Port Sonoma

he other way.”
It sounded good to me, especially since my mother’s breakdown. Her care was expensive. So we didn’t find the pot farm. We got these payments at least once a month for a year until some other cops put the squeeze on our grower for a bribe. When he wouldn’t pay, they busted him.
Through his attorney, the back-stabbing bastard offered a trade to the prosecutor. He would name cops he had paid off, if all the charges against him were dropped.
The prosecuting attorney was up for election to the County Attorney’s office and he thought that the publicity from a conviction of dirty cops would help him get elected. He agreed to the deal. The grower named Mitch and me.
We were arrested and booked. But the grower had no videotapes, sound recordings or pictures to implicate us. He had paid us in cash, and we had not put the money into our bank accounts. We used the cash to buy everyday items like gas and groceries, and a lot of beer for coeds.
This left extra money in my bank account. I used it to pay for the convalescent home costs that remained after the Sheriff Department’s health plan had paid its share. When my father died of cancer, my mother had a mental breakdown. She forgot where she was and forgot people, like me. Even when I stood in front of her she didn’t recognize me.
This was the same woman who had put potato chips in my bologna sandwiches and cheered me at high school football games. Now she couldn’t remember my name. The doctors said one day she might snap out of it, but so far the medications and therapy hadn’t helped. Love and patience were the best help that we could offer her.