Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,37
causing me to crash into a table where another couple was sitting. I heard breaking glass and the girl—blond, topsiders, and a tight red Lacoste shirt that encased striving breasts—swore loudly. As I was trying to stand, the bouncer grabbed my elbow. He was a gorilla in a Bruins jersey and when he escorted me outside, I made sure to tell him the Bruins sucked. Maybe that’s why he threw me to the pavement and kicked me in the gut.
I was spitting tequila-flavored stomach juice out of my mouth when I looked up and saw Margaret staring at me as if I were a traffic accident. I asked if she’d like a ride home but she told me she had already called her jailbird brother and he was on his way. This did not sound promising. I had no intention of meeting him so I said I’d call her and lurched toward my car.
Unsure of the way home, I gunned the Peugeot into the night. One turn, then another—in complete control of the car, thank you very much—and I found myself in Hyannisport. Traffic was remarkably light, and all going in the other direction. I was quite pleased with myself. The alcohol coursing through my bloodstream coated the recent events in a patina of hazy amusement, and I ascribed the evening to experience, a story I would tell the three guys from school with whom I was sharing a ramshackle garage apartment. Tomorrow, I surmised—ever the optimist—would be a better day. The flashing red and blue lights in my rearview mirror put a toe tag on that thought. I cursed under my breath and pulled over.
A bright light shone in my eyes. I squinted. “Can I help you, officer?” I asked.
The cop was young, in his twenties. He had pasty white skin and black hair, cut short. As he scoured the interior of the car with his flashlight it occurred to me that I might be more inebriated than I realized. He asked for my license and registration. I handed them to him with the most helpful-seeming alacrity. If I could convey the essential sweet harmlessness of my nature, I knew he would just wave me along.
“You know where you are?”
“Hyannisport.”
“This is a one-way street, and you’re driving the wrong way,” he said, to my immense chagrin. Then he ordered me out of the car where, beside the curb, illuminated by the headlights of the patrol car, I performed the DUI ballet: walk in a straight line one foot directly in front of the other, touch your nose, turn around, and repeat. I executed it perfectly. So I was stunned when he told me to place my hands behind my back.
“Exactly what do you think you’re doing?” I asked as he slipped the cuffs on, like I was Mr. Howell and he was Gilligan. He told me I was under arrest, which came as a shock, although in retrospect the handcuffs should have been a giveaway. Then he told me to shut the fuck up. In a Boston accent. Which I hate. The tequila said he should go fuck his mother. I noticed his name tag read, O’Rourke. He shoved me in the backseat of his car.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” I asked, as Officer O’Rourke drove toward the police station.
“You’re the dipshit I just arrested,” he replied.
“I think you’re missing my point,” I said. “I pay taxes, so that means you work for me. Take me home.”
O’Rourke laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh you hear when a guy thinks something is funny. It was a little brutal. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk.”
“I’ll do all the talking I want,” I said. Yes, I was sitting handcuffed in the backseat of a Hyannisport police car, conversing with this submoron O’Rourke, but he would have to release me eventually and I’d have another piquant detail to add to the saga this evening had become. What would O’Rourke have? Another shitty night, then home to a beer and bad TV. I told him that. What was he going to do? Beat me to death? O’Rourke grunted in reply. Then I threw up in the back of his patrol car. Up came the tequila, along with the cheeseburger and fries I had eaten for dinner. I was careful to cant my body forward and didn’t get any on my khakis or white Brooks Brothers polo shirt. I told O’Rourke that if he had let me go he wouldn’t be stuck