Rookie

 

The captain shakes his head at me, asking what I think he should do.

I tell him I didn’t know the mayor was the mayor until after I arrested him, even though the mayor kept telling me he as the mayor as I cuffed him.

Ramming the mayor’s limo with my police cruiser might see excessive had I simply been trying to stop the car for speeding.

I tell the captain I thought the mayor who I did know what mayor then was really the killer of the teenage girls the department said I should keep a look out for. After all, the mayor looks and sounds a lot like the man witnesses described as the killer.

This prompts to ask how I could tell how tall the mayor was – or for that matter know anything about him – when the mayor sat in the rear of the limo with tinted windows at the time of his arrest?

I tell the captain I made a calculated guess.

Just like I guessed last week in the park when I arrested the two undercover policemen as prostitutes, the captain asks?

Exactly, I say, after all how was I to know that they were policemen when they were dressed like women and were walking in the park after dark?

The fact that one of them needed to use the Men’s Room in the park might have clued me in, the captain suggests.

At this point, the desk sergeant interrupts and tells the captain he just got notice from the state police that the Governor is coming to town.

The captain nods thoughtful, pauses, then looks at me.

“Take the day off, Rookie,” he tells me.

Naturally, I protest. I love my job.

His face hardens when he says that if I don’t take the day with pay, he’ll put me in a jail cell.

What a grouch!

So I leave, making my way down the hall, and out the door, and across the parking lot to my car.

On my way passed the airport, I see a motorcade – speeding.

Of course, I know that a police officer is still a police officer, on duty or off.

I also believe that rich people have to follow the law as well as poor, so I turn on my siren and lights.

The captain would expect no less of me.