Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

“It’s crawling today,” Marty said. “Okay. Let’s see. Yeah, we’ve got a three P.M. headed up north, and then we’ve got a six P.M. going to shops between Naples and Tarpon Springs.”

“That’s the one I didn’t have,” I said. “Okay, great. Thanks a bunch, Marty.”

“No problem, Dan,” Marty said.

I turned off the phone. “Got any plans for Saturday night, Fi?”

Sam hated cop bars. It wasn’t personal. He just preferred a bar where you could get something more than a domestic beer and a shot of Jack Daniel’s. And then there was the issue of the kind of women who frequented cop bars. Not that Sam kept up on all the latest hairstyles for the fairer sex, but he was pretty sure that teased and crimped hair bleached to the point of translucence was not being shown anywhere near the runways these days. And yet sitting along the bar at Cuffs were three women whose hair looked to be conducting electricity. They weren’t bad to look at otherwise, but Sam just didn’t care for women who smelled of Budweiser and Jack Daniel’s and whose hair had a separate area code.

Sam could have lived without hearing “Magic Carpet Ride” for the rest of his natural-born days, too, but it seemed to be on heavy rotation on Cuffs’ jukebox, having already played three times in the past hour while he waited for his friend Ross Angel to show up. Ross wasn’t exactly a cop; he was a meter maid. Or, as his business card said, PARKING ENFORCEMENT OFFICER, which meant he had a badge and access to the systems Sam periodically needed access for, as well. Sam didn’t know Ross well-he’d been introduced to him by another friend, this one at the DMV, after Ross had a small problem with a loan shark over some gambling debts. It wasn’t a huge debt-$500-but the shark was starting to make threats, and Ross couldn’t very well call the cops. So Sam did what he could to help the poor bastard-which, in this case, just meant that Sam dug deep and paid off the shark. Now Ross owed him a periodic favor, one low enough on the totem pole that Ross could be of any use at all, which meant Sam mostly used him to help parking tickets disappear. Still, he felt pretty confident Ross could come through on something a bit larger, like the identity of the cop who drove the cruiser Fi spotted. But now Sam was worried, since Ross had chosen to meet at Cuffs, which meant his judgment had to be impaired.

The jukebox spit out the opening strains of “Back in Black”-easily the fifth AC/DC song played in the past hour, too-just as Ross finally entered the bar. Sam waved his bottle of Bud Light at him, and Ross sidled over the long way, making sure to pause by the bar for quick conversation with the ladies before sitting down.

“You a regular here?” Sam asked.

“No, no,” Ross said. “They got trivia here every Tuesday, so I come in for that periodically. And on Wednesdays and Fridays they got half-priced wings, so I tend to drop by then, if I’m around. And Mondays they got a pretty chill DJ. Saturday and Sunday, if they got a game on, I might drop by. But that’s it.”

Meter maids, Sam thought, spent so much of their lives accounting for time that, apparently, they just didn’t have a good sense of it in their personal lives. Either that or Ross was just a strange, strange man.

“Any luck with my errand?” Sam asked.

Ross put a finger over his lips and then looked over both of his shoulders. Because nothing conveys secrecy better than shushing someone and then looking over your shoulder. “You know where we are?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, “you picked the place.”

“I thought if we were here, no one would think it was suspicious that we were together.”

Oddly, Ross’ explanation actually made a bit of sense, but was also entirely senseless. “Listen,” Sam said, “top secret mission here, Ross. Lives are at stake. Communists could be landing on our shores at any moment. So, do you have a name for that plate or not?”

Ross reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper and handed it to Sam. “You didn’t get this from me.” It was as if everything Ross said was cribbed from a bad crime novel. It didn’t surprise Sam. He suspected Ross had a lot of free time to read. “Unless there’s a commendation coming. If there’s some hero shit going down, it would be fine if you mentioned me. Just trying to get a leg up in the force, you know?”

“I know,” Sam said. “If we get before the Hall of Justice with this, I’ll recommend you immediately be made an honorary Superfriend.”

Sam unfolded the paper and saw the cop’s name: Pedro “Peter” Prieto. A pretty common Cuban name. He had to hope that Ross’ own latent desire to be a detective got the better of him and caused him to do some legwork.

“What do you know about this guy?”

“He writes off a lot of minor tickets,” Ross said. “He’s what we call a neighborhood guy. Everyone he grew up with comes to his house when they have a fix-it ticket or a parking ticket. Just one of those things.”

Just one of those things. Of course, if you happened to be wanted for some larger crime and got a fix-it ticket, it would help to have someone there to write it off. “What’s his beat?”

“Little Havana, mostly. I don’t know much about him except for his daily logs I pulled. He does some traffic pickups over by the Orange Bowl, too. We don’t exactly hang out. Cops and Parking Enforcement aren’t on the same feed line, but I see him here and there and he’s come to me with a couple favors over the years. You’d be surprised how much a ticket for an illegally lowered car can be, seeing as they mount up. That’s one thing I’ve never understood. Lowering your car. Why do that?”

“To look cool,” Sam said.

“Really?”

Sam wanted to say, “No, they do it to look like assholes,” but decided against it. Let the poor man live in blissful ignorance. “This Prieto,” he said, “how old is he?”

“Thirty? Thirty-five? Why?”

“Helping out neighborhood guys, that’s something you do when you’re not sure you want to be a cop long term. But get into your thirties? That’s your career. Why jeopardize that for some kid on the streets?”

“Maybe he’s cultivating confidential informants?”

Sam was going to guess that Ross watched a lot of Law amp; Order. Who ever called a snitch a confidential informant? “He’s not working major crimes, is he?” Sam said.

“No,” Ross said, “more like stolen bicycles and petty robbery. Pick up a hooker every now and then. That would be my guess. I see him on the street, he’s just rollin’ most of the time. You know, I’m trying to get into the police academy. Did I tell you that before?”

“No,” Sam said.

“I just want to be a cop that no one has any issues with, right? Like, just a good person.”

Interesting.

“Any rumors about him being gang affiliated?” Sam said.

“Everyone who grew up in Little Havana is gang affiliated in one way or another,” he said. “But he’s with the good guys now.”

“If that’s true,” Sam said, “why didn’t you have some moral objection giving me his information?” Sam hated to play hardball with Ross, but he felt like the meter maid wasn’t giving the full story. That was the downside of dealing with sources: Sometimes they just don’t want to give up what they know.

Ross drummed his fingers on the table. “Sweet Home Alabama” started on the jukebox and for a couple minutes Ross seemed to get lost in the music, but Sam was pretty sure he was trying to figure out how to say something he didn’t want to say. “You know what’s crazy?” Ross said. “Neil Young and the guys in Skynyrd? They were actually good friends. So everyone hears this song and thinks the guys in Skynyrd hate him for all that ‘Southern Man, don’t need him ’round’ shit, but it’s not true.”