They set up around the corner where you can’t see them until it’s too late, the traffic too heavy and no place to turn off. It is my way home, a short block past the hospital then right to climb the escarpment that bisects this city. Around I come and there’s the orange cone markers and cruisers, lights flashing, patrolmen, arms arcing, cars and trucks fed left into the lane where they do their business. It’s as if I’m their first catch, crazy I know but there’s that moment you flash to everything you’ve ever done wrong: the smuggled bottle at the back of the liquor cabinet, the unpaid fines, a knock-down at The Lion you can’t remember how it ended. All the shit that makes you think maybe you’ve finally crossed the line, fucked up enough that it’s become worth their while to set this little shindig in your honour.
I look across the front bench to Meg. She says nothing, stares straight out the front glass but I know what’s whirling under those blond curls, she’s thinking she offered to drive home after supper, offered more than once and maybe I should have listened but if you drink regular you don’t ever notice a difference. If you’ve got some size, what effect could one bottle of wine spread over a long meal have on your blood-alcohol? Hell, she had half a glass herself. But Meg is a rock. She says nothing. She’s said maybe six syllables since the salad.
What the fuck are these ass-holes doing out here anyway? Christmas booze-up is done. I’m stopped, a rookie on the curb cranking his fist because he wants to talk, so I press the little button to drop the driver’s side window. "Good evening," he says, "we’re just doing a seat-belt check and I see you’re buckled up and your passenger too very good pull up to those gentlemen ahead they’re from the Cats they’ve got a coupon fifty per cent off tickets for the next game to thank you for you’re trouble." The pavement is wet and hisses the way that makes you think you’re someplace things could happen.
"I can’t believe it."
"It’s true. Fifty per cent off. Just pull up to those two guys they’re players probably give you an autograph."
"City sets all this up to sell football tickets."
"We’re doing seat-belt checks, sir. The coupon is to thank you for the inconvenience. You don’t have to take one. Pull ahead now."
"Sure, you’d have run this seat-belt thingie even if the Cats didn’t need help to build attendance. That was just a coincidence. Great the way gears mesh in the universe, eh?"
"Sir, pull ahead now."
"Are you proud to wear that uniform, son? Is this why you took the test?"
He looks behind at the gathering traffic. "One last time. Pull ahead. Now."
"There a problem here?" I recognize the voice. The mirror on my door fills with blue serge and silver metal. I’d known that buckle when it made a three point connection on a sam-brown and wasn’t the first part of Marion Sherk to enter the room.
"This what you do now, Marion? Shill tickets for the fucking football club? Christ, I can’t believe you’re even still on the job. What’s next month’s special? Pots and pans?"
"Get outa here Swan. I shoulda waved you through when I seen ya in the lane."
"We were up for a lot of things, Sherk, you and me, but nothing like this cheese. We never got so low we pulled people over to make them buy shit."
"It’s called community-based policing. Not like when you were on the force. I got a computer in the cruiser and everything. I’d show ya, but we’re kinda pressed. Do us a favour and fuck-off, huh?
"Suppose I don’t? Say I sit here and put a cork in this scam?"
"Suppose I grab you for interfering with an officer?"
"Oh, that’d look good. I still have some friends down at The Spec would like to report that story," I say.
Sherk crouches to my window. "You used up any friends you ever had long ago." He looks across to Meg. "Pardon miss? You say something? Did I just hear you offer to suck this citizen’s purple potato for fifty bucks? That’s an offer ain’t legal, you know. You should take your johns someplace private, talkin’ that way. Pretty little thing like you, tell me that ain’t what you just said."
Meg turns her gaze from the windshield for the first time since we left the restaurant, and gives Sherk a shine from the finest set of pearlies he’s seen outside a glass.
"Not tonight I didn’t, officer," she says. Damn I love this woman. Just the tip of her pink tongue runs the back of her lower, reddened lip. "Fifty dollars," she laughs, "Really!"
Meg does me proud, but it was wrong for Sherk to drag her into it. I throw a low shot: "This what you were doing when the scream came through for Paul Engle?" They’d had Engle on a B&E while neighbouring forces circulated a description that linked him to a series of ugly rapes. Someone should have checked the computer files before he was released. Engle didn’t bother to come back for his bond deposit. Two more women paid for that flub.
Sherk is red, sweat popping out his forehead. I should stop, but I’m rolling. Sherk had blown his marriage off, the misses taking custody, and a big monthly cheque for the kids and the pain. Sherk got a shitty bachelorette out by the freeway. Left him whining coffee change from a string of partners. So I say: "Where were you when Engle was let out? Selling magazine subscriptions to put the kids through school?" This turns him a shade of purple you wouldn’t think flesh could be. He belches thirty-three years of unfiltered Export A into my face.
His turd thick fingers grab my near ear. "You- I’d drag your fat ass out through this window if I thought you’d fit. Shit, I oughta anyways," and he starts to pull.
I throw my fist up and back, knock his arm into the door-post. Sherk steps away clutching the injured forearm to his gut with the free hand. He stares from four feet back. The eyes are doorways to the soul, but Sherk’s brows shade two uninviting entries. He looks about to drool. The rookie starts a move, but the veteran waves him back. When Sherk comes, he lifts the heel of his right boot and caves the panel of my door. He steps back again, gathers himself, then does the same on the rear door, with a grunt. "Hunh." He goes around and does both tail lights, and once on the trunk lid for luck. "Hunh-Hunh-Hunh."
The other cops stop waving traffic. People climb out their cars to get a better look as Sherk works his way down the passenger side of my tired chevy. "Hunh-Hunh - Hunh - Hunh," more time passing between each grunt. Around the front he’s breathing hard, then cranks up to take out the front grill like he’s going for a fifty-yard field goal.
His foot gets stuck. Sherk twists and pulls, suddenly wails like he might have torn something. He hops there for a time, bellowing, one foot stuck in my car. Caught, fucking the dog. Eventually three officers come over. Two hold him up while another gently works the angle trying to get Sherk’s foot free.
Someone calls an ambulance, though we’re hard beside the hospital emergency door. There’s some screwing around with gauze, pliers, saws. Meg and I are ring-side through the front windscreen. I twist on the high beams for the sharp, hard light. When they have Sherk sitting on the walk, back up a concrete lamp post and still thundering like a load of steel pipe rolled down the escarpment, one of the blues comes to my window. He surveys the watching crowd, inhales deep and leans in. "Leave now," he whispers. "Make me take you in, I promise a long, slow ride to the station."
I ease the chevy forward. The football players are gone. They haven’t come all the way from Pennsylvania or Ohio or wherever, just to sell tickets on the fucking sidewalk.
