NOVEL NEXT 70) Cops: Stories from the street
70) Cops: Stories from the street
Looking in the still intact windshield’s rearview mirror I could see behind me one of the older cop cars that the city still used in my part of the city instead of their newer SUVs. Its lights were flashing as it paced along behind me but they hadn’t flicked the siren on yet.
For a moment I thought about just ignoring them. I mean it wasn’t like I was in a car that they could just block off by pulling in front of it, the Heap could just climb over a cop car, or better yet just go around in up on the sidewalk.
They couldn’t throw out one of those spoke strips to pop the tires, or shoot them out either, but they could shoot me.
Besides, even with the Heap rambling along at what had to be its top speed, at least with a gutted out station wagon on top of it, that speed was at most around twenty miles per hour. If I just ignored them eventually the call to decide what to do about me would reach someone who was more worried about their job than if shooting a fart for refusing to pull over was right or wrong. They would also be high enough up in the ranks that they could put all the blame on the guys in the cop car that was pulling up next to me.
I sighed. “Well, at least I got to be behind the wheel again.” Something that I had long thought would never happen again after my insurance scamming company had jacked up my premium payments after I got into a fender bender.
Yeah, I’m old and the accident was entirely my fault, but my record had been pretty clean before that, and everyone gets in an accident every now and then, it might have just been the odds catching up with me.
Alpha Three had been more than happy to take my money all those years, but even with me paying for the damage to both cars out of my pocket instead of getting them involved, they still decided to gouge me.
I guess they only screwed themselves since I couldn’t afford to drive at all anymore at their prices. Guess they never heard about not killing the golden goose if you want to keep forcing it to cough up golden eggs.
Sighing, I stuck my arm out and bent it down, my hand flat, to signal that I was breaking. “Pull over Heap. If you don’t let them strut around and lord it over you, they get so scared they can’t think of anything other than getting violent.”
When the only tool you’re allowed to use is a hammer, you look forward to getting to nail someone with it.
While I did have the Heap slow down to stop and shift over to the side of the street, I still had him keep the station wagon at about eight feet off the ground. It seemed like a good idea to stay out of the cop’s reach until I figured out if they felt like talking, or if they were going to come out of their car yelling and pointing their guns.
Wait? When did I stop being afraid of being shot? I’m not that tough, what the hell am I thinking…
“Ah? Mr. Bright?”
I gave the fat cop that had come to my house a week or so ago a startled look, I had been so lost in thought I hadn’t even noticed him and his partner, the black kid, get out of their car.
Neither one of them had their guns out, although they looked pretty unsure about things and were keeping their distance which made me think they hadn’t just pulled me over just to ask about my new ride.
“Hi. Sorry, but I don’t think I cared enough about other people to get your name last time. Officer...?”
The middle aged cop with thinning grey streaked reddish hair sighed, “I’m Sargent Ritter, and this is Officer Fairchild.” He scratched at his head. “Mr. Bright… What the hell?” He held his hands out towards me. “How is this even remotely a good idea?”
I blinked at him and had the Heap lower itself down even more as I pushed Blue back off my lap so I could twist around in the diver’s seat until I was facing him at a height that I was looking at him eye to eye.
“Last night me and another old man went into a dungeon that a federal officer that was preventing anyone from going inside and destroying it. So we rushed in and did it anyways. When we came out he arrested me, and then locked me into a room until my child abandoning little shit of a son showed up to threaten to lock me up in a ‘rest home,’ while he took control of my property.”
Ritter twisted his head slowly to one side, his mouth partially open like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what. I held one hand up and waved it a little at him. “Give me a second, I trying to figure out what was going on in my head this morning.”
He blinked, then crossed his arms while leaning back against the hood of his car. “You know what, go ahead. It’s not like I know what to do with you right now anyways. I’m hoping the watch commander will make the call so I don’t have to.”
I grimaced and gave him a nod. “So I’m supposed to be somewhere right now talking to my lawyer to deal with the fallout from all of that, and I realized I have no way of getting there without calling someone for a favor, and frankly… I’m so fucking tired of not being able to do things on my own anymore. The people in charge of city services have dropped the ball so badly that I’ve had to get rides from the Military to even get the food and medicine I need to survive. What about the other people around here that rely on public transportation? What if they don’t have anyone to call either?”
The cop nodded now and then as I talked, and complained. He was letting me rant, and vent instead of just telling me what he wanted me to do to get things over with. Treating me like a person rather than a problem.
“Is this you being you, or is this something cops do now? Listening?”
The sergeant sighed. “We were always supposed to listen to people, but you get worn out having to listen and not having anything to say back that means anything. It gets easier to be indifferent enough to not care anymore about the things you can’t help, and then you get indifferent to being blamed for everything because we’re the only ones people get the chance to complain to.”
Dam. That sounds like being married to the whole world.
“And here I am out here making more problems for you. I swear that wasn’t my plan when I headed out this morning, I just thought I had figured out a solution to my travel problems.”
He straightened up, and held his hands out to the Heap, “I get it, but could you explain what the plan was?”
I reached back and scratched Wylina behind her ear. “To get me and the coyotes to the Elysium Assisted Living Facility so I can meet up with my lawyer and make being the head of some State sponsored foundation that can put areas with Dungeons on them under my power all official. Although I think the only thing that it will do is let me call up the big boy here away from my house.”
Reaching down, I patted a section of old dried up tree branches and realized that this could mean that I could call up the Heap in front of a Dungeon and might even be able to take it inside with me.
Ritter looked at the Heap, then gave me a questioning look. “But you already have it here now, don’t you? And what is it anyways?”
I nudged the edge of the station wagon’s door frame with my elbow, “What you never heard of a Woody? No? Nothing? Dam, even you’re too young to get that? It's something I can make with my power on my land, but…” A second of sticks fell off the Heap in a small shower of dead leaves. “It starts falling apart as soon as I leave my land, so unless you’re willing to let me keep going I’m going to be stranded out here, with no food. I might even be forced to eat a coyote.”
Blue made a questioning sound behind me. “Not you, Chubby got more meat on him.” The pup in question gave a disgusted sounding snort.
The sergeant started to say something, shook his head in dismissal, and finally looked over his shoulder, “Rick, call for a tow, hang on…” He pointed at the rear of the car. “Can a tow truck haul it on those two back wheels?”
I nodded. “The Heap was dragging it behind it at first, but I couldn’t see where we were going.”
He shook his head again after a moment then told his partner to finish their call.
Twenty minutes later I had the Heap holding up the front end of the station wagon while a flatbed truck pulled it up with a cable. Then me and the pups piled into the back of the cop car, with Wylina up front with Ritter, and the other cop riding with the truck driver. The Heap got dismissed which left a a pile of yard waste sitting out on the side of the street.
Ritter convinced me not to just send the Heap back home on its own since people had been making panicked phone calls even with an old guy sitting in a car on top of it. He felt that a pile of dead tree branches out walking around on its own was only going to scare people even worse.
I twisted my lips up at that, those stupid evil monkeys wandering around here had ruined things for me, and gathering up all that material for the Heap had taken me over an hour. But I guess he had been making too much of a scene and I couldn’t find any blame for how Ritter had handled my little outing.
Besides, he was my ride.
A short dive later and the cops headed off with my station wagon as I watched them from where I had gotten dropped off in the circle drive in front of the Elysium.
Looking down at Wylina, I realized. “Shoot, I forgot to ask him how to get my car back.”
Even if I couldn’t take it out on the street, it would be nice to have a place to sit while I wandered around the block I now owned half of.