world is cold the bold men take action
have to react or get blown into fractions
ten years old it's something to see
another kid my age drugged under a jeep
This chapter begins with Eve standing in her apartment in her underwear. Yeah, I know. I should do this more often. Anyway, she was holding heels in one hand and a red dress in the other. They were supposed to go salsa dancing tonight, her and Dave, and like 20 of his friends she didn't even know he had. Her riding suit was on the bed. She was looking at it, wondering out this was all going to work. She broke down and used a backpack. They rode together. They could have just taken Dave's car, but he wanted to ride. The argument ended abruptly when he asked her if she was scared. Also, his car was in the shop for some reason.
The ride to Little Cuba was uneventful. As Dave promised, there was a coat check and a ton of room for changing in the ladies room (how did he know that?) but to get there they had to thread through a throng of people all spinning and twisting their bodies to latin dance music, holding their helmets in front or behind them. Eve turned heads.
Eve had a good time. Dave had taught her some steps on her hardwood floor at home. It had not been the dancing around to Frank Sinatra that she had imagined, or even the dancing in her underwear to Johnny Cash. It was even a bit awkward. At the club, though, it all came together for her. Eve couldn't understand the words but that music ignited something within her, a passion that could only be unleashed by furious spins.
She was also getting jealous though. Dave was not the kind of guy that normally attracted girls to him, but he appeared to know all off them and they were practically lining up to dance with him. He got tired quickly and sat down next to her.
"So have you guys heard about the new rent-a-cops?" asked Barry. Barry was one of Dave's few guy friends. He was pretty big, but not really fat. Just large sized.
"Oh you mean the mercenaries?" said Dave.
"Are they really?" asked Eve.
"Yeh. Same company that shot up some intersection in Iraq and killed like a hundred people for no reason."
"Yeah...ooh gotta go," said Barry. He bounded off to the dance floor to catch a girl he'd been eyeing all night.
"Yeh apparently they are supplementing the police or some bullshit. Ever since that biker smashed that guys windshield, some soccer mom has been going on about safety."
"Her son was hospitalized by a biker."
"Probably deserved it."
"And where do you get off calling a woman a soccer mom just because shes-"
"She is literally a soccer mon. She drives a minivan. She takes her kids to little soccer games in that minivan. And she was only chosen to run for mayor because they need a woman."
Eve was about to come back with a smart reply, but something distracted Dave and she followed his gaze. There, on the dance floor, the girl Barry was dancing with was trying to extricate herself from his arms, but was unable, because he had fallen asleep and was very heavy. Other people were just starting to notice. Dave jumped up and hurried to the dance floor. He patted Barry on the back, then flicked his ear. Barry woke up. The girl smiled at them and was gone.
"Dude. Vodka red bull."
"I hate red bull," said Barry.
"Yeah, well you need it."
After that, they didn't get a chance to talk much. Eve was swarmed by men wanting to dance with her and Dave had no shortage of dance partners himself. Barry spent a lot of time sitting, then headed for the other side of the dance floor, where hopefully no one had noticed him fall asleep. Truth be told, it was a good night.
Eve rode home with a smile.
Then she got pulled over. She had the license plate flipper, but she couldn't outrun the black SUV behind her, not on the highway. The pulled over. The man that stepped out was not a cop, or really even a man. He was a kid wearing a Greywater Security jacket. She couldn't read his body language at first but his intentions became clear a half hour later when he refused to let her leave until she promised to go out on a date with him. Eve had a host of different tactics, including fake numbers, fake boyfriends, sudden illnesses, etc. This jerk wasn't going to get a fake number. They started arguing. She screamed at him. It did no good. Then things got interesting.
Eve got sick of it and pulled out her phone. She started dialing 911. The jackass told her to put her phone away, and reached for his taser. Eve lowered the phone, but pressed Send as she did so. The jackass started resuming his twisted mating call but was interupted by the all too clear voice of a dispatcher saying "911, what is your emergency?"
"I need help!" Eve raised the phone and yelled so the mic would pick up her voice. Jackass lunged for the phone, but Eve held it away from him. He knocked her and her bike over. Eve thanked the angels she had a brick phone, and slid hers along the rough pavement of the shoulder, the call still going. She prayed it was getting traced. It was. Jackass ran for the phone. Eve's right led was pinned under her bike, but she swung her left and tripped him. Fortunately, that moved pissed him off and made him forget her phone. Unfortunately, he came after her.
Jackass dragged her out from under her bike and pulled her up. She kneed him in the balls, hard. Eve wished, very much, that she had her sword, and decided she didn't really want to leave home without it again, not with all these punk ass bitches trying to get a piece of her action. They strugged. Jackass was not used to non-lethally subduing a victim, and Eve had no combat training whatsoever. He tried to use the taser on her. She managed to knock it away, but he still won in the end. He flipped her over and pressed her neck and face into the ground with his knee while he cuffed her. That's how the real cops found them.
Two single seat (one cop inside) cruisers pulled up. The cops hauled Jackass to his feet and cuffed him. They stood her bike up but kept her in cuffs as well. They took them both away in separate cars, leaving Eve's bike on the side of the highway.
Eve was in a tiny interogation room when the police chief walked in. She asked him to make a phone call but he told he she wasn't under arrest. "I understand your story is that he pulled you over without a reason, and refused to let you leave because he wanted a date?"
Eve nodded.
The captain leaned back in his chair. "I've been around long enough to tell when someone's lying to me." He paused. Eve didn't say anything. "And that jackass is a fucking liar. I've had my hands full for weeks trying to deal with these assholes, but the chief has enormous pressure coming down on him to make this 'program' work." The captain slid her phone across the table. "You did the right thing calling us."
"So that's it? Can I go now?"
"Yes. Be advised that I am going to leak this story to the press, and that will include your name. You may not like that, but that bitch Pennington has been railroading us with this shit ever since she took office."
"What keeps them from coming after me?"
"They won't. If an incident like this happens again, the Chief will snap and he'll have us arrest them all." It wasn't completely true, but it sure was reassuring.
Eve called Dave. He showed up with his lawyer friend, who was unecessary but did ask if she wanted to sue. Eve declined. They drove her back to her bike, which thankfully had not been stolen. She gave Dave a kiss and rode home to collapse into bed.
Elsewhere, many people watched the news that night. Dave, from his apartment. Biff, from a bar. The story was a disaster for Maggie Pennington. She had spent a large part of her campain money parading hostpital pictures of her son in front of everyone to see, and that had gotten her a lot of support, but when the news showed a picture of the now arrested Greywater Security personell next to a stunningly beautiful biker chick that had apparently fought back, the people of the city stoppd caring about Orwell Pennington and the traffic incident with too many unexplained details. If Eve had simply been accosted by the mercenary, it would have been bad enough. People would have been filled with righteous indignation, and geeks everywhere would write mean things in their blogs. It was the details of Eve defending herself that made people feel like they weren't hopeless, like there was something they could do about it, and it was the details about her calling the real police that blasted the legitimacy of Pennington's new safety program out of the water.
Someone, somewhere, made a homemade bumper sticker that said "I only pull over for real cops." Dave saw this bumper sticker, and ordered 7,000 copies. He did not ship them to himself. He shipped them to random addresses based on a poisson distribution of the statistical breakdown of census records, in an attempt to get those bumper stickers in the hands of as many twenty-somethings as possible. His statistical model was way off, but nonetheless those bumper stickers found there way onto plenty of cars.
Biff had his own plan. The first step was to break into Greywater Security's motor pool and write down all of the license plate numbers.
Three days later Maggie arrived at her office and found an old newspaper clipping on her desk. Most of the article was missing, but she knew what it said. It was the article describing Christine Miller's death. Someone knew.
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