Crisis Control

            by Henry Corrigan-Gibbs

 

Chief Security Officer Willy Cooks looked up at the Berkeley Community Theater.  On the roof, a 10-foot-tall inflatable rubber penis waved gently in the breeze.

Cooks rubbed his chin pensively.  The perpetrator must have moved in the apparatus at night and erected it that morning.  Cooks chuckled.  Erected.  But this was really no laughing matter.

The jumbo-penis hadn’t been the first strike, but just the latest in a series of pranks that had fallen on Berkeley High.  Bathrooms had been vandalized, fireworks had been set, attendance excuses had been shamelessly forged, and that was just the beginning.

Graduation was but a few weeks away.  Soon, the prank-pulling, delinquent senior would be out of Cooks’ grasp, probably on the way to a job at McDonald’s.  It was either that or a fancy east coast college.  Cooks shuddered at the thought.  There was precious little time to bag this bad boy.

The renewed desire for a quick solution to the problem at hand had already prompted Cooks to make a few changes around the school.  On-Campus Suspension was converted into On-Campus Interrogation, and Cooks also introduced its top-secret offshoot, On-Campus Abu Ghirab.  Students were reclassified as enemy combatants, and now were at the mercy of even the lowliest vice-principal.

But Cooks was more concerned with the whereabouts of one student in particular: the one who was connected to the most recent wave of pranks.  He had spent days following the perp’s scent like a bloodhound, tracing a path across campus and back again.  Sometimes he would track the scent for hours only to find that all along he had been following a malodorous bag of Mu Shu Beef.

But Willy Cooks wasn’t discouraged.  He had a mission.  He had to bring law and order back to this school.  He had to represent the pinnacle of civility.

“Hey motherfucka!  Get off that cell phone,” he yelled at a passing student.  It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.

 

            Willy Cooks had a small office in the school’s new administration building.  A framed picture of George Bush hung next to a certificate that announced “Security Guard of the Year - 2004.”  Even though Cooks had printed the certificate himself, he thought it was well deserved.

On his metal desk, a manila folder lay open.  Inside, he had put everything that was known about the suspect.  Cooks smiled.  It made him feel very detective-like.  It bothered him only slightly that the folder was completely empty.  Even more worrisome was that Cooks’ normal sources of counsel, repeat viewings of Shaft and Men in Black, hadn’t provided any useful tips for this sort of case.  It was completely unprecedented.  He took a deep breath and looked up at the sign on his wall.  “WWJD?” it read.

What would Jim Slemp do?  Cooks thought fondly of the school’s principal.

Just then, an idea came to him.  It was as elegant a plan as Cooks could imagine.

 

The following evening, as all of the teachers left for their homes, Cooks’ car stayed parked in the staff lot.  Once the campus was clear of students, Cooks strategically placed a lawn chair in the center of the school’s courtyard.  If he couldn’t find the prankster, the prankster would find him.  He removed from a canvas tote bag all he needed to execute his plan: a camouflage parka, a shotgun, and a copy of Sports Illustrated, the swimsuit edition, which he had confiscated from a mouthy student earlier in the day.  Cooks donned the parka, placed the shotgun on his lap, and opened the magazine.  It was a damn good plan.

The next morning, as espresso machines everywhere churned out their first lattes of the day, Cooks awoke to find himself covered in a fine layer of morning dew that glistened gently in the light of the early sun.  He paused a moment to ponder the beauty of the scene, then reached for his shotgun.  However, instead of finding the 12-gauge Remington by his side, his hand found only concrete.  Cooks stood and turned to search for the missing weapon, and sure enough, the gun was gone.

Must have blown away in the wind, thought Cooks, shrugging.  It had been known to happen.

But the true nature of the prankster was not revealed until Cooks saw that where his Sports Illustrated lay the night before…It couldn’t be.  But it was.

“Noooooooooooo!” Cooks’ agonizing cries echoed off of the buildings facing the courtyard.  The Swimsuit Edition had been stolen.

 

            Weeks later, the perpetrator was still at large.  Cooks had lost many hours of sleep and missed multiple episodes of Desperate Housewives while trying to track down the student.  However, every attempt was in vain, and Cooks had all but given up.

Now, Cooks stood at the gate of Berkeley’s Greek amphitheater, watching as parents passed through the entrance to catch the start of the graduation ceremonies.  The theater was shaped like a half-bowl and in the bottom, a pool of red- and yellow-gowned seniors sat waiting for their turn to receive their diploma on stage.  Beyond the graduating class sat the rest of the audience, which totaled a few thousand.

            As the last few guests trickled into the theater, Cooks took his position on the stage facing the audience.  Cooks’ job was to remove any students who got a little too excited, and if need be, haul their asses back to detention.  Damn, I love my job, thought Cooks.

            Minutes later, the audience had settled down, and most of the graduating class had already tuned out, they would listen to their iPods for the duration of the ceremony.  To begin the event, Principal Jim Slemp stepped on stage to give a few words of introduction, “It is my pleasure to welcome…”  He had hardly spoken these words when the audience, in unison, burst into laughter and applause.  Cooks, confused, but not wanting to be left out, laughed along.  That is, until he turned and saw what everyone was laughing at.

On the backdrop of the stage, a billboard-sized poster of Cooks himself had been unfurled.  However, instead of his normal body, Cooks’ head had been expertly transplanted onto another body; a body Cooks immediately recognized as that of Chelsea, a bikini-clad brunette from the Swimsuit Edition.

In the brief moments between the unfurling of the poster and its removal by the unusually efficient stage crew there was chaos in the amphitheater.  The deafening laughter drowned out Jim Slemp’s voice, and the seniors became even more belligerent than usual.  All the while, Cooks had to wonder how the prankster had timed the act so perfectly.

Just then, a single red-gowned student slipped quietly from the back of the stage and began to make his way towards the audience.  Willy Cooks spotted him.  It was a criminal of the worst kind — a student using a cellphone during school hours.

“HEY!” Cooks sprinted for the prankster.  “YOU!  STOP!”

The perp didn’t realize he was being pursued until he was knocked to the ground from behind by Willy Cooks.  As the perp fell to the stage, there was a clatter of metal and Cooks saw his old Remington and Swimsuit Edition skid across the stage.  But Cooks was focused on the real contraband.  Cooks stood over the boy, glaring as meanly as he could, then stretched a hand out to him.

“Gimme that phone, boy.  ‘Less you want to spend summer cleaning the C-building.”  The student handed over the phone.  “Good, now get off the stage.  You can pick up the phone after school.”

The boy stood and dove into the pit of seniors, fading immediately into the sea of red and yellow gowns.  Though another cell phone abuser had been brought to justice, Cooks would never realize that he had let the prankster slip from his grasp.

Willy Cooks smiled proudly and pocketed the cell phone.  All in a day’s work .