The Flaming Marshmallow

The Flaming Marshmallow

By William T. Moyer

Copyright 2017 William T. Moyer

Thed Flaming marshmallow

By William T. Moyer

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my beautiful wife Leah who taught me to Live in the present and not the past,

To Jenny, Joe, Lindsay, Evan, The preppy twins Grayson and Finley, The Barbarian Twins Allie and Lexie, my only best friend Jeff (the perpetual teenager) and

In Memory of my little brother Jimmy and Alan (The Thirteenth Moyer)

INTRODUCTION

If you read this book you might learn a little, but I know you will laugh a lot. You just can’t make this stuff up and besides the statute of limitations has expired on most of it by now.

When I was young it was all about running from the police, chasing wild women, egging houses, breaking windows, getting away, getting caught, winning fights, losing fights, making out with girls, skipping school, sneaking out at night, discovering the joys of gunpowder, friends dying, friends leaving, getting stabbed, getting shot, a brick in the head, summer camp for New York City troubled youths, leeches, outhouses, falling in love, falling out of love, first striptease show, wild women, wilder women, getting thrown out of the Boy Scouts, being a kid all alone in New York City, driving cars, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, making money, going to night clubs and then I turned thirteen. Funny how the biggest hell raisers always become police when they grow up!

Table of Contents

Chapter One- The Man with One White Shoe

Chapter Two-The Early Years

Chapter Three-The Mummy Dick

Chapter Four-Not an Angel

Chapter Five-The Flaming Marshmallow

Chapter Six-First Flight

Chapter Seven-Summer Camp

Chapter Eight-The Wall

Chapter Nine-High School Days

Chapter Ten-Military School

Chapter Eleven-California Dreaming

Chapter Twelve-Rookie

Chapter Thirteen-Hard Luck Larry

Chapter Fourteen-Hello Dolly

Chapter Fifteen-The Biscuit

Chapter Sixteen-The Stakeout

Chapter Seventeen-A Christmas Miracle

Chapter Eighteen-Fun with Winos

Chapter Nineteen-The Bionic Man

Chapter Twenty-Big Pink

Chapter Twenty One-Fritz

Chapter Twenty Two-Kung Fu

Chapter Twenty Three-Cry Me a River

Chapter Twenty Four-In Concert

Chapter Twenty Five-True Power

Chapter Twenty Six-Words

Chapter One

The Man with one white shoe

I needed a neck brace to help hold my head up. I was so sleepy that I felt numb all over. My work is usually extremely boring. During the long slow times I get so bored that it’s hard for me to keep my eyes open while I drive. I turned the steering wheel and drove down an empty street as my eyes just keep trying to slam shut. I knew it would be so easy to give into the sleep, so very easy. I rolled down the driver’s window and let the cold night air rush in to revive me. I started to feel a little better. This is the way it usually is on the long night shift. The first couple of hours were pretty interesting and then it slowed down to a lazy crawl. The oncoming headlights began to blur together and I decided to turn into a brightly lit new car dealership. After checking the salesmen’s office for any signs of a break in, I just poked along, up and down the long lines of cars, trucks and vans in an effort to defeat the creeping sleep. I stopped my car in the middle of the brightly lit crowded acre of shiny vehicles, turned off the engine and stepped out into the brisk night air. The car dealership was closed at this hour or there would be car salesmen crawling all over me, telling me lies to try and sell a car. I guessed that the temperature was about forty degrees, maybe upper thirties. I knew that nothing worked better as a stimulus than just getting off my butt and walking around for a while. Under the bright lights all the new cars looked like shiny gem stones. I looked at some of the window stickers and realized that they were all priced like rare jewels as well. I was starting to feel like my old alert self once more, when I heard the crackle of my car radio.

A sexy woman’s voice was saying my call sign over and over. Car 420, car 420, I walked to the open car door, picked up the radio microphone and responded, car 420, Washington and Main. I was required to always answer a radio call with my location. The sexy voice momentarily ignored me and called for car 460. I heard car 460 respond with his location just as I had done. I figured that the dispatcher with the low sexy voice was going to send both of us on the same call or maybe she wanted to find out which one of us would be the closest to an address. After another few seconds of silence there was a high pitched tone that denoted an emergency call. Then she came back on over the radio, car 420 and car 460, 2618 East Florida Street, apartment 28A, a burglary in progress. I immediately responded with 10-4 and then George in car 460 did the same. Everyone knows that 10-4 is the universal radio signal for acknowledgement of information. George waited for me to 10-4 before he did since I got the call first. That is what radio procedure specifies and I am big on radio procedure. Well, there goes my boredom. I was wide awake now.

I looked at my watch and it was 3:14 in the morning. I figured that it would take me about 10 minutes to arrive at the apartments called Morningside Homes and about 5 more to find the victim’s address in the housing project. I didn’t recognize the address, so it wasn’t an apartment where we got a lot of calls. Morningside Homes was a low income housing project not too far from my beat in the downtown area. I knew from the location that George, in car 460 had given, that it would take about 5 minutes longer for him to get there than it would for me. I slid back into the front seat of my patrol car and started the engine. I put the gear shift into drive and slowly drove out of the car lot. As I drove out of the car lot and entered on to Washington Street, I flicked the toggle switch mounted on the dash that turned on my blue lights and then reached down under the dash to the center console and turned the knob to start the loud wail of my siren. When responding to a burglary in progress call procedure dictated to run in emergency mode with blue lights and siren on. When we got near to the victim’s address, we would turn off our sirens, so the burglar would not hear us coming. We don’t want to let the burglar know we are approaching and give him a chance to escape. I remember that I was thinking maybe we can catch this one, when the sexy dispatcher’s voice crackled over the radio again. Car 420 and car 460 switch to F-3 for further information. Man, she sounded sultry. I wonder what she looks like. Any woman’s voice on the radio at 3 in the morning sounds sexy, except of course for Ann’s voice in car 440, she sounds like slow motion chalk on a blackboard at any time of the day or night.

I turned the frequency knob on my radio and switched to channel F-3 as directed. Once George and I acknowledged being on frequency F-3 a very mature, calm and cool man’s voice said, car 420 and 460, be advised the victim is on the phone with us now and the suspect is still inside of her apartment. She says she can hear him moving around in the next room. She has locked herself in the bathroom until officers arrive. George and I both responded with 10-4 to acknowledge the information. Now if this bastard will just stay there for a few more minutes.

I arrived first, like I figured I would. Again following the protocol, I silently turned into the parking lot. I drove slowly with my headlights turned off and coasted my vehicle up to the front of the apartment building where the victim said she was hiding in her bathroom. Each police car has a toggle switch on the dash that turns off the cars brake and backup lights. This enables us to stop the car at night with no lights at all showing. I flipped that switch before I came to a stop, put it in park and turned the engine off. I got my walkie-talkie from the car’s front seat and turned the volume way down. I got out of the car and quietly closed the driver’s door. The interior dome light was also turned off. Police are pretty good at sneaking up on people.

We’ve had a rash of burglary in progress calls in this neighborhood lately, but we have not been able to make any apprehensions. When someone breaks into a residence, while the occupant of the residence is asleep, it is called a first degree burglary and in North Carolina. First Degree Burglary carries a life sentence. That means that the burglar really does not want to get caught and will probably do anything to escape. What’s he got to lose? We always seem to just miss this guy, but I felt like this time it might be a different story.

George arrived silently in car 460 right on cue. We huddled together in the darkness making a plan. It was a simple plan. The victim’s apartment was on the ground floor of the two story building at the far right end. We quietly walked around the outside of the apartment crouching down as we passed windows. We found where the burglar had made his entry in the rear. We could hear someone rustling around inside and assumed it was him. A screen was off and sitting on the ground beside an open window. The plan was for George to wait there outside the open window, while I loudly bang on the front door and yell police. Then when the suspect climbs back out of the open window, where he had entered, George would arrest him. As soon as I create the diversion I will run around the building to assist George, if he should need it. The diversion was so the burglar would think he had an exit and not think he was trapped. We didn’t know what kind of weapon he might be armed with and we didn’t want the woman in the bathroom to be caught in a cross fire or to be taken hostage. George thought it was a good plan too, so we got into position.

You are probably wondering, why George was elected to stay by the open window and not me. Let me try to explain. George is a great police officer and I think I am pretty good too, but George is twice as fast as I am. He is 5’10, weighs 175 pounds, and runs like the wind. I, on the other hand, am 6’1, weigh 255 pounds and do not run like the wind. If the suspect takes off running, George has a better chance of catching him than I do. It is sort of like a football game. The smaller fast guy catches the ball carrier and holds him until the slower big guy gets there to finish him off. It’s not like in the movies and TV shows, where the police officer draws his gun and yells police officer, freeze, and the suspect always stops and puts up his hands. Then he does whatever the officer tells him to do. In real life, in this neighborhood, the suspect would probably only hear the Po… part of the sentence and then he would be gone like roadrunner in the cartoon. The department won’t let us shoot at running suspects anymore unless they shoot at us first. George has a good chance to catch him in a foot race, but I would need a whole lot of luck to catch him. The method of giving chase that I usually preferred was to yell stop or I’ll shoot and then throw my flashlight and hit the suspect in the back with it. They always think that I shot them in the back, at least for a second or two. Usually they will fall down on the ground in shock, where upon, I can catch up and arrest them. It actually works about half the time.

Using my flashlight, I banged it hard on the steel front door of the apartment as I yelled open up, this is the police. That ought to get his attention and I ran full speed around the building to where George was waiting by the open window. When I turned the final corner of the building the beam of my flashlight briefly illuminated the back of George’s black uniform. He was running full tilt into the bushes heading deeper into the catacombs of the dark housing project. I couldn’t see who he was chasing, but this guy must be fast. During the short time it took for me to bang on the front door and run around the building, he had made it out of the open window, gotten away from George and taken off into the darkness. I hit the bushes going after them.

I could see splashes of light ahead of me from George’s flashlight every few seconds. My flashlight was aimed at the uneven ground I was trying to maneuver. The ground was littered with broken tricycles, beer bottles, needles and other trash that I was trying not to trip over. Running in the dark was treacherous. My adrenalin was pumping and I was still falling behind them as I hurdled over debris trying to keep them in sight.

I guess I should have been looking up. Clothes lines are quite common in the housing projects. I hit a cluster of them about face high at a full run. Man that sure stung. Suddenly I was lying on my back on the ground. I had to make myself get up. It took a lot of will power. I regained my footing and staggering a little I jogged off in the direction of George’s shouts. I was trying to navigate by sound now rather than sight, since I had lost my own flash light when the clothes line got me and I could not see the flashes of George’s flashlight any longer. My eyes were starting to adjust to the total darkness and George’s shouts were getting louder and louder.

The only reason that I caught up to them at all was the simple fact that they were not running anymore. George had evidently caught up with and tackled the suspect. I could barely make out their silhouettes as they rolled about in the dirt. Now I could understand what George had been shouting. George was yelling for me to Shoot him! Shoot him! It was pitch black and my adjusting eyes could barely make out their dark shapes much less tell which one was the police officer and which was the suspect. George was wearing his black police uniform and the suspect, he was fighting for his life with on the ground, was wearing dark clothing as well. George is a black man and the suspect is a black man. I could not tell who was who on that damn moonless night. As they rolled around in the dirt George shouted again with even more urgency in his voice He’s trying to get my gun! Quick, shoot him! For God’s sake shoot the bastard!

I got down on my hands and knees and crawled over close to George and the burglar as they were wrestling on the ground fighting for possession of George’s hand gun. Feeling my way as I went, guided by Georges shouts, I located them and using my arms I grabbed all four of their legs and feet as they struggled on the ground. I could barely make out their shoes. Straining my vision to the limit, I could just make out a shade of white in the darkness. Since I knew that it must be the burglar that was wearing the white sneakers, I took out my revolver and held the tip of the barrel against the patch of white and pulled the trigger. The flame from the barrel of my .357 Magnum revolver lit the suspects face up for a split second as I blew his white sneaker off. The look of surprise and then excruciating pain on the suspects face was quite evident in the brief bright flash before we were plunged back into greater darkness. A .357 magnum revolver shoots about a six foot long flame out of the barrel when fired at night. I know this, because I have seen it do it several times in the past.

The burglar stopped struggling at once, his body became rigid and he started screaming. I jumped on top of him and hand cuffed his hands behind his back as he writhed in pain. Regaining some of his breath and decorum, George quickly found his flashlight that was still shinning into nowhere, lying twenty feet away. Miraculously I still had my walkie-talkie attached to my Belt.

Our prisoner was bleeding pretty badly and his sock was smoldering. Every time his heart beat, blood would shoot out of the top of his foot about six feet into the air. I was getting covered with the warm liquid every couple of seconds. I ripped the suspect’s shirt off and wrapped it around his foot to keep it from squirting blood on me. I told him that he had the right to remain silent and I stuffed some of his shirt into his mouth to shut him up. Then I sat down on the ground.

The air smelt like Cordite from my pistol shot and it felt nice and cool on my face. I had to wait for a while until I was more composed and caught my breath before I could radio in for backup and an ambulance. I have always thought that it was important to sound cool and calm when talking on the radio, no matter what is going on all around you. After all the girl with the sexy voice might be listening. Since we were pretty much