"Why honey, you look like you ain't feeling too good," Hooter said, making her way to him on her wobbly heels. "What'chu doing out here in this cold alleyway? Want me to call the ambu-lance?"

"My zipper's stoppered shut," Trader told her, squeezing himself and yanking the slide to no avail. "Damnation!"

"I have that happen sometimes," Hooter sympathized with him, coming closer and getting a good look at him to make sure he wasn't some crazy person. "I tell you, it's a whole lot worse when it's in back." She indicated the back of an imaginary long evening gown. "I had that happen one time when I went to this fancy New Year's Eve Ball at the Holiday Inn, and I couldn't get my dress zipped up and was 'fraid if I yanked too hard, I'd rip that beautiful thing for sure."

She went on to explain in detail how she had finally waited out in the hallway of the motel until some nice Arab man had passed by and helped her unzip her dress so she could start all over again and zip it up without getting snagged on chiffon. But the Arab man hadn't wanted her to zip the dress back up and in fact had insisted that she take it off along with everything under it, so she had had no choice but to beat him up. Hooter lit a cigarette, caught up in the memory, as Trader held himself and begged the zipper to deliver him from captivity.

"Please lit me free. Please lit me free," he begged, near tears, in a dialect Hooter was unfamiliar with.

"Why sure, baby." She bent over and lit a cigarette for him. "You can have all the smokes you want and I won't charge you a cent 'cause I don't touch pennies anyhow. I think it's a sin to let someone bum a cigarette and then charge him for it, don't you? What's that you sitting on, baby?"

Trader was suddenly aware of the hard lumpy package he was perched on beside the Dumpster. He felt for it with his free hand and began to rip off the paper wrapping as he pitched the fresh cigarette in the dirt.

"Guns," he declared, and then he further realized that maybe he could use one to shoot off his stuck zipper, as long as he was careful.

"Oh my!" Hooter exclaimed. "What you be sitting on guns for? That's mighty dangerous, and why you have them to begin with all wrapped up in UPS paper?"

Trader snatched out a nine-millimeter pistol and dropped out the magazine, happy that it was fully loaded, even if he was unfamiliar with firearms, unless it was a flare gun. He tugged and played around with the slide until he figured it was possible a round might very well be chambered. He spread his knees wide and carefully fired.

"Godamighty!" he yelled when the bullet pinged off the brass zipper slide and ricocheted into the Dumpster with a loud thunk.

"You insane!" Hooter screamed, backing up a few steps and almost falling. "What'chu trying to shoot your privates for?"

Trader lined up the zipper slide in the sights again and squeezed the trigger, furious when the bullet ricocheted off the slide and whizzed straight up, knocking out the streetlight. The zipper was indestructible, clenching its teeth in a death grip while Trader fired again and again, ejected cartridge cases sailing and clinking in the dirt as Hooter ran through the alleyway screeching for the police and waving her arms at the big helicopters flying overhead.

"Help! Help!" she hollered up at the Black Hawks. "Get down here and stop this crazy man! He trying to shoot his privates off and keep missing! But soon enough, he gonna hit something! Help! Help!"

Andy was parking in front of Judy Hammer's house when the call came over the radio.

"Promiscuous shooting in the five thousand block of Patterson Avenue. Any officer in the area. Report of shots fired in the alleyway."

Hammer appeared on the front porch, wondering why Andy wasn't getting out of his car. She came down the steps to investigate.

"What are you doing?" Hammer asked as Andy rolled down his window.

"There's a shooting and nobody's responding," he said, getting excited. "I guess all the city units must be tied up on other shootings and looking for the Hispanic."

"Let's go," she said without hesitation, climbing in.

They roared off with the blue grill lights and siren going full tilt while the city police dispatcher continued trying to raise an officer to respond to Patterson Avenue.

"Three-thirty," Andy said over the radio, using his former unit number from his days with the Richmond police department.

"Three-thirty," the dispatcher came back and sounded slightly confused, because she remembered Andy's pleasant voice and knew he didn't work for the city any longer.

"Responding to Patterson Avenue," Andy said.

"Ten-four, former unit three-thirty."

"You know exactly where in the alleyway?" he asked into the mike.

"Ten-ten, three-thirty," which was the city's way of saying, "Negative, Officer Brazil or whoever is riding around pretending to be Officer Brazil."

Dispatcher Betty Freakley turned around to the 911 operators sitting behind her and shrugged.

"I thought he'd gone and signed up with the state police. What's he doing riding around in the city again?" she asked.

All the 911 operators were busy. Things were hopping in Richmond this night. An intoxicated white male had fallen down in the yard while taking his dog out. A black female was lying in the middle of the street near Eggleston's grocery store. An infant had eaten all the little beads inside a purple Beanie Baby Millennium Y2K bear. There were several car wrecks, and most officers were tied up looking for a Hispanic male suspect driving a Grand Prix with New York plates. But the urgent matter that caught Hammer's attention was the report of a male with a bag over his head who was trying to rob Popeye's Chicken amp; Biscuits on Chamberlayne Avenue.

"I wonder if that's the same man who tried to rob the tollbooth last year," Hammer said. "What's his name? He ran into the tollbooth because the holes he cut in the bag were in the wrong place and he couldn't see."

"Goes by the street name Stick," Andy said. "He's got an endless rap sheet and has tried the bag thing for years."

"You would think he'd figure out his M.O. is obvious and isn't working," Hammer replied, never failing to be amazed by the stupidity of most criminals.

"He hit Popeye's on Broad Street a couple months ago," Andy recalled, speeding through a yellow light on Gary Street. "Walked in with the bag over his head, tripped over the railing where people wait in line, and made off with an eight-piece chicken dinner, then walked into the glass door and broke his nose. We got his DNA off the blood on the paper bag."

"Does he use a gun?"

"That's the problem. He's never armed, and just walks in with the bag over his head, asking for whatever. So we can't get him on any charges that stick, which is why he never spends much time in jail. According to him, he asks for something and people give it to him without protest, so that really isn't a crime and there's nothing in the Virginia Code that says it's illegal to walk around with a bag over your head. So the judge always throws it out when Stick shows up for arraignment."

"Any officer in the area," the dispatcher came over the air. "Report of a white male with a bag over his head, down in the parking lot of Popeye's on Chamberlayne Avenue. An ambulance en route."

"I guess he tripped again," Andy said.

Stick wasn't the only one to trip that night. When Barbie Fogg got out of her minivan in the carport, she stepped on the Barbie doll of one of the twins. As usual, it had been left where the child had played with it last.

"Oh, my!" Barbie cried out as she picked herself up from the concrete floor and checked for injuries.

Barbie, who very much believed in signs from The Universe, interpreted what could have been a serious accident as a signal that she had misstepped and overlooked something important. Oh, of course! she thought as she remembered the very special thing that had happened before she'd stopped off to visit the nursing home where she made the rounds visiting infirm and forgetful old women she didn't know. Barbie believed The Universe had chosen her to be a healer, and at last, The Universe was about to reward her, which was why Hooter had given Barbie the special gift.