The Squatter Part I

The beer bottles under my seat came loose and rolled under the gas and brake pedals as I careened around the turn. When I jammed my boot on the brake pedal a bottle lodged underneath it kept it from going down. The result was a rather wide turn that sent my retro-fitted bio diesel Jeep sliding through the neighboring office buildings flower bed. I was headed for a fire hydrant when the beer bottle under the brake came lose and I was able to stomp down on it.

Luckily, it was just after dawn and no one in the neighboring buildings was at their offices yet. I collected several dozen of the less damaged roses from the flowerbed. They might have brought a pretty penny on the flower black market and I planned to sell them to my cohorts at our daily lunch meeting in the food court at Strawberry Square but as luck would have it I forgot them in the back of my Jeep and discovered them several weeks later when I noticed a rotting smell.

After packing the flowers away I drove around my office building to park in the rear parking lot.

“Egad, a squatter,” I cried.

Some bastard had parked in my private parking spot. The car looked like a reject from the demolition derby with one side rippled and stripped of paint. The hood was held down with a bungee cord and the tires were balled and mismatched. This bastard had blatantly disregarded the no parking sign posted right in front of his car.

I had dealt with these parking spot stealers before and they were not a rational type. When it came to parking they believed the rules of the old west still held that if you parked your wagon on a certain parcel that it was in fact by squatters rights their property until they decided it was time to move on. This illegal squatting was of course against every city law known to man and since no one in the city seemed to enforce this illegal parking I had taken it upon myself to deal with these bastards in my own way. Calling a tow truck was too good for them. I needed to make an impression.

I got out of my Jeep and looked inside the car. Evidently this guy was some sort of gadget nut. There was a GPS system, a radar detector, a satellite radio, CB, Two cell phones, an AM/FM cassette, CD and Eight track player and a docking system for an I-pod. The contents of the car greatly out valued the vehicle itself.

I was contemplating my next move when I heard someone cry out. “Hey, what are you doing to my car?”

I turned on the heels of my Burmese Jungle boots and stood face to face with a man that had evidently never been introduced to a razor. He was wearing a white T-shirt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed since the invention of carbonated beverages.

“You’re parked in a private parking spot.”

“I wasn’t even gone for a half hour.”

“Right, well, I think you’re missing the point here. This is private parking. You’re not supposed to park here any time.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to mess with my ride.”

“Again, I think you’re missing the point. You are on private property. No matter what your excuse is you are not supposed to be parked here. Do you understand that?”

The cocksucker got in my face and it was all I could do not to karate chop him in the neck and render him a useless blob but I held my cool. I didn’t want to wrinkle my suit and I was already involved in several physical assault cases, all of which I was guilty of but for the right reasons..

Just as suddenly as he’d gotten in my face he backed down. “You’re going to pay for this.”

“Pay for what? You’re the one that broke the law.”

He swung open the door of his car and it nearly fell off. He fumbled with it for a few seconds, getting it back in line and then hopped inside and pulled the door shut. He rolled down his window and held onto the door so it wouldn’t fall off, started it and peeled out. Pieces of the car fell off as ripped out of my parking spot.

Somehow I knew I hadn’t seen the last of this cocksucker…