To Make a Long Story Short
1
A Strange Tale of the New IPD
Copyright ©2021 Elder Road Books
Original draft, 1971
Revised September 2021
FROM THE TIME I got up Thursday morning, it had been “one of those days.” There was an accident on I-70 that held up traffic, so I was late for work. The boss was unhappy with that and gave me a ten-minute lecture on why I needed to plan ahead for such things and leave earlier in the morning. By the time I made it to my station, I was even later and the supervisor had to give me an earful, too. I had a backlog on the assembly and managed to get my knuckles scraped up trying to loosen a part from the mess. At lunch, I grabbed my brown bag and found my thermos had leaked all over my sandwich and the bottom of the bag fell out when I picked it up.
I finally got out of there and managed to drive through a food pickup for dinner. The fries were cold and so covered with salt that I couldn’t wash it down with the diluted soda they served. When I got to the college for my night class, there was no parking within half a mile, so I ran from my car—in the rain—to class in time to find I’d left the paper that was due today at home. After class, that cute Darlene started talking to me and we were making some time when she dropped a book. I bent over to pick it up and ripped out the seat of my pants. That ended that conversation, with a few titters and “See you!”
When I got back to my car, I discovered I’d left the lights on and the battery was dead. AAA promised to be there in thirty minutes. Two hours later, the truck showed up, couldn’t get the battery to jump, and sold me a new one on the spot. At least it started the car.
Finally, after midnight, I was wearily driving home, hoping to get there before I fell asleep. I thought I was alone on the street, until suddenly I saw flashing red lights in my rearview mirror. “Ah,” I thought, “the guardians of our fair city are wakeful. This noble policeman is hot on the trail of some archvillain—an enemy of the people. I shall pull aside and let him pass.”
But he did not pass. He pulled over behind me. There he was at my window, asking to see my driver’s license. I was the archcriminal he was after. Forty in a thirty-five mph zone at one o’clock in the morning is worth a ticket.
As I pulled up to the next stoplight, there was a car ahead of me with one of those cute bumper stickers on the left side that said, “America, love it or leave it.” On the right side of the bumper, one said, “If you don’t like police, next time you need help, call a hippie.” After the day I’d had, neither seemed like a bad idea.
Friday is garbage collection day, so when I got home and had changed into a comfy non-ripped pair of sweats, I tied my big green bag of garbage up and walked out to the back alley to deposit it in the dumpster. The sharp command of a voice brought me up short as it said, “Hold it! Turn around real slow.”
The figure I saw wore a leather jacket, dungarees, a slouch hat, and held a gun. But the voice was unmistakably female. I didn’t know what it was she wanted. I’d left my wallet in my apartment and all my money with it. In fact, all I had with me was my bag of garbage and my virtue. I could tell by the way she was pointing her gun at my sack, she didn’t want that! She just stood there pointing her gun and didn’t say anything. Finally, in desperation, I yelled out, “I need a hippie!” That’s not what I meant to say. I meant to yell ‘cop’ but somehow it slipped out wrong.
She jerked at first and raised her gun up at me. Fortunately, before she shot, what I had said sank in. She looked at me a moment, then broke out in uncontrollable laughter. I joined her quickly, thinking that perhaps I had just saved my bacon. Our laughter was cut off by another voice.
“You need help, daddio?” he said as I saw him coming around the corner. He was in a tie-dyed sweatshirt and blue jeans, and his hair and beard hung down in strings past his shoulders.
All I could think was, “Oh, my God! What have I done?” Then two more guys appeared from the opposite direction. My assailant swung her gun around and commanded us all against a wall. I saw two dark shadows materialize behind her.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. She didn’t have time to answer. One of the dark shadows, a black man dressed in black, reached out and grabbed the gun from her hand, while the other pinned her arms behind her. Somehow, however, I had the uneasy feeling my troubles were not yet over.
One of my ‘rescuers’ stepped around a corner and whistled. The two remaining with me took me by the arms and one said, “You’ll come with us, please.” It wasn’t really a request. The other two moved with my assailant beside us as a beat-up but gaily painted old panel van pulled up in front of us. We were ushered inside. I was twenty-one years old and had recently considered getting a similar vehicle and outfitting it with a mattress and some cool tie-dyed curtains like this one had. I mean, not the mattress. We just sat on the floor. But it did have curtains.
We rode in silence about twenty minutes before stopping on a shady looking street, and were led into a nondescript brick building. The lighting was poor and the room dirty. Dust covered everything we touched as we went down a dark stairway and through a door at the bottom. The sudden glare of light that burst forth through the door blinded me as I walked into the room, but as my eyes adjusted, I noticed the obvious differences between this room and the rest of the building.
This room was not at all dirty. In fact, ‘immaculate’ would describe it perfectly. I was standing on thick red carpet. Around us were benches that looked like old church pews facing the same direction I was. The room was set up just like an old-fashioned English courtroom, if all you had was what you could find in a church basement. A panel of judges sat at the table in front. Three men with long hair and beards. Two women with straight hair that hung below the top of the table. I was led to the front and seated to the right. My assailant was seated to the left. There was a kind of sweet smell in the room and a stick of incense burned on the judges’ table.
A man in his mid-thirties, bearded but trim and clean, walked over to me. “Harold Markle III, Doctor of Law, Notre Dame University, at your service,” he said as he shook my hand warmly. “I’m the prosecuting attorney.” I started to ask him what I was doing, but at that moment one of the judges on the panel rapped a gavel and we were called to order.
“Will the plaintiff step forward, please?”
The prosecutor gave me a nudge and we went forward.
“Like, what’s your name, man. And your address and the charges and stuff,” the judge asked.
I told him, and said that I had been held up by this woman while emptying my garbage. One of the men dressed in black came forward and produced the gun he said was taken from the woman. In the light of the room, the gun looked like it had been retrieved from a dump. If it was loaded, I’d be afraid to fire it. Not that I’d ever touched a handgun in my life. I glanced over at the woman and discovered in the light that she was just a teen. Quite lovely at that. Another woman was talking with her and then came over to address me.
“Hey man,” she said, “Did the defendant, like, ask you for money or anything? What did she say?”
“Only to hold it and turn around real slow,” I said. “She didn’t have time for anything else. I just yelled for help. Um… a hippie,” I said, scarcely above a whisper.
“Then no actual threat was made other than the perception that she was holding a gun on you? That um… thing there.”
“No.”
“Judges,” she addressed the panel, “I move the charges be changed from attempted robbery to something like menacing a citizen. Do you agree to that, dude?”
I looked at the prosecutor and he nodded to me. “Of course,” I answered.
The center judge spoke again. “Charges are reduced to menacing a citizen.” I’d never really heard of such a charge. “The defendant will please come forward.” She came forward to stand next to her attorney. “So, babe, what’s your name and address.”
She said her name was Wendy and she didn’t really have an address in the city.
“Are you, like, guilty or innocent?”
“Guilty,” she cried. I mean, really cried with tears and sobs and everything.
The judges conferred together briefly.
“You need to pay a fine of $5.00. If you can’t pay the fine, you’ll be supervised for four hours in the morning while joining a park cleanup crew. You’ll also forfeit your firearm… this thing. Girl, this needs to be taken apart and melted down. What a piece of junk! You’ll be watched for thirty days or until you leave Indy, whichever comes first. There’s this cool lady over at the Unitarian Church who can help you find work and get straight. If you have any needs, see us. Don’t turn to crime.” Then he turned to me. “Dude, the court awards you $2.50, no more than you’ll lose by oversleeping and being late for work in the morning. Are you satisfied?”
I said, “Yes, sir, but you have my curiosity aroused. You fined her $5.00 and awarded me $2.50. Do you get the rest?”
He produced a large coffee can from behind him. It was labeled “Emergency relief fund.”
“The rest,” he answered, “goes in here. The next time she’s desperate enough to rob someone, she’ll have someplace to come where she can get a no deposit, no return loan.”
“In that case,” I said, my spirits by this time greatly uplifted, “please put my $2.50 in there, too. And please, may I go home now?”
I was ushered out of the building and to a car by two of my rescuers who drove me home. When we reached our destination, I invited them in for a beer before they left. They declined and said they never drank while on the job.
When I went into my apartment, I discovered my whole ordeal had taken less than an hour and a half. I chuckled to myself when I thought about how long it would have taken me to even get to court via the police. Then I sighed. The rehabilitation program got me thinking. If it wasn’t successful, I’d likely face the same ordeal next Thursday night and I would probably be killed. Maybe even sooner, for all I knew.
Just a few days later, however, two of my rescuers came to call with an invitation. I was escorted to a wedding where I was asked to give away the bride. The minister was the cool lady at the Unitarian Church. The groom was one of the judges. The bride was Wendy, my assailant. Now, that’s what I call rehabilitation. Oh, well. As the old saying goes, “If you don’t like police, next time you need help, call a hippie!”
AFTERWORD
Not twenty-four hours after this story first appeared in print, there came a knock at my door. Two burly plainclothes policemen flashed credentials and pushed their way past me. They had search warrants for a dozen different things signed by our chief of police, prosecutor, a judge, and a score more public officials. They checked all the rooms to see that I was alone, sniffed the ashes in my ashtray, and looked for sugar cubes in the refrigerator. I poured them each a beer and we sat down to talk, whereupon one pulled out a copy of my story.
“Is this story true?” he asked in a gruff voice.
“Of course not,” I said. “Why? Did you think you could be replaced by a hippie?”
They were very rude when they left. They didn’t even finish their beers.
Oh, well. “…next time you need help…”
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