Meter Maids Eat Their Young: A Love Story

by EJ Knapp

  I scratched my head, looked around and peered back inside. Why would this guy spend an hour strolling up River Avenue and back and then another hour writing tickets just to toss them in a trash can?

  Philo had mentioned allegations of fraudulent tickets. I reached into the container, trying to avoid the worst of the muck, and retrieved the tickets. I was about to return to the bus shelter when I decided a cab ride, from several blocks away, was in order. But first, I wanted to check a hunch.

  There are several abandoned warehouses along River Avenue. I hurried over to the one nearest to the trash container and crawled in through a hole that had been punched in the wall. There was a moment of panic when I heard a shuffling noise off in the shadows, but it turned out to be just another homeless person seeking shelter from the world. The thought struck me that he looked familiar, but the screeching of brakes interrupted and I hurried to the window to watch.

  The blue Mercedes was idling alongside the trash container. My friend stepped out, a flashlight in hand, and peered inside. He jerked up as if he’d been bitten by something and glared over at the bus shelter where we’d had our little chat.

  He scanned the area, no doubt looking for me. I was glad I had decided on the cab, and gladder still that I’d decided to hide and wait. When he slammed his fist down on the top of the container with such violence that it caved in, I was triply glad I’d moved from the street. He jumped back into the Mercedes and sped off, leaving at least ten-thousand miles’ worth of rubber, and a pall of blue smoke, in his wake.

  Getting Old Sucks

  I waited another half hour in the warehouse, warily watching the homeless guy snoring loudly in the corner, trying to think of why he seemed familiar and wishing I’d thought to bring water with me. When I felt enough time had passed, I walked a mile down litter-strewn back alleys until I could find a cab.

  Thirty years ago, my morning’s excursions would have passed with little effort or aftermath. By the time I arrived back at the Call Register, I was soaked in sweat, my knee was throbbing, my stomach was churning, my head was splitting, and every muscle in my body felt as if it’d been beaten with a rubber bat. I don’t care what the AARP says, getting old sucks.

  I considered running up to my office but decided a shower and change of clothes were in order so I ducked down into the garage and retrieved my car. An hour later, I had the tickets spread out on my coffee table and was battling to keep the cats from scattering them on the floor.

  I sorted through them, noting that only the portions the meter maid stuck under the wiper were there. So the parts the meter maid turned in were still with the meter maid. I went through the tickets again, counting them this time. There were a hundred in all. And I caught something I had missed the first time. The dates were all different. Some were from the week before, some today, some a few days hence. That was odd. Then I checked the license numbers I had written down against the tickets. They were there. What the hell was going on?

  Lions and Tigers and tickets blowing in the wind! That was it. Lost tickets! Had to be. The clipboard the meter maid had been consulting must have been a list of cars that were parked there on a day-to-day basis; the regulars, as it were. And the tickets in the trash were the tickets blowing in the wind. Just because you don’t see the ticket on your car, doesn’t mean you weren’t issued one. If the ticket disappeared, for whatever reason, the DPE would send you a friendly reminder several weeks after the fact, with a nice little ten-dollar fine added to the total.

  The people who parked here, and other places in the city like it, hovered on the fringe of illegality every day, betting that the meter maids wouldn’t be around that last twenty or thirty minutes before enforcement expired. And who the hell could remember on what days they were parked legally and when not? So, the poor rube gets a reminder in the mail and what does he do? Moans about the loss of a day’s work if he decides to fight it, grumbles about the hoops of fire they make you jump through just to get a hearing, bitches to his friends, coworkers and family, and then dashes off a check to the DPE to keep his car from being booted.

  But, if what Philo had said was true, that was changing. Folks were beginning to protest about the tickets in earnest, despite the fact their protests weren’t going to achieve much with old man Gallagher, the meter maid’s friend, sitting on the bench.

  I quickly did the math. One hundred tickets at fifty bucks a pop: Forty for the ticket and an extra ten for the late fee. That one meter maid, in less than two hours increased the city coffers to the tune of five thousand dollars! What would he have earned the city had he been actually writing up offenders? I had made sure all the meters were full till the cutoff time so they wouldn’t have made a dime.

  I leaned back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. If there was one meter maid scamming tickets like this, were there others? How many? Five? Ten? More? The numbers became staggering. And if that were the case, then the allegations Philo had mentioned were true. The DPE was issuing fraudulent tickets.

  I needed a look at their financial information but that would require either my going down to the DPE offices, which didn’t seem like such a smart move on my part, considering the way they felt about me. Or, horror of horrors, using a computer and accessing it from their website. I wasn’t sure which idea I liked least. However, there was one other avenue open to me.

  I pulled out my cell phone, called the paper and asked for the morgue. The receptionist hesitated, started to tell me I had the wrong number, and I realized my mistake. They don’t call it the morgue anymore. I corrected myself and after several rings, an altogether familiar voice answered.

  “Research. This is Lynn.”

  Luddite

  It would be easy to say that as a reporter I prefer to do my own research, track down my own leads. True enough in the old days. Nowadays, several dreary hours of pounding the bricks, or shuffling through piles of musty old files in a dank basement, can be reduced to a flurry of keystrokes at a computer terminal. The modern age. Dull as it sounds, I prefer the old ways.

  Luddite that I am, when I needed the kind of mundane but important information a computer could offer, I would have one of the junior reporters request the info from Research. It wasn’t that I disliked dealing with the department, or disliked anyone in it. If anything, it was the wildest department at the paper. Mostly early twenty-somethings with scruffy, unkempt hair and goodwill clothes cutting across three or four generations of fashion.

  Piercing and tattoos had replaced the tie-dyed T-shirts and bell-bottom jeans of the old morgue days, when everything was kept in giant file cabinets and rotting boxes. Gaming posters had replaced the rock n’ roll stars on the walls. There was always music playing: Loud. That, at least, hadn’t changed. They had their own kitchen down there, which always looked like the aftermath of a week-long party of teenagers left home alone while their parents were vacationing on the islands. The fridge was stocked floor to ceiling with high-octane sugar drinks instead of beer.

  No. It wasn’t that I dislike it. I found it comforting in a way, wishing I could be more a part of that wild enthusiasm, despite the difference in years. And I was always amazed that HL not only approved of it, but actually encouraged it. Sort of made me wonder if I would be that open-minded when, if, I hit nine decades.

  “Research. This is Lynn.”

  “Hey, Lynn,” I said. “It’s Teller.”

  “Hey, Cat, how goes it? Sorry about the other night.”

  “Not a problem. Look. I need some data.”

  “Lay it on me,” she said.

  I told her what I wanted.

  “That must be the Meter Mangler story,” she said.

  “Yeah. I need some background on the department, financial stuff mostly. I’m working an angle. They have a website, or something, but I, ah, just don’t have the time to track it down myself.”

  “That’s what we’re here for,” she said brightly.

  “Oh,” I added, thinking of my earlier conversatio
n with HL, “and could you bring up any meter-related vandalism not directly linked to the Mangler, going back, I don’t know, six months before my first article, say? I want to see if there’s a progression there.”

  “I’ll get someone on it ASAP and email you the results.”

  I considered that for a moment. Having something emailed would require me to boot up the computer in my office and I wasn’t sure I knew how. I’d pulled the plug from the wall my first day back at work when the thing started going whacko on me in the middle of an article, spitting out Cyrillic letters instead of the English ones I was hitting on the keyboard. I had sat there, staring at it, expecting at any moment it would start singing ‘Daisy’ as the lights faded from the monitor screen. Now, I was too afraid to plug it back in. Or to call the IT department. Those guys scare me.

  “Could you just print out both things and have someone drop it in my in-box?” I said.

  She laughed. “Luddite. No problem, Cat. I’ll have ’em for you in a bit. Hey, did you hear that Mike is back in town? Him, Steve, Rick and Jerry are doing a gig at Booker’s Club on Friday.”

  “Booker’s? Is that place still open?”

  I’d had some wild times at Booker’s Club. Not to mention nearly being killed by Booker himself while I was rifling through his private office. If it hadn’t been for Robyn ...

  “Jeez, Cat. Are we living in the same town? Rick bought Booker’s place about six years back, just after his third album won the Grammy in the Alternative Music category. You know that. You flew in for the grand reopening. Jody came up. All three of the Barrington boys. Even Little Mary came out of hiding. It was a hell of a party.”

  I knew Rick had won a Grammy. And with Lynn’s prompting, I vaguely recalled the party that had been thrown in his honor that year, though the reopening of Booker’s Club eluded me. Of course, this all took place before I stopped drinking. There are many events tucked away in the alcohol-fogged part of my brain. Most I don’t remember and no doubt more than a few I wouldn’t want to remember.

  Her exclusion of Robyn most likely meant Robyn had been a no-show. Surely I would have remembered if she had shown up? I started to ask but stopped myself. “Did I have fun at the party?” I wasn’t really sure I wanted an answer.

  “Darcy said you did,” Lynn said, a hint of laughter in her voice.

  Darcy? Uh-oh. “Uh, Lynn, I’m not sure I want to know anymore.”

  “Chickenshit.” She laughed. “Darcy thought you were great. Even if you did pass out ...”

  “Lynn!”

  “Okay, Cat. Hey, you want to go?”

  “Go?” I was losing the thread of this conversation.

  “To see the guys’ gig,” she said. “It’ll be just like the old days at The New Miami. It’s Friday. Probably around ten or eleven.”

  I thought about The New Miami days, the amount of booze that had flowed like spring water.

  “Ah, you know, I’m not real sure that would be a good idea right now.”

  “Oh, right … jeez, I’m sorry, Cat. I forgot. Damn.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Lynn. One of these days, I’ll get over that hump. Maybe by the time Mike hits town again.”

  “Right. I know you will. You can do anything when you set your mind to it.”

  “Well, I have my doubts about that.”

  “I don’t. I’ll have those printouts in your box in an hour or so.”

  “Thanks, Lynn.”

  “No problem, Cat.”

  Flipping the phone closed, I leaned back into the sofa. My head was throbbing, my thoughts chaotic. I felt as if I was working with an Erector Set into which Lincoln Logs and Lego pieces had been thrown. Was there a connection between Harrison’s murder and the Meter Mangler’s campaign? My instinct said there was and HL certainly believed there was. And how did these tickets tie into that? Was this what Harrison was onto? What got him killed?

  DPE was obviously the focal point but beyond that, everything was hazy and out of focus. I needed to bring order to chaos and to do that I needed to go over all my notes from day one.

  The tickets. What to do with the tickets? Stash them here? No. I didn’t want them anywhere near me until I could figure out what they meant and how I could use them. The office? No again. Way too many people around. I looked at the Zappa wall clock. A safety deposit box would be good but it was after 6:00 p.m. The bank was closed and I wanted to rid myself of the tickets ASAP. A vault was a nice idea and that’s when the ideal place occurred to me. I gathered up the tickets, dumped them in a manila envelope and headed out the door for the office.

  A Perfect Hiding Place

  I was passing the courthouse when the opening bars to a Janis Joplin tune slipped through the speakers. Despite my headache I cranked it up loud. The first time I saw Janis was in a smoky little dive in the wrong part of Memphis, Tennessee, shortly before she joined Big Brother and the Holding Company.

  By the end of her first set, I knew she was a star destined to nova. That kind of pure, explosive energy can’t be contained indefinitely. But, Lord have mercy, you knew she’d burn everything in her path on the way down.

  She gave the last little piece of her heart to Alice Cooper as I pulled into the Call Register’s parking garage, found my spot and killed the engine. At least it was free to park here, but only because HL owned the building. I found an old plastic grocery bag in the trunk, wrapped it around the manila envelope and headed to the elevator.

  I usually take the stairs up, my one concession to exercise, but this time I punched the button for the elevator. Slowest thing on earth, that elevator. And the burnt oil stench of it was enough to make you gag, not to mention my dislike of tightly-enclosed places. When it finally arrived, I stepped in and while I was waiting for the door to close, I examined the maintenance sticker. It had been inspected less than a month ago and inspections were on a three-month schedule. I wanted to see Lynn’s report before discussing the tickets with HL, and they would be safe here for the short time I planned on leaving them. I pushed open the maintenance hatch in the ceiling and slipped the tickets onto the roof of the car. Satisfied, I pushed the button for my floor.

  The newsroom was quiet, the day’s deadline long past, only a few stragglers remained, a skeleton night crew. I could remember a time when this room was chaos from well before daybreak until the depth of night. The Internet was destroying print news and journalism in general, as far as I was concerned.

  My sour mood over the death of journalism didn’t improve when I ran into Rafe Savage coming out my office as I approached it.

  His name in no way describes him. Early thirties, kind of slow on the uptake, a florid complexion stained with freckles, and the scent of English Leather that clings to him like the dust of lost civilizations that follows Charles Schultz’s Pig Pen wherever he goes. He wanders the offices like a monk in joyous mourning, zealously sucking time from whoever crosses his path. Shaking off a tick was easier then shaking Rafe once he locked onto you.

  Back in the old days, before political correctness ruined the language, Rafe would have been known as a copy boy. What his title was now, I had no idea. I’d never been much for PC, and I wasn’t even sure if there was such a thing as copy boys anymore. He was mostly a gopher now; go fer this, Rafe; go fer that, Rafe; oh and bring me some coffee and one of those donuts too. He’d make your copies at the Xerox machine, sharpen your pencils and restock the all-important Post-it note supply. Pretty much any minor task that needed to be done, Rafe would do. Sometimes he helped the janitorial crew clean up. That was what I thought he was doing when I saw him coming out my office.

  “Hey, Rafe,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said, jumping about a mile off the floor. For a moment, I thought he was going to start crying. Unusual for Rafe, the always-happy guy. “Mr. Teller. You scared me.”

  I didn’t bother to correct him on the mister part. I’d done it a hundred times since I’d returned and he never remembered.

  “Sorry, man,” I s
aid.

  “I have to go now, Mr. Teller,” he said, inspecting his shoes. “I have to … I have to get something for the boss.”

  “Sure, Rafe,” I said. “No problem.”

  He shuffled off, staring at the floor as if he expected it to open wide and swallow him. I noticed he wasn’t carrying a trash can. So why had he been in my office? I remembered HL’s leak. Rafe? I laughed out loud at the thought. Rafe involved in something nefarious was beyond paranoid and into the ludicrous. He was probably just lost, or maybe he’d delivered the report from Lynn.

  I stepped into my office and checked the in-box. Empty. I looked back into the newsroom but Rafe was gone. Whatever. He was harmless enough. If it rocked his boat to wander about the newsroom after working hours, who was I to deny him that small pleasure? He was on HL’s payroll, not mine.

  I looked back at the in-box. It was still empty. There was nothing on my desk but an old pizza box and several dirty coffee cups I kept forgetting to take back to the kitchen.

  I glanced at the computer crouched menacingly beneath my desk, as if ready to pounce on the unwary. No. Lynn wouldn’t do that to me. She said she’d print them out but, despite the lunacy of the idea, it bothered me that Rafe had been skulking about my office. I tried calling Research, just to check, and got a recording. They had either gone for the day or were having a party. With Research, anything was possible.

  I grabbed my notebooks from the shelf and spread them across my desk. Flipping through the CD rack for some tunes to think by, I considered The Car’s Candy-O, and rejected it. If anything would lead me into the Robyn Zone, the Cars would and I needed to concentrate not ruminate. I slipped Haris Alexiou’s Di Efhon from the sleeve and into the player instead. She was Greek and her voice was beauty incarnate but, as the lyrics were in Greek and I couldn’t understand most of them, the music soothed me rather than distracted me. When the first notes of the title cut began to drift from the speakers, I started reading through my notes, making a list of my thoughts and observations in chronological order.