Done for a Dime by David Corbett Page A

this blind alley, okay? He’s figured it out finally, the cluck. No place to go. I start shouting into my radio—this thing here, on my shoulder—pretending the cavalry’s on the way. Truth is, there’s nobody but me. This kid, he don’t know that. He jumps on top of a Dumpster, tries to snag a fire escape ladder. I grab for his ankle, he stomps on my arm, little prick, which is how the wrist got like this.”
    “Yeah,” a second voice said. Breathy, young. Female. “Swole up bad.”
    “It’s nothing. Line of duty. Any event, this kid hits the fire escape, he’s gone. So I lean down, grab the backup piece from my ankle rig, lay it on the ground. I call up, ‘Break yourself, skinnybone—see this? It’s called a toss down. That’s the weapon you pulled on me, you worthless piece of shit. Now climb your scrawny black ass down off that Dumpster or I’ll defend myself, hear me?’”
    The young woman chuckled and mewed, awestruck.
    “The rest was routine. Used what we call the kneel down, pat down, and cuff technique. Here, I’ll show you.”
    Murchison went to pull back the screen, but Stluka stopped him—finger to his lips, that wicked glee in the eye. Fifteen, twenty seconds, Stluka nodded okay. Murchison cleared his throat.
    “Officer?”
    Stluka drew back the curtain. A nurse’s aide—maybe twenty years old, blond hair and baby fat, dressed in blue scrubs—knelt on the floor, hands cuffed behind her. She had bloodred nails, big teeth, hair pulled back tight with ringlets at the temples. Gilroy, left wrist bandaged, was patting her down with his good hand. He was big—square, muscular—with a chestnut-colored flattop and huge ears. The ears, they’d earned him the nickname Dumbo; due to other qualities, the nickname had stuck.
    He was leaning close behind the girl. Her cheeks were flushed.
    Stluka said, “Confirm all wants prior to arrest.”
    They froze, the girl and Gilroy, looking like some randy statuette at a novelty store.
    “That thing on your belt. You know that’s a baton, right? Not a marital aid.”
    They gave Gilroy time to undo the girl’s cuffs, help her up. She fled. He couldn’t wipe away the bad boy grin.
    “You took a suspect into custody,” Murchison said. Given recent activity, he felt the need to add, “Downtown.”
    “Thigpen kid. Yeah. In the raghead’s store. I hear somebody bitched up his window after, too.”
    “This Thigpen kid, he’s where?”
    “Holding, waiting for transport to County. That’s where I left him, anyway.”
    “You written anything up?”
    “Not yet.” He lifted his bandaged wrist, waved it a little side to side. Queen of the Rose Parade.
    “What was your reasonable suspicion?”
    Gilroy looked stunned at being asked such a thing. “Hennessey didn’t—”
    “Let’s hear it from you.”
    “Store owner IDed him as a potential suspect, the Carlisle thing. Him and the vic got into it, rough stuff, less than half an hour before the shooting. Outside the liquor store, which is just down the hill from the old man’s house.”
    “But you decided to detain him. This Thigpen kid. Not just give him a Beheler and invite him down to the station for a chat.”
    “He got itchy feet. I went in pursuit. In the course of pursuit, we got in a toss. Plus this.” He held his breast pocket open with the bad hand, reached in with the good, and pulled out a popper vial of brownish liquid, holding it top and bottom, index finger and thumb. Murchison took it from him, careful not to touch the sides, shook it, watched the fluid darken.
    Stluka said, “Imagine that. Best drugs in town. And they’re free.”
    Murchison followed up: “You open this?”
    “No.”
    “No secret sniffs?”
    “No.” Pissed now.
    “You found it where?”
    “Dropsie. Right there at his feet, in the alley where I made the arrest.”
    Stluka groaned. “If only life were as simple as you, Dumbo.”
    Gilroy crossed his arms, get that bulge thing going. “Excuse