My new novel, "Big Pink" will be out soon.
I'm just putting the final touches to it now.
Here is a brief excerpt from "Big Pink".
I was working security at one of the Grateful dead Concerts and everyone was totally Stoned out of their minds. There were several young hippie girls sitting with their backs to a chain link fence while they waited to be admitted into the coliseum. On the other side of the fence was a really stoned guy urinating on them through the fence. The girls were too stoned to know they were being pissed on and the guy was too stoned to even know he was pissing on them. Sometimes life is good.
The show was finally over and the crowd had mostly Left the parking lot. I was tired from standing up so long, so I was glad to sit down in my unmarked police car. I drove out of the coliseum parking lot, past a few stragglers still standing by their cars talking. I turned left and headed back toward the police station. My shift had ended thirty minutes ago and the department does not like to pay overtime. I was slouched down in the driver’s seat of the blue dodge as I stopped for a red light at the first traffic signal out of the parking lot. There was very little traffic this time of the morning. I was patiently waiting for the light to turn green, when a Cadillac pulled up beside me in the left turn lane and stopped, also waiting for the light to change. I glanced over at it and noticed there were five black men in the car. I figured they had just left the concert parking lot.
Now in my opinion there are several different grades of stupid. My stupidity scale goes from “mildly stupid” on up to “too stupid to breath”. Evidently the occupants of this Cadillac were in the “too stupid to breath” category. Since I was sitting low behind the steering wheel they could not see my police uniform. Evidently they were far too stupid to think that a white guy driving a blue dodge at 1:30AM, might just be a cop.
The two guys on the passenger side of the cadillac leaned out of the windows with their arms hanging out of the car. Each one’s hand held a can of malt liquor and the guy in the front seat shouted out the window at me, “What you lookin’ at, you honkey, mother fucker?” Then when I appeared to ignore this threatening remark the guy hanging out of the back window threw his can of malt beverage and hit the side of my car. I just sat there and ignored this as well. My silence apparently gave them more ethnic courage and they all started hurling racial remarks and threats in my direction. I guess, as in most instances like this, these guys were more show than go. Just then the light changed to green and they Started Driving off, turning left on to the main four lane road in front of the coliseum.
I hesitated for a few seconds after they started driving away. Reverently, I looked up at the stars in the sky and said, “Thank you, Jesus”, then I stepped on the accelerator pedal and drove off, following the Cadillac. When I fell in behind them I saw several angry black faces looking at me through the back windshield. I could not stop grinning as I reached out to the toggle switch on the dash and using my index finger I flamboyantly flipped on the blue lights in the grill of the unmarked police car. I then enthusiastically hit the siren yelper a couple of times to be sure that I had their attention.
On cartoon Saturday, the Wiley coyote’s ears would Slowly Droop down right when he realized his plan had failed and the boulder was going to squish him instead of the road runner. I swear that is what happened to all those guys looking out of the rear windshield. They, in unison, got a bewildered look on their faces and their ears appeared to slowly droop down.
