“You got fifty dollars, sweetie?” Sabrina asked abruptly.
“Sure.”
“Well let’s see it.”
“Later, after we get where we’re going.”
“Ain’t goin nowhere. We gonna do it right here.”
“We are?”
Then it occurred to Harold that he had been honked and he had been solicited for money, but no one had specifically mentioned a sex act and he wondered if the arrest would be legal without it and just then Tammy honked him again and he grabbed her hand.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Harold said, desperately trying to remember the phrases Scuz had told him which would not be construed as entrapment.
“Why you just sittin there blowin bubbles off your tongue?” Sabrina asked.
The air was close in the darkness of the Cadillac with both big women pressing him. Then Harold remembered a word: “I’m looking for excitement!” he cried.
“Well, no shit!” said Tammy, and she honked him again but harder this time because she was getting sick and tired of dicking around with the little creep.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” Sabrina demanded and she leaned back against the driver’s door and pulled her dress midway up her thigh.
“I just wanna know what I’m gonna get,” Harold said, and now his voice was hoarse and parched and he feared he was going to lose it all.
“We tryin to show you!” said Sabrina. “You wanna do it or talk about it, man?”
“Talk about what?” asked Harold Bloomguard who was oh so close to his arrest.
“Ballin! Frenchin! What the fuck you think?” shouted Sabrina.
“Sucky fucky five bucks, oh thank you,” whispered Harold Bloomguard who felt he had his case at last.
“What?”
“Sabrina!” said Tammy as she adroitly unzipped Harold’s pants and shoved her hand inside. “He’s hung like a hummingbird. He don’t wanna ball. He’s some kinda freak! Probably wants to beat on us with his shoe or something!”
“No, I don’t,” said Harold Bloomguard, pulling her hand from his pants and trying to rezip, but getting caught on the shirttail of his white dress shirt which protruded six inches from his fly.
“What’s goin on here?” Sabrina demanded.
“Yeah!” said Tammy.
“Nothing,” said Harold Bloomguard, struggling with the zipper.
“Feel my pussy if you ain’t a freak!” Sabrina ordered and took Harold’s hand and dropped it on her thigh.
“Let’s get in my car and go to some romantic place,” said Harold Bloomguard as his cold wet hand slipped off Sabrina’s warm dry flesh.
“Shit,” said Sabrina.
“Crapsake,” said Tammy.
“You a freak,” said Sabrina.
“I’m not!” said Harold.
“You a freak!” Sabrina shouted.
“Like hell!” Harold Bloomguard answered indignantly.
Then he pulled free from Sabrina, reached over Tammy’s belly, opened her door and crawled over her lap until he was on the street.
“You a freak!” screamed Sabrina, thinking they had lost the fifty dollar trick.
“I not a freak!” shouted Harold Bloomguard, reaching in his back pocket and exultantly pulling his shield. “I a cop!”
And while the two whores stared dumbstruck, Harold reached inside the car and grabbed both purses and the car keys from the ignition.
“Hey!” Sabrina gathered her wits too late to stop him. “Now I’ve got your keys and I’ve got your purses so you’re not going anywhere but with me!” said Harold Bloomguard, ripping off the horned rimmed glasses to show them the real man beneath the disguise. “Just don’t try anything funny!”
“Well I’ll be gud-damned,” said Sabrina to Tammy who was about to cry. “PO-lice Department got to be mighty hard up these days to be hirin little cock-a-roaches like this!”
“Out of the car!” demanded the little cock-a-roach, reaching back for his handcuffs, remembering that Scuz had said that in vice cases you always handcuff two suspects and sometimes one if there’s any doubt at all.
“We goin with you, man, but you ain’t gonna be puttin those things on no pregnant lady, hear me?” Sabrina said as the three were standing on the sidewalk beside the Cadillac.
Harold Bloomguard thought it over, decided not to force the issue now that they were obeying so nicely and put the handcuffs back in his belt, saying, “All right, but behave yourselves.”
As they walked slowly to Harold’s car on the dark sidewalk, Harold Bloomguard started to feel a little sad once again.
“You’re both so young,” said Harold. “Bet you’re not over twenty-five, are you?”
When the miserable whores failed to reply Harold said, “Ever been arrested before?”
“Bout thirty times,” said Sabrina.
“Bout forty times,” said Tammy.
“Oh,” said Harold. And he tried to cheer them up by saying something funny “I have no altourniquet but to do my job.” Then he added, “I’m sorry about you and your baby and all.”
“Why?” snapped Tammy, dabbing at her tears. “You didn’t put it in my belly. You couldn’t even get it up when I was playing with your dick, for chrissake.”
“Well, it’s not that I find either of you unattractive,” Harold explained, “it’s just that I’m a vice off…”
And then Sabrina started to groan and the groan quickly turned into a wail and then to a deathless shriek.
“RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!”
Sabrina grabbed Tammy’s hand and then Tammy started to do it:
“RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!”
“Don’t do that,” said Harold Bloomguard but they didn’t listen to him. Harold looked around at the darkness and the houses and said, “You’re resisting arrest, you know.”
“RRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!” screamed the two whores in unison, and then, Sabrina leading, they started to run north on Oxford, hand in hand. Lights began coming on. Doors opened. A woman put her head out a window.
“I’m a policeman,” said Harold Bloomguard. She closed the window.
Then Harold slung his purses over his arm and began jogging after the two whores, finding it easy to keep up at first, not particularly frightened now, just confused and embarrassed, wondering what the next move should be, wishing he had never presumed to catch a two-banger.
A strange thing happened. The two whores began to outdistance him as they turned west on Fourteenth Street and crossed over to the north sidewalk still screaming for help. Now Harold’s heart began working a bit hard and he sprinted to catch up. Tammy turned and saw him closing in and dashed for the porch of the nearest house on the north side of the street where the front yards were small and the old houses were bunched together.
“Help! Help!” Tammy screamed as she banged on the door with one hand and held her belly with the other.
It was a sixty-five year old white man who came to the door, pulling his pants up and struggling with a bathrobe.
“What’s going on here?” he said, switching on the light and squinting through the darkness.
“Help us!” Sabrina pleaded, standing on the porch next to Tammy, catching her breath.
Harold blocked the steps, holding his badge in his hand. “I’m a police officer!” he panted. “Go to your phone and call for help! Give your address!”
“Don’t believe him!” Tammy said, leaning against the porch railing. “Please help me. I’m gonna have a baby!”
“I order you to call the police right now!” said Harold Bloomguard.
“But you say you’re the police,” the old man said, scratching his gray jaw stubble and looking from one to the other.
“I order you!” said Harold Bloomguard.
“Now just a minute, young fella, this’s my house!” the old man said.
“Fred, you come in here and leave those lunatics be!” said a shrill voice inside.
Then Sabrina grabbed Tammy’s hand and both girls pushed past Harold and began running back down the sidewalk the way they had come.
“I order you to get me some help, Fred!” Harold Bloomguard yelled as he turned and pursued the girls.