The Serious Busting of Mo-Hos

It’s a purple night, edged with the silvery streams of streetlights. The woman in camouflage patrolling the street raises a long, funnel-like object in the air. Her name is Jean. Most people call her, “Queen Jean, the Queen of the Mean.” It’s the best line on a resume teeming with military endeavors. Her partner, Tony, paces quietly six feet away before approaching her. He also holds a funnel-like object positioned tightly against the side of his camo uniform.

“This is the worst outbreak we’ve had since the end of the big pandemic,” Tony whispers. He and Jane pierce the darkness with their penetrating eyes as they await the planned invasion of Wall Street. A team of back up units surrounds the building behind them.

“They’re not getting past us,” Jane whispers back as she hoists her funnel into the air. “Those gold diggers, those money-grubbing money hos! I got one word for them. Run, mo-hos, run!”

“It’s a sad situation,” Tony says, shaking his head. “The wealth of this country now rests in the hands of only a few. But does that give mo-hos the right to use seduction?”

Tony bops his hand under the butt of his funnel. “No,” he answers himself, “No it does not.”

“That’s why I’m glad the military gave us these Super Suckers,” Jane replies. “If someone gets amorous and wraps themselves around a wealthy Wall Street broker, we’ll just suck them off!”

“We’re good like that,” Tony agrees. “We’re protecting the nation’s wealth.”

Jane and Tony look at each other. They start to cavort in what can only be described as a hunch dance.

“We got power to the nth degree,” they rap, “oh, baby roll with me …

We’re going against the flow for the people who got the dough

Oh, baby let’s roll, let’s roll, let’s roll

When perps try to get the buck

We know we have to suck

Yeah, baby, we have to suck …”

The pair get down on all fours, and wiggling their butts, they lift their back legs in the air.

“We suck!” they finish rapping.

A city bus stops on the perimeter next to Jane and Tony. The doors squeak open, and children emerge,

laughing and screaming. But wait a minute. Behind them are … mo-hos. They rush towards Wall Street,

pushing each other, enthusiastically trampling Jane and Tony. The pair get up and run after them,

activating their funnels.

Other units come to aid. Six of the mo-ho busters surround Jane and Tony, three men and three women in camouflage, responding in military fashion. As the perpetrators disperse, cross suctioning causes a

few perpetrators to be pulled in different directions. The team handcuffs their captures, pushing them

into paddy wagons. One of the perps, a handsome blond man in his twenties, remains distorted by all

the sucking action. EMTs arrive on the scene, pulling out a large wooden object shaped like a spoon.

They push a button on the switchboard mounted inside the door of their van and gently paddle the

young man back into shape.

Tony, always one for drama, holds his prisoner in front of him, grabbing the cuffs behind her back and

presenting her to Jane. The disheveled young woman looks downward, surveying the damage to her

high heeled shoes.

“Oh darn!” she says. “These are new Louis Vuittons, a gift from a person of influence. I won’t say which

one. You can’t make me.”

“This is why I do what I do,” says Tony. “I have to protect society from people like you.” He turns and

directs his comments to Jane, “You know, at this time point in time, I thought we would be chasing

zombies, but Nooooh. No zombies have been seen here on earth. We chase these criminals instead.”

“Yeah, well these offenders are egregious,” says Jane. “I’d rather be chasing the walking dead.”

Meanwhile, back at FBI headquarters in Quantico Virginia, an immaculately dressed man, Professor

Edmond Provost, slaps the pointer in his hand onto a screen behind him labeled “Mo-Hos.” Like the

others in this classroom, the professor has donned a suit and tie and has paid particular close attention

to the scrubbing of his fingernails.

“Class,” Professor Provost says, “Our focus here is on the impact these wicked wrongdoers have had on

our country.”

The screen behind him changes to a pie chart.

The professor aims his pointer at the first pie. “Here is what our society looked like in the 80’s. You can

see how large the upper middle class was at that time. Life was good. Many of the upper middles, along

with the upper uppers, lived luxurious lives and wore designer clothing.”

He then points to the second pie. “This is what our society looks like today. The upper middle is teeny, teeny. And Poof!” he spreads his fingers. “The middle has disappeared. It fell into the lower middle class. And the lower middle class, well, they’re on the poor side. Some of them can’t even afford streaming

services.”

He turns to the class. “And do you know how this happened?”

Hands shoot up.

He calls on one young man. “Wayne?”

“Well, yeah,” Wayne says. “They selected the wrong streaming networks to begin with, then they kept

adding on. Now they’ve spent all their money.”

“Not that simple,” replies the professor.

A gray-bearded man pokes his head into the room.

“My flight was delayed,” says the man, now confidently striding to the professor’s desk. “There was a

shortage of pilots. Or, should I say, pilots in training.”

“Class, I’d like to introduce you to Professor Alfred Birdsong, the head of our profiling unit for this

special team.”

Professor Birdsong takes the pointer. He looks out over the recruits and smiles with great poise.

“Class,” he begins. “Today I’d like to address the evil lurking inside the hearts and minds of men. Before we go further, I have to explain it is not really their hearts we care about. And we only care about their minds to a small degree.” He pinches his thumb and first finger together.

A scene flashes up behind Professor Birdsong. It shows well-dressed women piled up on top of a tiny man beneath them.

“These perpetrators are causing the collapse of society as we know it. They are latching onto all the wealthy prospects and draining their resources. Let me explain.”

He walks around the room.

“During the floods of the early 2000’s billionaires could have stepped in and renovated entire cities in one month. But that didn’t happen. In the recent wildfires, no one came forward and replanted whole forests of trees. You know why?” he pounds the desk in front of him. “Resources were tied up in designer clothing, Coachella, lavish parties. All thanks to a group most people call money hos, or mo-hos. For our purposes, though, here today we will call them Ho-t hos. These past couple years alone they have sucked up sixty-nine percent of the nation’s wealthiest individuals.”

The professor stops at the desk in front of the room.

“Let me illustrate exactly what I mean,” he says, picking up two dolls.

“Oh Ken,” he mimics as Barbie slithers toward Ken. He twists the dolls back and forth, making their lips touch on each side. “Thank you for buying me my lavish over-the-top Barbie Mansion and my luxurious pricey-ass Barbie convertible. Kiss, kiss, kiss. I will just die if you don’t buy me an island off the coast of Maine for the party, we are throwing next week.” He stops, piercing the classroom with his eyes, holding both dolls motionless in the air.

“I believe I have made my point,” he concludes. “We know the characteristics we are looking for.”

Back in New York, Jane and Tony confidently stride through the jail house towards the interrogation room.

“These cells house bad, bad criminals. Serial killers, armed robbers, car thieves, arsonists, and now a new group of felons.” Tony laments.

“Yes,” Jane agrees. “There’s no way to define them. They could be any race, any color, any sex, any religious order and,” she pauses, “they could be multiple multiples, a person who has many different races with many different skin colors and two or three different sexes, going from one religious order to the next. We just don’t know.”

Opening the door to the pastel yellow interrogation room and breathing in the sharp smell of Pine Sol, the pair take a seat next to a handsome dark-haired man in his early thirties wearing jail house blues.

“Okay Benny, give it up,” Tony says, leaning forward. “We know all about your attempts to get close to New York’s top financial officer Loretta Logan. You and your group are plotting something. Tell us what it is.”

“I can’t,” says Benny, dismissing the allegation. “It’s absurd you think I try to attract a wealthy woman like her. But,” he says, flexing his muscles, “look at these guns. Do you think I would have a chance?”

As Jane and Tony leave the room to go back on the street, they suddenly stop to watch the lobby tv, transfixed by a segment in the national news.

“Tonight’s top story,” says Chester O’Daniels. “Twenty-five arrests were made today inside the offices of Goldman Sachs.” Images of the story flash across the screen. “The offenders pushed their way past security and hit on every GS executive in sight. Unbelievable! Our correspondent in the field, Mark McMann, adds background to a story many are calling, ‘the Plight of America.’”

Standing outside Goldman Sachs offices with his microphone, Mark McMann smiles into the camera.

“I’m on the scene here where the events took place a few minutes ago, interviewing one of the culprits who was just arrested. The young woman refuses to give her name, but she is wearing many designer labels. For our purposes, we’ll call her, ‘Victoria’s Secret.’ Maam, why is your organization breaking into financial institutions?”

“Am I on tv?” the young Latino woman asks, staring into the camera. “How do I look? Do I look good?”

“Over to you, Adolfo,” McMann says to McDaniel’s’ co-anchor.

“This phenomenon is not new,” Adolfo says. “Remember the mo-hos you knew in high school? The ones with their noses all up in the air? Where did they all go?” An arrow flashes across the screen, pointing to the left. “California. They all went to California. But then the population grew, and they overflowed the borders, despite all efforts to hold them back.”

The scene focuses on an interview with former president Donald Trump.

“We will build a border,” Trump says, “and Mexico will pay for it.”

“The groups began expanding,” Adolfo continues. “They trekked all the way to New York in search of new opportunities. However, due to issues with the supply chain and their lack of finances, many money grubbers became homeless. One government informant explains his efforts to save them.

The camera pans to a close up of the informant, who looks suspiciously like Snoop Dog.

“I put my mo-hos in penthouses,” the informant tells viewers. “There’s nothing worse than a mo-ho with nowhere to go.” The informant steps back and the camera pans out, revealing New York’s Trump Towers.

While the Towers’ image flashes across the screen, Jane turns to Tony. “Let’s get back to business,” she says. “We have to get to our training exercise.”

Tony holds up his funnel, tapping it with his left hand. “You’re right,” he replies. “We just can’t imagine what might happen next week.”

The crew with the greatest knowledge of upcoming events lounges on sofas surrounding a coffee table at a location in upstate New York. The room smells deliciously like apples and cinnamon. Juliana Margolese twists the air freshener and slaps it back on the counter before taking her seat in a recliner at the head of the table. She curls her manicured talons around her latte.

“Look,” she instructs her twelve-person crew. “This plan involves a lot of coordination.”

Juliana pulls out a map of Midtown Manhattan, pointing to an address on Park Avenue.

“According to our information, the top floor of this building is where the wealthiest people in our nation plan to meet.” she continues. “Don’t forget. We can build our organization from their profits … incomes, investments, offshore accounts. We have to get to get close to them and use our skills to get that information. It may take a while, but we will manipulate, assimilate and integrate.”

“We plan to access their wallets with our computer technology, a gift from a benefactor.” She holds up a tiny device. “In addition, we are going to insert these low-profile flash drives onto their computers with a sleight of hand.” She opens her left hand, palms up to display four small, square shaped objects.

Juliana then points to the map, sliding her finger along the area to infiltrate. “Park Avenue, East 56th Street, Madison Avenue, East 57th Street. “We must block off these streets before the mo-ho sucking po pos get there,” she says. “Follow the plan we discussed earlier.”

“Now, Adrianna,” she says to a doe-eyed young blonde girl taking selfies. “You are our entertainment. You will sing that Miley Cyrus song in a nude body suit. And no mess ups like last time. We can’t overturn some of these federal indictments.”

“That incident was a misunderstanding,” Adrianna pouts. “I wasn’t going to abduct him. I was just going to borrow him.”

While Juliana conducts her meeting, Jane and Tony march with recruits. Funnels in hand, they fan out in a “v” formation and come back to a straight line. They bop the ends of their funnels as they lift them high in the air, then they salute the flag and the Republic, ready for battle.

The atmosphere is chaotic when the day arrives for the wealthy to hold their big meeting. An ambulance teamed with medics rushes through the crowded streets of Middle Manhattan. Cars break down on all four corners of the block where the meeting is scheduled to commence. Tow trucks bump along to assist the vehicles, further impacting traffic. Drivers roll down their windows and shout at each other.

Mo-ho busters step aside for paramedics to enter the building where the rich have gathered. The medical personnel run inside the building w and strip off their clothes to reveal classy tuxedos worn by wait staff.

The meeting room is tastefully laid out with beautiful tapestries adorning the walls. Richly embossed curtains flow down to the floor, topped by silk swags. The tablecloth and napkins are exquisite linens. The sterling silverware gleams from the chandeliers above.

Servers bring desserts to the conference room table, an elegant Crème Brulé. The lovely Alexandria passes out the sweets with one hand. With her other hand, she begins inserting the flash drives into computers while the handsome Christopher fluffs out napkins, laying them in the laps of the wealthy attendees.

A cocktail waitress in a stylish black tea dress, Alexandria, distributes drinks. “Coffee, beer, wine?” she asks, turning so the computer device in her pocket targets each wallet.

Christopher glances at the empty stage next to the windows.

“Excuse me,” he says, before leaving the room.

In the hallway, he calls Adrianna’s cell phone. “You are late,” he says angrily. “You better not be doing your usual, watching Dr. Phil and crying over the episodes.”

“I’m downstairs,” Adrianna replies. "Besides, just because I like the finer things doesn't mean I can't feel for idiots squabbling on tv."

Christopher looks at his cell phone incredulously.

“Those segments are not sad at all,” he replies.

Outside, a crowd with picket signs gather, protesting, “Riches to the Poor,” “Oppressed and Depressed” and “Where is Oprah? Everyone Deserves a Car, (How About a Nissan Rogue)!”

Tony and Jane survey the scene inside the ambulance. “This is weird,” says Jane. “They rushed here; they should be back by now.”

The two look at each other. “Uh, oh,” Tony says. The two race to the elevator, taking it to the top floor. With funnels drawn, they bust into the meeting room. Attendees look on with shock as the mo-ho busters apprehend the criminals, cuffing their hands behind their backs.

In the elevator, Adrianna squirms away from Jane. “Don’t point that funnel toward me,” she says, smoothing her svelte frame. “I am the perfect size. I just had liposuction.”

Outside, a man in a helicopter flying overhead grabs his radio. “Below we see suspects being led out of the building onto Park Avenue.” he says. We’ll get more coverage from our associates on the ground.”

Television crews break through crowds to get up-to-the minute details.

“I’m here on the scene interviewing Roksana Rusik,” says Mark McMann. “Now, Roksana,” McMann says, holding his microphone up to the young woman. “Can you tell me why most viewers will think you are a Russian spy trying to get information from wealthy men here in America?”

“I know nothing,” Roksana responds, shaking her red tresses. “I am here because I am attracted to men of power and influence. And I like going to gun range with AK-47.”

McMann takes the microphone back and smiles. “Chester, back to you.” he says.

The day is winding down. Tony and Jane stop in to see Skylar O’Connor in her holding cell. It does not smell nice. It is a putrid gray color, and it only has a bed and a toilet.

“You’ll be out in no time,” Jane tells her. “That’s the way these things always work.”

“For sure,” Tony agrees.

“I don’t have much to do with my time, anyway,” Skylar laments, “We’re between election years. I don’t even know who I have an alleged affair with yet.”

After a few days of an intense media blitz surrounding the bust, Ralph Lauren’s CEO makes a company announcement to stockholders.

“Recent events have created wonderful marketing opportunities for us. Our designers have originated a brilliant new clothing line.” He brings up photos on the screen behind him, showing high quality coats, jackets and shirts with a signature phrase, ‘Mo-Ho Wear.’ Everyone will want the notoriety and status that comes with wearing this apparel.” he says. The stockholders applaud.

Versace stylists cash in on the new developments as well. At the annual Spring-Summer Fashion Show, top models Tammy Rhea and Matthew Johan walk the runway in limited edition sneakers. The slogan, ‘Mo-Hos on the Go!’ is printed on the shoe’s tongue below the company’s iconic label.

The new shipments are bound to start trickling in. Juliana gathers her crew around the familiar coffee table.

“Our sources tell us that due to backlogs in other harbors, at mid-month we should look be looking for these products in the South Street Seaport.” Juliana says. “We have intel about the ship; what it looks like, where we can locate it. We will bring our party to the mates on board and be the first to experience these avant garde selections.” The criminals cheer, giving each other fist bumps and high fives.

Alexandria, holding her latte close to her body, swirls a finger in the liquid. “I miss the old fashions,” she admits.

Christopher looks at her with disgust. “Oh, you are so last year,” he says indignantly. “Give me that Gucci handbag.” He snatches the bag.

“No,” shouts Alexandria, trying to tug the bag out of Christopher’s grip. “It belongs in my collection of past fashions.”

“You have too many outdated items,” says Christopher, releasing his grip. “We’re going to see you on an episode of Hoarders.”

“Why would someone like you even want a Gucci bag, regardless of whether it’s new or old?” Alexandria retorts.

“Because I am a confident man,” Christopher replies, standing and running his hands downward over his sleek frame. “I am comfortable with my masculinity and fashion sense. I can wear a Gucci handbag with a Tom Ford suit. It’s obvious I choose only the best.”

Adrianna, taking in the spectacle, turns to Alexandria, looking forlorn. “I’d really like to have that Gucci bag,” she says.

“Why should I give this bag to you?” Alexandria asks.

“Because,” Adrianna says, “I’m not a regular mo-ho. I’m a Gucci Hootchie.” Then she smiles and winks.

At a Starbucks in Tribeca Manhattan, Roksana Rusik makes a cup of coffee for a customer. “The young man takes a sip.

“Wow! This Cappuccino, what’s in it?” he gushes. “It tastes awesome!” Roksana takes a swig from the bottle of Nemiroff Vodka below the counter. As the line for coffee grows longer, patrons begin pushing each other to get their brew. Customers sipping from their cups talk excitedly to each other. Three young women hold their cups in the air, clinking them together. “This coffee is wonderful!” they exclaim.

A group of five businessmen in suits look astonished as they drink the java. “This must be a new recipe,” says one of the men. “I don’t recall having this before.”

Two men in leather jackets and golf caps peek out from behind an office door, then pull it shut. Inside the room, they have tied up the shop’s owner. He tries to speak, but they have gagged him.

“Look,” the men tell the owner in their Russian accents. “We will let you go if you agree to terms. One, you let us operate your store as part of our business plan to take over Starbucks nationwide. Two, you let us store our high-quality merchandise in your stockrooms. And three, you must allow us to change the coffee menu to generate larger profits for us, and we will have coffee here every day. Cause C'mon, a day without coffee?” The owner shakes his head in agreement.

As time goes on, the mo-hos continue stealing Starbucks coffee shops to warehouse designer apparel while also infiltrating shipments of high-end fashions. Sadly, due to the ever-tightening economy and the disparities in wealth distribution, we have not seen the last of these offenders.

Editor’s Note: The preceding events cannot be classified as fiction since this is a true story that actually occurs in the future. Some mo-hos preferred to remain anonymous. They will sue me, but I will win on a technicality. Also, the names of a few mo-hos have been omitted because I don’t know who they are. I’m lucky I kept track of the ones I listed here. They all look the same to me.