THE HEIST- part2

She keeps trying to get my attention and tell me something and I keep telling her to stop. Her lack of street sense is often frightening, and in a case like this it could be dangerous.

What she’s trying to tell me is something I already know. Only a fool wouldn’t have noticed the startling coincidence of the van happening by just as the truck was being stolen. It’s like something out of a Jerry Bruckheimer film complete with poorly acted bad guys pretending to be in shock over the whole thing. And very time we move closer to Daryl to find out what happened, the two guys seem to move closer to us.

That’s when I decide to go get Charlotte. Moments later I re-emerge from the house with my dog and rejoin she and Daryl and the two “unfortunate victims.” After a moment of my again telling her to be quiet about her suspicions, Daryl tells us all to go into his house to warm up. No sense in staying out in the middle of a snowstorm as if the truck will magically reappear.

Daryl’s wife Pam meets us at the door and tells us all to come inside and get warm. I mention the fact that I have Charlotte with me and she says no problem. So we go inside, all five of us, shivering and most likely in shock. Pam and Daryl are an interesting looking couple. He is a skinny white guy, nice-looking with what one might refer to as delicate features, while Pam is a stocky, hard-featured woman of Mexican descent whose build makes her perfect for her chosen line of work: Landscaping. The stolen plow was a significant chunk or her livelihood.

They are the kind of people sentimentalists write about when they are extolling the virtues of Middle Americans. They have been nothing but kind and considerate to all those around, including us. Naturally, that means they must suffer.

As we stand around in their tiny living room, I realize what is happening here. We are either all warming up following a random crime courtesy of the good thugs of Detroit who occasionally venture across 8 Mile or we are standing next to a couple co-conspirators in a car theft that went horribly wrong. Judging by the facial expression of she who is normally known as EFB, I’m not the only one who has reached this open-ended conclusion.

Pam tells us how she called 911 to report the incident and how she was repeatedly told to calm down. This served to enrage her further as she informed the 911 operator there was no reason for her to remain calm while her husband was in danger and they already knew where they lived. This is the first time we’ve ever heard her use the “F” word, and she nearly has a nervous breakdown when she utters it.

This serves to throw the other woman in the room into a fit of righteous indignation over the fact that we haven’t seen a cop yet. She asks for my phone and redials 911 and complains about the apparent lack of response and the fact that we haven’t seen any patrol cars on our street in over a year. The operator asks her which issue she wants to address first and she says, “They’re the same issue.” Conceding her point, the operator gets the local police department on the line.
The officer who answers advises her that the cars that were dispatched were in pursuit of the thief and apologizes that no one came by the house yet. She assures him she is a huge fan of law enforcement and ”the man in blue,” because that’s the kinda chick she is. The cops do show up a few minutes later in SUV’s. Two giants emerge from the vehicles, looking more like Gestapo than local police officers. Jack-booted and militaristic looking, they enter the house and start filling us in on what occurred behind the scenes.

Apparently the cops had the thief surrounded on all sides; the cops respond quickly in my city and they had cordoned off the area within minutes. Unfortunately, even the mighty SUV’s were no match for a gigantic 4x4 pickup truck in the middle of a blizzard. Just as they were closing in on him, the thief punched through a giant pile of snow and made it across 8 Mile and into Detroit. They were unable to pursue due to Detroit's unwillingness to allow other cities to chase criminals across the border.

While the bigger of the two massive cops takes our information and gives us claim number for our mailboxes, EFB decides to start asking him if they were able to shoot at the thief. The cop tells us no, and suddenly their results an intense and long conversation about how they should be able to shoot anyone who is resisting arrest or committing a crime. The talker of the two guys from the van throws his two cents in by agreeing a bit too passionately. The cop informs us he is going to get off his soapbox, then starts talking about how there are too many "liberals" preventing them from opening fire on fleeing suspects. EFB decries the current state of America and goes on about how her dad always taught her that if a cop stops you, drop to the ground and present your genitalia for whatever purpose he deems necessary.

OK, I made the genitalia part up but that's all I could picture while she was spouting off.

The two guys from the van call Triple-A to send a tow truck that can hopefully pull them out of the ditch. Pam and Daryl thank us profusely and tell us we might as well go home. As we exit their house, Charlotte starts barking up a storm and is answered by a German shepherd. The cops sent a K-9 unit. You can't say they didn't try.

As we head back down the street and home, neither of us feels comfortable leaving Pam and Daryl alone with two guys who might have been in on the theft. But what else can we do? It's 11:oo at night and Triple-A is in no hurry to show up on blizzardous nights. We spend the next hour calling them to make sure they are OK and to share our suspicions. Eventually, the two truck arrives and the two guys are free to drive home.

Two weeks later I still don't know if they were part of it or not. Pam and Daryl never got their truck back. Ironically, they'd been discussing getting rid of it because of the slipping transmission mere days before the theft. The insurance settlement was enough to invest in a new truck, but Pam's "Ex-brother-in-law" sold her one of his before that happened. When I spoke to them recently, they said they didn't think the two guys were in on it. One of them was an engineering student who gave them his phone number and said to call him if they needed someone to help out with the landscaping business. The other one that we'd noted had shifty eyes turned out to have Sickle Cell Anemia and couldn't tolerate the cold.

But there are moment, just moments, when I could swear I saw the thief get dropped off by the van. Unfortunately, I can't trust my memory well enough to say for sure.

Some mysteries might just be better off unsolved~