The last "415"

She answered the door topless. Patrolman Jim Bob White, Tybee Island’s newest cop, was responding to a noise complaint, something the police department dealt with on a nightly basis during “touron” season. Even though he was a rookie, he had already responded to several noise complaints this summer, but none like this.

Tybee Island, off the coast of Georgia, is home to about 3,500 year-round residents, but around 8,000 come for their summer vacations each week and are joined each weekend by additional 2,000 day trippers from nearby Savannah. The “tourons,” as the locals call them, bring more cars that the island has parking space for, so they park any and everywhere. Tybeans understandably get upset when they see eights cars and SUVs parked for the neighbor’s vacation rental which doesn’t have parking for five cars much less eight.

That’s bad enough, but when the drivers and passengers of those cars and SUVs decide to party after a hot day at the beach, well, they more often than not make a lot of noise.

Now the partiers are only there for a week and can’t understand why the next-door home owner would begrudge them a once a year party and the accompanying noise. What they don’t figure in is that next week and every week after, the homeowner will have to deal with eight more cars and SUVs and another group who thinks they deserved to raise as much hell as they can because they paid the rental fee. 

So, it is little wonder that the Tybee Island Police Department gets more calls about noise complaints than any other request for help. 

And of course Tybee cops hate getting a call to respond to a “415” noise complaint late at night because usually the noise makers are drunk and rowdy and not prone to easily going along with the corrective measures like piping down.

And depending on the makeup of the group, the cop could have a beer can thrust into his hands or a girl still in her bikini might want to see his gun or approach the cop in such as way as to be sure to embarrass him. Also, Tybee is gay friendly, with a solid core of lesbian business owners, volunteers and community leaders, so it isn’t unusual that it would be a gay party that the cop responded to. If it were a house full of gay men, they didn’t have to do much — though they did more than that — to make a straight cop (or perhaps a closest gay cop) feel very uncomfortable.  

Jim Bob couldn’t have known that responding to tonight’s 

“415” would change his life in so many ways that he would be known thereafter as JB. But when she opened the door topless, he knew tonight was going to be different.

The young lady was immediately chagrinned, saying sorry she was expecting someone else. Certainly not a cop. And she shut the door before Jim Bob, soon to be JB, could say anything. 

Nonplussed, Jim Bob finally rang the door bell again. And knocked.

This time, the door was answered by another attractive young woman, and thank goodness she was clothed, albeit in flimsy halter top and cutoffs cut off so very high in what would be a impossible fit for any man and seemed would be uncomfortable for a woman. But she had the legs and hips for the look, and it was something.

Jim Bob said there had been complaints about the noise, and it was so noisy, the young woman couldn’t hear him. After asking “what” twice, Jim Bob asked if she would mind stepping outside.

She did, shutting the door behind her.

Before Jim Bob could repeat his statement, she pointed and his car and asked if it was his. He said yes, ma’am. She said you better not ever say ma’am to me again.

“I’m nobody’s ma’am. I’m Amber,” she said in a way that made Jim Bob think things he had no business thinking. And then as if reading his mind, she said, “Can I see it?”

Jim Bob must have blushed because Amber quickly giggled as if she had embarrassed him intentionally and said, “Your car. I’ve never seen inside a policeman’s car.” And Jim Bob was surprised how seductive “policeman’s car” could sound.

Then she grabbed his arm and proceeded to walk Jim Bob to his car.

And he let her. 

The first thing she asked after they were sitting in the car was ask why cops always keep their cars running, as Jim Bob’s was. He explained the “run lock ignition” allowed the car to keep running so that the lights and radio don’t drain the battery. 

“Can’t somebody just get in and drive away,” she asked.

“Not without the key,” he said, jingling them at her. 

“And as soon as someone releases the parking brake,” he said, releasing the parking brake, and the car shut off. 

Amber thought that was about the coolest thing she’d ever seen. She didn’t exactly squeal but Jim Bob would be hard pressed to describe it otherwise.

He turned the car on again, and when he said he couldn’t let her give the siren a blast, she pouted and said she wanted to go in.

Jim Bob then realized for the first time what had just happened. He had forgotten about the noise and had allowed an unknown tourist to sit in the front seat and make his mind wander and wonder about things that weren’t related to his duty.

As she got out and walked around to his side which faced the house, Amber said, “I have a idea, if you’re willing to have a little fun and not be a stick in the mud.”

Before Jim Bob could say the fun was over, she said, “Would you handcuff me and put me in the back and then go to the door and tell everyone I’ve been arrested. That would be such a hoot!”

Her idea was so far from any reality Jim Bob knew that all he could say was no, no, no. To which she said, please, please, please. 

Standing the shadows of the street lamp and flashing blue lights, Jim Bob saw himself stacking shelves with cans of beans and bagging groceries at the local IGA and then sitting in a fluorescent lit classroom with a crew cut police sergeant instructor at a whiteboard diagraming the proper response to a hostage situation. 

And then he heard her, “Please. Please. Pretty please with a cherry on top.”

And she was so cute and cuddly and sexy and tanned and nice and was just having some innocent fun on vacation after all. And why not?

Amber jumped up and down and giggled and gushed, saying this was going be great and thank you thank you, as Jim Bob handcuffed her and helped her into the back seat. She was awkwardly intoxicated, so that she fell into the seat backwards and ended up lying on the seat, giggling, “Help me up. I’m stuck.”

Jim Bob leaned in too far trying to grab her cuffed hands to pull her upright. Instead he ended up on top of her, and they both froze not so much from mortification, that would come later, but because they were stuck. 

You see, the back seat of a cop car is intentionally cramped, with far less leg room than normal and a higher seat that forces suspects to sit with their heads bent towards their knees. It makes it hard for a passenger to gain any leverage for any kind of attack. The bullet proof glass divider along with steel enforcements in the back of the front seats, are all for the protection of the cop. 

“You can get off now,” Amber said, “your belt is digging into me.” 

But when he tried to get up or slid off or turn, she screeched in pain. The very uniform that he thought might help him with the ladies was now scratching and cutting one of the prettiest he’d seen and certainly the only one he had ever come this close to. And it was very close.

He knew he wasn’t handsome, but no one had ever called him ugly, either. But whatever it was that attracted the ladies, he knew he didn’t have it. But decked in combats boots and a dark, gray blue camouflage uniform, Jim Bob thought he might stand a chance. 

Plus he’d always heard that some chicks really liked a man with a badge and a gun — a sweet 9 mm Smith and Wesson M&P (which stands for Military and Police) — not to mention the full array of pepper spray and handcuffs and a shoulder mounted walkie talkie, which was now crackling with a call for him check in.

He motioned to Amber to be quiet. “Hush.” He answered the call and told the radio operator he was just finishing up with the 415. He’d check back in soon. 

“I gave them their warning,” he lied and in lying realized he was losing whatever grip he might ever have had on the situation. And as soon as he said, “Roger,” and walkie talkie crackle stopped, Amber scream, “Get off me.”

He tried compressing himself against the front seats and seeing if she could slide out from under him but he couldn’t twist enough. Plus she remained handcuffed and unable to do anything but wiggle.

They turned this way and that and rather than untangling, they seemed to be more entwined. Jim Bob was handicapped by not wanting to use — touch — any part of Amber as leverage. But still could happen in such a close encounter. 

“Watch it,” she said more than once when he accidentally touched her.

Just at it seemed Jim Bob had found a way to wiggle back a little and she not scream he was ripping her up, another cop car pulled up, with its lights joining in the parade.

A strobe light suddenly lit up the back seat where Patrolman Jim Bob White was partially on top of a young girl. The girl was handcuffed. 

After Jim Bob released the handcuffs, Amber insisted to the other patrolman that it was all a joke gone wrong. No big deal. Certainly no laws were broken. And the party was now just a bunch of people talking on the front lawn about the show they were witnessing. 

All is well. 

Jim Bob said he would be returning to the station and the other cop shrugged with a knowing nod.

“And it’s not his fault, officer,” Amber said to the newly arrived cop. “Really. I talked him into it. I hope he won’t be in trouble.”