I started actively avoiding Zube after he'd told me about his personal mission to save my soul. Cox, of course, found the whole situation hilarious. So did my boss. Which was fine - I could see the humor in it - but it got a little old when I started finding handwritten bible verses tucked in my locker and in the glovebox of the truck. They were never the nice bible verses ("Jesus wept") or the badass ones (like the bit about Ehud in Judges) or the hilarious ones (Like Elisha siccing bears on people in Kings). No. I got quotes from Revelation about many-headed beasts and lakes of fire.
Sometimes there was a little more after the verse. "He is watching" was a favorite. Which is just kinda funny sounding when I write it down here, but when you're getting up from taking a shit and find a quote about hellfire with that written on it tucked into the back pocket of your uniform pants it slides right into creepy and makes a little house there.
Zube never mentioned the notes. If I had to guess, it's because he knew that some places might call it borderline harassment. Not that my boss gave a shit - he thought it was the funniest thing anyone had every done - but mall management would have shit a brick. Not that I would have gone running to them, but still.
So getting weird notes in obscure places became the new normal.
Summer came, and the mall got busy. The notes were still around, but I barely noticed them. School was out, and every fifteen year old with an allowance was blowing it at the mall or, failing that, hanging around on the benches and fucking up the railings in the parking lots trying to perfect their kickflips.
A new liquor store opened up across the street. Which was great - I loved booze, and I hated wasting time driving. Except I wasn't the only patron. Along with the out of school kids, the mallrats of the 18-30 range returned in full force to our hallowed, air-conditioned halls.
They brought their liquor with them. Usually riding in a big gulp cup or replacing some of the soda in a two liter. They'd walk the mall or hang out in the parking structures. Bullshitting, fucking, fighting.
Which mall management fucking hated. It scared the nice folk with the fat wallets who were coming in to watch the Lord of the Rings or Terminator 3 and who spent 30 bucks at the candy shop buying overpriced jelly beans.
So we got to chase them out. Which is why I slowly began to hate summer. I'd hated it already - summer in San Diego is swelteringly hot in a town that is always warm. It was a broiler that summer too - we had temperatures in the low 110's once a week.
Unlike their lesser brethren, the adult form of the mallrat found us more hilarious than threatening. Which was a pain in the ass. The badge and the radio was enough to scare off the larval form - worst case scenario, they were dumb enough to let us detain them and to give us their parents phone number. The older form knew just enough to be a real pain in the ass to chase off - they knew the cops didn't give a fuck most of the time, and that our legal right to kick them out was tenuous at best and borderline illegal at worst. So they laughed in our faces half the time.
For me, it was just a ritual of the job. Get called to chase them off, try, then tell the boss that they'd refused, and go back to cart surfing or whatever we'd found to occupy our time. Zube hated it.
Zube wanted to be a cop so bad he basically was one without a badge. Which, it turns out, is a bit of a problem when the power you have over any given member of the public is somewhere between harsh language and the vague threat of a citizens arrest. Zube went from fuming over management not promoting him to fuming over mallrats being drunk pricks on the right side of the law.
I barely noticed when the notes finally stopped.
It was a saturday afternoon when the call came in to go clear the 'rats out of the main structures second level. Someone had thrown a liquor bottle in the general direction of the foodcourt, which housekeeping reported seemed to be full of piss - judging by the scent of the pile of broken glass they'd arrived to clean up.
It was hot and I had been drinking the night before. So I went for the lazy option and hit the lights on the pickup (a bar of pseudo-cop lights in orange and blue) and cruised up to the second level. If I was lucky, the 'rats would book it when I they saw the flashing lights.
I wasn't lucky. There was a small crowd of them. Five or seven maybe, circled up by a lifted F-150 with bottles in hand and a wreath of smoke surrounding them. So I turn off the lights and park at the far end of the lot, light a cig, and just watch.
This was the tactic that usually got us somewhere. Pull up and ask them to leave, and they'll laugh. Settle down and just watch, and eventually they'll do something you could kick them out for. Someone would piss on a wall. Or throw a punch. Or smash a bottle.
Two cigs later, and nothing had happened. The boss was harping on me too, so I set about getting things done so I could go back to bullshitting with Cox in the other parking structure. I cruised by with the window open.
"Hey fellas. Boss says y'all are gonna have to move along."
"Fuck your boss."
"You wouldn't like that man. He's pretty old." Making a joke about it was probably the wrong answer. The little crowds self-appointed spokesman cruised over and leaned up against the window.
"Step back, man." I said. "No," he replied. He smelled like stale beer and his breath gave me a contact drunk. Something was wrong with his eyes too - this wasn't just some drunk guys hanging in a parking lot. This guy was flying on something more serious than natural ice and wild turkey.
"Step back, please." I hit the signal key on my radio - to this dude, it would look like nervous fiddling. To Cox the next structure over, it was a distinct series of three short, three long and three short beeps. An S.O.S. It sure as shit wasn't official code - my boss would have no fucking clue. But me and Cox had talked about it before, and it turned out that Zube was one smart motherfucker when it came to morse code.
When he refused again, I started putting up the window. He yanked on the glass. Predictably, it shattered. I about shit myself and hit the gas. Smacked the assholes arm pretty good and sent the pickup skittering halfway across the structure. I hopped on the radio and hollered in an 11-99. Officer in trouble. Which was good, because blood was in the water, and the 'rats had taken off after the truck, hooting and laughing like a pack of hyenas.
I was pretty fucked. The ramp down to the structure would require me to pass by the whole group of them, and running for the upper levels would only delay the problem. Odds were they'd beat on the truck (and maybe me) a bit. I had my mace, but that wasn't gonna get me out of it - I didn't really trust myself to use it. If I was lucky, backup would be arriving from the foodcourt, but that meant at least two minutes. If I wasn't, it'd be coming from across the mall.
So I waffled and feathered the engine and moved at just-faster than running toward the far end of the structure. The radio was blowing up. Just about everybody had hopped on to ask for 'status' or the like. Not that I was going to stop to tell them a story or anything. Lost in the jumble was a quiet "15 inbound alpha structure" from Zube.
I was just getting to the point where it was floor it for the second level or deal with a crazy drunk guy climbing onto the pickup when Zube arrived. He came hauling ass across the parking structure, looking for all the world like what me and Cox had always joked about - the cop from Terminator 2.
I saw him in the rear view mirror, coming out of nowhere to grab the collar of the front-running 'rat and yank him around. Dude went down hard and Zube stopped to confront the rest of them. I stopped the pickup. Somewhere between me getting out and getting closer, Zube maced the rest of them. They took off, the unluckier ones howling and pawing at their faces.
"Nice work m-" I started. But Zube was chasing them.
They piled into their pickup, climbing into the bed or the cab. They'd just pulled out when Zube came rushing on. He jumped halfway into the truck and snatched at the keys. The driver floored it.
So there I was, blinking back tears from the thin cloud of mace still hanging in the air, watching a lifted pickup veering down the parking structures main avenue with Zubes' ass hanging out the driver side window. He finally had the good sense to push himself out and drop. He rolled a bit, and the pickup was gone, roaring down the ramp and out into the street.
Zube picked himself up, asked me if I was alright, and patched up his arm with his personal first aid kit. By the time he was finished, Cox had finally arrived, along with management and half the guards on duty.
He didn't save my life. He saved me from a beating at best. Zube was not a sane man. He would never be a cop. But he was a good man.
Years later, well after I'd left the mall and San Diego, I heard from David that Zube had flunked out of getting into the police department on a psych eval. He'd stuck around the mall, and ended up being the key in mall management shitcanning the security director - turned out the guy had been falsifying documents or something.
Zube had taken his position.
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