The Headless Bikeman
October 5 2012. Las Vegas
Pepe Sepulveda is a motorcycle cop and big-time hotshot in Las Vegas. He loves to brag to his stupid family and cheap friends about all the old and disabled people he harasses with citations and huge fines for jaywalking. Also how he hides behind palm trees on his motorcycle and tickets people for going two miles over the too low speed limits imposed by the city for crooked revenue enhancement. Pepe uses the absurd pseudonym Mitchell LaThorn to avoid any just retaliation for his actions.
Pepe's family came to America from a failed country where the ambivalent culture teaches only inferior moral values. This is a common problem today in America accruing to Socialist politicians who promise a never ending supply of cheap labor in return for the support of industrialist cronies. Pepe carries quite a big bag of smart-mouth tricky-talk slogans to seemingly justify his evil encroachment against his daily victims.
3:03 PM. Pepe wants to make his quota early today as he hides behind the trees next to the fast food place watching the people come around the long curve past the home center just before they stop at the intersection. As the light goes green Pepe takes off with screaming siren and flashing lights after a terrified young housewife, but today something a little different happens.
All at the same time eleven men in different locations behind trees, buildings, signs, and cars suddenly raise their decapitating twelve gage shotguns in perfect unison and fire simultaneously. Pepe's head is effectively vaporized. It simply disappears in a cloud of red mist. The motorcycle travels straight another fifty feet, then the front wheel turns to the left and binds. Pepe's headless corpse is catapulted like a pathetic broken rag doll and lands belly-down on the center strip. The spreading stain on the seat of Pepe's trousers now glistens in the late afternoon sun and will stand forever as his epitaph, indeed the most eloquent and meaningful statement he has ever made or ever will make to his fellow man.
People everywhere are ducking and taking cover. In the confusion all eleven men leave the scene completely undetected. A middle aged writer waiting for the bus has been watching all this with sardonic fascination and begins to roar with laughter at the bizarre image and well deserved fate of the "Headless Bikeman". A cruiser speeds to the scene and screeches to a stop. Two officers jump out and pull their pistols bellowing "Freeze, Dirt Bag!" at the laughing man and take him into custody. Hours later, after questioning and background search, he is released. Late the next morning he gives his story to the newspaper with the title "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ~ Vegas Style".
October 8 2012
8:05 AM. Nobody around. A young college campus cop is walking his rounds. Recently he made big trouble for a man simply for looking at pictures of women on the Internet. Is this the same man who is now coming silently up behind him or perhaps an earlier victim? The avenger is wearing black clothing, stocking hat, and mask. With left hand he grabs the cop's left ear, positions a long kitchen knife, and drawing it back towards himself like a violin bow, slices the ear cleanly off.
The cop screams and clutches at the side of his head as he turns around with horrified scarlet face. The man holds up the ear and points at it "Hey, you don't fuck with me! You hear me? You ain't nobody's boss, you stinkin little pee wee you!" Having said his piece the man pulls out a pistol and shoots the cop between the eyes. Then, with tender compassion, he places the ear on the dead boy's chest as a gift to his family.
October 11 2012
Sitting looking out a window is a restaurant owner of Japanese descent who has lived in Las Vegas since infancy. When he was a boy of ten the newspapers had a nickname for him.
A pig had bitten off the hand of his little sister. One day the pig got very sick. The veterinarian found it was an infection caused by BBs which he removed from the pig's testicles after the infected testicles were of necessity removed from the pig.
On another occasion a bicycle dealer, who had cheated the boy with warranty deceptions, soon after had to replace three large uninsured plate glass windows riddled with BB holes. This time the newspaper proclaimed on page four
"The Cruel BB Gun Strikes Again!"
His real name is George Ikabasu. He is now thirty two years old and still believes in quick private justice. Lately the police in Las Vegas have been getting out of hand.
11:32 AM. Garrett is just finishing a fine lunch of baked brook trout and butternut squash when the phone rings. It's Ikabasu. Garrett goes to meet him at a coffee shop in a nearby mall. As Garrett enters, a man approaches and asks him to step into the private office. Ikabasu is waiting. He is about five feet seven and has his warrior-length hair tied back like a pony tail. Having removed his long trench coat he is wearing a white Samurai training suit. He stands up and shakes hands with Garrett who immediately asks "Are you truly Samurai?"
Ikabasu nods yes and replies humorously imitating a traditional Japanese man who speaks very little English "Yes, but me no Shogun, me Shotgun! Long ago called Cruel BB Gun but now grown up call Cruel Shotgun!" He lifts his sash to reveal a small sawed off twelve gage shotgun tucked under his belt like a Samurai sword. With menacing gravelly voice he proclaims "Me great master clandestine reprisal. Have many followers. Motorcycle cop, look out for me!" he says and laughs heartily with a winning grin.
Garrett likes this man and laughs with him "I've been wondering when someone would hit back at the police around here."
Ikabasu gives Garrett a cassette showing Pepe's headless ride. Valdison decides not to limit the field by reporting Ikabasu's ethnicity, but asks all the requisite newshound questions, leaves, enjoys prime rib at the Poker Palace, goes home, writes up the story, and retires early. Garrett and Ikabasu remain friends and from here on often enlist each other's help when righteous Libertarian action is needed.
October 13 2012
9:33 AM. The police have been "going shithouse" and wanted to talk to Valdison the minute they saw the newspaper story yesterday. Garrett enters the office of Sergeant Conners McGataghy and with a sly smirk says "Looks like Little Pepe Sepulveda is pulling his little pepe down in Hell where he belongs now, don't it Sergeant?"
The sergeant replies angrily to Garrett "Just can't resist those cruel puns can you, Valdison? It seems almost like you support these murderers and then you take the day off!"
"No Sergeant, I support only absolute individual liberty and all those who respect and defend it. What I do not support is tyranny of any kind. And I take the day off any time I damn well please."
"Is that some smart-ass journalist way of saying that the Las Vegas Police are tyrants?"
Garrett smiles "Face up to the just moral consequences of your behavior. People are starting to hit back. Aren't you're beginning to hear that after the campus thing last week?"
The sergeant frowns.
Garrett continues "Watch the news. People don't like being oppressed. It's starting all over the country, not just here, but I'll give you an another local example. Recently a cop gave a friend of mine a 190 dollar jaywalking ticket when no vehicles were coming. The police didn't have the time or integrity to investigate the theft of his wallet at the college but they have plenty of time to extort money from old people for normal pedestrian behavior where there's no crosswalk within five hundred feet. The friend is disabled, living on fixed income 200 dollars below the poverty line. He said to me "The cop was just some quick-mouth who snuck under the fence. What goes around comes around... Gas chambers. Ovens. Ash for the fields. God damn them all to Hell!"
"Tell me who the sonofabitch is. I'll straighten him out!"
"No, wise up and straighten out the fools who are running things. Stop the endless war on liberty. It's not just the police. At community centers it's common to find lesbian supervisors who persecute men for looking at women online. They don't mind kids spending six hours a day killing people in virtual reality, but they configure the computers so that adults can't even log in to dating websites. They want public funding but give back parochial lesbian viewing policy in their endless sick battle against human normalcy. On the upside, I'm proud of the public libraries here because they base their viewing policy on the Bill of Rights."
"Jeezus, Valdison. Are you running for public office or something?"
"No, but I sure hate to think how much revenue Las Vegas will lose from meal and lodging taxes if we become known worldwide as a speed and jaywalking trap. I think this shotgunning and the ear thing are just the beginning unless we get some big changes around here fast. Sergeant, unless I can help with something else I should be leaving. It's getting on dinner time."
"Okay. I'll file my report. Just for the record though I think this journalistic privilege of yours is bullshit."
"Is it? The alternative is that people will do these things and we'll never find out why. A good journalist can get past false confessions just like a detective, but it only works in person. The real culprits won't meet with police. Without journalistic privilege all you'll get is letters from revolutionary wannabees trying to take credit. Maybe the real disclosure will be mixed in with the phony ones, but you'll never know for sure."
As Garrett heads home, in antoher part of town, two motorcycle cops are cruising along when a Hummer comes along side. One man "riding shotgun" in the back seat yells at the cop nearest him "Hey, Electra Glide. Suck on this!" and blows the cop's head off. As the first bike dumps, the man yells "Caput!" as he blows the second cop's head off.
As Garrett prepares dinner, the television news gives details. Garrett says aloud to himself "The Triumvirate of Shame. The tormented souls of three headless bikemen doomed to ride the night-time streets of Las Vegas for all eternity." Then Garrett begins to sing a sour mocking rendition of the old song "When will they ever learn?"
