KEEP IT HOT

One early morning I'm walking down 21st street on my way to Weatherstone's and as I'm crossing the intersection of 21st and "H," I see, lying in the crosswalk, a loaded clip from an automatic. I pick it up and I start thinking of what I am going to do with it. I don't want to throw it in a dumpster where somebody might find it and mess around with it. I didn't want it. And then I remembered a coupla cops often came to Weatherstone's for coffee. I would wait for them and give it to them. Good idea.

I arrive at Weatherstone's, go up to the barista, ask her what time the cops usually come in and did they come in every day. She says they don't come in every day. Asks me why I want to know. I show her the clip and she suggests that I call the police station and have them send somebody down. Good idea. I do that.

After I make my call, I sit facing the large window in front, drinking my coffee, reading, keeping an eye out for a uniform. I hear a voice over my shoulder asking if I wanted to see a policeman. I look up, it is a man in a suit - not what I expected, no wonder he came in and I missed him.

I say, "Yes." He sits down at the table and I show him what I got. He looks it over, thumbs out a cartridge, puts it back, turns it over several times. All this while he's asking me questions. Where, exactly, did I find it. I tell him. A few other questions I forget now, but what mostly catches my mind is he keeps checking out the clip. I get the feeling he is trying to trip me up, make me admit to some nefarious activity. Finally I ask him, "What caliber is it? I knew it wasn't a forty-five, I thought it too small for a thirty-eight. He starts checking it out again, finally says, "Looks like a nine millimeter."

Now, this is a cop, been on the force for some time, I imagine, he's been checking out the clip all the time he's been sitting there, he must have seen hundreds of clips of nine millimeters - being the gun of choice for the police, so why does he have to look at the clip again and make a guess as to the size of the caliber?

I go home, told my son about the experience and I volunteer that the detective was trying to trip me up. He says, no, think about it. Some guy calls up saying he found a clip, wants to give it to the police. Who they gonna send? Not some guy they need to do police work. They're gonna send some dork that's of no use at the office, right? Yeah. That sounds right. The dork's activities make sense now.
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There was this guy that hung out at the coffee house where I hung out that was on SSI because he couldn't handle the slightest bit of responsibility. One day he told me that he didn't get his check and he went to the people that help guys like him and they told him to just go down and get the check. He said he told them, "The reason I get the check is because of my inability to do such things as to go and get my check."

He told me that he once had a job tarring roofs and he bought a new pair of boots and he was being very careful not to get any tar on them. He said that one of his working partners said, "You gotta get those dirty," and wiped his tar-mop across his boots. So he pushed the guy off the roof. He said he told the boss that he guessed he'd better leave and the boss agreed.

He had gotten hold of a printing press and my son and I were publishing comic books and we couldn't find a cheap printer, so I went looking for him to see if I could borrow his printing press.

A mutual friend known as "Porno Ray" told me that he told this guy that I was looking for him and he said that he disappeared - like "It seemed he thought you wanted him to do some work."

I went into Weatherstones shortly after that and he was sitting at a table with a friend and I said,"Hi," and went up to order coffee, turned around and he was gone! We always got along really well, so I think it really true that he was avoiding me, and thus what he thought was work. I finally tracked him down and it turned out that the printer didn't really have an owner. I don't remember what happened to it. Those things cost up in the thousands of dollars.

There is a side story to this. I was told by this guy that had responsibility problems that there was some kind of a lawsuit concerning the printer with him and and another guy that used to organize week-long poetry readings on street corners downtown as antagonists. This poetry guy at one point said to the judge, "Don't you know who I am?"

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There was this really fat lady who used to hang around Weatherstones. She lived in one of the halfway houses for disturbed people. She was very aggressive and nasty. One day this Hungarian immigrant threw a cup of coffee in her face because she wouldn't leave him alone. Once she spit on our car with my wife and I standing there.

One day we were driving by, looking for a parking place and we saw her go in Weatherstone's with an opened umbrella. We started laughing because we knew she was going to do SOMETHING with it. We came around the block and the umbrella was way up in the tree that stood in front of Weatherstone's. Nobody around. We never did find out what had gone on, but it was probably interesting.

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I was standing in line to order coffee and in front of me was this older middleaged guy, kinda dumpy. In front of him was this young girl. I heard him say to her, "We don't have places like this in Montana where I come from."

She answered, "Oh. Where do you come from?"

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Around the corner from Weatherstone, down the alley, was a Seven Eleven mini mart. One night I went there to get a pack of cigs and there was a bunch of people crowded around the cement slab in front. A black man was kneeling on the parking lot pavement, laying out three cards on the cement. Several men were standing on the cement pad, facing him. The black man would look up at someone and tell, him -"Take a guess. Free guess. Where's the red card?" The guy would point, and he would get it right. He once looked up at me and said, go ahead - where's the red card - free guess. I smiled and said no. I wasn't about to get into three card monte in any way shape or form.

Now, I don't know exactly how this next happened. It was pretty confusing and I kept trying to pick out the shill, but the ones I picked for some reason or other did something that didn't make any sense,. but I know a shill was in there somewheres. This one guy says to this other guy - "C'mon. Gimmie twenty. I know where it is. It's a sure thing. C'mon! I'll give you your twenty back right away." This was the guy I was most sure was a shill until the guy gives him the money and he picks the wrong card.

The manager of the store comes out just then and tells us to break it up and as we were walking away, this one guy kept asking this other guy, "Where's my twenty? Where's my twenty? Where's my twenty?" The guy never answered.

I figured out that how this particular three card monte was working was that the guy was looking up into our eyes, following where we were looking. If we had the right card, he would give us a "free turn." If we had the wrong one, he would say, "Take a guess. You'll win twenty dollars."

I wish the manager hadn't broken it up so quickly.