Cruising With the Whore Cop

"You know what the worst part of her death was? Nobody gave a shit," he says, looking into the black night. "No family, no friends, no nothing. That's the thing, these girls out here, nobody cares. It's like they're disposable."

He was born in Chicago, raised in Phoenix, and that's where he wanted to go when he decided to become a cop after 20 years in the Army. Instead, he got a call from Dallas. That was 16 years ago. He's still low man on the totem pole at DPD, but he doesn't mind. His job is interesting, to say the least.

We continue on Peterbilt, slowly cruising past a row of trucks parked illegally. For the most part, the rigs are exceptionally clean. Their hoods, their chrome grills and their spit-shined wheels all gleam under the streetlights. A few truckers are sitting in their cabs, filling out their logbooks. Others are outside, checking their load. Some of the rigs appear empty, the velvet curtains between the cab and the sleeper pulled shut.

"None of these trucks should be parked here," Peters says. He points to a row of smashed "No Parking" signs lying in the field. "Who do you think ran those over?" He points to a trucker sitting in the cab of his truck, acting busy.

Peters reaches back and turns up the CB radio he keeps in the backseat. He's on the same channel most of the truckers use. This is how he gathers intelligence. It's a mess of static and beeps and clicks and 10-4s and fuck yous and what you say nigger and one driver talking over another in a string of code words only truckers understand. Peters is hoping to hear a driver making a date. Instead, the first thing he hears is this: "Hide all the women--the po-lice are riding through."

Countersurveillance is what this is, and Peters considers it a huge pain in the rear. He reaches back and takes the CB receiver in his hand, holds it close to his mouth. "Yeah, I'm the po-lice," he says in his best trucker voice, a convincing Southern drawl. "I'm truck stop po-lice. See me over here in this white bobtail parked on the corner, I be truuuck stop po-lice."

Peters loves messing with truckers. He knows their lingo, and he thinks it's pretty funny, carrying on like this, hassling them about their logbooks or whatever. Often, he poses as a trucker on the radio, and it usually takes at least a few minutes for the trucker on the other end to realize he's been had. Peters once had everyone convinced that a big black officer was his illegitimate son. That one still cracks him up.

"I bet you ain't got your last seven days done," he's saying on the radio in his best Boss Hog voice.

"You want to see my logbook?" a trucker asks incredulously.

"Yeah, I want to see it, but who's going to write it for you? You're too dumb to write it. Maybe you can get a hooker to write it for you," he says with a grin. Then he turns the radio off.

"I'm not saying all truckers are bad. Most of them are just blue-collar guys, working hard. But these ones just sitting here? It's real simple. Professional drivers drive. They know the distances, they know the routes, they plan it all out. They don't hide out where crack whores are."

We pull onto another street, where not a single truck is parked. In the darkness, I make out the figure of a man at the edge of the field, sitting on a concrete block. We slow to a crawl for a better look. It's Hillbilly, Peters says. He washes wheels. He might charge between $3 and $5 a wheel, which takes him between half an hour and an hour per wheel.

"Peterson?" Hillbilly calls out, unsure. Peters waves. Hillbilly relaxes and ambles over to the cruiser. He's tall and lanky, dressed in a a grease-stained T-shirt and jeans. He's letting his graying Afro grow out, sort of Rasta-style, with one small braid down below his right ear. He has smiling, glassy eyes and an oddly serene look on his face. He may be high.

Peters introduces us, and Hillbilly shakes my hand. He's the guardian angel of the truck stop, he says. He used to be in the Navy, he tells me proudly, which is why he and "Peterson" respect each other, both of them being vets. Now most of the money he makes, washing wheels and whatnot, he spends on his mother, who is in a nursing home.

"What goes on out here?" I ask.

"Shoot, what don't go on?"

Being guardian angel of the place, Hillbilly has seen a lot. He's had to break windows to get girls out of dangerous situations. He points to a "No Parking" sign lying in the dirt. Once, he says, he had to pick one of those up and smash a driver's window to get his attention. Only then did he let the girl out.