Then I looked past the badge to the heavy black radio clipped to his shoulder strap. The green power light was off. In my thirty years working on this avenue, I had spoken to a hundred real police officers and municipal inspectors. Their radios never stopped murmuring with dispatch chatter, a constant hum of city noise. This man’s radio was completely dead.
He wasn’t a cop. He wasn’t a city inspector. He was a private thug wearing a costume purchased online, hired by Apex Development to physically scare an old mechanic into signing over his deed before the eminent domain hearings began next week.