The paternal grandfather of Nelson Hareem had been a rug peddler from Beirut, but his three other grandparents were pure Okie from Bakersfield and Barstow. Nevertheless, because of his grandfather and his surname, he bore the brunt of every Arab or Iranian joke in vogue. And of course, because of his reputation, everyone began to call him Dirty Hareem.
Some cops thought that at the root of Nelson Hareem's aggressiveness was a little-man's complex, and because he was only five foot seven, they'd dubbed him Half-Nelson. He'd been given his walking papers by both of his previous police chiefs for being unacceptably "eager." Once, when he'd choked out a San Bernardino County deputy D. A. who'd stopped at a minimarket to buy some nonprescription sleeping pills after a long and arduous trial in which he was prosecuting two outlaw bikers for beating the crap out of a cop.
Young Nelson had been cruising by the minimarket and spotted a bulge under the prosecutor's jacket as the lawyer was leaving the store with his Sominex. And Nelson was sure he was looking at the armed bandit who'd robbed six liquor stores in the area. How was he to know (he later pleaded) that this prosecutor had received a death threat from the biker gang and so carried a concealed firearm even when he went to his daughter's first Cotillion dance, which was where he was headed that evening.
After the prosecutor revived from five minutes of convulsive twitching brought on by Nelson's carotid chokehold-with his wife, daughter and three other little girls in Cotillion chiffon screaming hysterically in his Volvo station wagon-the lawyer became a tad less diligent in prosecuting those bikers for breaking the bones of a cop. In fact, the prosecutor offered to drop the felony charge and let them cop a plea to malicious mischief. That caper put an end to Nelson Hareem's career in San Bernardino County.
In Los Angeles County he was even more eager. While patroling an alley with his car lights out just after midnight, Nelson had spotted a prowler lurking around the side window of a very fancy house in a silk-stocking residential district. Nelson got out of his patrol car and crept quietly into a neighbor's yard, climbed a six-foot wall that divided the properties, and was shocked and outraged to see that the prowler was watching an unsuspecting woman undress in her bathroom. Nelson was even more shocked and outraged when the guy started whacking his willy. When the woman turned and uttered a plaintive little scream at the prowler, Nelson launched himself into space, down on the guy's head, who, it turned out, was the owner of the house, and the biggest commercial real estate developer in town. He also was president of the local Kiwanis, as well as a contributor to the political coffers of a state senator, a U. S. Congressman, and Nelson's boss, the Mayor.
Until that night no one knew that the real estate developer and his wife had an arrangement where once every other week or so, she'd undress very provocatively in front of the window and then scream when she saw him milking the mamba. For which she'd get to overdraw her Neiman Marcus charge card with total impunity. It was a good deal for both of them, until their local policeman, Officer Nelson Hareem, went ballistic and put the hog flogger in a neck brace for three weeks.
Nelson capped it off two weeks later by accidentally firing a shotgun inside his patrol car. When he dashed inside the station to inform his long-suffering lieutenant of an "accidental discharge," the older cop said it was okay, he had them all the time. But when Nelson showed him how he'd put a sunroof in his patrol car, the lieutenant told him to resign at once or face a firing squad.
So, Nelson Hareem was at his last stop in the godforsaken south end of the Coachella Valley. Another massive attack of eagerness would take him to the French Foreign Legion, his new chief had warned when he'd hired Nelson during the previous summer.
Sometimes, Nelson Hareem could convince himself, for a microsecond, that his present job wasn't so bad. Then he'd look around at "downtown," which was terrific if you were into 1952 nostalgia. The way the town looked to twenty-seven-year-old Nelson Hareem, Michael J. Fox should come whizzing by on a skateboard on his way back to the future. Low one-story storefronts a few with corrugated tin roofs, lined the main street where nothing much had changed since the locals helped elect Dwight Eisenhower. There was a hardware store, a bar, a pool hall, a tiny food market, a barber shop run by a cross-eyed barber who scared the crap out of Nelson every time he picked up a straight razor, and of course, a video store. People had to have something to watch on their stolen VCRs.
When Nelson got real bored he'd drive over to a neighboring town, population nine hundred, and watch the street melt. He wasn't on the job a week before he'd abandoned the flak vest he'd never gone without in the other two police departments.