Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Sudetenland Tales

Page 21

morning out of stubborn ritual. He's the last cop left in a department that no longer exists.

After the brutal pillaging and its ensuing scandal and endless budget cuts, the city council apparently decided to do the federal judge one better, and voted to defund the department entirely. The vote passed, applause echoed in chambers, and officers cleared out within days. Lenny didn’t. Whether out of loyalty or delusion, no one could say. He patrols the streets in his aging cruiser, the paint faded to a ghostly blue, his dashboard lit up only by a flickering check engine light.

His badge didn’t grant authority anymore, but at ;east he no longer had to answer to any bureaucratic assholes, and people still waved. Not everyone, but enough to keep him driving. In neighborhoods where security is do it yourself and justice is crowd sourced, Lenny solves problems nobody’s asked him to. He breaks up street fights, talks down angry landlords, and escorts school kids past hot zones. His new beat is everything; substitute teacher, grief counselor, human caution cone.

Late one night, \he pulled up beside a battered van abandoned near City Hall. There was movement inside. A teen climbed out, eyes bloodshot and defiant. Lenny doesn’t reach for a weapon. He just nodded.