Probation Officer #123: An afternoon with the police 4

A uniformed cop showed us through to the office of the Police Commissioner, who Jock had been calling the Chief. There was faint derision there. 

tanThe Chief – I’m afraid I’m following Jock’s derisive view  – was Greg Maynard, a trim man with tan spectacles, a greenish tan suit, and neat sandy hair. He was waiting in his office, alone. He was confidant he could handle Jock, as the head of a service with less statutory power, a lower profile and smaller budget. Since I was a junior employee, he wasn’t counting me at all.

Jock shook Maynard’s hand and asked after his wife and health, and Maynard made non-answers and asked back.

Then Jock introduced me. I got a handshake but no questions. I repeated my name, and his. We looked at each other then, and though he was about twenty-five years older than I was, we knew and loathed each other in a second.

He was more like me than like Jock. He was a public servant, and he only happened to be working for the police. He could as easily be working for the City’s Finance department, cutting the police budget as ruthlessly as he currently defended it. He was tied to long term goals that had nothing to do with traditions or institutions. We had different goals, but we knew that we were somewhat alike. We smiled at each other like people switching a torch on and off to test it, and then he turned his attention to Jock.

Jock went through his spiel about cooperation between the police and probation services, the long relationship, and so on. I listened to it because I hadn’t heard it delivered in this setting before. Maynard wasn’t listening, and in most senses nor was Jock.

Then Jock looked at me. “The thing we want to resolve at the moment, as you’ll be aware, is the incident involving Lance Holder and some farm worker he thumped, because that farm worker was trying to lock him in a barn. You’ve charged Holder with assault. Under the circumstances, all of the circumstances, we’d like to suggest that that might be unhelpful, not just to Holder, of course, but also to the City of LA. My young colleague here -”

Maynard waved his right hand at Jock like the tail of a fish. “Just a second. I’m happy to talk about Holder, but there have been a couple of other incidents, even more recent, involving your young colleague‘s caseload. I think perhaps we could clear up some things there first. The City of LA might find that helpful. Mr – Mortimer is it? – last week we picked up one of your clients, a Dwane James.”

I said, “Yeah. That was a serious assault. I don’t think there’s going to any disagreement between the police and us over Dwane” 

“Well, when we picked him up, he was quite belligerent. He said my officers had no right to detain him. He said he knew this because his probation officer had told him so. He assaulted one of my officers, based on his probation officer’s advice. Your advice. He’ll be charged with that too. Do you think it’s your job to give advice like that? Do you think that’s helpful to the City of LA?”

He looked at me. So did Jock.

Probation Officer #122: An afternoon with the cops 3

I understood. There was silence until I turned off the road into the police yard. We’d been driving with no talk and his vast, self-contained displeasure hovering like a black cloud beside me.

ministry of fearI was prepared to do harm to the continued good relationship between the police and probation service. If it got in the way of what I wanted too do, particularly for Ana. Jock wasn’t. He had more invested in that relationship than one Samoan girl, a flasher, and a thug who really did belong in jail.

So I understood that I was only afraid of failing. Jock was afraid of me.

I didn’t consider that much of an advantage. I respected Jock. He didn’t know it, which was a failure on my part. Still, his fear was a fact, and I’d have to take it into account.

I parked and Jock got out of the car. He straightened his shirt and tie, and walked ahead of me to the back entrance of the police station. He said, without looking back at me, “Okay. We’re on.” 

Probation Officer #121: An afternoon with the police 2

I was never going to be as fit as Jock. Not even with gym muscles. I was unlikely ever to confront a guy with an axe when I had nothing in my pockets but hands. No one would ever tell awed stories behind my back.

But there was another difference between me and Jock. He cared about the probation service, and he was in the only job he could imagine doing. 

But I only worried about Anna, and Lance, and even the likes of Dwane, though Dwane was psychotically violent at unpredictable intervals and no brighter than a plate of cat food. But I didn’t worry much about the probation service. 

I could imagine our offices closing and a computer firm or a travel company moving in. So long as someone was still working to keep most of the clients out of trouble and out of jail, I didn’t care where they were based. I could easily imagine doing something else, somewhere else, for a living.

The state of California would still need Jock and his colleagues. But to Jock the probation service had a tradition he cared about, and it was part of his home and part of him.

So he sat silent and grim beside me. Finally he said, “All right. You can talk through your issues with your clients. At the meeting.”

“Thank you.”

"You bumptious little wanker."

“You bumptious little wanker.”

“But don’t waste anyone’s time. And remember I’ll be keeping an eye on you, and so will the Chief. And so will any people he takes into this meeting. Say as little as possible, and don’t you ever take them for fools. If you fuck anybody round, and that includes me, you bumptious little wanker, there’ll be consequences.”

“Okay.”

“Think of me, angry, as a consequence. A consequence. Do you understand?” 

Probation Officer #120: An afternoon with the police

I’d expected that Jock would call me into his office a couple of hours before the meeting, to discuss strategy and to warn me off doing the things that I intended to do. But he didn’t communicate with me until half an hour before the meeting. If he’d intended to get me nervous, that part had worked. But at three-thirty he’d turned up at my office door, thrown a set of keys at me and indicated with his head that we were going to the carpark.

The keys were for the only car the probation service owned that was less than two years old. Most of my colleagues smoked, and so did their cars.

It’s a job that involves a lot of waiting for other people to arrive, followed by intense work. Nurses, cops and actors tend to smoke, for much the same reason. The probation service’s cars smoke because all the public funding goes into building more jails. Anyway, Jock got in the passenger door. Usually the man who drives has some power deriving from that. Jock wanted me to see myself as the chauffeur.

I drove silently while Jock glared at me. He was trying to keep me ill at ease. I was, so I leaned my arm on the open window and projected utter nonchalance and relaxation.

I said, “We haven’t had time to discuss the meeting. So, you should maybe do the general stuff, about communication and cooperation between the police and us. Those issues. But I’ll talk about the specific cases, Lance Holder, Dwane, Ana and so on, myself. Since I, uh, haven’t had time to brief you. Yeah?”

Jock kept staring.

twofistHe was, as I’ve said before, a physically imposing figure. He had arms like hardwood logs. He’d let the workouts and the boxing go a little since he’d remarried, but he still looked unnatural, his body tapering sharply down to a boxer’s narrow waist. He looked like a cartoon hero, a sketch with every line emphasising strength.

He had a set of white puckers in the skin above his left eye, from when he’d faced down a prison escapee who’d armed himself with an axe. Jock had guessed wrong about the axe-man – he’d thought the guy would back down – but after taking an axe swing to the face, half concussed and nearly blinded with his own blood, he’d broken the guy’s arm, punched him unconscious, and sat on his chest, bleeding onto him, while he called the cops. It was the cops who called him an ambulance.

Probation Officer #119: A Day at the Office – 5

The search and photography session in Ana’s room was easy in practical ways and mildly awkward at a social level.

I’d flirted with Jane Siebel, but never chased her very hard. Jane had made it clear that even a date would take some serious chasing, forsaking all others, on my part. But we generally took the time, when we spoke or met, to recognise that there was a possibility there. A small possibility and a fading one, but that sort of thing is never completely unimportant.  

But there must have been more spark between us than I’d realised, because she and Sa’afia soon recognised each other, and that each was there for practical reasons and because of the slightly ridiculous way I ran my life. They started by being faintly prickly with each other, and then relaxed when they realised they liked each other. So they spent their spare energy being ironical at me instead. I pretended to be oblivious.

Drawers

Drawers

When we’d done Ana’s room we’d found that Ana had been a good girl who did as her probation officer said, and either had no marijuana – which was the only drug she took, I was pretty sure – or kept it somewhere it couldn’t be connected to her. And we had a photo essay that included pictures of the inside of all of her drawers, the imitation burberry suitcase under her bed, and so on.

The dusty space under the loose floorboard in the corner was the most likely hiding place for any drug user, or an alcoholic hiding a bottle, but all Ana stored there was dust. There was more dust, lots of it, behind the books on the shelves in front of her mirror.

We were out of the house by half-past twelve. Afterwards I dropped Jane and Sa’afia back to their workplaces. I gave Sa’afia a boringly formal kiss outside her work, and issued a couple more instructions for her to pass on to Ana.

Then I drove back to work. It was three and a half hours to the meeting with the cops. 

Probation Officer #118: A day at the office – 4

Suddenly we're back to land lines.

Too retro to hack. Suddenly we’re all back to land lines.

Sa’afia didn’t sound enthusiastic when she picked up my call. She wasn’t supposed to take personal calls at work, and I’d made her look bad. Why hadn’t I just called her cell phone? But she rallied when I explained that I was calling because Ana was in trouble. And that my cell phone, and possibly hers, weren’t as reliably private as we might like, right now.

I told her what Ana had told me, and let her spend some time being outraged and sympathetic. She’d experienced police racism, but nothing quite as ugly as the things that were being directed at Ana.

I told her I thought this had happened because Curnow had heard there was a high-level meeting between the police and probation service this afternoon, and that it had something to do with my case load. He guessed my agenda might have something to do with him. Which it did.

So he wanted to frighten Ana. It would soon be occurring to him that he’d also need to discredit her, in case she wasn’t frightened enough. Curnow had various kinds of advantages over Team Ana, but one thing we had going for us was that he wasn’t very bright, and he was very lazy. My observation of the unusually corrupt local cops was that it wasn’t so much that they were greedy, because corruption didn’t pay all that well for most of them. It was more that they were lazy. Being corrupt was easy.   

I said some of that to Sa’afia. There was a long silence from her end of the phone. Then she asked what she could do. So I asked her if there was a room at her firm where Ana could sit with the door open so there’d be no shortage of witnesses to prove she’d been there all afternoon. Sa’afia thought, and said there was. Then keep her there till five, I said.

And I said I was probably being silly, but she shouldn’t use her cellphone to say anything she wouldn’t want Curnow to hear. And when Ana arrived, she should take her cell phone battery off her. That’d be the only way to keep Ana from using her phone, and it’d help her see that this was serious. 

Then I asked her to take an early lunch and meet me at Ana’s place. I’d bring Jane Siebel, a friend from the Community Law Centre, who I hoped would want to do the work even if I couldn’t get her Ana as a paying client. Because it might mean nailing Greg Curnow. Jane would be there to witness us searching Ana’s room, taking photographs as we went.

Sa’afia could be back at work in less than an hour because we only had to search and document her bedroom. If Curnow came round to plant drugs, or maybe stolen goods, it’d be in her room. There’d be no point in planting anything in the kitchen, lounge or bathroom. Those rooms were shared.

This afternoon I’d sort out all the things that needed sorting, including a safe place for Ana to stay that night. Sa’afia said she could probably help with that. 

I wanted to say something sexy to her then, since this was a personal call on the boss’s time, but Sa’afia stopped me. She said there seemed to be some sort of subdued chaos going on in the foyer. “Subdued chaos” was Sa’afia’s phrase.

I said, “that’ll be Ana, you think?”

“Not think. That’s Ana. I’ve got to go.” But there was a smile in her voice, and some of it was for me. That would have to do.

Probation Officer #117: A day at the office – 3

“I’m just outside work,” Ana said, eventually. “I’ve finished my shift. Finished this job, probably.”

“Okay. Have you got any money on you? Like twenty bucks?”

“Yeah? I’ve got … a ten buck note and some coins. Probably about twenty.” 

“That’ll do. I want you to consider that it’s possible that someone’s watching you at the moment. There probably isn’t, but if there is we want to lose him, don’t we?”

“All right.”

“Okay. I also want you to pretend that someone’s listening in to your phone.” I wasn’t sure if there’d be someone watching her in person. But I was sure that her cell phone would be being monitored. Curnow would have had no trouble getting her phone hacked, with or without a warrant. You can’t have drug prohibition and not have police corruption. “Including listening to this phone call. So I’m not going to give you any detailed instructions. What you’re going to do is talk to your tuakana.”

“Ah.” Tuakana means an older, respected cousin, of the same sex. It meant Sa’afia. But it would take Curnow, for example, a while to find someone to translate the word for him. “Okay. I can do that.”

“Good girl. Talk to your tuakana in person, not on a phone. I’ll have contacted that person by the time you get there, and they’ll know what to do. Um, I don’t care exactly how you get there. Just make it hard for anyone to follow you. Can you do that?” 

cops and robber“Oh yes I can.” Ana had cheered up a little. This was a game, and she liked games. 

I said, “Good. Make sure you win. I’ll talk to you soon.” 

I hung up. I was worried that if we talked longer Ana might say something that identified Sa’afia. 

I considered my desk phone. Probably it wasn’t tapped. It’d be hard to get a warrant to intercept calls going in and out of the probation service. It would also be hard to do it illegally, in this building, without getting caught. But still … 

Down the corridor, I found Jock’s office empty. I sat in the visitor’s chair, not that that would make him much less annoyed if he returned before I’d finished. I picked up his desk phone and called the landline at the law firm where Sa’afia worked.  

Probation Officer #116: A day at the office – 2

“Hello, Ana.” 

“Wow, Jaime. Just wow.” 

“Have you been talking to Sa’afia?” I used the voice of a probation officer who was busy, and not in the mood.

“Huh? No, why?” 

“Oh. Well then, nothing.” I felt vaguely ashamed of myself. “Why are you calling? And what’s wow, just wow?”

Curfew. Greg Curnow, you know, that pig?”

“Yeah, he’s a cop. But I know him. As a man he’s a pig, you’re right.” Curnow was a racist, and he was probably corrupt, though he hadn’t been caught yet. He knew exactly how far he could push people so that they’d use obscene language, run off or take a swing at him, without anyone being able to prove he’d been engaged in harrassment. About half of Ana’s criminal record was owed to Curnow,  

rape issues“Jaime, he came round to work, so my boss would see. With two other cops. I don’t know who they were. And when we were out the back and there was no-one around he said he’s going to fuck me. And his mates are going to fuck me too. They said they’ll put drugs on me, and if I don’t fuck all of them, they’ll…”

She stopped. She wasn’t in tears. But she couldn’t go on talking. I said, “Ana, he’s not going to fuck you. Nor his mates. Ana, I’m not going to tell you things are okay till they are. I don’t want to lie to you. But he’s not going to fuck you, because I will stop that.”

I wasn’t sure how I was going to make certain of that. But in the meantime I was ready to make the commitment. “And he’s not going to plant drugs on you.”

“But you can’t know that.” And then Ana cried. She’d said her thing, and I’d said mine, for what it was worth, and now she bawled like a baby, a baby who was badly hurt and scared, without restraint.

I looked at my watch. My meeting with the cops was in four hours’ time. This had to have something to do with that meeting. I said, “Ana, where are you? I mean, right now, where are you?” 

I had to ask three times before she could answer. 

Probation Officer #115: A day at the office

I got to the office, wet-haired, about half an hour late. It turned out I’d been missed. Last night a client I haven’t mentioned, Dwane James, had kicked a man almost to death outside a bar. He – I mean Dwane – always wore steel-capped boots, though he’d never actually had a job. He just liked the steel-capped look.

Bloodstained+Boots+Blood+Stained+BootsHe must have thought his victim’s blood suited him too, because when he was arrested an hour or so later, walking home as if nothing had happened, he’d still had the blood all over the boots, and the bottoms of his Lakers tracksuit. He didn’t play basketball, either.  

He’d be going back to jail for many years. I had no problem with that, except in the sense that jails weren’t going to make him any safer to be around, when he got out again. But I couldn’t change that.

It was my job now to find out what had sparked Dwane into violence last night. The judge wasn’t going to care, beyond mild curiosity, but it had to be done. And it would be my job to recommend “a significant custodial sentence”, though Dwane was going to jail whether I recommended it or not.

So I called the cops to say I was ready to see Dwane, and they brought him round, with a couple of officers guarding him. Interviews were done at our place, mostly, not theirs.

Dwane had no explanation of what had happened last night, but he managed some tears for himself and the future he’d trashed. I told him he was lucky the guy he’d attacked wasn’t going to die. Dwane didn’t care about “that asshole”. I tried explaining why he should care, but he wasn’t taking in information. That could be his lawyer’s job, when the drugs wore off.

The cop who took Dwane away asked if we were going to have a fight about Dwane. He knew I was coming to see their Chief that afternoon, and he wanted to read my mood. And he hoped I might say something the cops could use against me, something unbalanced or anti-police.

I said Dwane was a fucking idiot, which wasn’t giving away any professional confidences, and that we weren’t likely to be disagreeing about his case. Then I said, “unless you guys want to send him home to his mom; we might be disagreeing then.” So the cop laughed, and said that the next time Dwane saw his mom, it’d be through wire-reinforced glass. He left with Dwane, and with nothing for his Chief to bring up at this afternoon’s meeting.

So I went to the office of my permanently unimpressed boss, Jock, to tell him how things were. He listened in silence, then let me stand there like a schoolboy for four minutes. Then he nodded and said it was often a good idea to turn up at work on time. And that I’d see him that afternoon.

I went back to my office, thinking that this job is a minefield. It was a game of snakes and ladders. With land mines. I sat down, with things to think about. The phone rang. And sure enough, it was Ana.

Sa’afia’s punishment night (1st IV scenes)

[Welcome to E[lust] readers. This post collects four scenes from a night in the bedroom of a woman called Sa’afia.] 

1

 Sa’afia lay long and strong across my knee. She wasn’t being spanked. She expected to be, since she’d asked so sweetly to be punished. I couldn’t remember what it was that I was supposed to be punishing her for. It didn’t matter because I knew Sa’afia didn’t remember either, and she wasn’t going to ask me. Anyway, if she asked I’d make something up and punish her for forgetting.

Sa’afia wasn’t a remotely silly or gullible person, but in that moment she believed that I knew everything important about what was happening. I was in charge, and all was well in the world because I cared for her and I was just. 

She could feel that way because it was a sexy thing to think, and because she could rationally know that I’d do nothing to shatter that faith.

squeezeboxHer ass was raised a little, not to invite the spanking she expected but because I had the lips of her cunt held firmly between my right thumb and forefinger. I had to hold and squeeze very hard, because she was very wet. She was getting wetter, demanding a tighter grip. Her buttocks trembled slightly, with the effort she put into being still.

She’d drawn in her breath and was still holding it because a few seconds ago I had twisted her lips hard to the right, as if they were a key, before relaxing back to vertical. She was expecting me to twist her again. She was not wrong. 

2

Sa’afia had put her wrists together behind her back. I’d told her to. She liked obeying very easy orders. I’d wrapped two old silk ties – nice fabric but an unfashionable cut, so they were only good for low-budget bondage – round both wrists, then round each wrist, with a non-slip knot. I took the long ends and slipped them down between her buttocks, then between her thighs, pulling them tight against her cunt.

Sa’afia had pressed and rubbed the silk, breathing hard, until the ties disappeared between plump lips. I’d smacked her bottom as a kind of reward, and told her to get her ass up. While she complied, making a rounded tripod of her chest and her parted knees, with her ass at the apex, I’d run the ties under her.

I knotted the two ties just below the nub of her clitoris, so she could press against that nice hard gathering of silk. The knot allowed me to separate the two ties, so each came back up a different hip. Then I tied the ends to her wrists. Her movement wasn’t much restricted, apart from her arms and hands, but she could turn any move of her ass or any micro-movement of her wrists to pleasure. 

The moment at which this memory  is centred, like a still from a movie, is when her fingers felt for mine while I tied the silken ends together.

The silk, where it re-appeared below her cunt, was already wet. She smelled of arousal, and cocoanut oil and soap and spices. Our fingers touched. She had turned her head so her eyes were on me. I amused her, I think, just then, but she didn’t smile. 

3

Sa’afia lay on her belly, hands still tied, cunt still stressed, just inside her lips, by two tight strips of soaked silk. I had three fingers in that silk-lined and sensitive cunt, while with my other hand I spanked her, quite hard, in time with the movement of her hips. Her bottom rose to meet my hand, and fell again, freshly stung, to stretch the silk and press herself onto that glistening knot just below her clitoris.

She was working on her orgasm, and we both knew that she was one movement, or at most three or four, from going over. Her breathing was fierce and fast.

orgasm screamBut the instant I remember is just before she came. She looked up at me, washed in sweat, and there was terror in her eyes. The orgasm she was building was too big. It was like surfing and finding, just as the wave was going to break, that it was as high as an office block.  

When I saw her fear I’d said to her something like, “I’m holding you, love. You’ll be fine.”

After I’d spoken, Sa’afia screamed and came. Not because of what I’d said. But she screamed again, and her contractions felt like they were going to break my fingers.

But the vivid memory isn’t her orgasm. it’s that look of fear and amazement at her own sensations, and her nervousness about letting go as hard as she wanted to.

Sa’afia  lay across her bed, her arms and legs spreadeagled. I’d tied her wrists and ankles to the legs. I don’t think she’d been thinking about bondage, when she’d bought her bed. Perhaps she’d thought about it since, alone in the dark sometimes. Now it was happening.

When I’m introducing someone to submission, I don’t usually have a plan beforehand. I pretend there’s an agenda, but mostly I just have a few ideas to fall back on if I lose the flow. I try a direction and see what she responds to, and watch the responses. Submissive responses are sexy and beautiful in their own right, and they show where I should go next.

The rod was one of our fixed points. I’d promised Sa’afia she’d get a thrashing with that polished wooden stick she’d shown me, and it had to happen. She could tell herself, amazed, that she was being bound and flogged, and that afterwards she’d have to suck the cock of the man who’d flogged her, while her ass still throbbed. I’d tied her more to let her feel the ropes on her body than to keep her in place. She didn’t need to be tied, but it made her wet.   

I striped her buttocks and upper thighs with the rod, hard enough to hurt her, but  taking my time, until we’d not only lost count of the number of strokes but also the number of minutes. Sa’afia made her little noises of pain and concentration. Her ass was already well striped, with some of the red lines raised a little into welts. Her skin was hot to the touch. I’d been flogging her thighs, and it was time to re-visit those lines across her buttocks.

I raised the rod, admiring her ass, and raised the ante. It was time to go harder. Sa’afia was comfortable, and we were going to go a little further.

cane-weltsI knew she’d moan at the next stroke, and that a second after the rod had landed across her bottom the pain would turn to something floaty and sexual. As a dom, I’ll only ever know that state of mind by imagination. I watched her, reading her sensations. I couldn’t go to that place myself, but it felt good to take her there. 

That’s the memory: my certainty that Sa’afia was flying. We were in tune together.

 

[If you’re interested in the rest of this story – it’s very long, and not over yet – click on the category “The Probation Officer’s Tale” and all the relevant posts will appear.]