True Story©... The Comeback

(so we back on this?)

    I tend to have to worry when things get a little too quiet. I've reached a moment where my routine is a little too... easy.
So it's an otherwise mundane-ass Wednesday morning, 10am. I'm, naturally, spending my 15-minute break in my front yard leaving some pretty stripes. As a habit, to preclude people from talking to me, I usually have on my big headphones while I work in yards. This has been changed recently, as I think my wife misplaced my big headphones and I have finally taken to the habit of wearing a hat so I have updated to a pair of noise cancelling buds.

    Why am I talking about trying to stay ahead of people distracting me? Naturally, of course, it is because someone decided to fucking talk to me. An unmarked-but-still-obvious police vehicle stops in front of my mailbox, but as a non-criminal (ha!), I continued what the fuck I was doing without approaching the car, I have 15 minutes to cut this front yard at least twice and cannot stand to have my routine upset. As I came back toward the driveway, a familiar face was standing on the corner of my yard.

Me: "Back on the driveway, please... I haven't put time and money into this grass to have you tracking my shit all up."

Detective Ramsbottom: "I was looking for Phillip, used to own this house. Has he moved?"

Me: "Fuck is wrong with you? I ain't moving!"

Ramsbottom: "Jesus, how much weight have you lost?"

Me: "Transitioned out of weight loss months ago, it's all body fat I'm losing now."

Ramsbottom: "Ahh, I see. You got a minute?"

Me: "Not really, if we're being honest. As you see I'm kind of busy and got a get back to work, like, now-ish."

Ramsbottom: "When might you be available to sit down for a minute."

Me: "Lunchtime is 12:30-1 and you know I don't particularly fancy conversations with police."

Ramsbottom: "So should I come back?"

Me: "Fine, I'm going inside now."

See, now I gotta finish this shit after work and I'm kinda pissed.

    True to form, I saw the same cruiser back out front at 12:28pm. I finished what I was doing and emerged from the front door and sat down on the porch...

Ramsbottom: "It's very hot out here, you think we could have this conversation inside?"

Me: "No officer will ever enter my house without a warrant. I don't trust you not to shoot my dogs."

Ramsbottom: "Wow, I-I--..."

Me: "... you're on a strict clock, get to it!"

Ramsbottom: "Dig Bick Throbbers are back."

Me: "What does that have to do with me?"

Ramsbottom: "You did so well helping with the first time."

Me: "Did you know that 'creeping' grasses spread through rhyzomes and stolons instead of regular roots?"

Ramsbottom: "What?"

Me: "I cut grass for my extra money, y'all don't be paying when you come begging me to think for you. I never got my check when I helped Woodpenis sniff out the Smart Dildo theft ring."

Ramsbottom: "Who? What? Nevermind... I was just hoping--..."

Me: "Shit in one hand and hope in the other one, see which one fills up first. As it relates to your case, though, go back to the original source and work back from there."

Ramsbottom: "We did that. The store owner's son doesn't come outside at all anymore. We monitored his web traffic, he's moved on to day trading."

Me: "So, like, how do you even know the wee-wee pills have made it back to the streets?"

Ramsbottom: "Please don't call them that."

Me: "You came to me for help, you gon get all these dick and fart jokes!"

Ramsbottom: "So like last time, an influx of ER visits started, and when the common culprit wound up being what appeared to be a similar supplement taken by all involved we dug a little deeper and found the same chemical profile as before and knew they had made a comeback."

Me: "So someone talked?"

Ramsbottom: "Sort of... Most were tight-lipped, as per usual when dealing with us. We leaned on one guy with a criminal past and--..."

Me: "You know that's real shitty, right?"

Ramsbottom: "Huh?"

Me: "Don't 'huh' me... Mans is in the hospital, probably embarrassed from having overdosed on a gas station dick pill, and you leverage his criminal past on him while not breaking any law to give up information? He'd have been well within his right to tell you to eat a DBT-enhanced dick and you could have done nothing."

Ramsbottom: "We're desperate to get these off the street ag--..."

Me: "Spare me the boyscout bullshit. What'd he say?"

Ramsbottom: "He said he met the seller on a dating site."

Me: "A dating site might be the most HILARIOUS place to be shilling weiner exploders."

Ramsbottom: "Well apparently he matched with what he THOUGHT was a woman, but once the messages started exchanging he would find it was a man."

Me: "Nightmare scenario. Imagine matching with a woman on the app and later finding out she has a pænis. I'm SO glad I'm married!"

Ramsbottom: "Once the air is cleared, the man makes his sales pitch for the pills. 'Y'know, when you DO meet a woman' and the mark either gives in and makes a purchase or blocks."

Me: "Dia-fuckin-bolical. You gon have to send in your own catfish, indiscriminately swiping on EVERY woman until the pill sales--... wait, are they still using the 'Dig Bick Throbbers' name?"

Ramsbottom: "No. Now they're called 'DBTMaxxx' and someone has put more work into it this time. The packaging is more professional looking."

Me: "Can I see?"

He went to the cruiser and came back with one. I immediately turned it over and looked at the side effects:

"Side effects include thoughts of suicide, explosive anal discharge, thoughts of homicide via explosive anal discharge, thrush, pneumonia, uncontrolled weight loss, fungal infection and feelings of loneliness"

I laughed absolutely uncontrollably until he broke in...

Ramsbottom: "So will you sign up and see if we can smoke him out?"

Me: "Fuck no. Good luck!"

Ramsbottom: "..."

Me: "..."

It's apparently Mexican standoff time in this negotiation.

Ramsbottom: "... so--..."

Me: "... the answer is no, not negotiable. I'm going back to work. Good luck, detective Buttsex."

Ramsbottom: "Fuuuuuuuck, I was hoping you'd forgotten about that."

Me: "THERE YOU GO, LET THEM F-BOMBS FLY!!!"

Ramsbottom: "You have a good day, call me if you reconsider."

Me: "heh, don't hold your breath."

And with that, I went back in the house.

    In the days that followed, things were kind of quiet. I won't say that I wasn't curious about whether or not he employed my idea and what the outcome had been. Not curious enough, of course, to be the one doing the actual work of it. Don't get it fucked up. All I could do for the time being is wait. I can only hope he has the common decency to clue me in on to the outcome or next steps, or at least ask me for some input or something.

    Monday rolls around. 10am, I'm back outside cutting the front yard.

[Phlip note: I don't like my front yard to look like it needs to be cut, judge yo mammy]

Same unmarked cruiser pulls up, I commit to the same routine of acting like it ain't there. He walks to the corner of the driveway and waives from across the yard.

Me: "Thank you for staying off my fescue."

Ramsbottom: "We got him."

Me: "... and by 'him' I'm gathering you mean 'not the store owner's son' correct?"

Ramsbottom: "Nephew, actually."

Me: "Unbelievable. Was this connected?"

Ramsbottom: "That's the CRAZY part -- no connection between the perp and his cousin! It would make all the sense in the world for their to be, but our original guy has been a model citizen."

    He goes on to explain the sting in detail, how he--...

WAIT!!! Y'all know I got so wrapped up on this shit that I forgot I was on a 15 minute break and was supposed to be cutting my grass?

... anyway... He goes on to explain the sting, they carried it out just as I said, swiping right on every single last woman, no worries about whether or not there was a match. The idea was to match with literally ANY woman who also swiped right, with the understood goal being that our suspect would out themselves to try to sell them the pills.

    He showed me a screenshot of the conversation that ensued when my silly-ass idea worked.
"She" wasted little time between matching and sending the undercover a DM. There was naturally a little smalltalk before "she" came clean that this was not a romantic connection, but rather an opportunity to perform better when he does make a connection with some pills that had been once "banned for being too effective."  The undercover did a wonderful job of keeping the conversation up long enough for them to be able to find and raid.

[Phlip note: keeping it up, see what I did there?]
They found him in a climate controlled storage unit he basically had set up like an office, with a small table and laptop surrounded by SEVERAL cases of DBTMaxxx pills.

    The raid was mostly uneventful, they got him into custody without a firefight or much resistance. I mean, there aren't many places to run or hide in a storage unit full of black market dick pills.
Once in custody, he folded FAST. He had apparently heard of the money his cousin had made selling the pills the first time and when they got popped, he learned the recipe and just rebranded before taking distribution further underground. Faced with copping out to FDA/FTC charges, plus tax beef, he chose to just take the minorest of the charges offered. I don't think he realized that the FDA doesn't give a damn about dietary supplements, especially when the only claim on the label is the vague "will get your shit bricked up."

    Okay, I have RE-closed the gas station dick pill chapter of my life, and didn't even have to leave my house or DO anything this time.
I really think I'mma get back to my "I'on talk to police" thing next time he comes to my house.