Rick Zube was a part timer. He worked two shifts a week (friday and saturday evenings, naturally), and spent the rest of the week working out or doing whatever it is that odd forty-something year old cop wannabes do in their spare time. He'd been in the Air Force (he always referenced his time in the service as "in the military" - presumably because that belied the fact that he'd spent four years as a refueling technician and caught a dishonorable discharge when he got caught with a hooker on base) and worked security on and off for the decade and a half or so since he'd left.
Zube wanted to be a cop, bad. He read cop magazines. He read books about cops. He had three 'tactical' handcuff keys (which were black, see) and a taser and a laser-accurate flat top. He wore aviators when it was sunny out.
Imagine the cop-terminator from Terminator 2, only with a child molester mustache, and you're getting close.
I barely interacted with the guy for a large portion of my time at the mall. We worked the same shift, but the duty officer usually stuck Zube somewhere out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere to keep him out of trouble. This pissed him off to no end. He'd take it out on the boss by being as annoying as humanly possible over the radio, while never precisely breaking the rules.
"Zube to Office."
"Office, go ahead."
"Office, if you could put a call in with the police for the area near Borders, I would appreciate it."
"Say again Zube?"
"Call PD for the sidewalk near Borders. We have a motorcycle parked illegally."
"..."
"It's a... Mitsubishi. Black. License number 3-2-4 Charlie Alpha Foxtrot."
"..."
"Confirm you've got the plate number, office?"
"What is the problem with this vehicle, Zube?"
"It's been parked in the Chili's to go fifteen minute parking for twenty minutes."
"10-4."
"..."
"..."
"Office, have you contacted PD regarding that motorcycle?"
"No."
"10-4." You could hear the pouting.
This sort've shit always cracked me and Dave up. See, we didn't give a shit about what went on around the mall most of the time. If we were doing something (like kicking out the mallrats), it was to keep the boss off our ass or because it was sufficiently hilarious to do anyways. Zube did it because he had a hardon for the authority the shitty tin badge gave him. He did it because it was one long cop LARP for him.
Which was hilarious to watch. Zube would look for a missing CD like he was hunting bin Laden. If there was a rumor someone was planning on stink-bombing the food court, Zube would be on the lookout like someone had just called in a nuclear bomb threat.
It was funny to watch for us. For the boss, it was a pile of trouble as Zube would jump on just about anything and act in his trademark "professional" manner - which usually meant asking for police to be dispatched immediately and then attempting to handcuff the living fuck out of whoever had provoked him. This was occasionally pretty useful - Zube was like a walking citizens-arrest cruise missile if you knew how to lead him on.
Which was nice. Why? Because if you were the one doing the arrest, you were also the one doing paperwork. Paperwork is boring. It means sitting in the office (the one with no AC that smells a bit like piss), with the boss sitting over your shoulder, scrawling out half a dozen pages about the dumbfuck mallrat you hooked when he tried to steal a trucker hat from one of the mall stands.
Zube loved doing paperwork.
So that was his role. He was the guy that we'd call for 'backup' when an arrest was going to have to be made, but none of use really felt like jumping on the grenade of a few hours in the stinkbin engaging in some creative writing.
One of the bookstores in the mall left their remaindered magazines in one of the hallways. Technically they were off limits, but fuck that, this was free access to nerding materials like Dragon magazine, full of random ass shit for D&D. I'd make a pass once a month or so just to see if there was anything worth grabbing, and stowed most of them in my locker for break time reading or for flipping through when I got parking lot duty.
Which was great, until Zube opened my locker by accident one day, and decided that I was a satanist.
I caught him flipping through one of the magazines when I came in on break.
"Oh hey Zube," I said, "didn't think you were into D&D."
He looked up at me. "I'm not. I'm studying it."
"Studying huh? You should try to find a group sometime-"
"I am going to save your soul, Gilbert."
"What?"
So it became Zube's mission in life to show me the sinfulness of my ways. Which was hilarious, because his conception of what a D&D session involved was blood sacrifices and casting spells to control peoples minds.
"I know you've tried casting them on me fourteen. But god protects me."
"Well, okay then," I replied.
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