CREEP BLOCK
2<43
"Forget it.
If
he thinks he's so special, and
if
you think he's so
great, put him in the creep block. We've got no time to waste on all
your fancy postgraduate work. But we'll book him on a vag tonight.
You'd just better have something tighter than all this in the morning."
The sergeant was comforting, if not refreshing; he sounded ex–
actly like one of his calling who had served manfully on a radio pro–
gram that, as a child, 1 had dutifully listened to at 5: 45 every after–
noon. He turned to another officer: "How much did he have on
him?"
"Okay for vag."
"Well, let him take a load off his feet until tomorrow." (See?
The man might have been reading from a script.)
"But Sergeant Felsenkopf," began the expert again,
"I
can really
trace him in an hour or
so.
This is an age of specialization you know.
Your old, brutal police methods aren't going to work with what I
like to call, uh, the modern criminal. He- Look here," he broke off,
turning to me again. "Here, you, read this sentence on this card out
in a normal way not changing your normal way of speaking in any
way."
All
this was said very mechanically,
as,
seemingly from no–
where, he produced a rather soiled card. I held it before me and stared
at the union printers' label at the bottom, letting my eyes go out of
focus in the glare of the white, overhead light.
"Come on, now!"
I began to read in a normal way: "Merry Mary got married to
a lawyer with wens on his forehead that he kept purple with an oint–
ment of tin and an analgesic balm prepared by a-"
"My sweet Christ!" This was Felsenkopf in mingled displeasure
and disbelief.
"But sergeant, it's only my dialect test. I want to find out where
he-"
Felsenkopf held up his hand gently and winced. I Imppose that
I
giggled. He called out to two loitering figures across the wide room:
"Take this, uh, Kooker here and put him on creep block for to–
night."
The creep block was not really a cell block at all, although it
may once have been one. It was a long, high, brightly-lit room, lined
on three sides with newish, shiny green tiles that ran up to a ceiling
that looked, in the glow of the fluorescent lights that outlined the
skylight panels, to be mauve in color. The fourth side ended in an
