Can You Use Humor in Thrilling Fiction?

Bonds Flat Road was so congested Grant and Bensen decided to find a landline instead of slogging through traffic, watching for bars to appear on their cell phones.

The parking lot next to the park office building was full, so Grant parked in the back. Walking through the lot, Bensen said, “Lots of fed-looking cars here. You think Homeland Security and the FBI are here?”

“Wouldn’t bet against it. This is a big deal now, maybe the biggest thing to ever happened around here. I bet the governor does a flyover.”

A dozen photographers elbowed each other on the observation decks, jostling for the best perspective, snapping away with big cameras. The sun was up and it was hot, yet they wore long sleeved windbreakers advertising the agencies they represented.

“Yup,” Bensen said, looking at the observation decks. “Homeland Security’s here. And the FBI, the CBI, and someone from four or five counties. And I think I see a security guard from Walmart.”

Two big feds were guarding the door, arms folded across their chests. “Can we help you?” a black guy with a knobby bald head said.

“I need to use a landline,” Grant said, pulling out his ID. “There’s no cell coverage out here and I need to call my chief.”

The guy peered at Grant’s shield for half a second while shaking his head, and said, “Sorry, Homeland Security’s using this building.”

“How about a cordless, then?” Bensen asked. “We’ll stay out here and talk. You can eavesdrop.”

The guy scowled and tightened his arms across his chest. The other guy, who looked like a movie mobster, smirked.

Grant got an idea. “Hey, is Barbara Johansen in there?”

“Yeah. She’s area supervisor. So what?”

“Tell her Detective Grant Starr is here and I need to talk to her.”

He scowled at Grant again, disappeared into the building for five minutes, poked his head back out, glared at Grant and Bensen and said, “You can come in.”

Grant walked in and Bensen followed. When Bensen passed the guy, he slipped him a folded dollar bill and said, “Keep an eye on the blue Ford, will ’ya?” He winked at the man. “There’ll be more of these if it doesn’t get dinged or scratched.”

The guy threw the bill on the floor and said, “Smartass.”

Five steps later, Grant said to Bensen, “You’re paying the deductible if my truck gets keyed.”

“Don’t worry,” Bensen said. “Guys like that are really pussycats.”

Eco-terrorism is no laughing matter, especially when hundreds of innocent people get killed because one man thinks things fish are more important than people.

In this scene, Detectives Grant Starr and Ralph Bensen have just witnessed what would likely happen (at least in my imagination) to the Don Pedro Reservoir if the O’Shaughnessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy failed. Flood water tops the dam, the worst thing that can happen to an earth-and-rock-fill dam, but...

No spoilers here! Check out my THE MIGHTY T page for another excerpt, reviews, and purchase information.

It’s a tense scene, yet Bensen is cracking jokes. (He probably should think twice about agitating the angry fed at the door, though. They might need to pass through that door again before the story is over.) I like Bensen, he’s a little like me in some ways; I’m always trying to lighten a heavy situation with humor. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not so well. Eyes often roll after I’ve opened my mouth.

Some readers may not like the wise-cracking Bensen, may think he should be more policeman-like, especially in a dire situation like this one. They’d likely be the ones who roll their eyes at me after I’ve said something witty, or pithy, while trying to lighten the mood.

I’ve read novels that had almost no humor in them. I have to say I don’t enjoy them as much. Humor isn’t always appropriate, but I think it is more often than not.

Cops: The Feds Vs. Locals

“People,” Johansen said to the group, after she and Grant walked into the room. “This is the detective from Modesto I told you about, Grant Starr. Detective Starr, will you tell us what you know about the unsubs?”

Grant spent the next ten minutes telling a gaggle of agents and officers from local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies what he knew about Samuel Raimes, III, which wasn’t a lot, and what he suspected. 

“So,” someone in a fed shirt said, “you don’t have any evidence. Your case against this guy is all circumstantial.”

“No, we have some evidence,” Grant said. “Not on Raimes, but we have solid evidence on the woman, Mindy. We have her fingerprints and she was ID’ed by a witness. We think she was here this morning and killed the two dam operators. They were knifed, which is her MO.

“We also got some prints off a steel shed they put up in La Grange. One of them came back army, a guy who was discharged after getting caught with drugs. His and another set of prints were found on evidence at the house of the MID guy who got killed the same night the TID guy got killed. So we have that, too.”

“But against the guy, Raimes, you got nothing,” the fed said.

“Well, hell,” Grant said, a little pissed off at the fed. “At least I got something. What’d you bring to the party?”

“I just got here.”

“Well, until you have something, I suggest you shut the fuck up.”

“Hey…” The guy stood, and Grant took a step his way.

The noise level in the room ratcheted up: feds sat up and thrust their shoulders back, making their chairs creak; locals snickered and pivoted to look at the fed, who was ten inches shorter than Grant.

Johansen stood and said, “Guys, a pissing match isn’t going to help us find the unsubs.” Grant and the fed continued their stare-down. “This is a national tragedy, the worst thing since 9/11. Let’s try and keep our heads here.” She placed a hand on Grant’s chest, not pushing, touching.

This scene from THE MIGHTY T takes place at the New Don Pedro Dam in La Grange, California. The terrorist who calls himself John Lightfoot had just successfully attacked the O'Shaunessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy, causing a near-catastrophic flood. The feds have moved in and taken over the investigation.

Detectives Grant Starr and Ralph Bensen were at Don Pedro when the flood hit. Grant needed to call his chief but Don Pedro has no cell coverage, forcing him to ask to use a landline in a building Homeland Security has taken for their headquarters. He tries desperately to avoid Area Supervisor Barbara Johansen, knowing if she sees him he'll likely get sucked into Fed World and lose half the day.

Grant finds a phone and makes his call. He and Bensen are about to enjoy some free fed snacks, coffee and pastries, when Grant hears Johansen's voice calling him from somewhere down the hall. She asks him to brief a gaggle of cops and he gets sucked into Fed World, as he feared he would.

I'm not a cop, nor has anyone in my family, to my knowledge, ever been in law enforcement. What I know about how well federal cops get along with local cops I learned from TV and novels—so take this as fiction if you like. I imagine the locals don't like it when the feds march in and take over investigations; it's gotta be a pride thing.

I took advantage of this real, or imagined, animosity to create some conflict in my story. Stories without conflict are dull. I was pulling for Grant, of course; he shoulda punched the weasel fed in the nose!

Lightfoot Makes Them Pay For What They’ve Done

Old Photo of Jones Pumping Plant, circa 1958

Tonight, before they drove their bomb to the Jones Pumping Plant, Lightfoot felt the need to tell them why the pumps had to go. Again.

He stood next to the river, his back to the water, in his Indian getup, lecturing: “The salmon fed the Miwuk for centuries. They caught enough to dry…”

The rest of the gang sat on the ground and swatted at mosquitoes, which were plentiful and so aggressive they pushed through the thick layer of repellant the gang had slathered on. The pests seemed to ignore Lightfoot, much to the other’s disappointment; they were sure he wouldn’t be so long-winded if he was being eaten alive like they were.

“Then the white man came. He dammed the Tuolumne in 1923 and 1926, and once more with the New Don Pedro Dam in 1971. And he thought, in his arrogance, he could ‘manage’ the Tuolumne, improve on Nature’s perfect wisdom.”

Donaldson tuned Lightfoot out and mentally reviewed his part in tonight’s mission: he was to drive the truck bomb. Driving the bomb wasn’t dangerous, it wouldn’t explode unless it was detonated, but if the cops pulled him over he’d go to prison for a long time while the others went free.

“The mighty and noble salmon might have survived the white man’s dams, but when the white man decided to send water from the Tuolumne to southern California, they sealed the salmon’s fate.” Lightfoot’s face filled with grief that quickly morphed to rage.

“In 1951, the white man installed six 25,000-horsepower pumps near Tracy. These killer pumps siphon the Tuolumne out of the Delta and push the water through 15-foot-diameter pipes at a rate of 768 cubic feet per second.” He spat the numbers out.

The numbers meant nothing to Roberts, who was also trying to ignore Lightfoot’s ranting. How much water was in a cubic foot? He didn’t know and didn’t care. Lightfoot had him riding in the truck with Donaldson, to keep an eye on him. “If he suddenly grows a conscience, shoot him and drive the truck yourself. If he gets sick or has a heart attack, push him out and take over.” Lame.

“The pumps draw water from the Delta and lift it 197 feet into the Delta-Mendota Canal. There’s no salmon in the Delta-Mendota Canal. Do you know why? Because the pumps cut the salmon to pieces!!!”

The group had heard the speech so many times they were ready for Lightfoot’s outbursts; no one flinched. The first time Lightfoot delivered the Pump Talk, Griffith did some fact-finding research—for all the shack didn’t have, it did have a broadband Internet connection.

He learned the California Bureau of Reclamation, the agency that operated the Jones Pumping Plant, which they would hopefully blow up tonight, went to great lengths to stop fish from getting sucked into the intake canal that took water to the gigantic pumps. Various types of fish-screening devices were used and were, for the most part, fairly effective. A fish had to be less than one and a half inches long to make it through the screens.

So Lightfoot’s speech about the salmon getting cut up in the pumps was bullshit. When he told this to the others, everyone except Danny, they had all had a good laugh.

What Griffith didn’t tell the others was that while the small immature fish—the babies—couldn’t get through the screens, they often couldn’t get away from them either: the screens cut the fish up, not the pumps. Lightfoot was right, his timing was just off.

* * * * *  

Thankfully for the gang, the end of Indian Class is seconds away. Do you think Lightfoot’s “sermon” sounds rehearsed? It does, for a good reason: He’d typed and memorized it before giving it the first time. And he’s no Winston Churchill.

Lightfoot blames the decline in Tuolumne River Chinook salmon on the two dams controlling the river and the massive siphon pumps in the San Joaquin Delta. But the dams didn’t build themselves, and the pumps didn’t drop out of space and land in the Delta like some piece of space junk: humans were responsible, so humans had to pay for what they’d done.

The O’Shaughnessy Dam at Hetch Hetchy was constructed and is operated by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. The Don Pedro Dam belongs to the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts. Lightfoot targets the three utilities for revenge, specifically, their general managers.

THE MIGHTY T begins when Danny, a member of Lightfoot’s gang who’s crazy-good with a sniper rifle, and just plain crazy, targets one GM from the top of the twelve-story DoubleTree Inn in Modesto. He hits his target and empties the rest of the clip into the plaza below. (Read Chapter 1 to see what happens to Danny when he’s no longer useful to Lightfoot.)

The pumps in Tracy are run by the State of California; far too big a target for Lightfoot. Who would he send his gang to kill, the governor? Turning the 150-foot-long pump building into rubble will have to suffice. Those pumps won’t be killing salmon for years after he’s done with them.