transporting Mama Coco himself, but when the melon went further than his colon, it wasn’t worth the risks of excavating it. Dopey took that day off work, I bet he hit him over the head and tossed him into the flooded metro tracks to hide all this.”

“That would explain that huge gash on his forehead,” Phillips stated, pointing at the huge gash on his forehead. “I wonder how much all that oxy is worth.”

“8k,” said Mr. Wündertaker matter-of-factly. “I suppose Eric-Del’ight-Dental-Sparrow-West-the-Third and Dr. Dopey have got kids to feed. Working in pharmaceuticals doesn’t pay what it used to.”

“Let me get a closer look at those bags,” Phillips said. “They’re all labeled. I bet I could match this handwriting sample to the address you got, probably the prints from the pen you stole too. Mr. Wündertaker, send these bags to the lab again, will you? Request a handwriting analysis.”

“Looks like we’ve cracked this case more than Boobdick’s pelvis,” I said. “Hanen’s gonna be horsefooled.”

Part 5: The Last Taco

Still, again, slightly later in the day, April 7th, 1995

I stood in the damp puddled street leaning against Phillips’ hatchback when a Channel 6 News van pulled up beside us. A brigade of forty or so fully armed SWAT men burst into the pharmacy. A few bites of Taco Bucket later, Phillips’ and I saw Dr. Dopey and DDS (that’s right, we’re still friends) coming out in cuffs.

“Cilantro, bro!” called DDS. “We thought you were a real one! How could you do this to us?”

“I knew we couldn’t trust him!” Dr. Dopey said. “Nobody’s real name is GabeCilantro!”

“Sorry, guys,” I said. “But nothing makes me prouder to be a cop than putting away drug mules while pretending to be somebody I’m not.”

“You’re a good one, Pepperdeck,” Phillips said proudly. “Maybe you’re ready to graduate from rookie territory after all.”

The End.