The back of his neck had rolls like a pack of hot dogs. He sported tinted sunglasses, wraparound-baseball-player style. He walked stiffly, elbows out, like he either had a backed-up colon or thought he was in a Western. He wore a sack suit and a cheap tie. In other words: a cop.With my family history, I get a little nervous around cops. Granted, now that I had the thick wallet and the cozy house in the city, I could see their appeal, but old habits die hard. Especially given my recent string of unorthodox activities, I was not at all happy when this palooka sat down next to me at a lunch counter and starting looking me over.There are no decent diners in the neighborhood where I work. There’s a spot called the Diner, but it’s a retro/meta thing where a sandwich costs ten dollars. So I spend more lunches than I should at a restaurant called Luna’s. It’s one of those Berkeley-earth-mom places, the kind with a bathroom mural of Noam Chomsky and Harriet Tubman holding hands and sliding down a rainbow, but the burgers are good and cheap.
