Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [5]
I am completely baffled, but whatever. They are leaving and I am leaving. Now I can get into town, get my bike working and get the hell out of here.
Before I am accustomed to no longer having the Pathfinder on my tail, I see a police car jamming up the road in the direction of the Gold Base. No faster than I see him, he has already passed me and as I watch in my one remaining rearview mirror I see him pull a U-turn and up go the lights and siren. This isn’t my day! I am now getting pulled over! This sucks.
First, I get run off the road, next pulled over. If this guy gives me a ticket for the broken mirror, I am going to lose it!
Since I am going a whopping 5 miles per hour, it is no big deal for me to pull over. If I were going any slower, I would be walking.
I take off my helmet, it is still raining although not as much as a few minutes ago. I see the cop sitting in the car getting his stuff together. He has to get his notepad, run my plates, all the normal stuff while I sit wondering how bad this is going to be.
He gets out of the car and comes towards me. I turn off the bike and put the kickstand down.
I hang the helmet on the one good mirror.
“Good morning, Officer,” I say like everybody says when they get pulled over by a cop and it’s morning time.
“Good morning. Can I see your license?” he asks, in stereotypical cop lingo.
I dig it out of my wallet and hand it over. I got a driver’s license in 1991. Every few years, I get a letter from the DMV and I renew it by mail. The picture is 14 years old and barely resembles me, but nonetheless, it is me.
He takes the license and goes back to his squad car. I don’t have anything on my record. No moving violations or accidents, nothing. I think I might have had a speeding ticket years ago, but besides that I was clean. No arrests. No felonies. I was at Golden Era Productions for 15 years, so I was, by all accounts, a model citizen according to police records. If you even get pulled over for speeding, you can’t drive anymore, so I was pretty clean on the driving record.
He is back in less than a minute.
“So, where are you headed?” he asks.
“Just into town,” I reply, wondering where the hell this is going.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” all the while thinking that I am the furthest thing from it right now.
“You’ve got a bit of mud on your pants,” he says, sounding like someone who would consider that other than “fine.”
“Yeah, damn rain. I must have brushed up against something muddy this morning.” Brilliant, I am the most retarded person in the world with this dialog. “Is he buying this?” I think to myself.
“Well, we got a 911 call that there was an altercation on the road a bit back with two vehicles, and one of them fits your vehicle’s description,” he says to me.
Someone saw them run me off the road! Now what do I tell him? I am not trying to mess up anyone’s day or cause any trouble; I am just trying to get the hell out of Dodge. If I make any kind of stink with the cops, I will surely get declared a suppressive by Scientology and they will make my life miserable.
“Oh, yeah, a few of the people that I work with were trying to get me to stay. I am going to visit my dad for a few weeks and they just needed to get some numbers from me where I could be reached.”
“That is why you have the bags?” he deduces.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s right,” I sigh.
“So you are fine?” he asks, knowing full well there is more to this than I am letting on.
“Oh, yeah, I’m good. Just heading into town and I will be fine.”
He gives me back my license and is about to walk away when up rolls Muriel, the Public Relations Officer at Golden Era Productions. She rolls up right next to both of us on the side of the road in the Port Captain Office Honda.
“What’s the matter with Marc?” she asks the officer through her passenger window as she continues to roll it down.