True Crime

BRISCOE:
Okay, what do we got here?

GREEN:
Looks like the kid went bad, Lenny.

BRISCOE:
You mean he shot someone?

GREEN:
No, I mean he confessed already. Case closed. Everybody’s confessing. There’s nothing left for us to investigate. They’re laying off all the detectives except us.

BRISCOE:
You mean because we make witty jokes about car theft?

GREEN:
No, because we’re the only ones left in the union.

BRISCOE:
Yuh, but how could he confess? What kind of a punk confesses? I got no use for a punk like that. The show just started. We got to fill up the rest with no body, no weapon, and no lab reports?

GREEN:
That’s life in the big city, Lennie. They give you a hot dog and then they scrape off the mustard. They give you a Walkman and then they take away the batteries. They show you a naked woman and then they charge you sales tax.

BRISCOE:
Yuh, well that don’t go down with me. Who did this to us?

GREEN:
Who else? The cheese. The suit. The big prosecutor upstairs.

BRISCOE:
Sam Waterston?

GREEN:
No, John Ashcroft.

BRISCOE:
The A.G.? He’s not supposed to be working down here. He’s supposed to be stopping the stock swindles, the accounting scandals, the white collar criminals.

GREEN:
Actually, he’d rather leave his friends alone. He wants to convict more troublemakers using the Patriot Act. He says if we want to keep our jobs, we have to go through the list of everybody who’s been at peace rallies, everyone who works for civil rights, and everybody in a labor union.

BRISCOE:
You mean because they might have witnessed a crime?

GREEN:
No, because they’re probably criminals and we have to stop them preemptively. Check out what kind of books they’re buying, who they’re talking to on the phone, and why they’re not shopping at Wal-Mart.

BRISCOE:
You got to get a court order to do that.

GREEN:
Not anymore. If you’re looking for terrorists, you can tap phones, swipe library records, and plant informers in political groups. No court order, no nothing.

BRISCOE:
So if some shnook checks out a book about Islam, we can lock him up without even charging him with a crime?

GREEN:
Sure we can. What are you saying, we should have to prove that he actually read the book? You can’t give an inch to an enemy combatant, Lennie. This is war.

BRISCOE:
Hey, give him the gas up his air hole. I’m no softie. But this is America. There’s got to be a trial. If there’s no charge, no indictment, no grand jury, and no trial, what are the assistant district attorneys going to do on the second half of the hour?

GREEN:
NBC just called, Lennie. We’re now a half-hour show.