Bessy:
You remind me of the person who claims to be decent yet loves to be a spectator at a terrible car-crash, or a shooting, or some other horrible effect.
You beg me to tell a story about my career as an outlaw, and I will, if you promise to wipe the drool from your insatiable face.
Deal?
Okay.
Years ago I was a driver/body-guard for an escort service. My job was to drive the escorts to their calls. On one occasion I was pulled over by a cop for making an illegal u-turn at two o’clock in the morning. But that was the minor problem to what eventually happened.
I didn’t have a license plate on my jeep. Instead, I had a square piece of card-board with numbers that I had copied from another white Jeep Cherokee of the same make and model, with “stolen plate” written above the numbers. This was because at the time I had warrants out for my arrest, and therefore I “went all the way,” so to speak, refusing to pay insurance and fees for registration and plates. I had that carboard on my Jeep for months, and hadn’t had any trouble with the law. See, if a cop got behind me and decided to run my plates, or cardboard (he…he), he would most likely believe that it was indeed stolen because the numbers matched up to the make and model in his system, and he wouldn’t know that I wasn’t “insert name of the owner of the Jeep with those numbers”. He would naturally assume that I was legitimate and in the process of getting another plate.
But I fucked everything up when I made that u-turn.
Here’s what happened. (Watch how clever I was)
I get out of the Jeep (Amber is sitting in the front chewing her fingernails) and stand beside the door…
“So your plate was stolen, huh?”
“Yeah, but its not my Jeep, its a friend of a friends.”
“What’s his name?”
“I dunno the guy…I’m borrowing the Jeep with his friends permission. Can’t you look it up by running the tags?”
[cop runs tags and gets a name, but doesn’t mention it]
“So his tags were stolen?”
“Yeah, he lives on the bad side of town. In fact, there have been two other plates stolen there within the last month or so, I hear.”
(remember I’m making this shit up as I go…I didn’t have a rehersed plan because I didn’t think I would ever get pulled)
“Well, lemme see your license.”
(now it gets fishy and I start to get nervous)
“I don’t have it with me…its back at the house. I can tell you my name, license number, and social security number.”
[cop runs the numbers and begins to scratch his head]
“Says here that you have a warrant out for your arrest.”
“What!? Are you serious?”
“Yes, you’re “so and so,” aren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s my name. Is it possible that you’re system has recognized another person by the same name and mistaken the numbers?”
“Its unlikely, it doesn’t make such mistakes.”
“Well, I’m tellin’ you I don’t have any warrants out for my arrest.”
[confused, the cop goes back to his lap-top and fiddles around a bit]
“The “so and so” I have here has a tatoo on his left shoulder. Mind pulling up your sleeve?”
[and it is here, Bess, that I had to make a move]
“No fucking way!”
[I took off running, leaving both Amber and the cop in a cloud of existential dust]
The cop begins pursuit, but most certainly can’t keep up with me. As I bolt through the woods, not knowing where I am, I hear him behind me crashing through the trees and bushes…“This is so and so…I need back-up…am in pursuit on foot!”
About two hundred yards later, I look back and see a tiny light bobbing up and down as he made his way through the woods behind me. I came to a clearing where an apartment complex was just on the other side. I began in that direction.
With a good enough lead, so he couldn’t see me, I slid under someone’s deck and crawled through the access door under the foundation. Wrapping myself up in some HVAC flex-duct, I silenced myself and waited, with fingers crossed. All I heard was my heart pounding, and the sound of the cop getting closer and closer. As I peek through a hole in the brick, I see him approach the edge of the clearing…
“Come out! The dogs are on their way!”
[he wasn’t kidding, either]
Thirty seconds later, I hear the jingling sound of a leash and four or five other cops…their radios active in communication.
Welp, the dogs would find me for sure, so I had to think fast. I started crawling toward the front of the apartment foundation, looking for another access door. I lucked out…there was one.
Before I was completely through it, I look behind me and see the shadow of a German shepard as big as a fucking horse, as they pry the door open and send him in.
I just made it out and locked the door behind me. Five steps away that fucker is barking his head off, right behind the door.
It is here that I have never run so fast in my life, Bess. I’m not shitting you, I must have been runnuing thirty miles an hour. I was so high from adrenaline I almost passed out.
So the time it took the cops to call the dog back and figure out that I had left through the other side of the foundation…I was half a mile down the street. See, the apartments were all connected so to get to the other side would take a couple minutes.
Eventually I entered the woods again and luckily found a heavy flowing creek. I ran down the creek a ways…in and out of it to confuse the dogs. Then I found myself behind a department store and jumped into a dumpster…covering myself with boxes and shit.
A minute went by.
Nothing.
Two minutes.
Nothing.
Five minutes.
[I though for sure they’d be there by then]
Nothing.
Thirty minutes.
Nothing.
Praise the fucking Lord!
I made it, B.
They were nowhere to be found.
I ended up walking back to the hotel where Amber was staying for the night. (she took a cab)
The cops impounded my Jeep.
This happened when I was nineteen. The warrants have expired and I live to see another day.
Thank you.
[bows to the audience]
This is one of many, Bess. If you behave, I’ll tell you more stories in due time.