RUBY BUSTS A COMEDIAN (a novella excerpt)

Ruby Greenberg, a socialite from the affluent town of Palo Alto, joins the San Francisco Probation Department. Due to the recent death of her father, she feels out of sorts and wants to put meaning into her life. “I wanna help people,” she tells her mother, “as long as they’re not homeless and smelly.” Her mother advises her to stick to her tennis club, but Ruby ignores her mother’s advice. Shortly after completing her probation officer training, Ruby is given an office in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. A few weeks later, she makes her first arrest.

It wasn’t long after they gave me my caseload that I had to bust this scumbag. His name is Douglas Ferari and he works as a comedian and he was on probation because he had hit his wife. He had only been on probation a month before he hit again, so I was going to have to throw his stupid ass in jail.

I read the police report several times because I didn’t think anyone could be such a jerk. In spite of having a stay-away order, Douglas had gone back to live with his wife. and the two of them had quarreled and he punched her in the mouth. According to the report, which included a victim’s statement, Douglas told her some lousy jokes that he hoped would beef up his act and popped her right in the kisser when she forgot to laugh.

Well, I showed the report to my supervisor and asked for his advice, and he told me to call Douglas in on a pretext and arrest him when he reported. He said the San Francisco Police Department could help me with the bust and to contact its Special Victims Unit and say I needed help.

I phoned the SVU, which is just three floors above me, and the cop I spoke to got snippy when I asked for some support. He told me probation officers ought to make their own arrests, but he said he would send down a couple of detectives when that fellow was in my office. After that, I called Douglas on his cell phone and asked him to come in right away. I said I needed to see him about something super important. My voice kind of shook as I spoke because Douglas, a big, chunky dude, looks as though he could crush chestnuts in his hands. I was afraid he was going to suspect that I was laying a trap for him, but all he did was snicker and tell me this real lamo joke.

“Greenberg,” he said, “Whaddya call the dumbest person in the courtroom?”

“I dunno—what do you call him?” I said.

“Yer honah,” Douglas said, and he guffawed at his own joke.

Well, I laughed along with him, so he wouldn’t know that I was setting him up, and he promised he would come in and see me right away. An hour later, I heard this knock on my office door.

I speed-dialed the SVU because I knew it was him in the hallway, and that cranky cop told me to stall him until the detectives could come hook him up. So, I opened the door and let Douglas in and I asked him to have a seat, and when he said, “babycakes, what’s up?” I wasn’t sure what to say. But it turned out that I didn’t need to come up with a reason for calling him in. Before I could think up an excuse, he started telling me more jokes.

It seemed to take a century for the detectives to show up, but maybe the time wouldn’t have dragged so much if that windbag had better material. But I laughed like I was high on pot and I kept saying, “that’s a good one,” and I heaved a great big sigh of relief when I heard a loud rap on my door.

“Didja hear the one about two lesbians in a bathtub?” he said as I opened the door, but he stopped running his mouth the second he saw two detectives standing there. Both were hefty women, and they seemed kind of humorless, so I don’t think they would have been inclined to let him finish the story.

“What’s with Cagney and Lacey?” Douglas said as the detectives filed into my office. “Greenberg, if this is your idea of a prank, your act is worse than mine.”

“Stand up, sir,” one of the detectives said. “Put your hands behind your back.”

“Anything sharp in your pockets?” the other detective asked.

As the detectives bound Douglas and frisked him, I made sure to read him his rights, and then I inventoried the stuff the detectives pulled out of his pockets. He didn’t have much—just a wallet, his cell phone, and at least a dozen condoms. I recorded everything on a property card, including those icky condoms, and I stuffed everything into a manila envelope so the jail could keep track of it.

“Ya into bondage, Greenberg?” Douglas said. “Is that why ya summoned these dykes?” He grinned at me like Jack Nicholson might have and gave me a stupid wink, but although he was trying to act nonchalant, I could smell the sweat on him.

I said, “Ask your wife why I busted you, sir. She said you struck her again.”

“Hell, I just tapped her, Greenberg. I was only trying to get her attention. If that’s what got yer tits in a wringer, I need to call my attorney.”

“What you need,” I said, “is better jokes. Maybe if you were funnier, things wouldn’t have come to this.”

While we frog-marched him to the jail elevator, he got uppity with the detectives. “I’ve got a master’s in English,” he snarled, “and I’m gonna sue you rug munchers till you bleed.”

“That’s nice,” one of the detectives replied. “I have a doctorate in jurisprudence.”

The jerk kept trash-talking all the time we took him down to the jail. I was hoping to book him quickly because he smelled like rotten cheese, but once we got into the sally port, a sheriff’s bus was blocking our way. A team of deputy sheriffs was herding a string of men toward the jail. The men were ankle-chained to each other and waddling like ducks.

“What gives?” I asked the detectives, and they explained what was going on. They said those men were bail jumpers in the hands of the Fugitive Recovery Enforcement Team—an elite group of deputy sheriffs who had rounded them up in a sting. They said that FRET had priority when it came to jailing prisoners, so we were going to have to wait until those clowns had all been booked.

We waited beside the electronic door while Douglas told more jokes, and for some reason, his jokes were better and even the detectives laughed. But it was almost two hours before we could muster him into the slammer, and after the detectives unhooked the cuffs, his jokes got lamo again.

“Get my good side, Shirley,” he said as this booking sergeant took his mug shot.

The woman, who knew him, tittered and said, “Dougie, welcome home,” and Douglas winked and said, “Sweet cheeks, we gotta stop meeting this way.”

After the woman filmed his fingerprints, we put him in a holding cell. “How ’bout some coffee?” Douglas shouted as he sat on the bench in the cell, and one of the detectives smiled wearily and said, “Honey, the pig is all yours.”

I thanked them before they left the jail, but I still had to jail frisk the jerk, and I didn’t want him accusing me of fondling his balls. So, I waited until one of the deputy jailers had time to help me out, and I stood outside the holding cell and watched as the officer frisked him.

After spreadeagling Douglas and groping his privates, the officer made him sit back on the bench, and then he ordered the jerk to remove his shoes and socks. Once he’d peeked into Douglas’ footwear, the officer said, “he’s clean,” and I covered my mouth when he said that so he wouldn’t hear me laugh. Heck, Douglas’ feet were so dirty that it looked like he’d waded through tar.

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Douglas was arraigned the following morning, and the judge simply turned him loose. That’s because his wife came to court and told the judge she’d lied. She said she was jealous of Douglas because he was fucking too many groupies, so she lied because she wanted him to keep his pecker in his pants. So, the judge gave Douglas two days time served for violating the stay away order and told him she didn’t want to see him back in her court again. Well, Douglas stood up and thanked the judge for cutting him some slack, and the judge rolled her eyes and said, “Yes, yes. You said that the last two times.”

A week after Douglas got out of jail, his wife showed up at my office. She told me Douglas had threatened to kill her, and she was in fear for his life. Shit, after all the trouble I’d gone to, I was going to have to bust him again. And that would probably keep happening until Douglas learned better jokes.

James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former fiction editor. His work has been published in multiple journals and he is a prior contributor to Adelaide Magazine. James is the author of seven books all of which have won awards. Global Book Awards recently gave him a gold medal for contemporary fiction.