I was sitting in my office, filing the serial numbers off my new Smith and Wesson, when the phone rang. I waited a few minutes for my secretary to pick it up, but I realize that she had left me the day before, spouting some nonsense about wage and hour laws. I sighed and picked up the phone myself.

"Sluice Tundra, Private Eye," I said.

"Mr. Tundra," a sultry female voice said, "Please, you’ve got to help me. I’m in jail."

"Sounds like you need a lawyer, doll," I said. "I’m a private eye. A gumshoe. Just an ordinary shamus, trying to earn a living on the mean streets, where life is cheap, the women are fast, and the lead flies like..."

"Yes, Mr. Tundra, I know," the voice said. "It’s in your Yellow Pages ad. That thing must have cost a fortune. It goes on like that for three full pages."

I grimaced. She didn’t know the half of it. That’ll teach me to dictate an ad to a salesperson working on commission, especially when I’ve been treating a head cold with a bottle of cheap bourbon. It reminded me that I needed paying clients. "So, what are you in for?"

There was a brief silence. "It’s some kind of conspiracy, I know it is. I mean, no one gets put in jail for parking violations."

"Actually, it’s not impossible. Not since that Supreme Court ruling."

"What Supreme Court ruling?"

"Some dame was bringing her kids home from soccer practice when she got popped for a seat belt violation. The cop could have given her a ticket, but he handcuffed her in front of her kids, hauled her off to jail and stuck her in a cell till she made a three-hundred dollar bond." I lit a cigarette. "Bet after an hour or so in handcuffs, those seatbelts looked like a pretty good deal."

"But that’s crazy. You can’t be put in jail even if you’re convicted for a seat-belt violation. And the bond was more than the fine."

I remembered that I didn’t smoke and put out the cigarette. "That’s what you’d think. But you’d be wrong. The lady sued for violation of her civil rights, and the Supremes threw it out. Since then, I’ve been getting a lot of calls like this. Guys are in the clink for tearing the tags off mattresses. Just yesterday a guy was run in for wearing the American Legion symbol without belonging to the American Legion."

"That’s a crime?"

"It is in North Carolina. You could look it up. Bet he won’t borrow his grandpa’s jacket again."

"This is crazy," the woman said. "It was just a misdemeanor. What could the Supreme Court have been thinking?" she said.

"Well," I said. "Justice Souter wrote the opinion, and he quoted some statutes from England that allowed people to be arrested for things like nightwalking, cozening with false dice, profane cursing, and negligent carriage-driving."

"Okay, cozening I can see. But didn’t we declare independence from England to get away from that kind of law enforcement?"

"I always thought so. But no one wants to be seen as being soft on crime. If you had a rule requiring arrests to be reasonable, it might actually be used by – I lowered my voice—"lawyers."

"So it’s not a conspiracy," she said.

"Nope," I assured her. "Not one against you at least. It’s just the way things are now. Just be glad you weren’t mistaken for a drug dealer. They probably would have blown up the car with an anti-tank missile. The good news is that most cops are decent Joes, just honest flatfoots, trying to do a tough job in a tough town…"

"Flatfeet," the woman said.

"What?" I replied.

"Shouldn’t it be ‘honest flatfeet’"?

"Whatever. The point is, just be glad most cops are reasonable. Because if one gets a bug up his behind and decides to humiliate you in front of your family for a minor offense, there’s not a thing you can do about it."

"Gee, thanks, Mr. Tundra," the woman said sarcastically. "You really now how to make a gal feel reassured."

"Hey, doll," I said. "You want warm and fuzzy, boil a chinchilla. I’m just an honest P.I. out here calling it like I see it, out here on the mean streets…hello? Hello?" There was a dial tone. Then even that was gone. I told the secretary to pay that bill.

COPYRIGHT 2001 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.