Meter Maids Eat Their Young

 

All names, characters, places, and incidents in this publication are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Meter Maids Eat Their Young

© 2012 by EJ Knapp

ISBN: 978-0-9869871-8-2

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

For information regarding permission, email [email protected], subject line: Permission.

First published by Rebel ePublishers 2012

Cover design by Mandie van der Merwe,
Love & Sweat

Interior design by
Caryatid Design

Chapter headings and title page graphics: © Can Stock Photo Inc. / Colecanstock

First and foremost, I want to thank the Department of Parking and Traffic in San Francisco, California for towing my car the day after Thanksgiving. Despite the fact that 99.9% of the US population consider that day a holiday and, despite the fact there were less than a dozen vehicles in the entire financial district, you felt my little Fiat, tucked away on a remote back alley, constituted a threat to the smooth flow of traffic.  The germinal idea for this story is your doing.

To the real Tom Philo, whose web page Why Parking Meters Should Be Banned was instrumental in tying this story into the neat package I hope the readers will find it.  Any errors or exaggerations I introduced into Tom's data are my doing.

To my Attack Cats: The Doubtful Guest, Mooch, Spook, Booth, The Beast, Feral-When-I-Wanna-Be and Puss Cat, and to Dinger, all in Kitty Heaven now.  Miss you guys.  I'll be along one of these days, tasty treats in hand.

Should anyone recognize my semi-fictional city, all I can say is rearrangement in space and time was necessary.

To Denise Rehse Watson and to Albert. Also the old Harbor House gang. Have a Cuppa Joe on me.

Thanks must be extended to Barbra Annino, Linda Ford, Debbie Hefka, Gail Henigman, A. S. King and MJ Librie for reading various drafts of this story and offering their feedback and to the folks at Backspace for their support.

To Peggy Ford and Eric Ford for help with the Great Escape. To RJ, Susie, Michael and Jennifer, and Cory, Brad, Cameron and Austin, and to the whole Koleda Clan, just because.

Thanks to my most excellent editor Jayne Southern. Your critical eye made MM better than it was and your witty remarks kept me from screaming too long and loud about the changes. I still think ‘silently left the building' was the better line, though.

And, as always, to Cindy Ford; friend, family, confidant.

 

This one's for Debbie Hefka.  She knows why.

 

There are many forms of extortion used by governments throughout the world. There are many ways to get money from the weak. There are many ways to fool the unintelligent. The tactics range from immoral tax collecting organizations, to police forces, to tiny machines that one might believe allow a person to occupy a certain space for a certain amount of time. Tyranny is not always a bloody affair. It is not always shocking, sometimes it is quite common place and accepted, but it is still tyranny. And so it is for the example of tyranny known as parking meters.

Philosopher Stephan Pacheco
Pacheco Humility Foundation
www.LibertyCore.org

Except for the half-dozen cats scattered about the king-sized bed, I was alone beneath the twisted sheets, deep in an uneasy dream. A gong struck and struck again, the reverberations echoing through the air like a cold wind that lifted me upward toward a starless sky and settled me down in a room aglow in predawn light. The beeper chirped on the bedside table. I reached over and turned it off without looking to see who it was. The page could only be from one person. I fumbled about for my cell phone, flipped it open and pushed the only speed-dial number set on it.

“A little early for a Sunday wake-up call, don't you think?” I said when the connection was made.

“News never sleeps, Teller,” said Felice, her usual melodious voice muted and somber. My heart began to race.

“Bad news, I suspect.”

“For you especially, I'm afraid. Your friend Harrison de Whitt was found dead in the East River Monorail parking lot.”

I bolted up, scattering cats. Harrison? I'd had dinner with him two nights previous.

“When?” I said, swallowing hard. “How?”

“As to the when, approximately ten minutes ago,” she said. “As to the how, I assume you are asking how was he found and not how he died? I can answer the former but have no information regarding the latter.”

There was a long silence. I could hear a deep inward breath followed by a long exhalation.

“I'm sorry, Teller. That was a harsh way to answer your question. He was my friend as well.”

“I know, Felice, I know.”

“His body was discovered soon after most of the parking meters in the lot went up like Roman candles. I'm afraid I know nothing more, which is why I suggest you get there as quickly as possible.”

I rolled off the bed.

“I'm on it,” I said. “I'll call as soon as I have something.”

I flipped the phone closed and went in search of clothes.

I dressed in what I could find in the dim glow of pre-dawn. I wasn't ready for lights. I wasn't ready for Harrison being dead.

In the kitchen, I poured food in the cat bowls, spilling most of it in my haste. There was a drip supply of fresh water but I checked it anyway, tripping and kicking it with my toe, splashing water across the floor. Cursing, I considered mopping it up but decided I didn't have the time.

As I stepped out the front door it struck me that the light in the stairwell leading to the upstairs flat was out. The darkness gave me pause. That light burns 24/7, one of those low-watt forever bulbs and its being out meant something. As an investigative reporter, I've learned that a healthy dose of paranoia is a good defense mechanism.

Standing there, the dawning sun broke and shone through the balustrade, casting slanted shadows up the stairway, stirring up fragments of dream memory. For a moment I could smell a hint of L'Air du Temps in the air. But that wasn't possible. I knew it wasn't my boarder's perfume. She wore a fruity blend of something I couldn't quite distinguish.

I closed the door behind me and hurried to my car, that hint of L'Air du Temps following like a phantom.

Twenty minutes later I was sliding the Altima into a parking space a few feet from the fluttering yellow caution tape the police had set up across River Avenue. I sat for a moment, listening to Lyle Lovett lamenting about having two wives and the sheriff on his tail. As I dug around in the center console for some change to feed the meter, a homeless guy rapped on my window. I grabbed a couple of extra quarters, got out the car, handed him a buck in change and used the rest to avoid a ticket.

Parking enforcement was brutal in this town. Give no quarter – ask for none, was their motto. Had they been at the Alamo, Santa Anna and his bunch wouldn't have made it close without a pocket full of pesos.

As I slipped coins into the slot, I wondered if it was true that meter maids eat their young. Hundreds of what I thought of as lifeless automatons cruised the city streets in blue and white Cushman carts seeking prey. Merciless, unafraid: Writing ticket after ticket with the cool efficiency of a Texas executioner. Once, I saw a meter maid write a ticket on another meter maid's cart! Now
that's
brutal.

Chaos reigned as I crested the hill and looked down on the monorail parking lot. Set in a deep depression in the landscape, it looked like a wok covered in grass and asphalt, with the Grecian-style Monorail Station as its handle. Those homeless not fortunate enough to escape when the police arrived were sitting in a tight knot off to one side of the lot, guarded by several cops.

There were a hundred parking meters in all in the lot, over half of them melted and still smouldering, reminding me of the candles we used to burn in empty Mateus bottles back in the sixties. The line of scorched meters ended where the greatest concentration of cops were milling about. My heart did a little two-step when I spotted the tarp in the middle of a cordoned-off space near the far end of the lot. It looked like a crumpled yellow daisy tossed onto a field of oil.

The CSI van was on the scene, the guys in white coveralls surfing the immediate area for clues. As I made my way down the hill, I spotted the coroner's van rolling into the lot. On the far side of the hill, the TV vans were setting up their antennae. Three cops were holding the reporters back a good distance away from the scene. If I headed down there, I knew I'd be stopped. Those CSI folks are very possessive of their crime scenes.