You've Been Flagged

“I’m sorry ma’am, you’ve been flagged,” the Bayonne DMV clerk said to Maggie through a bullet-proof glass partition.

Sam’s DMV-issued polo hung loosely over his slim frame. A Cornicello necklace dangled around his pencil neck, bouncing off his flat chest as he typed. The poor kid’s spine had a permanent hitch from bending down to examine papers and make computer entries. He peered through the thick glass with bureaucratic suspicion and smoldering contempt, as he repeated, “Your license is flagged, ma’am.”

“Flagged? What does that mean?” Maggie asked.

Even before we got married, I always joked that Maggie was probably on some kind of ‘watch list.’ It was funny, because Maggie was the last person that would ever be on one. She is a 5’3” perky blonde, with meticulous hygiene, as American as apple pie, Sunday football, and fireworks on the Fourth of July. And it always gave her a mild panic attack and caused her to break out in hives whenever I made the joke. Which was part of the fun. But everywhere we went, she was always getting “flagged” for reasons I could never understand. The airport. The U.S. Passport Office. Trains. Crossing the border into Canada. The line at the Dierks Bentley concert last August. And now at the DMV. Somewhere along the line it stopped being funny and started feeling like a curse. But I always chalked it up to bad luck.

“Ma’am, please wait here. I’m going to have to go in the back to address this.”

“Frank, do something,” she said, looking in my direction.

“Babe, just let the man do his job. There’s nothing I can do right now,” I said. These civilians, like my wife, just assume because I am State Police brass that I have authority over every organ of government. I don’t. It’s been fifteen years since I made a traffic stop, and quite honestly, half the time, the laws change faster than I can keep up with them. Even if I have access to all these systems, we don’t step out of line and stick our noses in to look things up unless it is part of an assignment. These days that’s all it takes to create a problem you can’t come back from. It isn’t like the old days. Back then if you were one of the good guys, they gave you latitude. But, in the new regime, everyone is expendable.

“Don’t babe me. There must be some mistake,” she insisted, as the foot tapping started.

Then Sam reappeared, walking with urgency.

“Ma’am have you ever applied for a license in Tennessee for any reason? Florida?”

“Tennessee? No. No. No. Something is seriously wrong here, sir… Florida! What about Florida? I haven’t been to Disney World in years. Years.”

“Ma’am please calm down.”

Maggie started crying. “Calm down!? I don’t have anything on my record. I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket, a parking ticket, let alone done anything to be ‘flagged.’ What the hell is going on here?” I knew Maggie would melt down. She always assumed clerical errors were signs of an impending arrest. What she would be arrested for was beyond me.

“I’ll be right back ma’am. I need to call-in a supervisor. Please have a seat.” Then the man swiveled back around hastily. “And Ma’am, please don’t leave the building,” he said as he stopped to tell a co-worker, Lisa, seated in a back cubicle what was going on. She muttered something about the last Code 86 being eight months ago. This little squat woman with blue sparkle Windsor frames, with three different team bobble-heads on her desk, and knee-high socks with USA flag shields on them shot a look of disgust in Maggie’s direction, as if she’d committed a murder.

My wife Maggie is a stickler for the rules. Always has been. She decided to spend her birthday at the DMV getting her license renewed the day it expired. That was her top priority. I knew there would be a problem the day she set the appointment. There always was. She couldn’t buy good luck in a clearance sale. For one thing, it was bad luck to draw the Bayonne DMV for the appointment. Of all the DMVs in all the world, there couldn’t possibly be a less fortuitous place than the Bayonne DMV on John F. Kennedy Boulevard.

The layout of the waiting area did nothing to make the stay endearing. Row after row of plastic brown chairs faced a garish green wall. The line to get in was fit for a lair of supernatural punishments. The building itself was haphazardly dropped at a strange angle into the guts of a strip mall that died. The line bent around a corner and lead up an uneven ramp adorned with green handrails with paint flaking so sharply you could catch tetanus.

There was a run-down McDonalds across the street with after-market arches like soggy fries. The air held the smell of motor oil and demolition from at least five different collision shops and a scrap yard. The stifling July heat wave that left us sweating while waiting in line was the icing on the cake to let us know this day would not just be bad, but truly horrible, in a way that would both be impossible to believe, but even worse, too memorable to forget.

Maggie stood at the counter with her 6 points of identification. Birth certificate, passport, social security card, PSE&G bill, mortgage statement, IRS letter, and a paystub. And then she had six back-ups on top of that. And she waited patiently for Sam to escalate her case up the chain of command. She was wearing a blue dress for her birthday that matched her eyes. She always liked to dress up for her birthday. And she was excited to get a cocktail at Madison’s when we finished up here. Our son was with my mother, and we had the day to ourselves.

Sam peered out from a closed door and motioned Lisa to come back right away. She stood up with great effort and waddled awkwardly into the back of house of the DMV, her USA flag shield socks on full display below her rolled jeans. They disappeared into a mysterious place, a dungeon, the inner workings of which I could only imagine.

Maggie looked at me with big wet eyes. “I am going to jail. I know it.” The thing about Maggie, is she would say things like that, and she was usually right. I’d stopped telling her she was overreacting when we booked a trip to Nashville to see a concert and the flight was delayed for 18 hours and then canceled, while the two of us sat in suspiciously uncomfortable chairs at the departure gate, wearing cowboy boots that we’d just bought, developing an outrageous number of blisters from pacing in between ‘your flight is delayed’ phone alerts.

“You don’t know that,” I told her.

“Jail babe. That is my new home. You can send my birthday cake there. Good luck explaining to Timmy that Mommy isn’t there to blow out the candles.”

Being a cop, the idea of my wife, Ms. Goody-goody behind bars was laughable.

A hulking man emerged from the same door that Sam had disappeared behind, what, like twenty-minutes earlier. The man had a crop of red hair and an enormous, flushed face, which was set on an even larger body. Not only was the man about 6’4” but he was wide too. Wide like a pick-up truck. The badge on his left pocket read “Officer Gillen.” I have no idea what jurisdiction this guy had. He was wearing a black uniform with shiny shoes and looked like he was the cop that arrested superheroes. I was a big guy, but next to Officer Gillen, I looked like I belonged on the JV team.

“Ma’am,” he said, stopping in front of her, and peering down a long way. “I’m afraid we are going to have to take you into custody on suspicion of identity theft, fraud, muling narcotics, and being a serial stowaway. As the gentleman may have alluded to earlier, your license has been flagged in seven states.” He paused. “I am sure this is all a big misunderstanding. But I am here to get to the bottom of it. I am very sorry.” He then pulled out his handcuffs like it was another day at the office. “Please turn around ma’am so I can place the restraints. And don’t make any sudden moves.”

Maggie looked at me. I looked at Maggie. I suddenly wasn’t sure who this woman was.

“Do something Frank,” she said, as he put her in cuffs and asked her to stand over by the wall. He knew who I was and knew he owed me the courtesy chat. We could both hear Maggie sobbing.

I gave Officer Gillen my badge, rank, and serial number, called the Colonel, put a call in to the Governor’s office too. I called in pretty much all my favors. For ten minutes of the two of us went back and forth on different Motorola two-way frequencies with various departments. I burned every lifeline I had. Enlisted friends. Begged for help. They were all in danger of incurring Maggie’s legendary wrath, same as me. She was a bubbly little blond who could go from a 3 to 11—and stay there for months.

When the hubbub subsided, Officer Gillen came over and put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Frank. Just doing my job. We’ve really got to get to the bottom of this. Please have a seat and we will be out to speak to you as soon as the Sergeant arrives.”

I’d been a cop twenty years and nothing rattled me—but this... this felt personal in a way I didn’t see coming.

Officer Gillen took my crying wife by the shoulder and led her into the bowels of the DMV, as she looked helplessly over her shoulder at me. The two of them disappeared into the dungeon. And that was the last I saw of my wife for four long hours—until they came out the CCTV tape of my wife, in Miami, muling cocaine for Poquito Chapo.

***

I had to give it to Officer Gillen. He was good. I had conducted thousands of interrogations. I had burned the living crap out of some coffee in my day. But I didn’t know you could burn instant coffee like this. And to keep some of those flakes somewhere dry enough that they wouldn’t dissolve, so they’d float on the top like chalk. Chef’s kiss. I kept my poker face on as I drank the sludge. Bits of dry coffee concentrate caking on my upper lip. I wasn’t going to let him see a crack in my armor. I owed Maggie that much.

“The pristine DMV record really was what clued us in, Frank. No one goes 21 years without so much as a parking ticket. You know? Anyway, just some preliminaries, Frank. Really sorry to have to do this. But you know the drill.”

“Sure do.”

“Which really is the heart of the matter.”

“What is?”

“You. You know the drill. If someone wanted to, say, bring in fresh Mexican powder to sleepy Bergen County, undetected, and cover their tracks by erasing any trace of so much as a parking ticket form the state database, who better than someone who knows the system? You know what I mean, Frankie?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Come on now Frank, if you just cooperate, I can help you. You know the drill. Can I get you another coffee, a coke, anything. I want you to be as comfortable as possible.”

Officer Gillen slouched. Put his giant arms between his legs. Then yawned, and pulled his arms back behind his head, cracking a few vertebrae in ways I was sure wasn't healthy.

“I’m good.”

“Do you know what your wife was doing in Miami?”

“John. Can I call you John?”

He nodded.

“What we have here, is a case of mistaken identity.”

Officer Gillen slammed his fist into the table, excitedly, and looked up at me. “Exactly, Frank. Ding, ding, ding. Getting warmer!”

“No. I mean it. You have the wrong woman. Maggie. She is a homebody. She never leaves the house. I don’t know what the hell got you guys turned around on this, but clearly there has been a terrible mistake.”

Officer Gillen grabbed a clicker that I hadn’t noticed before and pointed it at a TV that was mounted in the far corner of the all-white room. If you ever stayed in a hospital in the early 90s and watched M.A.S.H. reruns while recuperating from a surgery on one of these rabbit ear boob tube sets with the staticky reception, you know how difficult it is to even know what you are watching.

As soon as the VHS videotape started, crackling static and all, Officer Gillen paused it.

“By the way, where was Maggie on April 26th, the Friday after Easter?”

Then it hit me. Maggie had been away. She had been away with my mom, Betty. They had been traveling down to Florida, to Coral Gables, to help my brother Anthony clear some belongings out from storage. Anthony had been down there for three months on a consulting gig with a pet medicine manufacturing outfit that I always thought was a bit shady. What had the three of them been up to?

“Actually,” I said. “She took a trip with my family, to help my brother with a move back home.”

“Exactly,” Officer Gillen said, with a sneer. “And why would she need a Florida Driver’s License for that trip?”

“What?”

“By the way, that would be the same brother, Anthony, the one tied-in with those pharma bros with the Mexican supplier?”

“What?”

“What is right. Watch this.”

The grainy video footage continued. And as the scene unfolded, a woman officer came in. Hair back in a ponytail. Same black uniform. But her badge read “Dayana.” She started speaking to Officer Gillen in Spanish. Cuban accent, if I am not mistaken.

“Sorry. Force of habit. Dayana and I interrogate a lot of cartel mules on the drug task force. Want to try that again in the Queen’s English?”

“Oh. I was just wondering if he confessed yet. Or if he was going to make us do this the hard way.”

“Watch.” Officer Gillen pointed.

A woman in a floppy sunhat walks through the airport, with a large Cabana style beach bag as carry-on. Left of her is an elderly woman walking a bit behind. And left of her is what could only be my brother, wearing a Superman T-Shirt, cargo pants, and toting a wheely case. All-in-all, nothing out of the ordinary.

Behind them a short man, gosh, not four-feet-tall, with a tiny head, was trudging along with a bright yellow shirt that said “Poquito Chapo” in bold red lettering. It was hard to tell through the grainy footage, but I thought I could see luggage wheels below the baggy shirt where legs should have been.

Dayana came across the room in a single step, slamming her hands with manicured black nails on the table next to where this hulk of a man was seated.

“How did you get linked in with Poquito Chapo?”

“What?”

“The parrot on the luggage cart.”

“It’s a bird?”

Looking closer, I could see it. It was Great Green Macaw Parrot in a baggy t-shirt perched on a small, motorized luggage cart, hidden by the t-shirt.

“Airtight alias. Pristine suburban cover life. Spotless DMV record. Inside law enforcement connections. Classic Poquito Chapo,” Dayana said.

“No one selects mules like Poquito,” Officer Gillen said. “Largest white powder supplier east of Morristown.”

“Same M.O. Every time. Parrot muled meth in El Paso too. One smart bird,” Dayana said.

I was stunned. My wife had tried pot once in high school and she went to contrition every day for four months afterward. She’d never even smoked a cigarette. And now she was running cocaine? Nothing made sense. And Betty. She’d corrupted my poor senile mother too. I guess if Anthony was gullible enough to join a pyramid scheme, he was easy pickings. But my sweet, innocent Maggie, a drug mule?

Just then, Sam came rushing in. “There’s been a terrible mistake. Poquito was one step ahead of us again.”

“What is it?”

“The luggage was motorized.”

“Of course,” Dayana said. “Genius.”

“They weren’t helping Poquito. He set them up as decoys. The real mule was the Stewardess, Ms. Grimes on Flight 2107. See there.” Sam pointed at the footage. And there she was. They all nearly fell to the floor in shock. That waddle. Those Windsor frames. The USA flag shield socks!

In unison, they all burst out. “Ms. Grimes is Lisa from Driver’s Permits.”

“Get her,” Officer Gillen said. And Dayana ran out in the hall.

Maggie was released and the two of us walked down that uneven ramp with the green paint shrapnel, as if we’d escaped from Alcatraz. We could see them hauling Lisa (Ms. Grimes) out to Officer Gillen’s police cruiser.

“Want to get a drink?” Maggie asked.

“Better make it a double,” I said as we pulled off toward Madison's with Maggie’s new license in tow.

“Sure will. You didn’t really think I was running coke, did you.”

I just looked down at the floor of my truck.

“Frank!”

“Stranger things have happened. It is weird how you always get flagged.”

“I can’t believe you!” Maggie said.

A few minutes later we pulled up at the bar and Maggie displayed her new license to the bouncer, Sal. He ran the license through the card reader and stopped.

“Ma’am, I’m afraid your license has been flagged as a fake ID.”

Not again.