There were two of them. They got out simultaneously. One of them put his flashlight on the boys face again.
'You've gotta be kidding me,' he heard one say.
He knew they were talking about his size. Barely five-four and a skinny frame. Barely a hundred pounds. He felt his face burning red in the bright beam of their scrutiny. 'I have a license,' he said again.
'Then let's see it,' said the one behind the beam.
The boy unsnapped a pocket and brought out his thin wallet. He took out the license and held it out. He noticed that his hand was shaking. The one with the light took the license and thankfully lowered his beam to look at it. He turned it over and studied the edge as if to check for counter-feiting. Other cops who had stopped him had done the same thing.
'Where are you coming from?' asked the other cop.
'Work. I'm a dishwasher at Bahia Mar. The banquet center.'
'Working late.'
Yes. We had two banquets.'
'Busy night. You own this car?'
'Yes.'
He suddenly realised the registration was in the glove compartment. Along with the gun. 'What is everybody looking for?' he asked.
'Not what, who,' he said. 'We're looking for a scumbag. An armed robber.'
The boy thought about the gun in his glove box again. A tremor of fear went through his chest. He had touched the gun. He'd held it. Fingerprints. He knew about fingerprints from movies and TV. He and his father watched Kojak together every Sunday night.
'Does anybody know what he looks like?' the boy asked.
'Why, you seen somebody?'
The beam suddenly came back up to his face, blinding him again.
'Did you, kid? What did you see?'
The boy almost said not what, who. But he didn't think that would be received so well. The two policemen had tensed. They were keyed up about something. He thought about the gun again — remembered that it had been warm to his touch — and realised he could be in trouble. He chided himself for taking the gun. How stupid!
'Hey, kid, you still there?'
'Yes. I was just thinking. I saw a man running. Down near the beach.'
'Running? What did he look like?'
'I noticed because he was fully dressed but he was, you know, running.'
'Give us a description.'
'He was big. He — '
'You mean compared to you?'
'No, compared to anybody. He was tall. He had a beard and his hair was long.'
'White, black, brown?'
'White.'
'Okay, what else? What about the clothes?'
The clothes. He wasn't sure how to answer. Describe the man before or after he'd taken off the red shirt? He decided if there had been a robbery, the victim would have seen the red shirt.
'He had on blue jeans and a white T-shirt. And he had on a red lumberjack shirt — you know, like with a pattern.'
'If he had that on how do you know about the T-shirt?'
'The red shirt was open. Unbuttoned. I could see the T-shirt.'
The one without the flashlight peeled away and started talking into a radio mike attached to the shoulder of his uniform. He could hear him putting out the description and he wondered why they didn't already have it.
'That's a pretty good description, kid,' said the one with the flashlight. 'What were you doing that you saw this guy so well?'
The boy shrugged. 'I don't know. I saw him running. I thought it was strange because he was fully dressed. I saw where he went, too. He went into a bar. The Pirate.'
'Mendez, you hear this?'
'Let's go,' his partner answered.
'Okay, kid, let's get in the car.'
The boy was put in the back seat and then they took off for the bridge. The cop in the passenger seat announced their destination on the radio and asked for back-up. A minute later they were in front of The Pirate. Half a minute later the back-up car was there. And a third car was not long behind. By radio it was directed to the back of the bar.
The driver of the first car, the one called Mendez, turned round to look at the boy. 'You are going to stay here. We're going in. We're going to look for the guy. What we'll do is bring anybody we want to talk to outside. You watch through the window. If you see the guy, you give the nod. Okay?'
'I nod if I see him?'
'Right. Now sit tight.'
The cops got out and made their way around the line of motorcycles. They met the two uniformed men from the back-up car. The boy watched them talk for a few moments and then one opened the bar's door and they went in. The boy saw that the last cop to go in was holding his baton down at the side of his leg.
He waited for what seemed like an hour but was only a few minutes. When the bars door opened next, it wasn't a cop who came out. It was a customer. A man with a white T-shirt and a black leather vest. He quickly moved to one of the motorcycles and carefully pushed it out into the street between the two patrol cars. He saddled it, kick-started the engine and took off. He never saw the boy watching and the boy wondered if he had snuck out of` the bar or had been allowed to leave.
As he considered this the door to the bar opened again and the two officers from the back-up car escorted two men out. Both had beards and long hair, but neither was the running man the boy had seen. Then the other two cops came out with two more men. The boy now recognised the running man. They had him.
The cops instructed the four bearded men to face the front wall of the bar and put their hands against it. The men complied slowly, with the worn acquiescence of men who faced this sort of intrusion on a daily basis.
Mendez stood back while the other officers checked the men leaning against the wall for weapons. He turned and looked at the boy in the patrol car. The boy nodded and Mendez nodded back. He then surreptitiously pointed a finger at the first man in line and the boy shook his head. They repeated this until Mendez pointed at the third man in line and the boy nodded.
But just as he nodded, the third man turned his face from the wall and looked directly at the boy. Whether he understood or not that an identification was being made didn't matter. The boy was frozen to the bone. The man said something — just a couple of words — but the boy couldn't hear it because the windows of the car were up. Their eyes locked and held until Mendez barked a command at the man and he turned back to the wall. Mendez then came up behind the man and pulled his arms off the wall and cuffed them behind the man's back. The man did not struggle as he did this. Again there was a casual acquiescence, as if what was being done to him had been done before. As if it was expected.
The officers told the other three men they could return to the bar. Mendez then pushed the running man toward the two officers from the back-up car and they walked him to their car. As they were pushing him into the back seat the man began to struggle for the first time. Not to get away but just to keep his head up. He looked over at the boy again and said the words again, this time exaggerating the movements of his mouth because he probably understood that the boy could not hear. He then relented and let them push his head down and then into the back of the car. The car took off quickly and the boy watched its blue light go on as it sped away.
Mendez stood on the street and spoke at length over his radio mike before he and his partner returned to the car in which the boy sat. Mendez got behind the wheel but turned to look back at the boy before turning the ignition. 'We got him, kid. Good job.'
'What did he say?'
'He didn't say anything but we don't need him to say anything. With your ID we've got him. The detectives are heading over here to search the joint for the gun. They find that and it's bye-bye dirtbag. You did good.'
'What about the robbery? The victim. You need him to say he did it.'