UHL-Squad

Zip, Spit, Strip

I run after Christian, down the short stretch of corridor, round a sharp corner to the back entrance of the store.  This door is not locked until I leave the store, but there is a bolt on it, and this slows him down enough for me to catch hold of him.

By this stage the kid is frantic, arms and legs flailing.  He’s trying to get the door open whilst stopping me from grabbing a firm hold on him.  Mostly this happens in silence, but occasionally he shouts some expletives at me.  

The struggle lasts a minute or so before he changes strategy, and tries to get past me and head back toward the front of the store.  

In the confined space of the corridor I’m sure he can’t get past, but again I’m surprised by his strength, and he manages to slip around me and breaks out back down the corridor.  I manage to tackle him to the ground one last time, both of us slamming against the bare concrete.  He seems to fall pretty badly, and I get him in an arm lock.  

The zip ties I keep in my back pocket are mostly for securing stock, but they are also real handy in these situations.  He’s still struggling a little, but I quickly make a bracelet for each of Christian’s wrists, then lock them together behind his back with a third tie.  Then I drag him to his feet, grab a handful of that thick hair and push his head way down low, forcing him to stagger back to the store room, his head level with my waist.

Back in the room I force his ass down on the black metal chair, and with his arms hooked over the backrest I take another zip tie and secure his wrists to the bar at back of the chair level with his ass.

We’re both out of breath, panting hard as I take a step back.  I realise there’s something warm and wet that’s been on my cheek since the struggle out back.  I put my fingers up to my face and feel the warm fluid on my cheek.

“Fuck. Did you spit on me you little punk?”  

His face is flushed with anger while he pulls hard against the ties that secure his wrists to the back of the chair.  

“Let me go you crazy fucking asshole!”

I step in close to the side of the chair, grab hold of his chin, and force his face to look up at mine.  I make him wait for a moment, and feel the slightest quiver in his neck as he realises what’s coming. I fire a mouthful of spit back into his face.  He does not like this at all.

“Fuck!  You fucking ape!  You can’t spit in my face you dumb fucking cunt!”

I crouch in front of Christian, coming in close between his thighs to avoid any opportunistic blows he might try to land with his feet, which are still unsecured. He’s still out of breath from our struggle, and for the first time he actually seems scared, or at least unsure of how deep he has gotten into this thing. 

I reach into his waist and take hold of each side of his track pants, the backs of my fingers pressed against his skin - incredibly firm and smooth.  I pull down just a couple of inches before I realise I’ve also got hold of his underwear.  I adjust my grip, make sure I’ve released the waistband of his briefs, and start to wrangle down his track pants.  

It’s tough getting them off his ass, which is still sat on the chair, but as he neither assists nor resists this process much, I get the track pants down to his ankles without too much difficulty.  Again I resist the temptation to drag off his underwear as I haul the track pants between his ass and the seat of the chair.

Then as I hold his legs straight out toward my waist, and start to pull the pants over his heels, Christian sees his chance and lands a real hard kick in my balls, and I let out a shout of pain.  I manage to keep hold of his track pants and haul them free of his feet as I step back to the desk, my eyes watering.  He’s now wearing just the white tee, and briefs - a triangle of red fabric between his legs to go with the black Diesel waistband I saw earlier.

“I think I explained to you how I’m the only thing standing between you and a police record.  You did understand that part didn’t you?”  

He mouths a sullen ‘fuck you’ at me.  “And I’m also the only thing keeping your scholarship in play?”  It’s the scholarship which brings the fear back on his face.

Risking another strike from him, I come in real close, and reach in between his thighs.  He’s either too slow or too dumb to close his legs before I reach in and take a casual hold of his balls through the soft fabric of his briefs.  They feel kinda small, which I guess I expected, and I hold them in a firm grip.  My hand has come in from below, skimming along the smooth skin of his inner thighs, but I guess his dick must be pointing up or to one side as I don’t get a clear sense of where it is.

“You make contact like that again and I’ll crush your balls to a fucking paste.”  My face is right up against his, sharing each other's breath.  

Bad Cop

“OK, Christian, I’m gonna need you to take off your hoodie and place it on the desk.”

He scowls at me from under his mass of expensive hair, swears under his breath then shrugs off his hoodie.  Underneath is a snug fitting white singlet with a Nike swoosh over his left pec.  

He holds out the hoodie for me to take, like I’m his butler or something.  I tell him to place it on the desk and step back.  Then I make a show of laying the hoodie flat on the desk, checking each pocket carefully, and patting down the whole garment.  I put his keys, phone, a few scraps of paper and a pack of gum in the small plastic tray on the desk.  

“The sneakers too.”  

Without bending down he digs a toe into the heel of each sneaker in turn and pulls it off his foot, then hooks the sneaker up with his toe and raises it up into his hand.  He holds the pair out, but again I tell him to place them on the desk.  I make a show of inspecting his sneakers, although I know there’s nothing hidden in them.  Casually I glance down at his feet.

“Oh, and your socks.”

“Seriously?  Why do you need my socks man?”  He doesn’t wait for a response, kinda reluctantly lifts each foot up in turn and pulls off his socks.  This time I take the two socks from his hands - the fabric warm and slightly damp - and lay them neatly on the desk next to the sneakers.

“And your track pants buddy.”

The way he took off his socks without any real resistance made me wonder if I was going to get him stripped down without any more complaint, but he seems to think the track pants are a red line.

“No way man - what, you think you’re gonna strip search me?  Fuck that.”  He shakes his head and even turns slightly, as if he was going to walk out the door.  I’d definitely rattled him.

“I need you to take off your track pants buddy, that’s all.  I know you have some of my stock concealed.  About your person.  I just need to find out what you’ve got, put it all in the book, ban you from the store and then we can both get out of here.”

“Fuck that.  You’re not the cops, you work in retail dude.  You can’t go around forcing people to strip for you, you fucking perv.”  He paused for a moment, unsure of what to do next, so I waited patiently.

“Maybe I should call the cops myself, let them know I’ve been…” he pauses, trying to remember what his buddy had told him to say, “...unlawfully imprisoned.”.   There’s another pause, but then he can’t help himself: “... by some fucking sexual deviant who wants to see my ass.”  He seems to like this idea, and with fresh confidence he moves toward the tray on the desk which has his phone and other pocket debris.  I don’t try to stop him.

“We can absolutely bring the cops in on this, if that’s how you want to play it.”  I pull out my phone before he reaches his, and bring up the number of my contact at the local station.

“... but you need to understand that if we bring the cops down here, they’ll have the video footage of your theft, plus the testimony of the store manager and the mall security guard all confirming you left the store with stolen property.”  I pause for a moment to let this sink in.  

“They will take you to the station, they will charge you, and they will have your parents come pick you up from the station.”  

“Oh, and the best part.  As soon as you have a record, I think your school might be taking a different view on letting you graduate - and sure as fuck your college is gonna withdraw that offer of a scholarship.”

As I explained this last part - all based on I nformation which the dumb fuck had offered up a few minutes ago - I saw all his cocky attitude evaporate.

“C’mon man, just let me go.  Fuck.  I haven’t done anything.  You can’t screw over my scholarship.”  

“It’s a real simple choice you need to make Christian.  You can cooperate, and hand over those track pants - or we can call the cops.  It’s up to you.”

“Look, I haven’t got anything man - see,” he empties the two pockets in his track pants, pulling the lining inside out.  “Look, I got nothing.”

His definition of ‘nothing’ included a crumpled fifty dollar bill and two twenties, along with a couple more pieces of gum.  He dropped them on the desk.  

I made a point of smoothing out the notes and placing them in the tray with the rest of his belongings. But I made the mistake of turning my back on him as I did this.  

The little fucker sees his chance and bolts.  The door flies open, slams against the wall, and he's disappeared down the corridor to the right - perhaps smart enough to remember that I’d already brought down the shutters on the store front.

Good Cop

I drag the twink back up on his feet, my right hand now in an iron grip above his elbow.  As I haul him back into the store I give Liam a quick wave with my free hand and call over to him that we’re all good.

It’s nearly five, so as we walk back into the store I flick the switch to bring the shutters down, which spooks the kid a little.  He tries to head toward the sales counter, but I correct his course with a rough shove.  I take him through the doorway at the back of the store, down a short corridor and into the stock room.  I close the door behind us, and propel him into the middle of the room as I let go of his arm.

The room has floor to ceiling steel shelving units on three sides, though these days there’s not a lot of stock on them.  The old wooden desk is covered with paperwork and returned stock, with a chair behind it facing back toward the doorway.  I stand to the side of the desk rather than behind it, in case he tries to run.

“OK, I’ll need some ID to start.”

“What the fuck?  You’re not the police, you can’t demand to see my ID.”  He pauses and gives me an intense, angry stare.  He seems to lose his swagger a bit as he quietly repeats “I haven’t done anything.”  

“You’re right, I’m not the police.”  I lean my ass against the desk, relax my body language.  “I can call the cops right now if you like, but honestly I think we’re better off sorting this out between ourselves buddy.”   He pulls another sour look when I call him buddy.

I nod toward the battered log book on the desk, where I record all the stock we lose to theft and damage, “I just have to do some paperwork for my boss, that’s all.”  I look at my watch.  “It’s already five.  I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time on this - if you don’t fuck me around we can both be out of here in ten minutes.”

He looks straight back at me, cool and still for the longest moment before I casually hold out my hand and ask for his ID again.  Reluctantly he pulls out a driver licence and holds it out.  I move forward, pluck it out of his hand, place it on the desk and open the book.  As I copy his name, address and licence number into the log book, I keep him in my peripheral vision, in case he decides to make another break for it.

The licence tells me his name is Christian, his address is nearby in a very expensive suburb which I guess must be his parent’s place.  Then I check his birth date.  He’s a few months past his 18th birthday.  I double-check my maths - it would be an expensive mistake.

I casually ask if he’s studying, and he tells me he’s a senior at an exclusive school nearby.  I happen to know that the fees there are more than my pre-tax salary.  He also tells me he’s headed to FAU in the fall.  

I ask him a little more about college, and like a fucking moron he opens right up, telling me he’s got a couple more exams to sit before he graduates, but bragging that it’s no big deal as he has a water polo scholarship.  I guess he can’t help it - making sure I know about his expensive college, his scholarship, and basically how his life is all set for success.  I chat with him for a minute or so, putting him at ease until I feel I’ve got all the useful information I’m going to get from him.  Then I get back to business.

The Perps

It took me a couple of minutes to be sure the two guys were working together.  Like most of the dumb fucks who try to steal from my store, they walk in a few seconds apart and keep to different areas.  One of them browsing the sneakers while the other is checking out the compression shorts, that kind of thing.  

They see me at the sales register looking at my phone, and think I’m not interested.  What these chuckle heads don’t realise is that my phone is hooked up to the store security cameras, so in fact I’m tracking every move they make, behind every clothing rack, in every part of the store.

The twink is an amateur, looks like this is his first time.  He’s kinda nervous and not doing a great job of hiding it, keeps looking over at me then up at the cameras, then at his buddy.  He wears sharp new gym gear, new sneakers, and has a thick mass of dark hair in an expensive cut with highlights that probably get touched up by his stylist every week.  If he does end up stealing it’s not because he can’t afford this stuff, it’s because he’s been taught he can have whatever the fuck he wants in life and just has to reach out and take it.

He seems slender but not skinny, above average height, and he looks so fresh and neat that he could be a model, but more likely means he’s still in high school, which will be a downer.  Even if I catch them with stolen merch there’s not a lot I can do with shoplifters if they’re under 18.

The other guy is different.  Maybe a couple of years older, he’s similar height but a lot more weight - muscle bulk but also some flabbiness. His face is broad and heavy compared to the angular look of the twink.  His hair is dark and cut short, and he has a couple of days stubble on his chin.  He’s wearing faded shorts, an old hoodie and scuffed up oversized sneakers - like he doesn’t come from the same kind of money as the other guy.

The twink thinks he’s hidden from view behind a shelving unit, but on my phone I watch him take a box of underwear off the shelf and clumsily extract the briefs, stuffing them into a pocket and dropping the torn-up box on the floor.  My boss refuses to let me tag the underwear, saying it will damage the product, so instead we tag the box and this is the result.

The bigger guy is more skilled - he picks up dozens of items, sometimes two or three things at a time before putting them back.  I don’t see what he has taken, but I’m sure he has something.  To be honest I’m more focused on the twink.

Then he signals discreetly to the twink that it’s time to go and they both start moving to the store entrance.  This is a common strategy - they know that I’ll probably lose both of them unless I make a quick decision about which I target.  But that decision is easy.  I want the twink.  

I step out from behind the sales desk and everything suddenly accelerates.  The bigger guy breaks into a sprint and is clear of the store in a second or two, knocking over a display stand as he goes.  Lucky for me the twink is less sure of himself - he tries to play it cool and heads to the exit at a real fast walk, and only breaks into a sprint when he sees for sure I’m coming for him.  

He’s fast - real fast - but his strategy is poor and he changes his escape route mid-sprint, costing him a second or two.  I make contact with him just outside the entrance to the store and grab a firm hold of him just above his elbow.

“I’m gonna have to ask you to step back into the store, kid.  You have somethink you forgot to pay for.”

His body language is confident, bullish, but in his eyes he’s a little spooked. “Uh, no actually.  You made a mistake dude.”  He’s acting pissed at me and makes this real sour face as he looks down at my hand on his arm, like I’ve smeared shit on him or something.  “And you can let go of me.  You’re hurting me.”

I’m slightly out of breath but my tone is calm.  “I just need you need to step back inside the store.  We can sort this out at the register.”

Still holding his arm, I put my other arm around his shoulder, and shepherd him back into the store.  But in doing so I relax my grip just a little.  

Sensing his chance, he wriggles and twists his arm violently out of my grip.  The sudden burst of strength and speed take me by surprise.  He ducks under my other arm and sprints out of the store.  

Angry that I didn’t keep a proper hold on the guy, I launch out of the store after him.  He probably would have got away, except he catches his foot on the display stand his buddy tipped over and he stumbles, slowing his sprint enough to allow me to tackle him to the ground.  

We both hit the floor pretty hard, and for a few seconds we wrestle, his body writhing and flipping wildly as I try to get a hard grip somewhere.  I realise there’s actually a fair amount of muscle on him - he is lean but athletic and strong, and I almost lose him again.  Only when I get my knee hard into his back and my hand on his neck - pushing his face into the mall floor - does he stop struggling.  

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy this part of the job.  I get my hands all over every part of the perp, if only for a few seconds, followed by my body pushed up hard against his and a rush of adrenaline at having the guy completely under my control.

“What the fuck man - let go of me!  I haven’t done anything.  You’re hurting me!”  

This last comment is loudest and seems to be for the benefit of the handful of shoppers now looking at us.  I grab a handful of my perp’s thick lush hair, and twist his head to one side, pointing his face toward the mall security guard a way off in the distance.

“That’s Liam,” I explain, “our friendly mall security guard.  He’s ex-Miami PD, and real cranky that they retired him early because of some little misconduct.  He’d love me to call him over so he can bust you up a little.”  I tighten my grip on his hair, enough to get a little howl out of him.  “Would you like Liam to come over and help me out, or are you gonna cooperate?” The twink relaxes his body, realising that I’m his best option right now.  “I am cooperating man, but I haven’t done anything.”