Confessions of a Transylvanian (26 page)

I froze. What to do? Go on? Go back? I had no idea what my next move should be. I had never been in trouble with the police in my life. Could I actually be
arrested
for this? At the moment, it seemed very possible.

I heard a voice, but I could
n’
t make out what was being said. I looked down again and saw that Ron was looking at me intently.

“Did you say something?” I said.

“
Go in
,” said Ron urgently. I looked in front of me and saw that if I turned my body sideways, I could easily squeeze through the wall of the parking garage. Ron seemed to think this was a good plan and, lacking any other, I complied.

Seconds later, Ron slid through the same opening and we found ourselves inside the parking garage, huddled in the shadows.

“What do we do?” I asked him. His first idea had worked, so I figured he must have more.

Ron whispered, “Come on,” and gestured for me to follow him up the ramp toward the exit door. We could easily have gone through it and made our way downstairs, but there seemed to be a very good chance that we would meet a policeman or two on his way
up
the stairs. If that happened...things could get
bad
.

Clearly coming to a decision, Ron turned to me confidently and said, “Okay, her
e’
s what
I’
m going to do.
I’
m going to go
up
the stairs to the top floor. Then
I’
m going to cross over to the other side of the building and see if the coast is clear. If so,
I’
ll come back and get you and w
e’
ll
both
go up, cross over, slip down the other set of stairs (if there is one) and get the hell out of here. We clear?”

“Got it,” I said. Ron pushed open the doorway to the stairwell, listened for a moment and looked back at me.

“
I’
ll be right back,” he said. Then disappeared up the stairs.

And that,
I’
m sorry to say, was the last I saw of
him
.

The minutes began to tick by and still I sat there, waiting for Ron to return. All I could picture was that at any moment the door would burst open and a phalanx of armed SWAT team members would come flying through with their rifles at the ready.

Finally, I could
n’
t take the pressure anymore. At the risk of being spotted by the cops, I decided to take another look outside. Maybe, I thought, once the two of us had disappeared inside the building, the cops had simply taken off. It was possible. Cautiously, I poked my head out through the side of the building and looked down, praying that I would
n’
t see the three patrol cars.

I did
n’
t.

Instead, there were now
five
.

I yanked my head back into the building so fast I smacked the back of my noggin on the concrete sending up a shower of white stucco powder.

Shit!
What now? Ron had clearly abandoned me and I was on my own.
Think
, I told myself.
How can you get out of here undetected?

I pictured the building itself. I was on the west side, near the exit. But there had to be an exit on the east side, did
n’
t there? It was worth a look. So I sprinted across the lot to the other side of the building.

Miraculously, there was a stairwell there as well. My heart leaped. All I had to do was make my way down, exit the building on the east side and
I’
d be free and clear. I eased open the door and strained to listen with every fiber of my being.

Not a sound.

Cat-like, I slipped down the stairs, making as little noise as possible. I paused at each landing, nerves jangling, listening for the dreaded pounding of police boots. Nothing.

I reached the ground floor. The exit door had a small window, so I peeked out to see if anyone was loitering about, nightstick poised, ready to pounce. The alley was empty. I pushed my way out the door...and I was free. On the opposite side of the building from all the commotion, and back on terra firma. Nothing and no one could possibly trace me back the offending incident or identify me as one of the two idiots hanging off the wall of the building. I had nothing to fear.

Brimming with confidence and secure in the knowledge that I had escaped certain doom, I started north, turned the corner at Hollywood Boulevard and made my way back to the Orphanage.

I was thinking of how perfect it would be. I would simply walk around the next corner, stroll past the policemen sitting in their cars and saunter casually into the Orphanage, presumably to tumultuous applause. The accolades, I thought, would be the icing on the cake. This was gonna be
great
.

But as I turned the corner and found myself facing the crowd of policemen—just at that
exact
moment—a horrible thought struck me:

I was still wearing my Transylvanian outfit from the evening before. I had put it back on after playing Dr. Scott and had
n’
t taken it off since.

Now...you remember what a Transylvanian wears to work, do
n’
t you?

Black jacket. White shirt. Black pants.

Items which, after the climb up the stucco exterior of the building, were
completely covered
in white powder. From head to foot, I was dusted with this crap. I must have looked to these policemen as if
I’
d been in a food fight in a bakery.

Or, instead, like I had been climbing up the outside of a white stucco parking structure.

I felt the eyes of every cop on the street turn to me. It was as if Tom had turned on his blazing-hot spotlight and hit me with it full in the face. I stood rooted to the spot, unable to take another step. The cops were similarly frozen, looking at me in disbelief.

We stood there like that for what seemed like a month or so. Then a large, burly police officer stepped forward and crooked his finger at me.

“Come here, kid,” he said. “I wanna talk to you.”

I had no choice but to comply. The option of fleeing never even occurred to me. I was trapped. I slowly made my way toward the policeman as his fellow officers encircled me. I was at the center of a large ring of very displeased law enforcement officials and found myself the sole focus of their displeasure.

The officer who had beckoned me had a nameplate that said “Hardy.” He looked it, too.

“And who are you?”

I stammered out my name. It did
n’
t seem to please him (or anyone else in the immediate vicinity) to make my acquaintance.

“You got some ID?”

Now, as we all know, I did not. I was the only kid my age in all of South Florida that did
n’
t have so much as a training permit. I reached into my pocket to see if I had
anything
with my name on it. Turned out I did. I fished out my bank card and handed it to the officer.

He frowned. “This is it?” he said, puzzled.

“Yeah, tha
t’
s....tha
t’
s all
I’
ve got.”

“Le
t’
s just take him in,” said a voice to my right. I looked over and saw a tall, blonde cop shifting his weight from one foot to the other and nervously fingering the handcuffs hanging off his belt. His nameplate read “Weegman” and, to me, Officer Weegman looked about ready to break out the rubber hose and give me the beating of a lifetime.

Officer Hardy gave him a sour look. “For what? What do I charge him with?”

Weegman looked puzzled for a second or two but then had a brainwave. “Disturbing the peace. Trespassing. We could charge him with a lot of stuff.”

Hardy was unmoved. Turning back to me, he demanded, “Where do you live?”

Hearing that I lived up in Deerfield, he shook his head in disappointment. “What the hell are you doing down here at this hour of the morning?”

And her
e’
s the thing: I was brought up to respect authority, give deference to my elders and all that, but...somehow it seemed to me that if I was completely honest with Officer Hardy about why I was here and what I had been up to the night before, there was a good chance that I could wind up in the back of Officer Weegma
n’
s patrol car suffering from multiple contusions. Rather than simply make up a story out of whole cloth, I punted.

“
I’
m just down here visiting with some friends. Spent the night.”

“Where are these
‘
friend
s’
?”

Involuntarily, I cast an eye toward the Orphanage and, to my shock, saw that the front window of the house was filled with the concerned faces of my Rocky castmates. I quickly glanced away, lest I should draw attention to the place. God help us if the cops decided to perform an inspection. Between the underage girls, the teenagers reeking of beer and, oh yeah, all the drugs, we could all wind up in the pokey for years to come.

“Actually,” I said to the nice police officer, “I was supposed to meet them for breakfast but I got lost.”

“Bullshit.” This from Weegman, who now looked as if h
e’
d prefer nothing better than to tie me to a chair and give me the third degree. Hell, he might even raise it up to the
fourth
degree if I was uncooperative.

The questioning went on for another minute or two. Hardy would ask me some personal detail, where I went to school, if my mother knew where I was, things like that, then I would answer him as honestly as I could without dragging Rocky Horror into the discussion. I suspected that any mention of my transvestite-movie hobby would be Weegma
n’
s cue to suggest to his superior officer that I was a degenerate and, by extension, a thief and a drug dealer and deserved to be hauled down to the station, booked, tagged and bagged.

But, in the end, Hard
y’
s merciful nature won the day. “Here you go,” he said, handing me back my bank card, upon which he had inexplicably written my address. “Tell you what—find your friends, have your breakfast and get the hell out of my district. That sound like a plan?”

“Yes sir,” I answered, knowing a good deal when I heard it. “Thanks a lot.”

“Tha
t’
s okay,” he said. And for a second, he looked as if he was just going to simply turn away and get into his squad car.

But instead, looking at me intently, he frowned.

Clearly, there was something that was puzzling him. I could
n’
t imagine what it could be.

Slowly, Officer Hardy reached towards me. I did
n’
t move, unsure what he was up to. Then, to my great surprise and embarrassment, he stuck his hand into the breast pocket of my shirt. This simple action had happened so unexpectedly that I was completely unable to react. What in the living hell was he doing?

After a moment, and very slowly, Officer Hardy withdrew his hand and revealed what it was he had spotted stuffed into my pocket. The other police officers leaned forward in expectation. Weegman was practically drooling, hoping that Hardy had snagged a bag of heroin and that there would finally be grounds to haul me off to the hoosgow.

Instead, what Officer Hardy unfurled from my pocket, in what seemed like super slow-motion...

...was a long, black, sexy fishnet stocking.

It rustled, slightly, in the morning breeze.

Officer Hardy held it up in front of his face, his mouth agape. The other officers were similarly floored by this unusual development. I was pretty shocked myself.

The moment hung in suspended animation for an eternity. I swear, the birds even stopped singing, unable to tear their eyes away from this spectacle.

Then, excruciatingly, all eyes turned once again to me. Officer Hardy held out the stocking as if he were expecting me to offer up some kind of reasonable explanation. Unfortunately for all of us, I was unable to react in any cogent way.

Finally, Officer Hardy broke the silence:

“This yours?”

What could I say? He had pulled it out of my pocket. I could hardly deny ownership.

“Y-y-y-yes,” I stammered. “Yes sir.”

His eyes narrowed. He once again looked the stocking up and down and then turned his attention back to me. He chose his words, it appeared, very carefully.

“You...funny?”

We all knew what he was asking me. And to be honest, it was a logical question, given the circumstances. But I was quick to correct his misinterpretation.

“Oh, no. No sir. I
t’
s mine, but it does
n’
t
belong
to me. I mean to say, I do
n’
t
wear
it, of course. I
t’
s just…mine.”

Yeah, tha
t’
s the best I could do.

Officer Hardy had heard enough. He reached forward and stuffed the stocking back into my shirt pocket. This morning had been odd enough for him already.

“Have a nice day,” he said and sauntered, a bit dazed, over to his squad car, got in and took off. The other cops followed suit and pretty soon, after the slamming of doors, the turning of ignitions and the squeal of tires on the asphalt, the police cars had disappeared and I was the only one left standing in the street.