Banana Nut
It’s About Evolution
Fowler parked down the road from the flashing red and blue lights, stuck the NYPD sign in his windshield, then walked up the hill to the accident scene. Already, vehicles were everywhere and more would be coming, clogging the road. The chance for a quick escape made the hike worthwhile.
He recognized the uniformed cop standing watch.
“What do we got, Magurski?”
“Van hit a light pole, Loo.”
“Can’t anyone drive, anymore?”
“Whole city’s gone off the edge, you ask me.”
Then Magurski said, “Looks like this could be sticky. I wish you luck, Lieutenant.”
“Luck’s got nothing to do with this one. The Commissioner’s office is already burning up the wires.”
He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. “Politics sucks, you know?”
“These days, even worse.”
“Any reason you can see why everyone’s fired up?”
Magurski seemed reluctant to speak. Finally he said, “Probably better if you check it out cold.”
Fowler nodded and moved on.
A line of uniforms stood watch, keeping back the usual throng of gawkers. The van sat half over the curb at an odd angle, next to the light pole. He couldn’t see much from the back but it was clear that the interior was stuffed nearly to the top with some kind of cargo. Then he walked around to the other side, and WHOA!!! would you look at that! No wonder everyone’s in a snit. The side doors had popped open and there must have been at least 10,000 bananas spilled out onto the street and sidewalk. The air was rich with a thick, musaceous aroma. Nearby a forlorn civilian surveyed the mess, looking sad and dejected.
“You the driver?” Fowler asked.
The guy nodded. Fowler asked for some I.D. The guy’s name was Sullivan. Frank Sullivan.
“You feeling a little nervous, Mr. Sullivan? You’re looking a little nervous.”
Fowler picked up a banana and tossed it up and down a couple of times.
“Guess I don’t need to ask who you’re working for, do I?”
The guy shrugged, tried to look unconcerned. “Everyone’s gotta work for someone.”
“Is that a fact? You just come up with that off the top of your head? You a thinker, Mr. Sullivan? Is that what you think?”
Fowler tossed the banana back onto the yellow pile.
“Here’s what I think. I think a lot of people would fault your logic. Me, for one. I think folks like you suck, that’s what I think. I might even think you’re a traitor, depending on my mood at the time.”
Then he grinned a cold grin and clapped Sullivan on the back, all friendly-like. “But no one’s paying me for my opinion and I don’t give it away for free, so we’ll forget I said that.”
The guy gave another dejected shrug. He wasn’t in any mood to argue. Fowler understood why.
“So what happened?”
“Don’t know.” Sullivan shrugged. “One minute, I’m cruising along, the next I’m sliding out of control.”
“What’d you do, slip on a banana peel?” Fowler let out an exaggerated guffaw and gave Sullivan a comradely slug in the shoulder. He received a reluctant grin in return.
“Hey, lighten up. Just trying to inject some much needed levity into the situation.”
Sullivan looked like he’d never see levity in any situation, ever again.
Fowler finished his cigarette and lit another. “You gotta tell me something,” Fowler said in a much gentler tone. “Just us guys here, talking, okay?” He took a drag, held it, then slowly let it out. He nodded towards the banana pile. “Why this? I mean, I know the party line, how it’s the new order of things, everyone’s supposed to go along, get along… but… come on — why go down this path?”
“Man’s gotta put food on the table.”
Fowler considered that for a moment.
“I got a daughter,” he said. “Nine years old. Know what we used to do, my family, every Sunday? We’d go to the park. Then you know what we’d do? We’d stop at an ice cream shop up on Atlantic Avenue and we’d all get banana splits. My kid loves banana splits. You know how long it’s been since I been able to buy her a banana split?
“My wife: she makes banana nut bread brings tears to your eyes. Moist, full of flavor. Take a guess when’s the last time I had some of my wife’s banana nut bread.”
He pointed to the mess of bananas on the sidewalk. “There ain’t no bananas for regular folks any more. And bastards like you help make it so.”
The guy seemed remorseful, like maybe he was about to confess something, like maybe he thought Fowler was his priest.
But just then a Mini-Cooper squealed around the corner and jerked to a stop in front of the van. It was painted a garish yellow with a fire-engine red top. The horn honked twice, like Harpo Marx just squeezed a giant air bulb. All four doors opened at the same time. Nine chimpanzees piled out.
They all wore sports coats that were a couple sizes too big, either ugly plaids or big checker patterns. All had hats. Some wore baseball caps, Fowler noted a couple of floppy fishermen’s hats, a few pork pie hats and the rest, sailor caps. Three of them had on nerdy, thick framed glasses, a couple others, sun shades, even though it was night. All wore bow ties. The one in the lead sported a Day-Glo green plastic flower on his lapel. Each chimp carried a stick.
They waddled over to the banana pile in that awkward gait they had, gathered around and started to screech, peeling up their lips in those weird chimp grins. Three of them started to jump up and down, not really moving their legs, just hopping off the ground and falling back down again.
“Don’t look happy,” said Fowler.
Sullivan sighed. “They’re never happy. All that clown stuff, it’s just an act.”
As if on cue, the chimps turned and loped over to Fowler and Sullivan and formed a circle around the hapless driver. They screeched at him now, coarse, angry grunts that almost sounded like words. Water squirted from the plastic flower and left a dark stain on Sullivan’s crotch. Then they all started hitting him with their sticks. Sullivan stood there and took it, not seeming too affected.
I Fowler thought that was the damnedest sight he ever saw. He’d best do something fast or he’d lose control of the entire situation. But the truth was, he was cracking up. Splitting his sides, cracking up. Red-faced, can’t take a breath cracking up.
Sullivan looked resigned. “They don’t hit that hard. They’d rather go for the laugh.”
Fowler finally regained his composure and took a few breaths. “Too bad that speech project they had going for a while didn’t pan out.” He started laughing again. “Might have given them more effective ways to communicate.”
Sullivan said, “They only learned maybe three words. This is their favorite.”
Now Fowler recognized it. What had seemed like grunting or barking formed itself into a garbled “Asshole, asshole, asshole.”
“That’s all they can say?”
“Kind of sums up their whole world view.”
Fowler could see they were pretty much harmless.
“Problem is,” he said to Sullivan, “they’re not the ones you gotta answer to.”
Sullivan flinched at that.
“And near as I can tell,” Fowler continued, “those boys don’t have a sense of humor.”
“Not a chance. The baboons… you can work with them. But the gorillas, they just want to crush stuff.”
Now the chimps tired of hitting Sullivan and all ran back to the van and began stuffing bananas into their coat pockets.
Fowler’d had enough. “Hey, take it easy! That’s evidence. Magurski! Get these monkeys outta my hair, will ya. I’m trying to run an investigation here.”
Magurski and another patrolman started herding the pack toward the far sidewalk.
“And take it easy on them. Last thing I need is PETA crawling down my pants. And get me a couple of large evidence bags for those bananas they lifted.”
He turned to Sullivan. In a lower voice he said, “Between you and me, things were a damn sight better when we still had zoos.” He gave a morose shrug. “I’m not going to bother writing you a citation. You’ve got enough on your hands.”
“Come on, can’t you take me in?”
“What, you want me to arrest you?”
“Yeah. Can you do that?”
“I get it. You want off the street.” Fowler thought about it. “It’s a nothing charge. You’ll make bail in an hour. Then where’ll you be?”
“Might be a bigger charge than you think,” said Sullivan. And then he blindsided Fowler with a haymaker that came out of nowhere.
Fowler saw stars and heard gongs and for a minute the jabbering chimps made more sense than his brain. By the time his vision cleared, the cops already had Sullivan in a choke hold and were slipping on the bracelets.
“Okay, Mr. Sullivan. You got your wish. Just remember — I don’t feel a lick of sympathy for you. So don’t act like I’m doing you a favor.”
“You are. Trust me.”
“What about them?” he asked, pointing to the chimpanzees. “They saw that trick you just pulled.”
“You kidding? They got an attention span of thirty seconds.”
“Get him out of here,” Fowler said to Magurski. Across the street, the chimps made happy sounds and clapped and jumped up and down. Fowler watched, silent, thinking about how being a cop used to mean something, used to be more than cleaning up after the politicians, being an errand boy in the service of one hair-brained agenda or other.
“You know what,” said Fowler to Magurski. “Run them in too.”
“You sure about that, Lieutenant? What’s the charge?”
“I don’t know… tampering with evidence, hindering an investigation. How about violating all known laws of civilized fashion? I like that one.”
Magurski shrugged, then took charge of loading up the wagon for the trip back to the station house. Fowler picked up the bags of bananas and started to call after him to sign the Chain of Possession form. Ah, but who was he kidding? No way the suits would let this get any traction. Politics and fighting crime made for a lousy mix.
Instead, he just watched until the wagon pulled away, then quietly walked back down the hill and tossed the bags in the seat next to him.
He sat there for a minute, looked toward the intersection at the bottom of the hill. A left turn would take him back to the station house, where he’d face a night of paperwork. Turn right, he’d be home in twenty minutes. He looked at the bags filled with bananas. Lotta fruit there. Lotta bananas. No way you could eat them all before they turned soft, brown and mushy.
Just like you want ’em for banana-nut bread.
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