Part I – Wherein he receives a wound…(got some blood in the game)

“He’ll run. He’s done it before about a thousand times. He’ll run.”

I shrugged. “Okey dokey. I’ll be around back.”

Getting more and more amped up, I stood near the backdoor. My plan was to wait until this kid (early 20’s, strong and fast and running from a fail to appear warrant that wasn’t even felony level) was about halfway down the stairs, then rush him, crash us both into the wall, and put him on the ground. Hard to run, I figured, when you’re on your ass.

There’s a chair near the stairs and I told myself, three times, not to trip over it. Remember it, gentle reader, that chair gets important later in our adventure.

After a few seconds, I heard them. It was like a thundering herd. Banging through the house. The local city cop screamed, “He’s running! He’s running!” Furniture slammed over. Other people yelled. Bang and crash and biff and boffo and now I’m REALLY amped.

They blasted out the back door and he got about halfway down. I leapt at him. Full-tilt boogie, baby, as fast and hard as I could.

And he stopped. Just above the bottom of the stairs.

I, of course, kept going and just about met the wall by myself. With a quick recovery, I faced the kid. “Where you going?”

The “Oh, shit,” look on that kid’s face was worth the price of admission. He’d been running for months from an older, overweight cop and seeing a second officer waiting for him was not part of his plan.

I grabbed him and put him against the wall. I got his left arm, the other officer got his right and this is going to be easy peasy. Except the kid didn’t cooperate. He tightened up and refused to put his hands behind his back. We struggled and tussled and danced a little and I realized he was holding a bag of dope and either a weapon or a cell phone.

So the local city officer decided to take him to the ground. Except….

Remember the chair? Yeah, that one. That one right in the way of the officer and the mope? They crashed over it and hit the ground extremely hard.

Then the mope was gone. Jumped up and took the hell off. Whooooosh, just like that.

I don’t remember deciding to chase him, I just ran. Jumped over the chair. Jumped over the officer and we were gone. My legs felt good and and my lungs and chest felt good. Damn, I thought, it’s good I’ve exercised since the cancer, right? I mean, I ain’t gonna catch this dork, but I won’t lose him, either. Hell, I’ll probably be able to pace him all the way to Cleveland! And I’ve got a radio so we’re good.

Except I think I was catching him. Closer and closer and he was scared to death because no one’s ever chased him. And I reached out, he’s just…right…there….

And I fell. Hard.

There were two voices in my head at that point (which is fewer than usual so that’s good, I guess). One said, “Get up, dumbass, he’s RIGHT there! You can still get him! GET UP!” The other, much louder, said, “Ooooooowwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!”

That’s the one I chose to listen to.

I limped to standing and the other office was by my side and our quarry was but a speck on the dirty horizon. So, of course, we started yelling. “Keep running, we’ll get your ass next time!” and “It’s prison now, baby, welcome to the bigs!” and “You son of a bitch!” and lots of other colorful expressions and for a split second, I was the old man down the street, “And stay off my lawn, goddamnit!”

A few minutes later, in the midst of lots of officers and a dog, the officer shouted and grabbed my arm. It was covered in blood and I ain’t talking a little. There was a gash the size of the fucking Grand Canyon near my elbow and then it REALLY hurt and I just wanted to cry like a baby.

“Wow,” the cop said as he cleaned it. “You might need a stitch.”

I paused. “A stitch? That’s not very manly.”

He shrugged. The bad guy got away and I went to the hospital.

Part II – Wherein he receives a Tootsie Pop…(yummm, the day ends well)

The nurse jammed me hard when she was cleaning it. Grinding and grinding and grinding and with just a smidgen of sadistic grin on her face whilst she did it.

“You have to do it so hard?”

“Don’t be a puss.”

She got it cleaned and stared at it, frown upon her features.

“Pretty bad? I thought so. How many stitches?”

And she started laughing. And laughed and laughed. Then she put a Band-Aid on it. Yeah, it was high-tech with shaped edges and very hip gauzes and all kinds of expensive medical linaments, but it was still a Band-Aid.

“What about the stitches?” I asked.

Still laughing, she handed me an orange Tootsie Pop and walked out. I could hear her laugh all the way down the hall.

Part III – Wherein He’s the Hero…(but still they laugh….)

The guys at the office love to hear that story. See, they never truly believed I’d jump in when things got hairy. They know I’m not comfortable with the physical part of things, and so hearing how the mope and I were gone in a puff of dust even before the other officer got up sends them into a paroxysm of gale force cop whooping.

I try to end the story before the whole ‘ain’t getting no stitches’ part.

‘Cuz that would just make them laugh harder…and not with me, but at me.

Again.

First of all, you gotta understand, it wasn’t my fault.

If it was anyone’s it was probably the hillbilly.  Or maybe the nameless, bitter, worn down by life, jaded, bureaucratic, pencil pushing mope who’d been given a sliver of power and didn’t give one shit for anyone except his ownself.

Okay, I’m on duty and I get the call to go to Chicago to pick up a prisoner.  Guy’s sitting in the Cook County Jail, one of the largest jails in the country (with better than 13,000 prisoners) and the single largest mental facility in the country.  I kinda dig doing transports, so I pony up and head out.

I drive pretty fast so I’m there quick.  Navigate some hellacious highway construction, drive around this huge concrete nightmare that is the jail, get to the back gate, pull up in my MARKED squad car, wearing my UNIFORM, and head into the gate.

“‘S up?” the guy asks.  He’s probably early 60s, obviously sliding into retirement.  He’s at the end of his shift.  He’s ready to go home.

“Here to pick one up.”

“Cool.  Lemme see your ID and we’ll get going.”

Okay, like I said, it wasn’t my fault.  A few weeks ago, the hillbilly dog ate my wallet.  I got home and there were all kinds of little pieces of shredded black leather everywhere.  Looked like snow…other than being coal black.  Death snow, maybe.

Well, she didn’t eat my Sheriff’s Office ID nor my driver’s license, but she did eat the wallet and I just hadn’t gotten around to replacing it yet.  So, consequently….

“You ain’t got no ID?”

“Uh…no.”

“Well, you got no license?”

And I wasn’t sure, given the grammatic obscurity, what the correct answer was.  So I said, “Uh…no license.  But I have a credit card.  Has my name on it.  Name matches my namebadge on my UNIFORM.”  And then, helpfully, I pointed to the MARKED squad car.

“Don’t care about none’a that,” he said.  “We got policy.”

“I drove two hours.”

“And we got policy.  You cain’t have him.”

“Seriously?”

“I look like I’m fucking with you?”

“Okay.  Well, let’s try this.  Is there a supervisor I can talk to?  I mean, I’ve got a marked squad car and I’m in uniform.  It’s pretty far for someone to go if they’re trying to break someone out of the jail, isn’t it?  I mean, I have business cards and everything.”

“And we got policy.”  But he dialed his captain.  “He gonna say no.”

In fact, the captain said no.  He didn’t even bother talking to me.

“What about the lieutenant?”

“He gonna say no.”

In fact, the lieutenant said no.  He didn’t even bother talking to me.

“Sergeant?”

Ditto.  Ditto.  Ditto.

That guy goes through his shift change and I go home…sans prisoner.  On the heels of my attempt, my sergeant sends another deputy.  He heads up, ID in hand, and comes back with the prisoner.

Here’s the rub: they never asked.

ID in hand, ready to show to anyone who might ask and they never did.  Didn’t ask at the guard gate where I’d been, didn’t ask at the desk that sits as the penultimate point of control before stepping into the cell blocks, which is the ultimate point of control.  No one EVER asked him for his damned ID.

It was a different shift, you see.  And apparently, there is only so much common sense at the Cook County Jail, and it’s all on the overnight shift.

And I realize none of this would have happened if I’d had my ID.  But like I said, that was my hillbilly dog’s fault.  You can’t blame that on me…can you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I bought a wallet.