Free Hooked by Matt Richtel Page B

be a friendly law enforcement encounter.

16
    L icense and registration please.”
    “Officer,” Erin said. “We were the ones who called in a report about a possible fire.”
    I extricated my driver’s license. I tried to remember where I had put my registration. Don’t cops know that no one actually has any idea where they put their registration?
    “You called in about a fire?” said the officer, whose name-tag read Sampson. “You called the San Francisco police?”
    “Nine-one-one,” Erin said.
    I held my driver’s license up to the open window. The patrolwoman took it and scrutinized my height, weight, and picture like it could tell her everything anyone could ever need to know about me.
    “Mr. Idle, can you please step out of the car,” she said.
    I tried to remember if I’d done something wrong. The answer dawned on me just as Officer Sampson said it.
    “You nearly killed a skateboarder,” she said.
    She got points for hyperbole.
    “We got two calls about a Toyota sport utility vehicle tearing through Cole Valley,” she said.
    She seemed to take pains to enunciate when she said “sport utility vehicle,” like my car of choice would cost me points when we came to the me-making-excuses portion of our program.
    “I didn’t see the incident,” she continued. “But I could hear the screeching of brakes and tires from around the corner. I could have heard it in the Castro.”
    It was kind of funny. She didn’t smile. Still, the way she said it, it sounded like good news. Like maybe she wasn’t going to dig into my bank account for something she hadn’t personally borne witness to. I decided to go for the jugular. I began begging.
    “I’m sorry, Officer. I’ve had an unbelievably bad couple of days,” I said.
    She glanced at me without commitment. “Let’s see what the box has to say.”
    She walked to the squad car. She sat. She started entering my information into her onboard computer.
    “Underpants,” Erin said.
    She leaned closer.
    “The one and only time I got in trouble with the law. The one and only thing I ever stole.”
    “Underpants?”
    “A racy little pink number,” Erin explained. “I was fourteen. I had some friends who were going through a theft phase. I wanted to prove myself, but I was terrified.”
    “By stealing big-girl undies.”
    She curled a strand of hair behind her right ear and trailed a graceful index finger along her jaw, letting it rest on her chin. I’d always found the great challenge of rock climbing to be deciding which jagged outcroppings were solid and secure enough to make reliable hand- or toeholds. I still couldn’t decide whether to grasp on to Erin.
    “Oh, no. My theory was much more flawed than that,” she continued. “I figured that I would steal something that I could readily conceal. I would simply try on a pair of panties, then walk out of Kmart undetected. Not only did I get caught, I had to undress in front of the manager. She was a nice older woman. But still . . . I was stripped right down to my thong, which fortunately I was wearing over two pairs of my own regular underwear and a pair of shorts. My father nearly disowned me. He was strict, capital S. I think it was a year before he let me out of the house for a non-church function.”
    The cop exited her car and started heading in our direction.
    “Anything short of a strip search, and I think you’re having an all right kind of afternoon,” Erin said.
    “Mr. Idle,” the officer said.
    She was using honorifics. That didn’t bode well.
    “Are you familiar with the term ‘reckless endangerment,’” she asked. “We got two calls from possible eyewitnesses, including the mother of a boy who claims you nicked the tail end of his scooter.”
    “What about the call to 911?”
    It was Erin. She wasn’t letting go. The officer took a deep breath. She seemed like someone to whom patience came naturally. The uniform had weaned it out of her.
    “A call was placed,” Officer