Two Cops, A Rich Guy and A Hippie

Dallas's Finest

Work, work, work.  Things at my office still sucked.  They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks; you couldn't teach those old dogs anything.  In a million years, if that were possible, nothing would change in that office.  I was looking for a place to transfer to.  Most places required that you have Time in Title requirements, meaning you are stuck where you are for a predetermined amount of time.  Unless the needs of the business dictate that an exception can be made.  So I put in transfers to all of the Business Offices for a job as a service rep.  I didn't care which office it was or how far I had to drive.  I just wanted away from where I was.

My boss tried to tell me that I couldn't put the transfer in—wrong chicky doodle. I called and discussed my situation with the Placement Bureau, and they told me exactly what I needed to do.  I was on my way out.  It was just a matter of time.

On this day, I had to talk to France about why I wasn't home the previous night.  The ball was in his court.  If he could find a way to talk to me in private, I would do it.  But that would be hard.  He came into the office several times to "use the copier."  But there was always somebody with me in the back room.  So he would just B.S. with me and do small talk.  I just smiled.  I smiled because I knew that I was in control of the situation.

He followed me out of the building when I went to lunch, but Mary was with me.  When we got away from the office on a side street, I spoke to him briefly.  I just told him that my kids and I had been out.  It wasn't a lie.  When he asked where I went, I told him that "we" went to a friend's house.  Also, not a lie.  But not the whole truth.  That seemed to satisfy him for now anyway.  So Mary and I continued our walk to the Deluxe Diner to pick up our lunch.  We would sit at my desk and eat simply because it would drive the old witches crazy.  Plain Jane would not get any work done because she was trying to eavesdrop.  Every once in a while,  I would say "Jane" under my breath, and she would respond.  Then I would ignore her until she said something several times and then say, "Are you speaking to me?"  She would say she was answering me, and I would say, "Oh, I am sorry, I wasn't talking to you.  You must have misunderstood me."  Haha.  Funny.

Driving home from work was getting to be the best part of the day.  I would try and keep my eyeballs open and zeroed in on cop cars.  But there were so many.  I never saw Daniel around his part of town when I passed through there.  I think because it was such a bad area that he didn't want me to stop there.  He was always where he wasn't supposed to be, miles away from where he should be.  I think the cops had a secret society of understanding between them.  He worked out of the same substation with the guys that worked the edge of Mesquite, so they knew each other and knew he didn't belong there, but he never got in trouble.  He never got in trouble, and he would turn up no matter how far away I moved.  Even when I moved to different cities like Carrollton.  No matter where I moved, I would wake up, and there would be a note on my car.  I always felt pretty safe.

He would never sit in the same place, waiting for me to zoom by.  Sometimes he would be on the opposite side of the road heading back to his area on a call when I would see him.  He would always call me later to talk when that happened.  If I wanted to, I could keep tabs on him by listening to the police radio.  But sometimes, it was scary to know the kind of calls that he was going on.  One night when I was listening, he was taken to the hospital.  He had tried to make an arrest, and the guy he was arresting flipped out and beat the crap out of him and several other guys.  He only stopped when they brought in a K9 and let the dog loose.  The dog nailed the perp. And Daniel went to the hospital in an ambulance.  I was worried sick about him.  Later that night, he called me from the ER when he was getting his head stitched up, and his broken hand wrapped.  I didn't tell him that I knew about it.  Why put any more stress on him?

I had sent Jimmy, my high school boyfriend's brother, a letter.  I was just checking on him to see if he had made it out of Vietnam in one piece and mostly to see how David was doing.  Years had passed, and now I was single and free, and I still had feelings for David.  I just couldn't let it go.  I always thought that we were meant to be together, even if it would be in a tortured relationship.  Nobody could ever match the way I felt about him.  I knew that.  I always knew that.  I just had to work my life around it and make the best of it without him.  The letter that I sent was very long; I had a lot to tell Jimmy.  I really didn't know if he was even living at home, which is where I sent the letter, but I figured his mom would get it to him.  Stupid me, I should have just sent it to David, and things would have been different.  Oh well.  It had been a few weeks since I had sent the letter and still had not heard anything back.

The next time I saw Daniel, he had a Frankenstein's head.  He had stitches all over his head and around one eye.    He was embarrassed at the way he looked.  I told him that he looked pretty good to me; at least he was alive.  He told me what had happened that night, and he was lucky to be alive.  It was part of the thing of knowing someone that was a cop.  You never knew if you would see them again.  That scary feeling was always there in the back of your mind, even when you tried to keep it pushed away. It had been some time since a Dallas officer had been killed in the line of duty.  Just a couple of years earlier, it seemed like they had big targets on them.  Quite a few had been killed.  I tried not to think about that, but it was hard.  He told me that he had put in a transfer to move to a different part of town, but he didn't have much seniority, so he probably would have to wait a while.  That meant that he was feeling vulnerable where he was.  I don't know how he faced that fear every day.  I admired him for it.

One night he stopped by my house while he was working.  My kids had not met him and knew nothing about him.  I tried to keep it that way, but it didn't always work.  He knocked on the door, and I opened it, and there he was in his uniform.  My kids were kind of agog at him.  He had that big ass gun on his hip.  They kind of glued themselves to the wall and just stared at him for a long time.  Then Jeff, the baby and the wild one, said, "He got a mustache."  And then he started laughing.  And then Glen started laughing, and then Daniel started laughing.  And that broke the ice.

A few days later, right after I got home from work, there was a knock at my door.  I opened it, and David's brother Jimmy was standing there.  Oh, dear.  I was glad to see him, but he wanted to stay with us, which would be a problem.  Somehow I was going to have to keep him hidden from France, Daniel, and Karl.  I didn't know how I was going to pull this one-off.  I was glad to see him, but still, I wasn't expecting him.

I would have to work this out somehow and pull off a game of Hide The Guy.  How was I going to do that?