Time's Up

by Janey Mack

  “Maisie—” His voice was tired and loaded with warning.

  “Did you know bus drivers make $28.64 an hour? Which is nothing compared to how much Nawisko pulled down as an officer of the Local #56.”

  Flynn came over and hiked a hip onto the desk. He ran a hand over his eyes and sighed. “Why are you a meter maid?”

  I cleared my throat and tried not to wince. “To prove I don’t have a ‘pathological need to be liked’ and that I’m not ‘too thin-skinned to deal with a hostile public’ so I can reapply for reinstatement to the Academy.”

  “So, to combat the psych review you took the most vile job you could find?”

  “Yeah.”

  His lips curled in a rueful smile. “That just might work.” He picked up my research and flipped through it. “This is good, Snap. Real good.” He closed the folder and tapped it against his palm. “Been at it long?”

  “Couple hours.”

  “You could do this professionally.”

  “I’m no desk monkey.”

  “Aren’t you?” He reached over and clicked the mouse. The monitor woke up with Integral Search’s series of mini-windows showing Thorne Clark’s social networking for the past thirty days. He scrolled through some of Clark’s Facebook musings and said absently, “Your boots are in the mudroom.”

  “Thanks.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you got a raw deal.”

  Me too. A tear bubble expanded in my throat.

  “How’d you like to be an unofficial consultant?” Flynn held up the folder. “You pull and print everything and anything. I can’t shake the feeling these vics are connected.”

  He wasn’t throwing me a bone—this was an entire skeleton. “Really?”

  “In return, I’ll show you the case jackets, walk through how I’m working them, and maybe write a letter for your reinstatement file.”

  I jumped up and hugged him. “You’re the best brother ever!”

  “Just make sure you say that in front of the rest of them.”

  Chapter 11

  The logical detachment I had when I found the murdered Mr. Clark didn’t make it all the way to my subconscious. I shot up in bed seeing blood and bullet holes at 4 a.m. With no hope of going back to sleep, I went to Joe’s to clear my head.

  I grabbed a speed rope, warming up with side swings and singles. Today was going to be a great day. My last training day with Leticia. And in fifteen hours and twenty-five minutes I was going out. With Hank.

  My life rocks!

  I switched to double-unders, thinking about how I’d talk the scene with Hank. Maybe he’d help me surprise Flynn even more. Finishing with crisscrosses, I chanted in time as the rope snapped on the gym floor.

  “Game on. Game on. Game on . . .”

  Friday was bagel breakfast day for Leticia. I sat in the Interceptor watching her eat while getting lectured.

  “I punched your insubordinate ass’s time card out yesterday and I don’t do that shit for nobody.” She wiped her mouth on a Bruegger’s napkin. “That was a one-timer.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Still. You pretty frosty, for a rook.” She flipped on the radio, dialed in AM 560, and swallowed the last bite of her second everything-bagel with lox and cream cheese. “I love me some Prager on a Friday. Especially that goddamn Happiness Hour.”

  She shot me a sideways look. “You know who I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I said. “Dennis Prager. Nice voice. Logical.”

  “And Jewish.”

  “Are you?” I asked, “Jewish, I mean?”

  “No.” She looked at me like I was crazy. “But I sure do appreciate them on a Friday.”

  Ooo-kay. I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked out the window. “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise,” she said happily, and cranked the radio even louder. We turned onto a residential street, quiet except for the corner where it looked like a drunken car dealer had opened shop. Cars were parked helter-skelter—on the sidewalks, hanging out of driveways, double- and triple-parked, blocking hydrants. No residential stickers were the least of it.

  “Oh yeah, baby.” Leticia gave a high-pitched girlish giggle. “I hope you’re ready to boot, McGrane, ’cause we’re carrying eight in the caboose and I’m sure as hell not bringing ’em back.”

  Leticia parked the cart, tossed me the trunk keys, and got out. Fingers flashing on the AutoCITE before I’d unbuckled my seat belt.

  “Boot.” She pointed at a ’79 Monte Carlo, and continued down the sidewalk ticketing with a speed and quickness that was truly a sight to behold. “Boot here,” she said and slid an orange violation beneath the windshield wiper of an Isuzu Rodeo.

  I had hit my stride by the fourth boot, barely registering annoyance at unlocking the trunk, pulling the boot, locking the trunk and lugging the boot down the block. Leticia’s enthusiasm was as contagious as a preschooler with the flu.

  “Heavy hitter, $750 in unpaids.” Leticia tipped her head at a maroon Oldsmobile.

  I lugged the boot down the curb, walking up into a yard to boot the car on the sidewalk.

  Lazy idiots. Parking on a city sidewalk instead of walking a half block.

  “Stop right there, you motherfucking meter bitch!” shrieked a black man, late thirties, five-eleven, two-forty, run-walking toward Leticia.

  She marched out to meet him in the street. “Stay on the boot, McGrane.”

  Hank’s Law Number Nine: Confidence is not competence.

  I dropped the boot on the ground and stood up, trunk keys laced through my fingers.

  Leticia got right up in his face, or more accurately, chest. “You got a problem, sir?”

  “Yeah. You, woman!”

  “Is that right? Well, why don’t you tell me all about it, Marcus. You Ahmad-Rashad-Muhammad-Ali-wannabe.”

  “You mock me? Mock Allah?” The man raised his fist. “Infidel bitch.”

  Leticia gave an incendiary head bob. “Go ahead. If you think you’re man enough.”

  I hit the radio on my vest. “Dispatch, this is car one-three-one-seven-two.”

  Two men burst out of the apartment building and down the steps. Which, I realized, was not an apartment building. According to the small handwritten cardboard sign Scotch-taped to the cracked window, it was the Brothers of Allah Prayer Center.

  A dozen more men came out of the building. A few in robes, most in jeans and various designer logo’d T-shirts. Cursing and gesturing, they moved toward Leticia and Marcus.

  Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.

  “Dispatch?” I said again. “This is car one-three-one—”

  My radio squawked. “Maisie,” Obi said, “—on—way—”

  “Say again, Dispatch.” I started toward Leticia.

  Leticia caught my movement out of the corner of her eye. “Affix the damn boot, McGrane,” she called over her shoulder.

  “The cops,” Obi said, amid the static, “there soon.”

  The first two men grabbed Marcus and dragged him—still yelling at Leticia—back to the building. The rest of the crowd, arguing and swearing, collected around Leticia. She pushed her way through the mob and sashayed past me like Naomi on the catwalk, punching license numbers on her AutoCITE, ticketing.

  I squatted down and clamped on the hub plate.

  A litter of boys ranging in age from six to twelve followed her, pulling tickets off the cars, ripping them to shreds, spitting on them. Leticia ignored them and placed another ticket.

  The men were following at a distance, complaining. With an extreme gesture, she pointed a fuchsia, blinged-out nail at a silver Honda Civic. “Boot it.”

  No worries, then. Who cares about a couple dozen rabid inner city guys screaming religious persecution?

  I followed Leticia’s order. Went back to the cart, unlocked the trunk, pulled another boot, locked the trunk, and jogged after her.

  Three of the men broke off from the mob following Leticia and came toward me,
threatening but keeping their distance.

  I ignored them and dropped the boot at the rear wheel of the Civic. Sweat dripped off my forehead, staining the sidewalk. I fumbled with the boot, getting nervy watching Leticia while also trying to watch my back.

  Marcus—swearing like a guy from a Tarantino movie—got away from the men restraining him and charged toward Leticia.

  Leticia jammed a ticket on the windshield of a Chrysler LeBaron, and spun back to face Marcus, arms extended, chest thrust out, like one of the girls on The Price Is Right, loving it. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t believe I heard that last racist remark.”

  “I said,” Marcus shouted, “get that skinny-ass cracker away from these cars.”

  “What do you think, McGrane?” Leticia called out to me. “You wanna knock off early, maybe go get us a couple of crispy bacon sandwiches and beers and wait for these sorry-ass brothers to learn how to read and quit parking on the sidewalk?”

  I finished tightening the hubcap plate and held two fingers against my thigh. Two boots left.

  Leticia nodded.

  I got to my feet and turned to retrieve another boot. Three men blocked my way, faces bent with contempt. I widened my stance, transferred my weight to the balls of my feet, keys in one hand, lug wrench in the other.

  Insanity.

  I could hear Hank’s voice in my head. “The only standard of a fighter is his fight. Not just the fights he picks, but the fights that pick him.”

  With my hand holding the lug wrench, I hit the radio on my vest. “Dispatch, boot removal crew and tow—”

  The smallest of the three ripped the radio from my fingers, tearing my vest. He threw it on the ground.

  A lifetime of training kicked in. I dropped the lug wrench, drove my forearm into his throat, and stomped on the instep of his foot. He fell forward and I grabbed his arm, jerking it up hard behind his back, forcing him to kiss the hood of the Civic as I kicked his legs apart.

  “Oh, you done it now!” Leticia shouted in jubilation. “You crazy sons of . . . Assaulting a PEA is a felony!”

  “This is fucking ethnic profiling,” Marcus said. “Allah will stomp your fat ass, Leticia.”

  Leticia laughed. “Ain’t you just a walking TV commercial to convert?”

  I had my assailant pinned to the hood and two surprised and pissed-off guys behind me. Cripes. Now what, Lizard Brain?

  The blurp of a police siren sounded.

  Thank God.

  “Is there a problem here, Miss McGrane?”

  Of all the losers to walk into my gin joint . . .

  “Last time I checked,” Tommy Narkinney said in my ear, “meter maids don’t have the authority to manhandle and apprehend private citizens.”

  He slapped his hand on the hood of the Civic next to the man’s head I had pinned. “Especially Academy washouts. Let him up.”

  I did.

  My assailant retreated to the safety of his two pals.

  Narkinney glanced over at his partner, a chunky forty-something white male in the thick of it with Leticia, Marcus, and a crowd of angry men, and snorted. “Jesus, can’t you do anything without putting on a show?”

  I pointed at the man. “He assaulted me. Tore my radio off and broke it.”

  “Yeah?” Tommy laced his fingers together and flexed. “’Cause from where I sit, it looks like you’re the one doing the assaulting.”

  Jerk. “I’m filing, Nark. There ought to be plenty of paperwork for a Class D.”

  “Not today, you’re not,” Narkinney said.

  Emboldened, my assailant pointed at me. “That—that woman did not even ask us to move our cars!”

  Narkinney fake-coughed over his chuckle.

  “It is Friday prayer. A holy time. They do this to us because we are Muslim!”

  “No member of any religion is immune to the traffic laws of Chicago,” I said. “You need more parking, file for a permit.”

  “Hey, McGrane,” Leticia shouted at me, grinning. “The boys in blue are gonna stay here while we finish. Get me a boot.”

  I pointed at my broken radio on the sidewalk. One of the three men had crushed it. “And who’s gonna pay for that?” I said to Narkinney.

  “It’s not like you can’t afford it.” He turned to the men. “Other side of the street or in the building. Now.”

  They scuttled away.

  “You better get back to work.” Narkinney grinned. “Peterson and I ain’t gonna hang around all day.”

  I booted two more cars. A Kia and a Chevy. Getting the business from Tommy Narkinney the entire time, while Leticia flirted shamelessly with Peterson as she ticketed, dawdling like a fat man at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  The boot removal crew and tow trucks showed up. Finally.

  I walked back to the cart with Leticia. “Now this is what I call a damn fine Friday,” she said.

  The squad car pulled up as we were getting back in the cart. Narkinney hung out the passenger window. “Call me anytime you need your meter filled, McGrane.” Laughing, they drove away.

  Leticia started the cart and we drove off. An unholy excitement still sparked in her eyes. “I used to date that broke-ass son of a whore until he impregnated my sister. My baby sister.”

  “And so you do this?”

  “Every third Friday the good Lord gives me.” She grinned. “Makes life worth living. Asshole Marcus don’t pay Sharelle a dime of child support. So a’course she and Shanice are living with me.”

  Putting us at risk over a grudge. Jaysus.

  “Leticia, that was a powder keg back there.”

  “Bullshit. Do you know Marcus the Molester only converted just so’s he could have his new baby mama—she only fifteen—wrapped up like a wooly burrito, cooking and cleaning and signing her checks over and not having any say in her life. Makes me sick.”

  “That may be, but that’s not the point.”

  Leticia pulled over, put the cart in Park, and angled the rearview mirror. “The hell it ain’t.” She carefully unpinned her PEA visor and patted a tissue between the cornrows. “He’s working on another one now. Poor brainwashed bitches popping out welfare babies, slaving away for his scrub ass. He don’t need four wives. He need a job.”

  “What if they file a conduct complaint?”

  “I have an exemplary record with the public.” Leticia reattached her visor. “And you can bet your ass Dhu West don’t want any more attention around the fact that they’re an Arab company in an Arab country running Chicago’s Traffic Bureau.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Damn, girl, don’t you watch the news? Our mayor and the Mob humped that deal to get him in office. Selling our city off piece by piece for who knows how much campaign money.” She shook her head. “A cryin’ shame.”

  “I’m feeling a little light-headed,” I said. “Can we go get something to eat?”

  “I wasn’t kidding about that bacon sandwich.” Leticia grinned. “It’s a tasty treat.”

  “My radio’s busted.”

  “Leave a report in my box. I gotta say, McGrane, you ain’t that bad for a trainee. In fact, I’m gonna set you up proper—just like the prize baby white elephant you are.”

  “Thanks.”

  I think.

  Chapter 12

  I never dated much. Oddly enough, guys weren’t all that interested in going out with me once they realized I lived in a house full of guard dogs armed with badges and law degrees. Friday night, I went downstairs dressed to the nines with a bellyful of butterflies. Mom and the twins were at the far end of the bar arguing over their latest defendant, an obscenely wealthy and connected child molester. Cash lay on the sectional in the great room, texting in front of the Angels playing the Cubs.

  Mom gave me a once-over. “You look terrific.” The twins grunted in agreement, not looking up.

  7:50 p.m. I lounged against the arm of the couch and tried to watch TV. The Angels are my favorite team, but I couldn’t follow the game at all. I got up and fetched my ma
il from the mudroom and brought it into the kitchen. National Review, Vogue Paris, two offers for credit cards, a dental cleaning reminder postcard, and a single white envelope hand-addressed with the crimson Loyola law school crest in the return address corner.

  Terrific.

  “What’s this, Mom?” I held up the letter.

  “I’ve secured a place for you at Loyola,” she said in a happy, easy tone. The one that always came before the hammer. “I want you to quit Traffic Enforcement. Use the summer to recharge. Refocus.”

  Declan and Daicen exchanged a look, scooted back their stools, and fled the room.

  Gee, thanks for having my back, guys.

  Hank’s Law Number Seventeen: Deescalate. The true fight is won without fighting.

  “Mom, I’m just about to go on a date with the guy I’ve been crushing on for a year and a half. Could we please talk about this later?”

  “Absolutely. You’re in at Loyola and that’s all that matters.”

  My lizard brain strangled the calming breath in my throat and took a swipe at Mom from under the rock. “You want me to be a lawyer? Really? You’re getting a child molester off and you’re sick about it.”

  She stood up and smiled grimly. “I’m more than sick about the Schumer case. But there are many different kinds of law to practice.” She marched into the kitchen and began to rifle through the freezer. “But if you think for one minute I’m going to let my college-educated daughter squander her future writing parking tickets for minimum wage, you’ve got another think coming.” She slammed a box of salmon filets on the counter and whirled on me. “Where are the molten lava cakes that Thierry made for my Sunday luncheon group?”

  Instantly, the tension left my neck and back. This was not about me. The case was really getting to her. “He hid them in the box marked ‘sea bass.’”

  “Typical,” she muttered.

  Living to fight another day, I left my mail on the counter and flopped down next to Cash.

  8:02.

  Hank was never late.

  Ever.

  Cash wiggled his empty beer bottle at me. “Were you gonna get a beer, Snap?”

  Eight weeks of serving Cash’s every whim was starting to feel more like eighty years. “You bet.” I popped up and went to the wet bar. “Want anything, Mom?”