California Schemin' - Kate George [78]
There was a pretty brunette who kept pushing her curls out of her face and was so awkward in her heels that I figured she had to be a uniform. The blonde in a red sparkly sheath, hanging onto the arm of a muscled cop, I took for a girlfriend. And the redhead in jeans sitting with the longhaired guys had to be undercover herself.
Being neither wife nor girlfriend should have made me feel out of place, but I felt pretty damn good. For one thing I was in a room full of cops, so nobody was going to abduct tonight. For another, to judge from the looks I was getting, I cleaned up pretty good. I smiled at the bartender. It was fine evening.
I took my beer and headed back to the table, nearly spilling my beer on a guy who leaned back in his chair right in front of me to shout at his buddy.
“You owe me ninety-nine cent,” he called as I clipped his chair, juggling my beer and glass. “Oops, sorry miss.”
“What?” His buddy called.
“Ninety-nine cent. You owe me.”
“There’s no such thing as ninety-nine cent.”
“What the hell you talkin’ about? You owe me a buck.”
“Its ninety nine cents, numb nuts. There’s no such thing as ninety-nine cent.”
I skirted his chair, leaving them to argue across the room like a couple of teenagers. I put my beer on the table and picked the clutch up off my chair, but Steve caught my arm before I could sit down.
“Come on,” he said. “There’s something you've got to see in the other room.” He steered me away from my beer and through the tables to a door leading to another conference room. In the middle of the floor was a shiny new black-and-white police cruiser. It looked like a modified SUV with a fancy bumper, almost like a cowcatcher, on the front. Steve pulled me over to it and opened the driver’s side door.
“Get in.”
I slid under the wheel and looked at the dash. It was like being in the cockpit of a private jet. Steve slid in the passenger side. Everything looked high tech and state of the art.
“It’s the new thing,” Steve said. “A company called Carbon Motors designed it. They want to market it to police agencies across the country. So instead of driving re-purposed Crown Vics, we’d all have these custom built jobbies. Cool, huh?”
“What are all these things?” I motioned to the dash. There was an LCD screen built into it. “That’s not a TV, is it?”
“No, it’s not a TV, it’s a computer. This thing has all the latest stuff. It automatically runs the number of every plate the camera in the front bumper picks up. You can even launch a GPS tracker at a speeding car so you don’t have to give chase. That’s a big deal. It doesn’t happen much in Vermont, but in other places high-speed chases end in crashes. Wonder what that will do to the popularity of the website devoted to police chases? Anyway, the front of this sucker is bulletproof.”
“Are you telling me regular cop cars aren’t bulletproof? How come I didn’t know that?” I was feeling pretty stupid. Considering Tom was captain at the barracks and Steve was a patrol officer, you’d think I’d know more about it.
“No, most patrol cars aren’t bulletproof. What I wouldn’t give for one of these.”
“Have you ever been shot at in your car?”
“Well, no, but it would be nice to know that no one could pick me off in my car. It worries me sometimes.”
We slid out of the car, and I took a look around it. It was like a glossy new toy.
“What would it take to get you one of these?”
“You can’t buy just one. They only sell them in fleets. That’s the only way they could make the price comparable to a re-purposed Crown Vic.”
“Jeez. That’s too bad. You guys should have these.”
“You could write a letter to the guy in charge for us. Put in a good word.”
“Because Lord knows I’m in good with the guy in charge. Bree? Bree who? Keep dreaming, Steve.”
We wandered back into the banquet room where it looked like they were getting ready to serve dinner. I sat down and took a drink of my beer. It seemed strange to be swigging beer