Page 87 of Nobody's Fool

I pull back to do it again. And that’s when someone hits me with a blindside tackle.

“Police! Stop resisting! Hands behind your back!”

Someone else leaps on me. Two uniformed cops are on me now.

“No,” I say. “Listen to me—”

I’m face down now. One of the cops jumps up a little and lands with his knee against my spine. I know the move. I’d done the move. It hurts.

“Hands behind your back!”

I’m tempted to tell him I’m a cop, but when they find out I’m no longer one, that might be a mistake. They won’t listen now anyway. I let them cuff me. I wonder whether Scraggly Dude is going to run. But he’s not. He’s just smiling.

“This guy is crazy, man,” Scraggly says. “He just starts chasing me.”

The officer looks at me. “Sir?”

“He sent my wife texts. He’s been stalking her.”

“Do you have any proof?” the cop asks me.

“He’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,” Scraggly says. “I’ve never seen this guy before in my life. I’m standing on the corner of Avenue C and suddenly he’s running after me like a psycho. Did you see what he did to me?”

Scraggly points to his bleeding mouth.

“Sir,” the officer says to him, “would you like to press charges?”

“No, man. I just want to go home.” He winks. “I got a hot wife and baby boy waiting for me.”

Rage engulfs me. “He’s lying.”

The cop gives me a world-weary-cop sigh. “And again I ask, do you have any proof?”

“Bring us down to the precinct,” I say. “My wife will tell you.”

“Tell us what exactly?”

“That he’s been stalking her.”

“Stalking her how?”

“He was outside our apartment this morning. Then my wife went for a walk, and she saw him following her. Then I saw him just now staring up at her window.”

“That’s bullshit,” Scraggly Dude says.

“He also sent two texts.”

“Sir,” the cop asks me, “do you know this man?”

“Not by name—”

“Does your wife know this man?”

“No.”

“Because the fact that your wife saw the same man on the streets of New York City, even if intentional, is not a crime. You get that, right? Do you have proof he was the one who sent you these texts?”

“Just bring us in.”