I tried not to stare. He was tall and slender. His lean face had a dark, week’s growth of whiskers, and his grey eyes seemed forceful and confident. I noted the dirty white tee and denim vest and torn blue jeans. He wore tan work-boots laced halfway up.
My impression was that he was trouble, but the thought kept going through my mind, “I wonder if he’s a cop?” He’d be undercover, of course, and I had no idea why he’d be riding the bus. Still, the twin impressions stayed in my mind as I tried to scan the whole bus to avoid looking specifically at him.
‘If I think he’s a cop,’ I thought, ‘I bet he isn’t fooling the bad guys.’
The ‘cop’ got off the bus at a strip mall in the east end. I’d been so curious about him that I’d missed my stop and now had to ride along the whole route to loop back to where I needed to be. My imagination kept working on the ‘cop’.
He’d be undercover with an auto theft ring, taking a bus to a prospective heist. There would be a bait car that he was supposed to take and drive to the warehouse that served as the gang’s hideout. Just as the crooks were about to strip the car for parts the sirens would wail and a SWAT team in black tactical gear would swoop in, yelling for everyone to ‘freeze’. The undercover cop would pull his weapon and assist the SWAT team. Police cruisers, lights flashing, would roar into the warehouse. Uniformed cops would cuff the crooks and put them into the back seats of their cruisers to be whisked away.
Plainclothes detectives would slap the undercover cop on the back and tell him, “Good job!”
I wondered what his name would be. Something from the movies, maybe like Jack Reacher, or maybe just Trace. When the paperwork was done, he’d hop on his Harley at the station and roar off into the night, free until his next assignment.
I pulled the stop wire and gathered my three plastic bags of groceries. I got off the bus by the rear door at my stop. The night air was warm but not humid, nice for a change. As I trudged along, on my way home to a TV dinner and whatever show was on the tube, I smiled and thought about Trace, motoring down the highway, shoulder-length black hair blowing in the wind. I sighed and mumbled, “Oh well.”
