Disturbing Trends

Scott Burton took another deep drag on his cigarette, his eyes gazing blankly at the flickering television screen six feet from where he sat.  If someone had suddenly turned off the set, he probably would have protested, but if the same person had asked him what he had been watching the past half hour, he probably wouldn’t have been able to provide a satisfactory answer. 

The sight of a bright red sports car racing madly across a desert landscape yanked Scott out of his semi-stupor.  “The New Kamikaze, from Cyclone Motors.  You’re just one step away from flying.”

Scott would have given anything for a new set of wheels like that.  At the moment, however, he didn’t have anything to give.  Six years at Valu-Fresh Markets had dissipated with the advent of a new price scanner that totaled an entire cart of groceries in fifteen seconds.  A $54,000 car was at the bottom of his list of necessities. Still, he was allowed to dream. 

He took another puff on his crude, home-made cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as possible before exhaling.  He couldn’t really afford to smoke either, but he had to do something to alleviate the boredom of a horridly dull existence.

An initial glance at Scott wouldn’t have distinguished him from millions of other typical Americans, employed or otherwise.  He was dressed in faded, tattered blue jeans, and a black t-shirt emblazoned with the explicit logo of Caramel, his favorite heavy metal group.  His dirty, white canvas sneakers were untied but loosely laced.  A backwards Phillies cap was shoved tightly on his head.  He was seldom without a cap, except when he slept or showered.  His hair hung to his shoulders in dark blond locks, and two-day scruff sprouted from his face. 

The television droned on.  “. . .Stillwater Falls runs red with blood, as a determined serial killer strives for 10 victims.  Will Reggie and Sheila be able to stop him before he makes his deadly quota?  Find out on Streets of Fire, tonight at ten.

“But now stay tuned for Roll Over, as Bruce is caught masturbating on the office surveillance system.”

“I feel like such a jerk! . . .Don’t say it!”

Scott laughed loudly and pounded the arm of his chair.  “Oh, man,” he said. His burst of joviality was interrupted by a pounding on the front door.  Instinctively he dropped the cigarette to the floor and hastily stomped it out.  Scuttling the barely smoking butt under the chair with the heel of his sneaker, he jumped to his feet.  Probably that cranky old Mrs. Okra down the hall.

The pounding continued unabated.  “Open up!” came a shout from the hallway.  “Police.”

As Scott grabbed the handle and started to turn, the door swung open with such speed and force that it nearly knocked him down. Two officers burst into the apartment, a short, stocky woman with mean blue eyes and a crew cut, and her partner, a tall, gaunt man in his late forties with a mustache and a dark goatee.  Side by side, they looked almost comical.  But Scott wasn't about to tell them that.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, looking as naive as he could.

The butch broad answered him.  “We have a search warrant,” she informed him, shoving a piece of paper in his face.

“A search warrant?” Scott said, doing his best to sound shocked.  “I don’t understand.”

Her partner took three or four long strides over to where Scott had been sitting, and picked up a clear plastic bag containing the three remaining cigarettes.  “Maybe this will clear things up,” he replied.  In his haste to extinguish and dispose of the butt he’d been smoking, Scott had forgotten the obvious.  

The short, stocky woman grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around, and shoved him against the wall.  In a second, her hands were all over his arms, shoulders, back, buttocks and thighs.  She methodically grabbed one wrist, then the other, and cuffed his hands behind his back.

“Take it easy, honey!” Scott said.

“What did you call me?” she demanded.

This time Scott didn’t have to feign surprise.  “What do you mean what did I call you?”

Her voice was a snarl.  “You called me honey! Jim, you hear him call me honey?”

Jim nodded.  “Sure did, Sue.”

“Mister,” she told Scott. “you’re lookin’ at possession of tobacco and second degree sexual misconduct charges.”

“What?” Scott shouted.  “This is unbelievable!”  He repeated this statement as the policewoman shoved him towards the door.

“You have the right to remain silent,” her partner began.  “If you give up this right, anything you say can and will be used against you.  You also have the right to have an attorney present during-"

“Oh, he knows his rights!” the woman snapped, sending Scott out into the hallway with a sharp kick in the pants.  Scott grimaced and then grew livid, but didn’t dare vocalize what he was thinking this time.

The ride in the back of the patrol car was interminable.  The locked doors on either side of him and the wire partition in front of him made Scott feel like he was already in prison.  He heard the casual conversation between his two captors, and they sounded more like they were discussing the weather over a cup of coffee and a bag of doughnuts rather than apprehending a “dangerous felon” like himself.

The squad car pulled neatly into a space between two other police vehicles in front of the gray stone precinct building.  Scott was hustled through a pair of glass doors, brushing past cluttered desks and bodies in blue uniforms.  He heard talking and shouting and laughing and cursing.  The stench of rancid coffee nearly made him gag.  He was efficiently booked, photographed and fingerprinted, then shoved into the back of a police van with seven men who looked like they were capable of mugging their grandmothers.  Nobody said a word or looked at anyone else during the bumpy, 15-minute ride to the courthouse. 

The group missed night court by minutes, so it was Scott’s misfortune to spend the night in a cell.  He stood with his hands on the bars after the cell door was locked behind him and stared vacantly ahead like the consummate prisoner.  He finally turned around and nearly yelled in shock upon seeing another person sitting in the corner, two or three feet from the toilet.  The guy was staring at him, not in a hostile fashion, just looking at him like somebody might look at a new building or a smashed vehicle on the side of a road.  He was about Scott’s age, tall, wiry, with beady eyes and slicked black hair that stood up in spikes.  Five earrings that resembled tiny links of chain hung from his right earlobe, and a large, white plastic loop from his left.   A silver bead was stuck underneath his lower lip.  His pants were so large on him that it looked like he had a throw covering his legs.  He wore a sleeveless red shirt inside out and backwards.  On his feet were black leather pumps.  Looking at him, Scott thought that the feature that stood out most was that silver bead above his chin.

“What’s your favorite arcade game, dude?” he asked Scott abruptly.

Scott leaned an arm against one of the cots protruding from the wall, and replied with calculated calmness, “Phatal Phight.”

The young man nodded, slowly absorbing Scott’s reply.  “Yeah, that one’s pretty cool.  I like to take Absolute Zero.  Either him or Acid Tongue.  But the graphics on Disemboweler are way better.”
Scott’s perplexed look didn’t fade.  “Oh, yeah?” he said.

“Totally, man,” his perforated cell mate replied.  “When you get to the third screen, all the people you killed come back at the same time.  They pop up out of the ground, under rocks, out of the trees. They rip your arms and legs off if they catch you.”

Scott still didn’t know what to say.  He blinked again and shook his head, hoping that this was a bad dream and that he could simply shake himself awake.  Nothing changed.

“What’s wrong?” the guy asked him.

“What’s wrong?” Scott repeated incredulously.

“Yeah, that’s what I said, ‘what’s wrong?’”

The expression on Scott’s face plainly told the guy that Scott thought he was an idiot.  “I’m in jail, man,” he said.
Silver Bead shrugged.  “So am I. Not the first time, either.”  With that he folded his fingers on his knees and began twiddling his thumbs, like he was switching mental gears from a failed attempt at conversation to idle finger play.  Then he came back.  “So what did you do to land yourself here?” 

Scott gave him a suspicious look. “Why?”  

“Just asking.”  He laughed.  “Look, I’m not a police decoy, if that’s what you’re thinking, dude.”

“Got busted with three cigarettes,” Scott said resignedly.  “And this lady cop says I called her ‘honey,’ so they wanna charge me with some sexual misconduct bull.”

“Pretty serious stuff,” Silver Bead replied, not at all seriously. 

 “Whatcha gonna do?”

Scott shifted position slightly.  “I don’t know.” 

“My old supervisor at the factory I used to work at slapped this girl on the ass, playfully, you know,” he started telling Scott, tactlessly, Scott thought.  “He spent four months in jail and the company had to pay her $250,000.  Last I heard, he was still outta work.”

Scott looked at him in misery.  “Thanks,” he muttered.

Scott’s garrulous friend acted like he hadn’t even heard.  “’Course, they had all kinds of problems at that place.  This one dude got fired ‘cause he came to work drunk three times, so he sued for racial discrimination.  Awarded him $50,000.  Can you believe that?”

“I can’t believe I’m here,” Scott moaned.

“It doesn’t take much,” the guy commiserated.  “First time?”

“First time.”

“What’s your name, man?”

Scott sighed.  “I’m Scott.”

“Wade.  Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, likewise.” 

“You know, Scott,” Wade went on. “my old man got busted three times for cheating on his taxes.  Said that he was just tryin’ to keep the government from stealing what was his.  They been taxin’ the hell outta him for years, Internet tax, e-mail tax, tax on all six properties he owns, county tax, occupancy privilege tax.  So he just had enough.  He was real defiant about it, too.  He did six months.”
Scott resigned himself to the fact that Wade was just going to keep on talking whether anyone paid him any attention or not, so he decided he may as well have a conversation with him.  He didn’t feel like sleeping.

 “So where is your Dad now?” Scott asked apathetically. 

“I don’t know,” Wade said.  “He’s not coming to bail me out, if that’s what you mean.”

Scott didn’t know how to answer.  Wade truly sounded dejected.

“I stole a car,” Wade continued.  “Sorry,” he added.  “I allegedly stole a car.  “I’ve been allegedly stealing stuff since I was ten.”

“What’ll happen to you this time?” Scott asked.

Wade began twiddling his thumbs again.  “Probably get a year or two,” he said. “But like I said, I’ve been in all kinds of trouble all my life.  Never killed anyone, though,” he added, as if to reassure Scott.

The two were silent for a long time after that.  Finally Scott asked, “So did you at least steal a nice car?”

“Oh, yeah, man,” Wade told him.  “A brand new Cyclone Kamikaze, tomato red!”

Scott’s jaw dropped.  “No way, man!” he shouted.  “A Kamikaze?  That is one sweet car.”

“You’re tellin’ me,” Wade shot back.  “Leather interior, six-speed stick shift, stereo system, built-in speaker phone. . .” his voice trailed off dreamily.  He added ruefully, “I really hated to break the window to get in.”

“Were you going to sell it?” Scott asked, feeling some camaraderie, or maybe just pity, for his fellow miscreant.

 “Actually, it was just a theft of convenience,” Wade explained.  “I needed to get somewhere in a hurry, and that was the first vehicle I saw.  My brother taught me how to hot-wire cars,” he explained.  He grinned.  “Taught me a lot of bad stuff.”

“Where did you have to go in such a hurry?” Scott had to know.

Wade blushed.  “To see my probation officer,” he said.  “I was running late.”

Scott looked at Wade for several seconds in astonishment, then the two of them broke out in gales of laughter that shook their whole bodies and left them coughing and gasping.

“To see your probation officer,” Scott wheezed.

A loud pinging rang off the cell bars as the officer on guard rapped them with his nightstick.  He was a fat, graying, middle-aged man with a red, bulbous nose.  A tiny diamond stud sparkled in his left earlobe.  “All right, settle down, you two,” he bellowed.  

“Didn’t know laughing was a felony, officer,” Wade challenged him.



The fat cop glared at him for ten or fifteen seconds, then walked away without comment.  Wade made a faint snorting noise.

“So,” Scott began tentatively.  “You think maybe your brother could bail you out?”

Wade shook his head.  “He’s dead.”

 “I’m sorry, man.”
“Yeah,” Wade said, almost philosophically.  “Flipped his car over three times.”

“Was he drunk?” Scott asked.

“No.”

 “I wonder if they’ll feed us,” Scott began awkwardly.

Wade’s response came out of nowhere.  “I did something about two years ago that also got me into a lot of trouble.”

Scott looked at Wade curiously, waiting for him to continue.  

“This was when I worked at United Medical Supplies, same place where that manager I mentioned got canned for sexual assault and the shipping clerk sued for discrimination.”  He took a deep breath, as if beginning to tell a long and tragic tale.  “They say stuff happens in threes.  Well, I was number three.

“I was on my lunch break.  Just about everybody else had gone out for Chinese, ‘cept I was broke and nobody was feeling too generous.”  He gave a short laugh. “Nobody was in the warehouse, so I started playing around with the computer on the shipping manager’s desk, surfing the Net.”  He grinned.  “Looking at those adult sites.  I come across this link for,” he whispered. “Stephanie Sizzle.”

Scott’s eyebrows raised at the name.  Stephanie Sizzle was a porn star whose career spanned just three years, but some 75 films.  Her stint in adult cinema came to an end when somebody found out that the comely, curvaceous blonde was 15 when she started making movies.  Nearly all of the films were officially considered contraband. 

“So I checked it out for a few minutes,” Wade finally blurted out. 

Scott grimaced.  “You got off looking at a 15 year-old?”

“I’m telling you, she had the body of a twenty-five year old,” Wade insisted, becoming defensive.  “I’ll bet you wouldn’t have known the difference, either.  Anyway, the feds came into the place the next day wanting to know who was looking at ‘child pornography’ on the Internet.  And like an idiot, I told them.”

Scott looked like he was hearing a murder confession.  “So, did they like, arrest you?”

“Hell, yeah,” Wade said.  “Arrested, fingerprinted, booked.  Fired from my job, needless to say,” he added.  “All for looking at a picture that somebody more or less flashed in front of my face.”

“It wasn’t exactly ‘flashed in front of your face,’” Scott countered.

“Oh, no?” Wade argued.  “It’s out there for everybody to see.  If some pervert pastes a picture of a couple of naked ten year-olds on a billboard right over I-95, according to the law, everybody who drives by and looks is a criminal!”

Scott rolled his eyes.  “That’s not the same thing.  Besides, who’d want to look at a picture of two naked ten year-olds?  Not me.”

“Not me either, man!” Wade shouted, pounding his fist into his palm.  “I’m not like that.  I swear.  But this was different, man.”
Scott wanted to know more.  “Well, how did they know somebody was looking at it?” he asked Wade.  “You turned it off before everyone got back, didn’t you?

“Yeah, yeah”, Wade said.  “But they got ways of finding that out now.  Do you know what cookies are?  I mean, like, computer cookies?”

Scott shook his head.

“Well, they’re like these little programs that latch onto your computer, like a bug, like tapping somebody’s phone, like they do to mobsters. They know everything, man. They find out.”

Scott still didn’t understand.  “So why don’t they nail everybody that looks at that stuff?”

“I don’t know, man,” Wade said.  “Totally random, I guess.”

“I don’t even own a computer,” Scott told him. 

“Me neither,” Wade replied.  “I don’t even own a car anymore since I totaled my last one.  Of course, that’s another story.  If it weren’t for that computer at work, that whole mess never would’ve happened.  But I’d have found somehow to screw up.  Story of my life.”

Scott didn’t recall being tired or even climbing into bed, but figured he must have, since that was where he woke up.  Since his watch as well as all of his other personal belongings had been confiscated, he didn’t know what time it was.  Wade was still sitting in the corner, like he hadn’t moved all night.  He was awake, and looked neither tired nor alert.

“Hello,” he said, as Scott swung his legs over the bed and sat up.

“Hey,” Scott replied.

Heavy footsteps thudded down the hallway.  The guard was back.  He stood purposefully before the cell door, squared his shoulders and then pressed his right thumb against a tiny gray screen set in between the bars and the door jamb. 

“Unauthorized personnel,” a monotone female voice said.
Cursing, the guard again pressed his thumb on the screen, harder this time. The response from the computerized square was the same.

“Hey, Jansen,” he shouted to a policewoman walking past. 

 “What’s the matter with this thing?”

She stopped and turned towards him.  She was about 25, a beautiful woman with a dark, unblemished complexion and sleek black hair tied into a topknot.  “What’s the matter, Frick?” she asked.

“I can’t open this damn cell!”

“Use your left thumb,” she suggested.

He tried this.  Again he heard the same infuriating message.
She laughed playfully, and lightly touched her own left thumb against the screen. “Jansen, Laurie F. Access allowed.”  There was a loud click, and she effortlessly slid open the cell door as her colleague looked on dumbfounded.

“Must be all that pizza grease on your thumbs, Frick,” she quipped.  Scott watched her longingly as she strolled off. 

The fat cop looked at Scott.  “Come talk to your lawyer,” he grunted tersely.

The two walked down the corridor past a dozen other cells.  “Hold it right there,” Frick announced, and Scott froze.  Then he opened a door to Scott’s left, ordered him to have a seat at a small table in the center, and closed the door behind him.  A minute later the door opened again and a woman entered, her heels clacking delicately on the floor as she made her way to the table and sat down opposite Scott.  She was about 35, with black hair tied in a bun and thick, plastic-rimmed glasses resting on her large nose.  She had the kind of face that could never be made to look pretty, only passable.  She had a very shapely figure, though, accented by her tight black skirt and white cotton blouse.

Scott unconsciously smoothed his tangled blond hair.

“Hello, Scott,” she addressed him.  “My name is Judith Plumb.  I’m with the Philadelphia Public Defender’s office.”

“Hello,” Scott replied, with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Scott, since you said that you couldn’t afford a lawyer, I’m here to help you,” she explained in a patronizing tone.  “And I think that I have good news for you.”  She paused, waiting for some response from Scott, which did not come.  She continued, “I spoke with DA Harris, and because this is your first offense, he’s willing to drop the sexual misconduct charges if you plead guilty to possession of tobacco.  This way, you’ll get six months probation, no jail time, and in a year, it’ll be expunged from your record,” she finished succinctly.  “How does that sound?”

Scott cracked a smile.  “Hang-em-high Harris said that?”

Judith Plumb was clearly flustered at Scott’s levity.  “DA Harris does not find that sobriquet amusing,” she cautioned him.

“Got him re-elected, didn’t it?” 

She sighed.  “Scott, as your attorney, I would strongly advise that you-’’

“Now hold on, Judy,” he interrupted.  “Give me a second to think.”

She frowned at him.  “Judith.  My name is ‘Judith.’”

“Judith,” he repeated.  “I’m sorry.”

“Now tell me, Scott, is this deal acceptable to you?”

Scott considered the offer.  “No,” he finally replied.

Judith Plumb looked as if Scott had spat in her face.  “What did you say?”

“I said ‘no’,” Scott calmly repeated.

“Scott,” she argued. “Perhaps you don’t understand the seriousness of these charges.  You were in possession of three cigarettes-’’

“Four,” he cut in.  “I slid one under the chair when the cops knocked on the door.”

Her hands flew to her ears.  “I did not hear that,” she declared.  “I did not hear any of that, do not repeat it!”

“What’s the big deal, Judy?” he asked.

“Judith!” she snapped.

“Judith!” he shot back.

“The big deal, mister, is that you are charged with possession of tobacco and second degree sexual misconduct,” she said.  “You could be facing up to 18 months in prison.  Now I am giving you an easy choice to make.  If you want to play hardball, you’re going to get slammed.”

Scott started twiddling his thumbs, just like he had seen Wade do.  “I wanna fight this,” he said triumphantly.  “I wanna fight this on the grounds that the law is unjust.  I’ll bring in the ALCU if I have to.”

“The ACLU,” she corrected him.

“Yeah, them,” Scott said.  “I wanna fight it all the way.  Can I do that?”

Judith shook her head.  “Okay,” she sighed.  “Okay, do what you want.  But I have a little advice for you.”

“What?”

“Be prepared to lose.”

Scott was returned to his cell and took his place across from Wade. The two began talking again for another hour about various subjects, none of them having to do with prisons or courts or police stations.  Wade didn’t ask Scott what had transpired and Scott didn’t offer any explanation.  

The two were so absorbed in trivial conversation that neither even noticed that the beautiful policewoman had returned.  They looked up upon hearing the droning “access allowed” message.  Frick stood a few feet in the background, looking and probably feeling useless. 

“Let’s go, Burton,” the woman told him.  “Time for your arraignment.”  Scott obediently walked out of the cell and heard the door slam shut behind him.  He started to walk down the hall to the courtroom, the two officers flanking him, and then stopped, turned around and said to Wade, “If you press the “Fire” button twice really fast, and then hold down the “jump” key on Disemboweler, you can create a firewall to protect you from all those zombies.  It’ll give you a little extra time before they close in on you.”

Wade smiled. “An extra thirty seconds is all I need.”

“It may be all you get,” Scott replied cryptically.  He gave Wade the thumbs-up sign, and Wade did likewise.  Then Scott turned back around and headed towards the court room, not sure what his own game plan was. 

Copyright Allan M. Heller