Neighborhood Watches

Sarge ushered Stacey into his office and softly shut the door behind him. He offered her the empty chair across from his impressively clean desk sans the Douglas file which he had accidentally on purpose left on Farrell’s desk.

Stacey swallowed hard as she grabbed the strap of her purse so that she could remove it from her shoulder and place it in her lap as she sat down.

The tension in the air was thick as hell. Both parties maintained eye contact until Stacey sat down and lowered her head. Sarge cleared his throat as he sat down.

“Ms. Mack. I’m Sargent Florek. I was wondering how long it was gonna take you to come in and speak to me.

Stacey swallowed hard again and wrinkled her face up in slight confusion while letting her eyes scan his face searching for one attribute that would jog her memory, but came up empty.

“Ms. Pinky’s on the Boulevard.” Sarge said.

Stacey licked her lips uncomfortably and her eyes began to dart back and forth under their lids.

“I dunno where that is.”

“Sure, you do,” Florek emphatically stated, “you were there the last time my old squad raided it.”

Stacey stiffened in anger but instead of getting loud, she just leaned in over Sarge’s desk and made her own emphatic statement,

“I ain’t ever work at no Pinky’s.”

“Never said that you did. Ms. Mack. I just said that you were there.”

Stacey looked confused as she began to position herself to get up and leave.

“Look, I’m about to call the media, because I came in here to report my son missin and I’m bein labeled as some common hoe…”

“Your son’s not missin… Malik Douglas is wanted, but you know that, don’t you Ms. Mack? You got a habit of turnin in folk for money, don’t you. Does Malik know you turned his daddy in?”

“Malik done never met the man. Jason was…”

Then it hit her like a lightning bolt. This was the partner of the man that made her a single mother.

The bile began to churn in Stacey’s stomach and she turned green.

One of the unfortunate perks of working in law enforcement, is being able to discern when someone is about to release their bodily fluids in a projectile manner. So automatically he reached under his desk and grabbed the wastepaper basket with the red bag for hazardous materials and handed it to Stacey just as she lost what Dennis cooked her for breakfast.

Sarge sighed and sat back down, opened his desk drawer, pulled out a container of baby wipes and a handful of peppermints and pushed them all towards the edge of his desk just as Stacey finished vomiting and put the trashcan down.

“Fuck you want?” She hissed as she grabbed a wipe from out of the container and wiped the corners of her mouth.

Sarge chuckled as he watched her unwrap a peppermint and pop it into her mouth,

“Fuck I want?” His cussing caused Stacey’s eyes to widen in a way she wasn’t used to.

“You’re the one who came in here poppin off at the mouth bout your grown ass missin son that you know full and good got damn well is a fugitive! Get the fuck out of my office before I lock you up for obstructing justice!”

Stacey gathered herself as quickly as she could and scurried out of the station.

Smirking the whole time.