Chapter 19B

One of the cops stayed with Belinda while Jeff led the other into the kitchen and then to the bedroom closet. The cop grew angrier and angrier at each stack of contraband he counted and became particularly incensed by the presence of so much coffee.

"I haven't even had a cup of the welfare coffee in six days and your bitch is sitting on two hundred keys of Costa Rican prime!"

"She ain't my bitch anymore," Jeff told him. "You gonna arrest her, or what?"

"Does a rump ranger like a rimjob?" the cop replied. "She's spouting off about the shit being yours. I trust there's no truth to that?"

"I just got back from combat deployment half an hour ago."

"That's easy enough to check out but she's gonna say that you were running things while you were away, that she was afraid of you."

"So you gonna arrest me too?" he asked.

"Well..." the cop said thoughtfully. "If you were to consent to allow me to examine the communications usage on your PC that might go a long way toward clearing this up."

Jeff shrugged and took out his PC. "Computer, display last two monthly personal communication statements."

"Displaying," the PC replied. Jeff handed it to the cop.

He took it and examined the screen for a few minutes, scrolling from top to bottom. There truthfully wasn't much to look at. "Nothing at all to or from your wife in the past six weeks," he finally said. "It would be kind of hard to run a black market booze, coffee, and cigarette operation from the line without communication, wouldn't it?"

"Fuckin' aye," Jeff agreed.

"And six weeks ago we weren't having the shortages so there really wasn't much of a black market yet."

"True," Jeff said, feeling something like friendliness towards a cop for the first time in his life.

"Okay then," the cop said. "Let me run you through the system and make sure your MPG story checks out. If it does, you're in the clear."

"Sounds like an ass-fuck," Jeff said.

His story checked out, of course. They went back in the living room where Belinda was still drunkenly yelling that she'd been forced to sell all the contraband by Jeff under threat of beatings and even murder.

"She admitted she's selling the shit?" the first cop asked the second. "Not just hoarding it?"

"Oh yeah," the second cop replied. "She even told me how much she charges."

"How much he makes me charge," she corrected.

"Of course," the first cop said. "In any case, you're under arrest for..."

"Me?" she screamed, leaping to her feet. "Haven't you been listening to me? I told you..."

"You are under arrest," he repeated, overriding her. "The charges are hoarding war shortage items and profiteering from war shortage items. We'll investigate to see if any of this shit is stolen and if it is, we'll add a possession of stolen property charge as well."

She began to rant at them. After a minute or so of this, she ran at them, unmindful of the broken wrist. She was wrestled onto the dip-hoes' gurney and her good arm was handcuffed to the side rail. She then tried to strike them with her bad arm and kick them with her feet. They tied her feet down and put another set of handcuffs on the broken arm. The dip-hoes wheeled her away, still screaming, cop number two accompanying them.

When they were gone the first cop looked at Jeff pointedly. "I can't imagine why you would want to divorce that sweet woman."

Jeff smiled wearily, more embarrassed than anything else. "Mars has moved on," he said. "She didn't move on with it."

The cop nodded and then did something that no uniformed police officer had ever done to him before. He held out his hand for a shake and introduced himself. "Zogan Ishiyudo," he said.

Surprised, Jeff shook with him. "Nice to meet you," he said.

"No, it's me who is honored to meet you," Zogan told him. "I'm standing in a city that's still free and unoccupied by WestHem marines because of you and people like you. Let me be the first to thank you sincerely for what you're doing."