Chapter 2

The Toon Division was, it hardly need be said, an amalgamation of three principle ingredients: chaos, cacophony and coffee. When the Toon Division had started in a tiny corner of the Hollywood offices of the LAPD, toons – suspects, criminals, or merely those lodging complaints against the first two – were all brought to the same place until the booking process began. Whereas other departments enjoyed separate areas for each of the top brass, the officers, and the suspects, the Toon Division did all of their business on one floor, meaning that at any one time there were approximately three million things going on in the same space at the same time. The officers had gotten used to it, and those who hadn't ever worked anywhere other than the Toon Division never knew any other way. In such a situation, it seemed perfectly reasonable that a toon suspected of, say, jewelry theft sat three feet away from another toon dripping in diamonds who had stopped in to lodge an unrelated complaint. That was normally where the cacophony came in; a scene would erupt, and then coffee – the great equalizer – would be given as a peace offering.

Needless to say, the third principle ingredient – chaos – was normal. Fortunately, chaos was often the default setting for toons, and no offense was ever taken.

Bonkers bounced along happily through the small aisles of the department, flanked by cubicles and the whirring of computers, printers, and the melodramatic sounds coming from a mix tape a heartbroken, newly-single young officer had deigned appropriate for workplace listening. None of that mattered, however; whistling a happy tune, Bonkers made his way to Grating's office and entered unceremoniously, plopping down in one of the tattered chairs in front of the desk, putting his feet up and stretching.

"Sure is a beautiful day, isn't it Cap?" Bonkers sighed to Grating, now Captain, who said scowling behind his desk.

"I haven't worked in an office with a window since 1978," he answered gruffly. "So how would I know? And get your feet off my desk."

"Sure thing, Cap." Bonkers put his chin on his hands, leaning on Grating's desk. "Oh, the birds are singing, the breeze is whispering through the leaves, even the carjackers on the corner seemed to be in a festive mood when they hauled that little old lady out of her car and politely told her to 'Get the hell out, ma'am.' I tell ya, Cap, such days are one in a million!"

Barney burst through the door, looking slightly sweatier and more unkempt than usual, if such a thing was possible. "Sorry I'm late, Captain – there was a line at Happy Burrito and they didn't want to take my two-for-one coupon, and I – "

"It's fine, Klyser. Sit down, both of you." Grating ruffled some papers on his desk, clearing his voice in a self-important manner. "You're both here because you're being considered for the head of the Toon Division, a position that carries with it the rank of lieutenant. It would be a big promotion for either of you. You're both…how should I put it…unique officers who know this department like the back of your hand – "

"Even better than that!" Bonkers interrupted. "I can even tell you where the cleaning lady keeps her secret stash of scotch – "

"Enough, Bobcat. Now, these decisions are never easy. Bobcat, you've been here for over fifteen years and have been…diligent in your duties which mostly seem to include irritating me and accidentally freeing convicted criminals because you left the cells unlocked – "

"Thanks, Cap. That means a lot," Bonkers said, wiping a tear from his eye.

" – and Klyser, you've been relentless in your pursuit of…well, not criminals, but…but good deals on burritos for the whole department, and dammit, that has to count for something, doesn't it?"

"Sure, let's go with that," Barney countered with a shrug.

"Therefore, I want to congratulate – "

"Oh thanks Captain Grating!" Bonkers cried, launching himself across the desk and wrapping himself around Grating's head in a bearhug. "You won't regret it! I'll be the best department head in the history of department heads, if anyone's keeping track of that! Have they? Is there a History of Department Heads Through the Ages down in the library, Cap?"

"Get off me, Bobcat!" Grating bellowed, shoving Bonkers back down into the chair across from him. "You didn't let me finish! I'm promoting Klyser, not you!"

"Wh-What?" Bonkers stammered, tears beginning to brim in his eyes. "You-You mean I didn't get it? I'm…I'm still just an officer?"

"That's right!" Grating roared across the desk. He let out a slow breath and turned to Klyser. "Congratulations Klyser, you start immediately. Get your things from the basement and bring them up here. You've got a helluva road ahead of you."

...

...

Fifteen minutes later and slightly more resigned to his fate, Bonkers watched Barney pack up his things in the office with a dreary expression, feeling as though he might melt into a puddle of anthropomorphized anguish at any moment.

"Maybe I'm just not cut out to be a cop," Bonkers sighed slowly, his cheek cradled in his palm as he rolled a pencil across his desk absent-mindedly. "Maybe there's something else out there – " here he gestured vaguely to a world outside of the station, " – that I'm meant to be doing instead!"

"We all got find a niche somewhere," Barney replied in a disinterested tone as he set an empty box on top of his desk and began throwing his office supplies into it. "And hey, knowing what you're not good at is half the battle, right?"

"But I always thought that this is where I belonged!" Bonkers declared, hopping up on his desk. "Here, where all the action is!"

Barney threw him a flat look. "We're in a dark, dingy basement full of spiders and leaky pipes. The only action around here is when the toilets above us overflow and we have to evacuate before we become mired in a swamp of raw sewage."

"But this is where all the action starts! Think of it! We get the small cases that turn into big cases!"

"And the big cases go to the guys upstairs. Face it Bonkers, the only people dumb enough to willingly commit a minute of their lives to the minutia that the detectives won't touch are the ones who get stuck down here for fifteen years."

"That isn't true!" Bonkers burst, leaping in the air to emphasize his point. "What about that kidnapping case last year? Little Frankie was returned safely to his family after we cracked the case!"

"Frankie was a cat, and he wasn't kidnapped, he ran away. To the neighbors. Who promptly gave him back after we saw Frankie lying under their porch." He tossed a stapler into the box and shook his head. "Face it, kid, big cases never go to toons, because toons can't – " He stopped here, sighing softly and rubbing his eyes with his thumb. "Maybe – Maybe you oughta do something that requires a little more creativity, you know? Some outlet for all that pent up energy – or whatever it is – that you got, huh?"

"That's it!" Bonkers cried, sitting back down behind his desk and whipping out a notebook and a pencil. "I'll be a world-weary writer, one whose cynicism is only outweighed by his arrogant ramblings and cognitive dissonance!"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's the ticket," Barney mumbled in what he hoped was a sincere voice as he emptied his pencil drawer into the box.

"It was 1:23 in the afternoon when I noticed the ring in my coffee mug had turned moldy," Bonkers rattled off, scribbling in his notebook frantically. "My partner Barney apathetically threw a box of paperclips into a brown cardboard box in a way that suggested he was weary of the pretenses of Western civilization – "

"Hey, keep me out of it!"

" – whilst I, in the throes of existential angst, pondered capriciously on the fact that although I could order a la carte off of any restaurant menu in the continental United States, I could not do the same for my cable channels – "

"Bonkers."

" – and suddenly it occurred to me: Why does Christmas effectively start in mid-October for most major retailers?"

"Bonkers!"

"What?" Bonkers answered with a start, looking up to see Barney standing in the doorway with the box in his hands.

"I'm leaving now. I'll be upstairs, if you ever need me, which you won't, because a trained aardvark could do this job. And it's only fair to tell you that that last sentence of yours makes no sense."

"It's not supposed to. I'm an artist," Bonkers proclaimed, arms crossed. "And I'll have you know that some of my closest friends are trained aardvarks. They make excellent excavators."

Barney rolled his eyes. "See ya around, kid," he said flatly, turning to leave.

"Wait! Let me help you carry that!" Bonkers jumped up, caught a toe on a rogue seam in the stained carpet of the office, and tripped headlong into a horrified-looking Barney. With a crash, the box tumbled to the floor, spilling its contents and ripping at its seams.

Barney made an exasperated sound and ran a hand over his forehead. "I can't even leave without you breaking something!"

"No worries, partner!" Bonkers replied, ever cheerful as he scooped up some of the office supplies into his arms and made his way towards the staircase. "We're still a team, at least until we get to the top of these stairs!"

Barney picked up the rest of the supplies and jogged towards the staircase. That was about the best reason he'd ever heard to hurry.

His new office – if a cubicle which backed up to a water fountain and an ancient microwave that reeked of burned microwavable lunches could be called an office – was near enough to a row of windows that Barney felt he'd inherited the office equivalent of prime real estate and he inhaled deeply, as though he were in the great outdoors, and smiled as he threw himself into his new chair. He stretched and put his hands behind his head. "Lieutenant Klyser," he muttered with a self-satisfied chuckle. "Lieutenant Klyser! Head of the department!"

Bonkers hopped up on his desk, scrutinizing the surroundings as Barney scowled upon realizing that the little orange devil now knew where his desk was. "Not bad, not bad," Bonkers acquiesced, hand on his chin. "That vent is a little noisy, and the cubicle next to you smells like someone threw up in it, and I can hear the toilet flush, and it certainly isn't as nice as the basement, but all in all, not too shabby. And now that you've worked one-on-one with the resident veteran of the toon division, maybe you'll throw him a few big cases, huh?" Bonkers whispered as he elbowed Barney gently in the ribs.

"Not. A. Chance," Barney stated calmly, looking Bonkers straight in the eye.

Bonkers' face fell as he sputtered, "Bu-But we were partners."

"Exactly. You're a walking disaster!" Barney began putting his office supplies away in his new desk. "Bonkers, you're a nice guy and all, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I hand you anything bigger than a stolen bike case. Look, it's – it's not you, per se, it's – well, you're a toon, and toons just can't handle complex police work. You toons weren't really made for it, you know?"

"I wasn't really made to sing falsetto either, but I do it!" Bonkers protested. He began to pace. "Barney, did you consider that half of the toon division is made up of toons?"

"Yeah, well, not for long," Barney muttered, taking out some files and placing them on his desk.

Bonkers' ink ran cold and he shoved his hat down over his ears. "I didn't hear that, I didn't hear that!"

"Bonkers. Look, toons are useful for some things. Just not the big cases, all right? Don't take it so hard," Barney urged with a sigh.

"You want to get rid of all of the toon officers, get rid of everything I've worked fifteen years for, and you're telling me not to take it so hard?" Bonkers cried, throwing his hands up. This exchange was suddenly punctuated with the ding of a microwave. Bonkers' face instantly brightened. "Ooo, my burrito is done!" he crowed happily, jumping over Barney's cubicle wall.

"Typical. That's exactly what I mean," Barney said, furrowing his brow as Bonkers almost instantly returned, an acidic-smelling burrito cupped in his fist. "Toons are too…too…"

"Cool?"

"No – "

"Fabulous?"

"No, too erratic. You can't trust 'em, can't count on 'em to do anything important."

"Nothing important, hm? Wouldn't you concede that one of the hallmarks of a good officer is razor sharp observational skills? Picking up on small details overlooked by others that could potentially change the direction of an entire investigation?"

"Well…I suppose…" Barney mumbled, scratching the back of his head.

"And what if I told you that I'd just observed something important, something out of place in our department?"

Barney took a quick glance around him and scowled. "Like what?"

Bonkers bounced over to the windows, pulled up the blinds with a loud fwap and pointed to a black sedan sitting trunk-first in one of the visitors' parking spots visible from the window. "Observe! That car is obviously out of place!"

"We get members of the public coming in here almost every day. What's your point?" Barney said with an irritated shrug, pulling his coffee mug out of the box and rising to his feet.

"That's no civilian vehicle. That's an unmarked government vehicle!" Bonkers pressed his nose against the glass, frowning in concentration. His curiosity finally piqued, Barney ambled over and took his place next to Bonkers. "Standard Crown Victoria model, black, no customizations. No dealer's name on the back of the car, painted black wheels, a small CB radio antenna attached to the back windshield, and – a dead giveaway – dual exhaust pipes! And why's that odd? Because that isn't one of our station's cars. Something's up, Barney."

Barney worked his jaw; he hated it when Bonkers was right. "We get visiting detectives in this department all the time. You think toons never commit crimes in other states? Probably just came to haul some loony away for a trial." He shrugged a bit smugly. "See? Easily explained. By a human, no less."

"That's where you're wrong, partner," Bonkers retorted as he absently picked up a rather risqué picture of Barney's rotund wife from the box, holding it at arm's length and staring at it quizzically. "Toon officers are every bit as capable as the human officers. Who better to understand crimes committed by toons than toons?"

"Yeah, well, if it were up to me, I'd lock you all up," Barney spat roughly, grabbing the picture away from Bonkers and shoving it in the bottom drawer of his desk. "And keep your paws off my stuff. Isn't there a squad car you could be washing?"

"Just give me a shot, Barney! Just one big case!" Bonkers leaned in close to Barney, a pleading look in his eye. "I'll prove to you that toon cops are just as good as human ones!"

"Absolutely not. Show me a man who hands you a big case, and I'll show you the biggest buffoon who ever walked the earth," Barney countered through bared teeth in a low, steely tone.

"Bobcat!" a gravelly voice barked behind them. With a surprised yelp, Bonkers turned to find Captain Grating looming over him, his face practically set in stone. "My office. Pronto."

"Even Captains make mistakes," Bonkers whispered with a small laugh, again elbowing Barney gently in the ribs. "Sorry Barney, but it makes no sense you being lieutenant. I bet Cap's going to tell me there was a mix-up and – "

"Bobcat! Are you coming or do I have to put you in irons? Because believe me, I'd love an excuse," Grating called, having gotten halfway down the hallway before he realized Bonkers was not following. Bonkers immediately rectified this by bounding next to him as they walked.

"Don't take it so hard, Cap. We all make mistakes," he said sympathetically, patting Grating on the sleeve. "Why, just last week I accidentally left the cells unlocked, and – "

"Just shut up, will you?" Grating growled, stopping at his door and beginning to open it. "I want you to know, with every fiber of your being, that I am absolutely set against this, and – "

Bonkers peeped in through the small opening between the door and the wall, and caught sight of what could only be described as a sight for a much-put-upon toon's sore eyes.

"LUCKY!"