“Urgent! Jim Singleton is on the line. Sounds like he’s in trouble and he needs to talk to you,” the secretary said. “I’ll transfer the call to your desk.”
“Jim Singleton” was an alias an informant and I used when we phoned each other. I was a Detective at @KerrvillePoliceDepartment. This was decades before cell phones, or even cordless phones. He would call the police station for me and tell whoever answered the phone that he was Jim Singleton calling for me. If I needed to phone him and somebody else answered, I would tell them I was Jim Singleton calling for Don, his real name.
Don and I had gone to the same university, although we had not met there. Our paths crossed later because he was a salesman. We met when he was selling vacuum cleaners door to door. Don had a degree, but he had become a pothead and couldn’t hold a regular job, instead skipping from one sales job to the next. Me being a cop didn’t scare him. He trusted me.
A few months after we met, he called the police station to talk to me. Although he was part of the drug scene, he couldn’t abide pushers who sold drugs to school kids. He knew of one who targeted primarily the local high school and he wanted me to take the guy out. I had never worked an informant and he had never snitched before, so we were both kind of working in the dark.
People at the police station knew the alias name and on the day in question when the secretary transferred the call to my office warning that he was in trouble, I was instantly on full alert. Had some of his druggie friends found out he was snitching them off to the cops? I would have to be careful and talk in code as we conversed because I did not know who would be listening in.
I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said.
“I’ve got a flat and, uh, I need to get some help here,” my friend replied.
“Where are you?” I asked. Answer: “I don’t know, several miles west of town on Highway 27. I walked to some store and borrowed their phone.”
“Is anybody there with you?” Answer: “Just the people in the store.”
“Are you safe?” Answer:”Yes, but I need some help here.”
“Should I come alone?” Answer: “I don’t care. I just need some help.”
“Will anybody there know me?” Answer: “I don’t know. Why the hell would that matter? I need help with a flat.”
After trying several more oblique attempts at communicating in some kind of unplanned code, the frustration grew for both of us. We were talking at cross purposes. It finally dawned on me. This wasn’t my informant Don, but some poor traveler from out of town whose real name was Jim Singleton. He had a flat tire, didn’t have a spare. Needing help, he had called the local police department. I said I’d arrange to have a wrecker sent out to meet him.
We never did bust the kid selling pot in the school. He didn’t keep it in his possession very long and he stayed on the move. Don lived fast and hard and he was dead within a year or two.
As for the real Jim Singleton, I guess he got his flat tire fixed and continued on his way thinking that the Kerrville Police were a screwed-up bunch of small town hicks.