Chapter 1
The glee was heavily increased upon Thomas’ arrival to the barber shop. Both the patrons and barbers were already in a state of elation upon his entrance, but their reaction to his entrance was that of genuine welcome.
“Well if it isn’t the Super-Cop himself!” one of the stocky and older barbers said in a rather robust voice in the midst of a collection of laughter.
Thomas humbly smiled out of flattery, taking off his suit jacket and hanging it up at a nearby coat rack. “Hey, Roland,” he greeted him, before greeting the other barbers on a first name basis. “How’ve you all been doing?”
“Pretty good, Tom,” Roland replied, “pretty good. We were actually just talking about you!”
“Oh, really?” Thomas asked, taking a seat in Roland’s empty chair. “Nothing bad, I hope…”
“Please, Detective,” one of the female barbers said in a playfully teasing tone. “You’d have to actually do something bad first.”
“She’s got a point, Tom,” Roland advocated, prepping Thomas for his haircut. “It’s been a while since we had a cop as squeaky clean as you around here.”
“And affective, too,” she added, placing a hand on her hip as she turned Tom’s way. “Why, you couldn’t pay a cop enough to show up on my side of town until you joined the force. Now it’s like they do their job just to keep you from making them look bad…”
The combination of the body language, attitude and tone of the woman made Thomas chuckle. He kept his head still as Roland began cutting his hair, even as he replied to the woman’s statement.
“Well I hope not,” Thomas said. “The motivation of police officers shouldn’t be the success of other police officers, it should be their natural want to preserve the peace, uphold the law and protect and help the people of the city.”
“Is that why you’re a cop?” the customer in the female barber’s chair asked.
“That’s exactly why I’m a cop,” Thomas answered honestly. “I believe that if officers aren’t in it for that, then they’re in it for the wrong reasons.”
“But what about getting paid to do all that stuff?” a young yet excited voice said from across the room.
Thomas and the other barbers looked in the direction, only to see a young African American boy. He was sitting on the edge of his seat in the waiting area with a woman Thomas assumed was his mother. Intrigue and excitement lit in his eyes like a beacon, and his demeanor showed the off-duty officer that he was eagerly interested in the discussion as of late.
“I heard that the pay is good to be a police officer,” he said to Thomas, in a tone that made him and every other older individual in the barber shop realize that this was not his first time inquiring about such a career. “Isn’t that a reason to be one?”
Thomas couldn’t help but to smile at the boy’s genuine curiosity. He couldn’t move his head to aid in his answer he decided to give him, due to the barber being halfway done with his haircut. However, Thomas found answering the boy in such a fashion to be less than appropriate for someone who was just as interested in law enforcement as he was at that age. So he looked the boy straight in the eyes and placed a comforting smile on his face as he gave an answer sincere enough to make the boy smile out of sheer encouragement and hope.
“No. It’s not a reason,” he said in a calm, yet blunt and fatherly tone of voice. “It’s a bonus.”
The majority of the older patrons within the barbershop replied to Thomas’ words with positive remarks, in the form of phrases according to their demographics. Phrases like, word, I heard that, and amen brother. Thomas could see the boy’s smile increase upon the phrases being shared among the people in the parlor, and that sight brought the off-duty officer nothing but sincere happiness.
“You must really like your job a lot, mister,” the boy stated.
“Oh yeah,” one of the younger barbers vouched for the officer. “Mr. Millcrowe’s pretty ill at it.”
Thomas glanced at the barber as Roland began sanitizing his head with alcohol. “And when you say ill, you mean…?”
The barber and his client began to laugh a bit, as if sharing an inside joke. Then the barber turned back to Thomas and explained.
“Cool. Tight. Sweet,” he responded. “You too young to be so old, dude; stop being such a lame.”
The younger crowd of the barber shop began to laugh a bit, finding the situation rather amusing. Even Thomas found it a bit humorous, before giving a proper answer to the boy’s question.
“Well, I do,” Thomas informed as Roland finished him up, looking at the boy once more. “I wouldn’t give it up for the world.”
“You put away any bad guys?” he asked.
Thomas let out a light-hearted laugh as he stepped out of the chair and pulled out his wallet. “Tons of bad guys.”
“Even more than X?”
“Oh, now that’s a good question right there,” the female barber stated before turning Thomas’ way. “Now how good would you say your track record is in comparison to X’s since he showed up?”
The question caused Thomas to pause, both physically and verbally. The look on his face that was once a smile immediately turned blank, as if he was suddenly reminded of something important he forgot to do ages ago. After a while, that blank look turned stern as he looked at the woman, and he gave his answer in a tone that reflected his demeanor.
“…Close,” he said to her, “but not close enough.”
Thomas and many others within the barber shop turned their heads toward the television mounted on the wall soon after the officer’s answer was declared, upon hearing the jarring opening music that played during a local news station’s announcement of a Special Report interruption. The barbers continued to cut the hair of the clientele currently in their chairs, steering their heads back to the attention of their chairs after being drawn in by the music and the station’s graphic. Thomas on the other hand, gave the report his undivided attention.
“This just in,” said a salt and pepper-haired male news anchor. “Southfield Police is currently in active pursuit of an armored car heading southbound on Telegraph Road in a high-speed police chase.”
The camera cut from the station to a bird’s eye view of the chase in question, and Thomas’ previous look of sternness was reinforced with narrowed eyes.
“Eyewitnesses say the car was last seen at the Michigan branch of Guy Technologies,” the reporter continued the moment the camera cut back to him, “where an individual who posed as an agent for the IDA was granted access to the building. Detroit Police will become active in the pursuit of the armored car if it succeeds in crossing 8 Mile Road, but we urge anyone watching or listening to stay clear of southbound Telegraph Road until the situation is under control.”
“Sounds like your friends might be clocking in a few hundred miles on their squad cars today, Tom,” Roland said in a joking tone of voice as he cleared his chair of leftover hair from Thomas’ cut.
Thomas nodded, then turned toward the barber. He pulled a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it Roland’s way, placing on his face a look of intrigue.
“To you, maybe,” he said in the same tone. “But to me, it looks like they need my help. Keep the change, Roland.”
When Roland took the twenty, Thomas turned to gather his suit jacket after placing his wallet back in his back pocket.
“Oh, come on, Tom,” the female barber said at the sight of him preparing to leave. “Why don’t you rest a spell? We barely get to see you here! Besides, you heard the report; the thing ain’t even in your jurisdiction!”
Thomas turned his head to look at the barber as he put on his jacket and smiled. “That’s never stopped me before,” he teased.
With that, he waved the people in his barber shop goodbye and left. He walked within eyesight of the shop’s windows, so that the barbers and patrons alike saw that he was heading in the direction that he came. However, once he was out of their sight – along with the people outsi
de – he darted around the building and into an alleyway behind the other shops on the street once he realized he wasn’t being followed.
Then, he pulled out his black-lensed swisher sunglasses.