by Janey Mack
“Benny’s Chop House. Friday night. We’ll hit the Berkshire Room and maybe the Violet Hour after.”
Expensive, trendy places. Not a casual, get-to-know-you kind of date. Although I doubted he ever went on more than a couple dates with the same girl. Or needed to.
“Lee—”
“Come on. It’s just dinner. It’s not like I’m asking you to move in or anything.” I could hear the smile in his voice, and for some reason it made me smile back.
“I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said.
I let my head loll back and banged it gently on the car roof.
“Maisie?”
There was no way anything good was going to come from going out with Lee Sharpe. “Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
Chapter 15
Poaching was where the action was. First thing, we hit the end of Sanchez’s route—a full city block of doctor’s offices next to an always full, fifty-dollar-a-day ramp and two blocks of snooty brownstones with nary an all-day meter box to be seen.
But even after scoring three dozen tickets, we’d be hard-pressed to hit quota. Niecy was worse than deadweight with a bladder the size of a peeled grape. The morning passed pilfering between pit stops, and me wondering how I could possibly talk her into wearing Depends for the rest of the year.
“The senior PEA always chooses where to go for lunch,” was the single thing she said, besides telling me her operator number.
At eleven we putt-putted a dozen blocks away from our route to Butch’s Beer Garden, a skuzzy little joint where no one gave a flying squirrel about the illegality of secondhand smoke.
“Butch,” Niecy called out as we walked in.
“Niecy, baby, where you been?” The bartender set a bag of Lay’s plain potato chips on the bar and poured out a Diet Coke.
“Rehab.” Niecy gave a squawk of laughter, took the chips and soda, and headed with shaky but determined strides to the back of the bar. I trailed behind like a stray dog.
She planted herself on a red vinyl stool at the rear counter and slapped down two ten-dollar bills. A dumpy waitress counted out twenty pull-tabs and swiped the money off the counter.
One wall of Butch’s back room was haphazardly stacked with ancient TVs all set to off track betting. Three obese guys, wearing the ugliest White Sox crap I’d ever seen, sat chugging beer and bitching about disability restrictions, ripped tickets lying in a pile in front of them.
Niecy grunted, struggling to get her fingers to close on the little paper tab of the gambling ticket. Too painful to watch, on several levels, I wandered back to the front of the bar, ordered a tonic water and lime, and ate my protein bar.
We’d written seventy-three tickets in five hours. I knew we were low, just not how low. I was in desperate need of information. And I knew just where to get it.
Out came the iPhone. Hello eBay.
Ten minutes of surfing and I found it. The perfect bribe. The offer Obi could not refuse.
Thirty-five cents’ worth of green plastic.
An original Kenner “Greedo” action figure, N.I.P. (new in package) with a Buy It Now price of one hundred and five dollars.
A bargain at twice the price.
I swiped through the PayPal screens. Did I want to pay an additional twenty bucks for overnight delivery?
Hell, yes.
Niecy was in a jovial mood the rest of the afternoon. Coming out five dollars ahead at Butch’s made for a banner afternoon. Back in the cart, she rolled down her window and, after misfiring the lighter seven or eight times, lit a cigarette.
She exhaled in my direction. “What’s that crap on your boots, McGrane?”
I looked down at the thin slivers of navy blue hockey-stick tape I’d adhered to my boots. “Tape.”
“I can see that,” she carped. “I got the Parkinson’s. I ain’t blind.”
Perhaps “jovial” had been a little overreaching.
“I put it on,” I said. “Inch marks. The quickest way to measure distances from curb, planting strips, and two-inch maximum hang-over into yellow zone lines.”
“Not bad, kid.” Niecy gave a jerky nod of approval.
I wrote up another fifty-seven tickets. Not a good day, not nearly enough to keep us in the berries, but I was praying I’d hit the lower side of average at least.
Niecey looked at her Timex. “Miller time.”
I turned the Interceptor around and drove back to the motor pool.
“Drop me at the gatehouse,” Niecy said. I pulled the cart through the gate and stopped at the back of the gatehouse. Chen, the gate guy, was already out of his Plexiglas hut and had Niecy by the arm.
I parked the Interceptor in space 13248. I’d have liked to leave the doors open and air the thing out, but that was against regulations.
C’est la vie.
I took the AutoCITE ticketing guns inside, plugged them in to the computer, and dumped the operator data. Afterward, I loaded the guns into the chargers and went to punch out.
Two women gabbing about baby daddies blocked the time clock. I snapped my time card across the back of my hand over and over. The big one gave me a dirty look over her shoulder and went back to talking. Not moving an inch.
It took a hideous amount of self-restraint not to shove past them.
Forty seconds later, the minute hand clacked on the time clock and they punched out. I took my turn and ran-walked for the door.
I stank of smoke. The PowerBar I’d eaten for lunch sat in my belly like a lump of lead. I was not cut out for breaking the law—any law. Engaging in criminal activity was proving to be an overwhelming amount of work for little reward. Hank or not, I was going to Joe’s. I needed to work out or my head was going to explode.
My fingers grabbed the door handle.
“Not so fast, McGrane,” Leticia Jackson said.
You gotta be kidding me. I turned and smiled at her.
“Well?”
“One hundred forty-eight. No boots.”
“That’s it?” Her face crinkled in disapproval. She adjusted the waistband of her pants. “No fish today?”
“Plenty that got away. It’s too bad I couldn’t just drop her off at Butch’s.”
“Niecy does love her some pull-tabs.” Leticia laughed and waved a hand at me. “I told you I’d take care of you. Just make sure you leave Niecy ahead of you in total. Dhu West’ll let you slide a month or three easy with you being new and all.” She pointed a finger at me. “You got a cell phone?”
“Yes.”
She snapped her fingers. I got it out and handed it to her.
“This be my personal number, so don’t go handing it out to everyone like it’s Halloween candy.”
“No, ma’am.”
She entered her number into the phone. “Your only job is making sure Niecy’s square. Day or night, I don’t give a goddamn what time, you call me if you’re not coming in. You think you’re getting the stomach flu? You call me at three a.m. before you start heaving up that cardboard crap you think is food. You dig?”
“I dig.”
Two things were waiting for me on my bed the following day. A FedEx box and a navy blue folder. I opened the folder. Inside was the ME’s preliminary report. The final autopsy report would follow in six weeks. And just in case the detectives couldn’t remember, the warning “The findings of the scene investigation are preliminary and no final conclusions should be drawn from them” was stamped across every page.
I flipped through multiple photos of Thorne Clark’s entry wounds, estimated line drawings of the bullets’ angles of entry, and approximate gun distance from the body when fired—more than two feet, less than ten—based on the wounds’ abrasion collars. I skimmed through organ and tissue damage. Four typewritten pages to confirm that yes, the vic had taken two to the chest and it had killed him.
Approximate time of death was between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. A few pages of scant victim background—driver’s license, address, credit report. A couple more pages of the crime scen
e photos and drawings and then the prelim ballistics report. The bullets were Buffalo Bore hardcast wadcutters. Shot from a .38 revolver.
Oh yeah.
Flynn knocked on my open door. “You were right. Wads in a revolver. If it was a hitter, he might’ve used a snubbie. Maybe an S&W K-Frame.”
“Hi to you, too.” I squinted at my brother. “What’s the matter?”
He sank into one of my armchairs and put his feet on the coffee table. “The BOC was sniffing around today.”
“What’d they have to say about the chicken er . . . waste?”
“I must’ve forgot to put that in the case file,” he said innocently. “Coles’s office hasn’t made a peep, either.”
“Fifty gallons of toxic chicken guano.” My nose wrinkled at the enormity of the sheer awfulness. “You can’t file an insurance claim without a police report.”
“Funny, that,” Flynn said.
New-in-package Greedo in hand, I went to see Obi. At 5:30 Thursday morning, he was where he always was, control central. I hiked my hip up onto the counter. “I seek your help, Obi-Wan.”
He jerked upright, a manga comic of mostly naked women dropped out of his route binder onto the floor. I hopped off, picked it up, and held it out.
A dark red blush climbed his throat. He snatched it from me and secreted it away in one of his wheelchair pouches. “Er, what’s up, Maisie?”
“I seek what every young Jedi searches for. Guidance.”
Obi looked furtively around, his smeary glasses sliding down his nose, and whispered, “Did you know the tallest man in the world is on average sixty-eight inches taller than the shortest? Imagine if the guy was a foot taller.”
Eighty short? Holy cat. Leticia wouldn’t be able to save our butts. No one could.
“Obi, I’m . . . I didn’t know . . .” I sniffed and let out a shuddering breath.
Eighty tickets short of average and the idea of washing out as a meter maid—it wouldn’t be too hard to start crying for real.
Obi spun his wheelchair around and pointed his elbow toward the door. “You look like you could use a little fresh air.”
Outside, I sat down on a cement parking stop. Obi wheeled up close to me. He was wearing red leather driving gloves. The fingerless kind with venting holes over the knuckles.
“Cool mitts,” I said.
“Yeah.” His lips parted in a goofy bucktoothed grin. “I really like you, Maisie.”
“I like you, too, Obi,” I said carefully. “And I need this job.”
He wheeled nervously back and forth, staring across the parking lot.
I moved into his line of sight. “Niecy does, too.”
“Yub, yub. Look, there’s a couple things I know that might help.”
“Like what?”
“Like all tickets are not equal. On the spreadsheet, a boot is equivalent to two dozen meter tickets. Yellow zones are worth three. Parking in block, auxiliary lane, planting strip, are worth four. Water meter blocking and reserve zone are worth five. There’s a bunch more, but mostly, anything on the meter box is only worth one ticket. Even triple tickets on overtime parking meters are worth only the three written.”
“So with that hit of Leticia’s at the Brothers of Allah . . .”
“Yeah.” Obi nodded. “For the month.”
“Thanks, Obi. That clears up a lot.” I took out the tissue-wrapped Greedo and handed it to him.
“Ohhh!” he breathed, his fingers trembling as he reverently traced the plastic-covered action figure. “I can’t. Maisie, this is too much. It’s so special, I—”
“You deserve it.” He’ll be in my debt forever.
I gave him a short salute and turned to go.
“Maisie, wait! There’s one more thing. . . .”
Obi’s “other thing” was an AutoCITE hack, from that day forward only to be known as Greedo’s Code. By pressing the eight, three, shift, and reset keys at the same time, I was able to bypass the AutoCITE’s system and illegally prefill five tickets. I only had to hit the select key, type the number, and voilà, the prewritten ticket loaded and printed with the current time.
We loaded our guns at the meter banks, drove around looking for yellow paint violations, and returned at the time Niecy noted on the Post-it on the dashboard. Technically, I never gave a ticket that wasn’t earned. But I felt greasy and dirty and not like a good person anymore.
We circled the block on Donna Brown’s route like a couple of starved sharks. Two large apartment buildings faced each other. One a six-story, the other a four. And only one had a private garage.
We’d hit quota by midafternoon.
Niecy took the north side’s four meter boxes, picking up two cars hanging over into yellow zones.
I took the south side. As I approached the first meter box, a dark, flapping cloud fell past my head. I ducked behind one of the fenced-in elm trees on the sidewalk.
A pile of clothes. Some clean, some not so clean. Ugh.
Next came the shoes. One at a time.
I peered out from beneath the tree. A skinny woman in a hot pink satin bra leaned out the window, holding a Nike in optimum pitching position.
A grubby, shirtless guy in sweatpants and bare feet rushed out of the building. “Jenna!” he screamed. “You bitch! Don’t you dare!”
“Bite me!” Jenna threw the Nike.
Screaming Guy tried to catch it. The shoe bounced off his shoulder. “Goddamn it! It’s my goddamn apartment! You get the hell out!”
“Make me, you cheating piece of shit!” An armful of CDs and DVDs were next, clattering and scattering as they hit the cement. Screaming Guy scuttled back and forth across the sidewalk, trying to gather his junk while avoiding projectiles from above.
I hit my radio when Jenna hefted a heavy, ancient Diehl table fan up onto the sill. “Dispatch! This is Car 13248. Dispatch!”
She shoved it out. It hit the cement with a loud, metallic thud.
“Obi, here,” came the voice from my radio. “What’s up, Maisie?”
“We’re on Fifteenth and Jefferson. Call a squad car. We got a domestic in progress.”
The radio hissed with static. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Maisie.”
A tray full of silverware rained down from the fourth floor. “Call them,” I said. “Now! Someone’s going to get hurt.” Or killed.
Screaming Guy ran back up the steps to the apartment building and frantically punched the call buttons to get buzzed in. Nothing. He kicked the glass doors, swearing.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Obi said.
A television imploded on the sidewalk.
“Call, Obi!”
Cans of food shot out the apartment window, bouncing off the sidewalk, dinging into parked cars.
Screaming Guy ran back down the stairs. “Throw me down the keys, Jenna, so I can come up and cut your fucking throat!”
A can of Campbell’s soup dented the hood of a red Kia Soul.
“Jenna! Goddamn it! Not my fucking car!”
Another can hit the sidewalk, clanging against the wrought-iron fencing of the elm I was crouched behind.
Unfazed, Niecy crossed the street and walked up beside me. She stood in front of the Soul and punched in the license plate. “Get back to work, McGrane. All these friggin’ fish are illegally parked.”
Screaming Guy caught sight of Niecy sliding the bright orange envelope under the Soul’s windshield wiper. “You bitches! You motherfucking Nazi meter bitches!” He ran toward us.
Niecy held up a Taser.
“Yeah? Oh yeah?” he screamed, backing up. “Piss on a guy when he’s down, huh?”
A siren sounded from the street.
The last voice in the world I wanted to hear sounded over the loudspeaker. “What’d you do now, ‘Meter Maid McGrane’?”
Dammit.
Tommy Narkinney got out of the squad car, wearing a metal splint over his broken nose. Peterson gingerly exited from the driver’s-side door, looking murderou
s. Apparently the bar fight at Hud’s was not yet water under the bridge.
Niecy, on a roll, kept ticketing.
“You don’t need us.” Narkinney pointed over my shoulder, laughing. “You need a car wash.”
Screaming Guy was peeing on the Interceptor. Aiming high, letting his hot yellow stream spray across the driver’s-side window and down the door handle.
Aw for cripes’ sakes.
Peterson let loose a phlegmy chortle.
Screaming Guy, realizing the cops were on his side, danced around the back of the Interceptor, grooving toward me, pants around his knees.
“You two-timing asshole!” Jenna yelled from the window. “Pull your pants up!”
Mostly-Naked Screaming Guy danced closer to me. Peterson and Narkinney howled with laughter.
“Incoming!” I shouted.
A frying pan hurtled through the air, barely missing Peterson. It landed on the patrol car windshield with a sickening crunch.
“You’re gonna fuckin’ pay for that, McGrane!” Peterson said as he and Narkinney grabbed Screaming Guy, whose pants were now down around his ankles, and dragged him up onto the sidewalk.
The good humor garnered at my expense long gone, Narkinney and Peterson each took a wrist and cable-cuffed Screaming Guy to the wrought-iron fence surrounding the elm tree, face out.
Prolonged indecent exposure, courtesy of the Chicago Police Department. Our tax dollars at work.
Narkinney and Peterson tore up the steps of the apartment building, catching a break as a jogger held the door for them.
“Hey, you! A little help!” Screaming Guy yelled at me. Bare-assed against the fence, dink swinging in the breeze.
A lot of nerve for someone who just peed on my door. I stared at him. “Seriously?”
“For fuck’s sake!” he complained. “Gimme a break!”
“Yeah.” I bent down and picked up one of the cleaner shirts Jenna had thrown down onto the sidewalk. “Helping you is at the top of my list.” I took the shirt over and wiped his pee off the window and door handle of the Interceptor.
“That’s my friggin’ shirt, meter bitch!”
I walked over to him. “Want it back?” I threw it in his face.