Maybe I should break it off now.
I headed back to the side door, pulled it open, and stepped outside. Talking to Theo in the open, away from any fuck-suitable horizontal or vertical surfaces, would be smart.
Except that wasn’t the Tesla coming to a stop in front of me. The cop behind the patrol car windshield flicked on his flashers, the whirling red and blue pinning me in place, and got out, crouching behind his door, gun aimed. “Hands up where I can see them! Now! Get ’em up!”
Shit! I could run. I could duck inside, up the stairs, out a window, off the roof—The wide, black mouth of the gun pointed at me said no fucking way. I let go of the handle. The door clanged shut. Slowly, I raised my hands and braced my legs to hide the shaking of my knees.Fuck, this is bad.
“Turn around. Hands on the wall. Spread ’em.”
I turned with my hands up high, making no sudden moves. Two shuffled steps to the wall and I set my palms on the cool stucco. I could hear the cop moving behind me, but I bowed my head and waited without trying to look back at him.
Breathe slower.I clenched my jaw and sucked air through my nose.Not a big deal. Not the first time. Not the last time.I tried to reassure myself that I’d been arrested before. Hell, I had a couple of convictions. Drunk and disorderly, back before I gave that up. Public nuisance. Loitering.I survived.
But I hadn’t been busted since Mimsy joined me. This time, they might get me for breaking and entering. Maybe more. I could end up with months, even years, in lock-up. Mimsy was safe up in the building for now, but the door had latched. Would she wait in there for me till she starved to death? Had I left a window open or shut them all to keep the sun-warmed air in?
The cop nudged my feet apart with his shoe. I obeyed quickly, which didn’t spare me a thump on my lower back. “Move ’em back more. Bend over.”
Putting more weight on my hands, I shuffled my sneakers backward. I hoped this cop was just throwing his power around, not a total asshole. I’d been beaten up enough times to know the difference.
He patted me down roughly but didn’t grab my crotch or yank my hair. When he reached my front pocket, he found the wad of bills from busking and pulled the money out. “Where’d you steal this?”
“I earned it.”
“Right. You’ve got a job? Honest working man?” I could almost taste the sarcasm.
“Panhandling.” I thought about naming Arthur, but he didn’t owe me anything and I wasn’t bringing him into this.
“There’s laws against begging in this town.”
Laws around the country said a lot about where you could and couldn’t panhandle for money, but it wasn’t totally illegal anywhere. I kept my mouth shut.
“Bet you stole it.” He didn’t put the cash back in my pocket.I’dbet it went in his and I was never going to see that money again.
The cop tugged my wallet out of my back pocket and leaned his weight on my shoulders with one hand while he flipped it open. “Pretty broke, huh?”
I was better before you stole my cash.I shut my eyes and breathed deeper as he lifted his hand off me.
“Huh. Illinois state ID. Non-driver. And lookie here, a year expired. Might even be fake.”
“It’s not fake. It’s the only ID I have.” Getting ID was a fucking ordeal. With no home address, you had to get some do-gooder in a shelter to sign off on a form. You needed a birth certificate. You needed a social security card. I’d lost mine one time, when I was busted and all my shit got stolen before I got out. Getting replacements cost money. Getting the ID had been free in Illinois once I jumped through the hoops of the homeless form, but when it expired, the state I was in had a no-exceptions fee and required a phone call to make an appointment if you didn’t have a home address and photocopies and yada yada. Forty bucks for the ID, twenty bucks for the phone, a buck for copies, three bucks for bus fare. When did I have sixty-four bucks I didn’t need for food?
“Well, you can’t walk around with expired ID. We’ll see what your prints say. I bet this isn’t your first B and E arrest.” The cop reached up and clipped a handcuff around my right wrist, swung my arm down to the small of my back so I was holding myself up with one arm. My elbow tremored.
“Stand straight.” He kicked the heel of my shoe. When I’d shuffled forward, he grabbed my left wrist and swung it behind me, locking my arms together. I knew better than to fight or complain, even when he pulled me off-balance so I staggered. “Turn around.” He swung me in a half-circle.
“That’s him!” The woman who owned the yap-dog hurried toward us, pointing at me. “He’s been sneaking around. I’ve seen him. Looking for what he can steal. He tried to take my Veronica.”
Bitch, I wouldn’t take your nasty little muffball if you paid me. Vicious, the pair of you.When I was younger, I might’ve said it, which would’ve been the perfect excuse for the cop to punch me a couple of times. Older and wiser, that was me. I stared blankly past her like she wasn’t even there.
Her voice got shriller. “Look at him. He’s probably a home invader, a cold killer.”
Jesus, give it a rest.I bit my cheek hard enough to taste blood and said nothing.
Then, to cap my humiliation, Theo’s Tesla turned in at the drive and glided toward us.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.Although I could ask him to look after Mimsy. He almost certainly would. That was maybe worth him seeing me in cuffs.
Theo hit the brakes abruptly and jumped out. “What’s going on here?”
