I was a young man working at a pizza joint. The pizza joint was in a big strip-mall and right up the street was a locals-only bar. I didn't have a car at the time, so I would get off work and grab a beer or two at the bar. Most of the time I could catch a cab driver heading in the direction of my home and I would ride along with him and the fare he showed up to take and I would just pay the tip instead of the fare on the meter.

Well, this one night a cab driver that I had rode with before showed up to the bar without a call to the bar. So I bought him a couple drinks after he agreed to give me a ride home without running the meter.

He had his drinks and we rode out.

He got a call almost as soon as we left the bar to pick up a couple kids near where we were at. So he said he had to get them first and would take care of me as soon as he dropped them off. I was cool with that.

So, my cabbie friend (I'll call him Seth) picks up the kids and they are going to a bad neighborhood. Seth drives them to their neighborhood and starts getting calls from his dispatcher asking him who he had in his cab. Seth just says he has the two kids he picked up. The dispatcher calls again and tells Seth that he needs to pull over. Says that the cops are trying to find him.

Seth pulls over, the kids jump out and we wait for the cops to show up.

Cops arrive and I am taken out of the car and asked what I am doing and where I was going. I told the cops I was going home. This fat guy in a cop uniform tells me that I could have done better and should have helped myself. He then sends away Seth and pats me down.

So now I got no ride home and am standing in a street in a bad neighborhood with cuffs on.

The fat cop puts me in his car and tells me keep quiet. A long time later he tells me that he wishes I would just be honest with him and that it was going to be so much harder if a magistrate had to be woke up in the middle of the night. He told me I was in deep trouble as he was driving us back to the bar.

I told him I had no idea what was going on and that I had lost my ride home. I asked him for a ride home as soon as this got fixed. He agreed, but said that I was going to have a few days before this got fixed as I was going to jail that night.

So the cop car stopped in a parking lot near the bar I had been to and I was told to get out the car and walk in front of the headlights of the cop car. There was another car there that I didn't pay any attention to. After I made a couple trips in front of the lights, they put me back in a cop car. He tells me the people in the other car identified me as the one who had broke into their car. He asked me if I had stolen purses or stereos from those cars.

Now my fat cop ain't so friendly. He tells me I am looking at a long time and that he can help me but I ain't helping him. He asks me again what I was doing and where I had been. I told him again (for the 100th time) that I had got off work and went to the bar to find a ride home.

He tells me I am going to jail.

He leaves the parking lot and drives to the strip mall I worked at. He stops for a few minutes and asks me to get out the car. I walk around a couple more times. There is another guy dressed about the same as me doing the same thing.

Finally, fat cop comes to me and says that the other guy agreed to the whole rap and if I was a man, I would take the charge too. I told him again that I hadn't done anything. He told me I was free to go. I reminded him that he owed me a ride home. He told me he couldn't do that. That I was outside his patrol area. I again reminded him that I lost my cab and asked was he going to pay for the ride.

Fat cop drove me home and he actually was a cool guy with a hard job.