Truckers are required to show they took rest breaks in their log books wether they feel like they need them or not. It’s too easy to get busted by the DOT system so many truckers will just go through the motion rather than risk getting caught with a steep fine. I went to a commercial tractor trailer driving school when I was with Delta. We did at one time pack all of our sensitive combat vehicles in tractor rigs and drive them across country for training, so as to minimize attention to ourselves.
So now there was nothing left to do but wait. The watch was ticking, the linkup time was approaching… let’s see what this guy was made of. Well, on time on target Buck arrives. We did the grip and grin and headed inside the diner for a quick bite and orientation.
The woman who would be our waitress was named Beverly, as I recall her announcing. This little sister had one foot in the diner and one foot still in Motel One, just up the street where Buck and I would ignite a ditch filled with foo-gas later that night as our Final Protective Fire (FPF) for our break out of encirclement.
Beverly had hair that was dyed, but not this month, an alien sort of gamut, not complimentary to the prime colors palette. Her haircut was not so much a cut at all as it was an identity crisis to a degree. I met it with a solid stare, though it may have garnered a light golf clap from Cindy Lauper.
Her many tattoos were clearly not of industrial standard application, rather of involuntary institutionalized living. There were brass knuckles, one over each breast. There was a Bette Midler Rose on her shoulder, ok so that was nice. Then there was the omnipresent crown with Baroque scrolled initials, all telltale signs of having been trafficked some time in her thirty something years.
And sadly, she had the unmistakable visage of grief, the strain of years of hard drug addiction that cheated her out of looking the twenty something that she really was. Hey at least she was working, right?? Yeah well I would go to that diner everyday for the rest of my life and be her cheerleader if I thought it would keep her at her job… I just don’t need a pinch to remind me that I’m in the real world.
We spent the majority of our time at the diner with me making excuses for how I was really working a riveting case with a crank-ho street informant that was supplying me with really great information that would bring the HT network syndicate to their knees… but that she had dropped off radar for days now. Surely it had nothing to do with the $100 I paid her the week prior. I continued with my barrage of excuses as we walked out to to the parking lot.
“What’s this gal’s name anyway, Geo?”
“Sally! Holy crap its Sally!” I responded looking across the avenue at Ms Lo-and-behold. Yes Ms Crank-ho was back on the radar screen with a blip, headed to her haunt, the Motel One. “Get in Buck, let’s go have a talk with that ghostosaurus rex.”
Long Tall Sally
We hooked around the block where she had cut through an alley between two industrial compounds. I intended to approach her from her front, where she could see us coming and not be surprised. And so Long Tall Sally didn’t miss a beat when we approached and stopped. She smoothly and efficiently maneuvered her unfiltered Camel in preparation for discussion, as if this had been our plan of the day.
‘Buzz… click… whirrr….’ Buck was extracting recording device after device from his go-bag to capture this Kodak moment. It was clear as the skin on a baby’s butt that this was not Buck’s first day at this.
“Garajo, chiquilla donde estabas? Ok, sooo… what the hell, Ms Sally… get caught up at the Rotary Club again?” Sally let a salvo of disjointed, senseless excuses peal off her chola lips, a salvo whose report still to this day makes me dizzy to recall. Even the brick wall that is Buck Clay reeled slightly there in the saddle.
“No purchase, dear Sally.”
“Que?”
“No purchase; I’m not buying any of it.”
“Well those people at the Motel saw me talking to you last week and now they want to kill me because they think you’re a cop. It’s your fault, mother fucker; You need to protect me Goddamn it… can I have $30?”
“A dub only costs $20.”
“No, Goddamnit… its not for drugs its for my Goddamn rent!”
“Here, you can have $10… now make your meetings chiquilla.”
And so LT Sal closed with the Motel One.
“So Buck, I want to show you the most drug trafficked apartment on this side of town. The parents of one of my street informants live there. Her parents trafficked her for H when she was a minor. Now she’s 23 and there’s nothing I can do for her. She says she can’t stand living with them, so she lives out here on the streets.”
“Geo, want to go back to the truck stop and swap out vehicles, since yours is probably pretty burned by now?” Yessiree… clear as the skin on a baby’s butt.
Geo sends
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