Authors: Len Norman
Finding 52
© Len Norman 2015. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-692-49755-5
Edited by Patti Frazee.
Cover design by Lori Hollifield.
Interior design by Patti Frazee.
Finding 52
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or specific locales is entirely coincidental.
Published by
Sag-a-Bay Square Press
Bay City, MI
For Meg
Contents
The Smoker and Alien Influence
The REAL People and the First Deal
Richard Nixon and the Three of Clubs
The Traffic “Cop,” Prisoner Exchange, and the Guinea Fuck
Look What I Found in the Janitor’s Closet
The Evil Spirits Motorcycle Gang
Seeing-eye Rat Assists Blind Colostomy Guy
The Lieutenant and the Prostitutes
“Motherfucking” Billy Roberts and the Stolen Car Caper
The Three Stooges and Water-Based Paint
Battlefield Signs and Trench Warfare
The King of Spades and Chernobyl
The Unholy Ones
1975
R
iverside, Michigan, was on a downward slide and only a decade away from the throes of first-stage urban blight. The residents had not yet received the memo from the Japanese automakers but things were becoming apparent. General Motors was about to be taken to the woodshed by its Asian colleagues and the good people of Riverside would suffer. Things were changing.
The days of graduating from high school and then walking into the local Chevrolet manufacturing plant to apply for a job, and getting hired on the spot, were long gone. Things like having a skill set or actually knowing the guy that did the hiring now came into play. There were other jobs but the really good-paying ones were fewer and fewer. More often than not high school sweethearts married and looked elsewhere to settle.
Riverside still had a robust downtown shopping area. The good people of Riverside supported local business but the shopping mall just outside of town was getting its fair share of business, and every year their cut of the pie grew and grew.
The Victorian houses still showcased the main street of Riverside but some of those were actually turning into apartment houses and the days of lumber money were long gone. Nearly a century earlier the economy was based on lumber, and local legend even claimed Paul Bunyan once resided on the west side of Riverside. Legend aside, nobody argued London was built from north Michigan pine and those logs once floated down the Franklin River.
The latest census had Riverside at 50,000, give or take, and that was down from around 65,000 just twenty years earlier. Nearly everyone agreed on one thing-Riverside had more taverns than any other town its size. It was not a one-night town; the beer flowed every night in Riverside.
The Riverside Police Department was in transition. It was the year when a dozen new police officers were hired and trained. Many of them would seek alliances with some of the old timers: A collection of misfits that were bad enough left to their own devices as a crew that worked the streets together, and were outrageous and at times despicable. They believed they were paid thugs hired to make the streets safe for others and to keep the peace. They thought of themselves as “Regulators.” They had one thing in common-all of them hated assholes. They were rowdy and loathed anyone or anything that crossed them. Their only allegiance was to each other. They were defiant in every sense of the word.
The class of 1975 went through the police academy and learned many things, the mechanics of an arrest, traffic and criminal law, firearms training and handcuff techniques—they were even taught police ethics and much more. They learned it all and used what they saw fit. They had a sense of justice that could never be taught from a book. In a nutshell, they were fucked up and knew it—unlike most people. They didn’t care what others thought of them and were amazed that they were actually getting paid for what they did because they enjoyed it beyond belief. They would have done it for free if they were not the police, not the Regulators.
By the time it was all over one of them would kill another and one of them would be killed in the line of duty. All of them would become very effective at what they did and they’d be remembered for a very long time. They broke rules when they felt like it and did so quite often. They were sometimes called the unholy ones and that was as good a description as any.
By year’s end the Riverside Police Department numbered nearly a hundred sworn officers. The new recruits would have to work with another officer for at least a year before they were deemed good enough to work alone. All of them would work twenty-eight days with a different partner, and the area in which they patrolled would change as well. The prevailing wisdom was after a year they’d be exposed to different styles of policing methods and this would ensure they’d all be prepared for a brand-new career, serving the community and protecting others.
Nearly all of the new recruits would be shipped off to the night shift where calls and perceived dangers were at their peak. They loved it because the Chief of Police and most of the higher brass never stayed up past eight o’clock in the evening. Leastwise, that’s what they believed, and with that, they only concerned themselves with the shift captain, lieutenant, and sergeant.
The new recruits were not well received. The old timers trusted no one, not even each other. They were leery at best with the younger officers and it was rumored that some of the rookies may have actually attended college and even graduated. This terrified the old timers in the same way a tourist who travels to another country becomes lost, and can’t find a single soul that speaks English. The old timers feared only one thing and that was change.
Within a year all of the night shift officers, new recruits and old timers alike, would not only accept each other, they’d actually enjoy working together. It didn’t take long for the established officers to realize the new guys would do anything for them. They’d lie for them when such a thing was required, and turn their heads when expected to do so.
The new kids on the block never imagined driving a police car and they let the old guys do all of the talking…at first. Police reports were written by the younger officers and that included the arrest reports. Before too long the old timers found their reports interesting, even if some of the bigger words had no meaning to them. The fewer times their names were in arrest reports they’d spend less time going to court. That suited them fine as many of them worked second jobs and for a few, they woke up daily with hangovers. The last thing the seasoned veterans wanted to do was sit in a courtroom and have a smart-ass defense attorney try to trick them into telling the truth.
The Class of 1975 couldn’t believe the freedom they were given from the very start. Many of the older command officers would take them aside and tell them if they never did anything they wouldn’t get in trouble. Sage advice, except getting in trouble was the last thing the rookies worried about. They were more concerned with getting along with each other. Eventually they no longer cared what was said about them in the newspaper or even in the hallways of the police department. Each of them believed they were invincible. They were in a union and they had rights!