SMASHING VIALS

(a novella excerpt)

Author’s Note

Ruby Greenberg, a socialite from the affluent town of Palo Alto, joins the San Francisco Probation Department. Due to the recent death of her father, she feels out of sorts and wants to put meaning into her life. “I wanna help people,” she tells her mother, “As long as they’re not homeless and smelly.” Her mother advises her to stick to her tennis club and stay off the streets of San Francisco, but Ruby ignores her mother’s advice. Three weeks after becoming a probation officer, she is recruited to take part in a drug sweep.

My supervisor, this fat lamo jerk who wears too much cologne, told me to clear my schedule for the next two weeks. He said I’d be joining a dozen other officers cruising the city in pairs. We were gonna be part of this drug sweep that the probation chief had ordered. We were supposed to shake down our clients in the Tenderloin and the Western Addition, and if they had powdered cocaine on them, to smash their vials on the sidewalk. He said the probation chief wanted to prove that the department was tough on drugs, and he suggested I be on my best behavior because the media might be filming us. He also told me not to pitch a bitch like I did a week ago—when I got issued a Second-Chance vest that made me look flat-chested. He said a field operation was no place for a Karen and that I needed to look more professional if I got on the Six P.M. News.

I was teamed up with Robert Rosso, a veteran probation officer who worked as a bounty hunter before joining the department. Rosso is a stocky Italian dude and he walks with a gunfighter’s swagger, and he’s so fucking macho that he makes me cream my jeans. Rosso told me the sweep was bullshit—a fucking publicity stunt and that the chief was too big an asshole to care about putting us at risk. He told me to be super careful because the city is full of kooks—brain-dead schizophrenics and raving religious nuts. He said he wasn’t worried about frisking our clients because he knew how to handle them, but there was always the chance that one of those crazies might interfere with the sweep. “Watch out for the psychos,” he warned me. “Those fuckers you see shitting in doorways. If you spot any of ’em eyeballing us, get back in the car quick as you can.”

Before we began our mission, I made sure to take a pee. I then slipped a steel plate into my Second Chance vest, loaded up my Glock, and put a fresh battery into my taser so it wouldn’t run out of juice.

While Rosso was driving us through delapidated neighborhoods an unmarked police sedan, I told him about this client of mine who was on probation for dealing meth. The dude’s name is Joseph Christmas and he was real polite, and I kind of got the feeling that he wanted to be my friend. I mentioned how I could not understand why Joseph became a crook because he seemed like a nice old fellow who liked to talk about books.

“I busted him a coupla times,” Rosso said. “He never gave me no trouble. But my only entertainment is Pornhub, so we never discussed no books.”

I said, “Did ya see that Netflix movie—The Old Man with the Gun? He reminds me of the gentleman bandit that Robert Redford played.”

“Rubes,” Rosso said, “you’re out here to break vials. Stop mooning over a con. Ya ain’t in no goddamn movie and Christmas was over last year.”

“Ya said breaking vials is bullshit.”

“That’s just the point,” said Rosso. “That stuff belongs in Clint Eastwood flicks, not on the streets of ’Frisco. If ya behave like Dirty Harry while yer cruising the Tenderloin, you could attract the wrong sort of attention and end up gettin’ hurt.”

I put Joseph Christmas out of my mind as Rosso and I went to work. At those times when we spotted our probationers, Rosso stopped the car. He made them lean against dirty buildings and had them spread their legs, and he told them jokes to break the tension while patting them down. “Spread yer legs wider,” he’d say to them. “Pretend this is yer lucky day.” Most of the probationers would laugh along with him because Rosso’s a real zany guy.

Whenever he found a vial of cocaine, he tossed it at my feet, and I stomped it under my boot as though I was killing a cockroach. It seemed like we were performing skits, but I’m a ham at heart, so I pretended I was starring in a Blue Bloods episode.

An hour later, I understood what Rosso was talking about because something happened that made me feel like I was in the Twilight Zone. We were doing our frisks in the Tenderloin, where cop cars never stopped, when I noticed a big cloud of homeless people on the other side of the street. Their faces seemed uninhabited, their eyes were hungry and wild, and after a minute, I realized that they were stalking us. When we moved, they moved. When we stopped, they stopped. They watched our every move, and whenever we searched a probationer, they waited like crows on a fence.

I put my hand on my taser because they really creeped me out—it was like we were in a graveyard and the ghosts had all come out. I knew that any minute this pack of walking stiffs would pour across the street to lick up the powder we’d left on the ground.

What harm can they do us? I told myself. Those people are already dead. But my bladder had a mind of its own, and my undies got warm and wet. It was as if I was in one of those horror flicks where zombies take over a city, and you see them ripping folks open and swallowing their guts.

Rosso was watching them also, and he had his Glock in his hand. Opening the passenger-side door to the car, he told me to get my butt in.

“Hurry up, Rubes!” he whispered but I couldn’t feel my legs, so he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and shoved me into the car. I didn’t appreciate him manhandling me, but I couldn’t stay mad for long. Those ghouls were already crossing the street when he hopped behind the wheel.

“Looks like the Grinch stole your Christmas,” Rosso said with a laugh, but he kept the Glock in his hand as he started the car.

“Quit making jokes,” I cried. “I gotta wash my panties.”

As Rosso gunned the engine, I managed not to scream, but the tires shrieked like bats as he pulled into the street. When we got back to the probation department, I was shaking like a drunk, so I ran into my office and pushed my desk against the door. That asshole chief could go screw himself—I was done with smashing vials. Never in my life had I been so fucking scared.

James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former fiction editor. His work has appeared in over thirty journals, including The Literary Review, Crack the Spine, and Sixfold. He is also a former contributor to Adelaide Magazine. James is the author of seven books, all of which have won awards. Global Book Awards has twice given him a gold medal for contemporary fiction.