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could. As was expected, the glass gave way and shattered into the room. As was unexpected, pain bolted up Keenan’s arm, set bells and whistles off in his eardrums, and burst out of the top of his head.
    He jumped up and down holding the injured arm, sending scattered profanities out into the street. When he saw a light go on in his neighbor’s house, he stopped. Steady, boy. The beer decided it had done enough. Keenan was instantly sober.
    He flexed his arm carefully several times and knew it was still intact. He couldn’t see any blood ( small comfort ), but he knew it was going to be black and blue for a while.
    It looks so flippin’ easy on TV . Pain radiated in a tidal wave through his arm.
    The shards of glass in the window beamed back at him like funhouse teeth. He pushed one back and forth until it loosened and then pulled it out, careful not to cut himself. When he got the second and third out, he was feeling a little better, but it didn’t last long. A blinding white light threw a gigantic Keenan shadow against the outside of the house.
    “Freeze. Put your hands out where I can see them.”
    “Fuck.” The elongated word floated out of Keenan’s mouth like a boiling teakettle and he carefully put his hands out on the wall next to the window.
    He heard some mumbled cop talk then, “Sir, put your hands on your head, slowly.” The voice was deep enough to send primordial shock waves into Keenan’s back, and he did what the nice police officer told him.
    “This is my house, officer.” The words didn’t sound convincing even to Keenan.
    “Stay where you are. Don’t move or I will shoot you. Do you understand?”
    That warmed Keenan some; rivulets of sweat trickled down both his sides. He nodded, but couldn’t get his mouth working.
    A few seconds later, he saw more red and blue lights reflecting off his house. They played eerily over the broken glass in the window. It sounded like two more cruisers pulled up.
    When the first voice sounded right behind his ear, he jumped a foot. “Lace your fingers on top of your head, sir.”
    Keenan complied, but by then he was shaking like a leaf.
    A hand wrapped around the first three interlocked fingers sending pangs of pain through his arms and into his head. He couldn’t have budged from the spot to save his life. Something cold clicked around Keenan’s right wrist. The officer gripped it tightly, bending the wrist forward until a new kind of pain joined the first. Not letting up on the pressure, the cop pulled the right hand behind Keenan’s back until it nearly reached his neck. That third pain completed the ensemble. The cop repeated the process with Keenan’s left hand and a second cuff zipped into place. Cold metal pinched his wrists, cutting off his circulation, but Keenan didn’t complain.
    Turning his head side to side, he spotted the two other officers flanking him. They stood back with deference to let the first cop do his job. Without ceremony, that one twisted Keenan around and one of the other cops blinded him with a flashlight.
    Keenan felt hands the size of catchers’ mitts on his shoulders, around each arm, chest, back, ass, and down each leg. When they got there, the hands stopped, apparently realizing Keenan was naked under that coat, and a snorted huh came floating up to his ears.
    Without even an excuse me , the cop unbuttoned Keenan’s coat and opened it wide, apparently to do a visual search for weapons. Hot cauldrons of embarrassment suffused Keenan’s face and neck, warming his skin instantly. Perv flickered through his skull, but he didn’t make a sound.
    When the cop seemed satisfied, he re-buttoned the coat and pulled the change out of Keenan’s pocket, then slipped it into a clear Ziploc bag with Evidence neatly printed across it. He seemed upset when he didn’t find anything else on Keenan to join the change.
    As Keenan’s eyes recovered from the glare of the flashlight, the cop said, “What’s your name?”
    The officer