It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946), American actor and comedian
Tabithae Wilkins was a stout woman who supervised a Michigan Secretary of State office in downtown Detroit. This is the familiar state office for acquiring vehicle registrations and license plates, driver’s licenses, and so on.
Her mother named her for Samantha Stevens’ little white girl, Tabitha, in the old TV series Bewitched, but she wanted her daughter’s name to be more distinctive, so she added the letter “e” at the end and pronounced it Tah-BEE-thay. With similar reasoning drawn through a four-inch length of glass crack pipe one day, her mother later named Tabithae’s younger brother Lemonjello, and pronounced it La-MOHN-shello. That poor boy was ate up with the dumb-ass because of his mother’s drug use during pregnancy, and he spent most of his time down at the Goodwill, sorting clothes.
Tabithae wasn’t a bad person. She was a lonely, slightly heavy, never-married single woman, almost broke sometimes, who just got by on her salary, paycheck to paycheck. A woman her age had needs she couldn’t satisfy with the money the State of Michigan paid her to renew driver’s licenses and issue car tags and manage an office of mostly menopausal or high or angry women, as well as a few old men who did the same things the women did, just slower and with more bitching.
So, when special circumstances arose, or she was sent a friend of a friend, of a friend, she wouldn’t do anything too terribly out of the ordinary, but she could help people out of some jams or get a registration squared away that sometimes didn’t have all the most perfect paperwork on Earth. She also helped people get personalized vehicle license plates that wouldn’t normally be available.
Like other states with vanity license plate programs, Michigan doesn’t permit obvious profanities or expressions that might offend tender public sensibilities. Absent that, almost anything was fair game if it wasn’t spoken for by someone else and could be spelled with a combination of seven or fewer letters, numbers, or a few symbols. What remained was a broad and creative range of possibilities.
Ambiguous plate requests, often turned down by one of the anxious old biddies at the customer counter, sometimes could get through with her approval, though. Like the time a friend of a friend, a shapely working girl who had a specific clientele with special desires, wanted ULICKME. That couldn’t get through the computer even with Tabithae’s help, but she convinced the customer that ULIKME would get through if she told the desk clerk it meant you like me.
Small victories were still victories, and she still got paid.
Under different circumstances—like a higher salary—Tabithae would never have entertained the unusual requests, because special treatment was strictly against the regulations. She was careful, though, didn’t bend the rules too much, and she made a lot of friends in high places.
High friends in low places, really, is what she would bray at parties when drinking too much, laughing too loud, and being way too indiscreet, but what was the difference? These people all had money they wanted to spend and, at the end of the day, she was a public servant in the customer satisfaction business.
So, when the man phoned and said Bobby sent him, and could she help him with a licensing thing, Tabithae said yes, yes she could.
Eighteen minutes after closing time she let him in through the office back door. All the other good state employees had bolted about eighteen minutes prior, so there were no worries about anyone observing the curious work ahead.
The handsome man was obviously in good shape, even under his expensive suit coat. He was very attractive in that slightly “older guy” way, though she saw the birth date on a strange federal police credential he displayed and he was fifteen or twenty years older than he looked, the blue-eyed devil.
If Tabithae wasn’t a particularly law-abiding state employee, she was indeed a loyal American. She took immediate note of the man’s Middle Eastern name on his business card, plus he was a cop of some kind, seemed like, and here he was making a side deal with Tabithae after closing time.
She worried for a moment about getting rolled up in a sting. Every person she had ever done a favor for—that Bobby, one—would give her up in a hot second if they thought it would keep their own asses out of a jam. The attractive man’s money promise wasn’t enough to make her go to jail.
All this rattled around in Tabithae’s head until the olive-skinned man fixed those blue eyes and long eyelashes on her and smiled. That lit her up like the marquee of the Fox Theater on opening night. She forgot everything else. If this gorgeous man is here to sting me, Tabithae thought dreamily, let’s get to stingin’.
The man wanted a certain combination of letters and numbers that spelled no profanity and made no off-color joke—in fact, she discovered the perfectly legal license combination had already been issued randomly to a motorist in her county of Wayne. That meant it was even easier to help the gentleman. She had done such things before.
Tabithae called the motorist from her office phone so that telephone Caller ID would indicate ST OF MICH. She informed him in her most sincere, bureaucratic manner that the plate had been flagged for an unspecified problem that she couldn’t discuss.
No, she told the motorist, he wasn’t in trouble—and wouldn’t it just be easier for everyone if it stayed that way?
However, Tabithae said, the problem was such that, regrettably, the state was canceling the motorist’s current registration and she was sending an officer to retrieve the plate right away.
The woman talked the motorist through the procedure of ordering a new license plate, which she was happy to execute right there on the phone while he waited. The motorist had a personalized plate option in mind and, bonus, it was available in the system. Tabithae told the obliging man that, in recognition of his cooperation, she wouldn’t charge the extra fee the state demanded for a custom license plate.
In fact, the state computer didn’t permit such generosity at taxpayer expense, but she would pay the fee from a debit card she maintained for certain personal purchases, some via the internet, that required more discretion. The balance on this account had run down nearly to the basement, but she had enough in there to pay the registration fee tonight and, yesss baby, by lunchtime tomorrow the account balance would be at an all-time high. An all-time high, do you hear me?
She promised the man on the phone that his new plate would arrive within ten to fourteen business days, she clucked sympathetically about how 9/11 had changed everything in America, blah-blah, she thanked him again, and the thing was done.
Before leaving to get the plate, the handsome man took Tabithae’s limp, damp handshake and thanked her, all up close and in her personal space. He was so close that she was certain the back of his hand brushed a fat breast and she thought she might fall light-headed to the floor right in front of him.
When he smiled that smile at Tabithae, a bead of sweat ran straight and cool down her spine and she could taste that coppery, electric taste on her tongue. Then he was gone, leaving her slightly delirious and with a steadying hand on the counter.
The attractive man drove up Jefferson to the motorist’s flat on the north side of Beaconsfield, just down from the Detroit-Grosse Pointe Farms border. He parked a solid black Chevy Tahoe SUV porcupined with extra roof antennas and shrouded in the blackest window glass at the curb in front of an older two-family house with a large covered porch and two opposing sets of steps.
At the lower-flat door to the motorist’s home, the man pulled from a different pocket a second police ID wallet with the gold badge of a Michigan State Police lieutenant and matching photo credentials. He did his own curt yeah-this-sucks sympathy act, got the plate off the man’s station wagon himself, and delivered the temporary registration for the new personalized plate the cooperative man had asked Tabithae to issue.
“Okay, Mr. Sal—Sala—Saladin, is it?” the man said. “We appreciate your cooperation. Here’s the paperwork. Have a nice rest of your day.”
When the paperwork exchange occurred, the tall motorist had to lean out of the door of his flat just a bit and into the fading light. When he did so, an American flag pin in the officer’s lapel silently captured the motorist’s crystal-clear digital image.
The paperwork said the motorist was getting a new vanity plate that read IMHOT4U. The agent shook his head as he drove away in the black Tahoe, thinking IMHOT4U is such a stinking load of bullshit.
The man returned to the licensing office where Tabithae waited. She concluded the transaction by re-registering the confiscated plate to information the attractive man provided from a black leather Levenger notebook. He didn’t show any prior registration or insurance documents, like the state required for plate transfers, but he had all the correct insurance policy and vehicle identification numbers for a run-of-the-mill 1978 Chrysler Newport four-door. Mint green.
He had shown her that impressive federal gold badge, though, and a fine business card that said he was from some Homeland Security office or another, but he didn’t let her keep the card or any of his notes. When she asked him why he didn’t take care of this in his office, he just smiled and said nothing.
The state’s computers cross-checked the data for accuracy, she approved it, and processed the transaction.
The attractive man thanked Tabithae and complimented her on her efficiency and patriotism. He emphasized the need for discretion and confirmed her agreement with that. She thought he might have been openly flirting with her a little bit now that the business segment of the program was concluded. He held her departing handshake for additional seconds, and told her how much he personally appreciated a state office working so well with a federal office.
While he couldn’t tell her why this deal seemed so odd and hush-hush, he implied that grave national security issues were at stake, and then he paid her in bundles of brand-new hundred-dollar notes—a lot of them—pulled from one of those wide black briefcases she’d seen pilots carry onto airplanes.
Tabithae’s breath quickened with every bundle dropping onto the countertop, plentiful as autumn leaves, and she thought that this was all she really needed to know.
As the attractive man drove away, Tabithae daydreamed about what having a class act like that in her life could mean. He was obviously a powerful man, physically and professionally, a person with connections, with class. She loved that he was so good looking—and he had money, lord.
He had given her enough cash in this one deal that she needed to borrow an office cash bag to carry it to her night deposit. The big one. Now she could buy a solid black Buick Lacrosse, the all-wheel-drive one, that was her modest dream car.
Honey, he just dripped status, too. He wore a two-piece dark-blue suit with a little faint stripe to it that whispered powerrr ever so faintly. She thought it was expensive and probably had a very recognizable label sewn into its lining. And he wore the most highly polished shoes she had ever seen, those fancy ones that businessmen wore with the swirls and holes punched in the toes and sides.
Most crazy of all was the expensive deal he’d made for a simple license plate that wasn’t even personalized.