Free Time Expired by Susan Dunlap Page A

She was a short, comfortably plump gray-haired woman who made you think of Mom. Usually it was Mom with cookies and milk, or Mom who wanted to hug you and make you well. There was a reason Parking Enforcement sent her to Morning Meeting rather than the more senior Elgin Tiress. Parking Enforcement was aware of the odious Tiress’s reputation.
    Eckey stood up to her full five feet three, placed both hands on hipbones, and announced, “This shit can’t go on!”
    Police officers are not shocked by much, and certainly not by common four-letter words. But from Celia Eckey no one expected more than a “Pshaw.”
    Eckey glared around the table. “We get more shit than the rest of you put together. The citizens of this town, they think we make up all these rules: If you live in Area D, you can’t park outside your house unless you pay for an Area D permit. Your parents come to visit and they can’t park there unless they get a permit. You get them a temporary permit and put it on their car and still they get a ticket because you forgot to write in the year; you’ve just got the month and day. What do you do? You scream at Parking Enforcement: ‘Hey you idiot, we all know what year this is! Do you have a quota? Do you get a bonus for stupid tickets!’ ” She fanned another glare around the table, daring anyone to take her on. I felt like a four-year-old caught with cookie dough on her hand.
    But Howard, whose charm had insulated him from normal rebuke, stretched his long arms forward. He was grinning. “So, Eckey, what do you tell him? Why do you insist on the year?”
    “We do it for little boys like you, Howard. College boys think it’s a big joke to save their temporary stickers for an entire year so they can use them again.”
    “Or sell them,” Howard said. “Remember the black market the undergrads were running with them? Good little profit maker until they made them the prize in a Homecoming Weekend lottery. The gift for someone who’s got everything, and no place to park it!”
    We, who get no more mercy than any other citizen when it comes to parking in this the tenth most crowded city in the nation, laughed. In an hour some of us would be running out to move our cars from their two-hour spots here in Preferential Parking Area C, in which we were neither the blessed residents nor commercial tenants. Organized officers like “Eggs” and Acosta worked in pairs, swapping their spots. The rest of us hunted and grumbled. And, as Eckey would have been glad to announce, bitched at Parking Enforcement. Berkeley is not a city prone to offer its public employees special privileges.
    Eckey was not laughing. “Permits are all yellowed; edges are curling with age; and these kids think we’re not going to catch on!” She shook her head. “I’d like to send every one of them to his room without supper.”
    Everyone laughed harder, and even Eckey joined in. Until Chief Larkin’s cough brought us back to business. “Eckey, how long has the perp been operating?”
    “No way to say, sir. Much harassment as we get, it’s hard to spot a new strain.” The captain started to speak but Eckey was not to be denied. “Accuse a guy of murder and he says he didn’t do it. But you stick a ticket under his wiper and you get a bunch of excuses that would shame a politician.”
    “Eckey—”
    “You ticket a Californian’s automobile; it’s the next thing to spitting in his hot tub.” Before Chief Larkin could try again, Eckey said, “We’ve seen it all, sir. And there’s no way to tell how long this perp has been doing penny-ante stuff. Eight marking wands have been stolen in the last month.
    “In the last three weeks,” Eckey went on, “we’ve had keys stolen from one vehicle, wipers from another twisted in knots, another one he stole the keys and left it parked going west on Shattuck.”
    It took everyone two beats to register that Shattuck was a north-south thoroughfare.
    “We’ve had the Cushman in the