Night Shift

by Gary Clifton

The battered yellow cab labored painfully down Commerce, creeping slowly past the gaggle of mostly female prostitutes lounging along the block-long facade of the Plaza Hotel. The cabdriver, Isaac Jackson, was big and just as tough as he looked. The backseat passenger, Charlie Cardo, was thirtyish, slender, with blond shoulder-length hair and thick beard stubble.

Every hooker, pimp, panhandler, grifter, thug — and the one-legged guy who shined shoes at Slick Willie’s Barbecue — knew that yellow cab was a police vehicle and anybody riding in or on it was either a cop or in a fix. Somebody was about to get screwed... or not, depending on interpretation.

* * *

Jackson caught Cardo’s eye in the rear-view mirror. “Lieutenant said our quota is two tonight. After that dopy, screamin’ psycho up on Harry Hines a while ago, we need to bag one of these jewels where we don’t hafta whup her pimp. County General just called. Slow George will live, man, but we busted his right arm.”

The hookers had all casually done the “I ain’t really here” stroll, except one who was actually approaching the poisoned free taxi ride to jail special.

“Decoy cop?” Cardo asked.

“Naw. We busted this dimwit a couple weeks ago down by the Trinity River Bridge. Remember, a bunch a’ aliases, no pimp, and that very large switchblade.”

Cardo asked, “Too dumb or toked out to remember us?”

Jackson shrugged.

From the society of survivors who live under bridges, DeSandra Klunk was a paroled murderer, frequently arrested for prostitution, and dumber than a day-old dog. Known by a half-dozen surnames in Tulsa, which she’d called home for her nineteen years, she’d moved south for a new grip on anonymity and to distance herself from a year in jail worth of capias — failure to appear — warrants.

Hookers develop instincts: when to run, when to negotiate. DeSandra was stuck behind the door in whore school when they did the part about common sense.

That evening, she’d wandered a block farther east on Commerce. In the blazing humid swelter, flaming red hair visible for two blocks, she slouched against a light pole in six-inch spiked heels. Her yellow shorts exposed most of the lower half of her pudgy, soon to be too fat to peddle, keister. The evening had been slow, the traffic consisting largely of losers who had neither style, money, nor could pass the “I smell a cop” test.

She leaned down to make eye contact with Cardo who was waving a handful of Ben Franklins — that’s hundred-dollar bills in civilian-speak. On sight of the cash, her brain involuntarily switched off the safety-mode switch. “Hey, baby,” she purred, “wanna party?”

“Uh, golly,” Cardo stammered like a tourist from Texarkana. “Whud you have in mind?”

“Gimme one of them Franklins, I’ll do whatever you like for a half hour. Two and it’s a whole hour.” She then went through a smorgasbord of sordid activities available in her inventory of treats, several of which were not in Cardo’s index of bizarre activity.

Unique about the hooker laws, no “crime” is committed unless the vendor of said sexual favors makes a cash offer first. Cops name a price first, no case. DeSandra had just stepped in legal super-glue.

Cardo casually got out and flashed a badge. “You’re under arrest for solicitation of prostitution.”

“Oh, screw me,” DeSandra wailed.

“Not tonight, dear, he has a headache,” Jackson grinned as he stepped around the Yellow Cab.

“Aw, hell, Jackson. Didn’t see your big ass drivin’ that buggy.”

And in the normal hooker business, that should have been it. She could bond out in an hour and in two more she’d earn back the five hundred bail money. But, nope, her survival switch was still stuck in the “off” position. She ran for it.

In her six-inch heels, she broke east on the sidewalk, veered across Oak, toppled to pavement, ripped the seat out of her yellow shorts, skinned a knee, and narrowly avoided being run over by an old F150 pickup driven by Oscar Ramirez, up from Waco trolling for a hooker while drunk as a blind orangutan. Ramirez skidded into a utility pole, broke his nose, totaled the F150, and knocked a brand-new aluminum light pole through the front glass of the Drovers’ and Merchants’ Bank.

DeSandra was in Official Time Out. Cardo slipped the cuffs on her and called for an ambulance.

* * *

A uniformed beat cop parked his cruiser and strolled over, preceded a full yard by his beer belly. Jackson and Cardo knew him well. The bet would have been a wash between which one disliked him the most.

Fortyish, his heavy breathing predicted he had about a year left. “Another friggin’ tentacle off the arm of organized crime, boys? Ain’t Vice got nuthin’ better to do than cherry-pick whore busts on my beat without notifying me?” He waved a carload of gawkers to move on. “This dopey chick really name a price?”

Jackson peered over his gold-rimmed half-glasses. “Barnaby, somethin’ you oughta know. When me and Cardo came on tonight, I asked him four maybe five times if he gives a damn about what ol’ lard-ass Barnaby thought about how we handled things... if you get my drift. So, when you’re finished attending to the driver and that F150 badly in need of a wrecker, kindly haul this beat-up babe to jail and do your damnedest to stay outa our bidness until, by God, they put you in charge of it.”

DeSandra, her derriere on injured reserve, feeling lower than a copperhead’s chin, sat bleeding on a curb watching the entire exchange. “Barnaby!” she finally said. “If you gonna be haulin’ my ass to County, this time you pay for services rendered... hopin’, of course, you got one o’ them Franklins. If it’s like las’ time, you ain’t got fitty cents.”

Barnaby’s expression, as he hate-stared at Jackson and Cardo, was much like he’d just swallowed a very large night crawler.