The Great Cleanup - стр. 4
The youngest of the three immediately took a pair of handcuffs off his belt and locked them onto the gypsy's wrists. The woman gave her hands submissively, though lighting and fireballs seemed to be emanating from her eyes while her lips now just produced an unintelligible, snake-like hissing. “She's cursing,” Anna realized, while gradually returning to normal.
As she saw all the family heirlooms and savings on the mirror table, she was horrified, shifting her gaze from one policeman to the next in embarrassment:
“I nearly gave her everything on my own. My own stuff, my husband's, my daughter's…”
The two uniformed men picked up their money, car keys, condoms and documents from the table. The one in civvies nodded:
“Yes, this happens. You are not the first, nor the second, nor even the ninth; there were seventeen robberies like this in this week alone. And we always failed to hit this Rada, Magdalene, Cookie Monstress, Adeline of the Western Seas and what not. Every single time, she managed to vanish before we could get to the scene. The victims and witnesses could not explain anything clearly, nor describe the swindler; they just said she used hypnosis, charming everyone into giving up their valuables and the addresses of friends who are well off. Well, charms don't work on us, and as you see you got lucky: we have finally traced the she-devil. We were shadowing her on the street, saw her make a phone call and then go into your apartment. So we have her now, all proper, clear-faced and red-handed. Now we'll invite an experienced hypnosis doctor and, under his supervision, have the crook confront all the people she managed to clean out. I have to say that she raked out a lot of money and jewellery from them. Let's hope she had no time to push it off, and will soon hand everything back into the jewellery boxes, wardrobes and safes of decent, law-abiding people…”
The gypsy threw an angry look at the speaker and mumbled with her lips again. The policeman made a disgusted face.
“Cut it out with the hissing and spitting or you'll end up with more jail time, as we'll consider it an assault on police on duty.” Then he turned to Anna again: “You will need to come with us, in our car, to the police station. We have to document the situation properly, so I hope you can spare half an hour for us. Are you free right now? Any plans for today?”
Anna shrugged pensively:
“Free… Plans? A great cleanup was on the plans. Especially now, after so many guests, there is much fresh dirt in the house…”
The policeman in civvies smiled:
“That's very good thinking; cleanliness is next to godliness and a godly society is a lawful society. So come on with us and you'll help clean up the city.” He looked at his comrades and sighed: “Though, truth be told, we just caught yet another small fish, swiped a peck of dirt, so to say, from the honest citizens' table. We should really do a great cleanup of the entire residential area. So many swindlers, pimps, drug dealer have sprung up…”
“Yeah,” the moustached policeman with an officer's badge agreed, “Would be nice to nail Cocaine, that monopolist octopus. And also Valve”.
The other uniformed policeman chimed in:
“And what about Borscht? He's got pretty brazen now. Our agents tell us that, under the cover of a restaurant, he has set up a powerful drug lab and even a first-class torture facility, to whisk competitors over to his side.”