“I’m not kidding. Now that it’s one way, I’ve seen cars go up that stretch of 17th Street at 50 miles an hour. It’s just a matter of time before somebody gets killed or maimed.”

Peter Loomis had yelled that out from the back of the Emanuel Baptist Church where it was standing room only for our March neighborhood association meeting. There was a little stage up front with a long table where a city councilman, a cop lieutenant from the Third District and our association president, Jimmy Carvers, were seated on fold-up card table chairs. None of the three looked pleased to be up there.

The meeting stayed on the topic of speeding up 17th Street a while longer. I chose to just sit back and listen. Mostly because I didn’t think speed bumps, the only workable solution to the problem, had a chance of making it. All kinds of bullshit reasons for not putting in the bumps got thrown around by the people on the stage. Most had to do with timing and budget. But Peter Loomis, the guy who’d gotten the whole discussion rolling, put it out there:

“Yeah, yeah. Then how come all the rich neighborhoods I drive through in DC have speed bumps?” His question threw the meeting into such a shouting match that a short break was called for. I chuckled, walked out, and didn’t come back.

Later that evening I was sucking on a Corona as I half watched some reality show Billy Straybuck had playing on his big screen. Most of the show was commercials mixed in with scenes of stupid criminals getting their butts kicked by store employees who’d been held up one too many times. One I particularly enjoyed was where this fool came into a Seven Eleven brandishing a shot gun only to have two big dudes start wailing on his ass with nine irons.

Billy was cackling along with me when he said, “Asshole’ll probably try to sue the store.”

“If he survives.”

“Which is highly questionable.”

Pretty soon a cop chase seen came on that gave me an idea for the speed bump problem. I ran it by Billy.

“You prepared to go back inside if you get caught?”

“Less likely to get caught if you help me up out.”

“Damn, Virgil, that is one persuasive argument.”

“Yeah, women say I’m good at the sweet-talking thing.”

“That’s nice. How ’bout just being good at the not getting caught thing.”

Took me and Billy a couple of days to acquire the equipment and garb necessary to debut our little experiment. On top of that we had to wait for the right weather conditions at the right time of day. That turned out to be a blustery Friday night about 11:30 when it was raining like an old cow pissing on a flat rock.

Billy and I were hunkered up under an old tree on a dirt heap that gave us a good view of 17th Street between Kalorama and Euclid. We had our faces painted black with that grease stuff Navy Seals and football players use. That and the camo outfits made it near impossible for anybody to see us.

There was more traffic than you might expect given the inclemency. That’s because of all the kids that come into Adams Morgan on the weekends to party. A few of ’em had to be hauling their Porsches and Beamers up the street at well over the 50 mph that Peter Loomis had brought up in the meeting.

“You still wanta do this thing, Billy?”

“I never did and I don’t now, Virgil. But, damn, these little turds do need to be taught a lesson.”

“Then let’s get down there and do some teaching.”

Less than 90 seconds later, we heard the throaty roar of a sports car as it turned the corner off Kalorama onto 17th. Billy and I did our thing just before the car shot up to us. Then we heard the bam, bam, bam sound and then saw the car come to a skidding, weaving stop. We yanked our device back in and scurried back up to our hiding place.

For a second or two, the car just sat there in the middle of the street. Then both doors popped open and these two leggy girls wearing micro skirts jumped out yelling, “What the fuck was that?”

“She wearing any underwear?” Billy asked as the one on our side bent down to take a look at what had happened.

“Feel a little better about coming out here now, Billy?”

He mumbled something I couldn’t make out because the girls were now screaming about the four flat tires on Daddy’s Lexus.

After they got on their cell phones, I tried to talk Billy into sticking around to watch the cops come and bite holes in their lips to keep from laughing at the two rain soaked speeders. I failed, and the two off us slithered off back to Billy’s condo.

Sunday morning Billy and I checked the Metro section of the Washington Post on the odd chance our little caper might get a line or two of print. It didn’t. However, as I had hoped, Peter Loomis brought the incident up at our April association meeting at Emanuel Baptist.

“Hey, Lieutenant! Was that you guys from 3D that threw the spike strips out on those two young women that got arrested for drunk driving over on 17th a few weeks back?”

From the guffawing that drowned out the lieutenant’s answer, it was obvious the story had made its way around the neighborhood. When the laughter subsided, the lieutenant repeated that the police had not used the spike strips. He further stated there was an ongoing investigation into who had committed the illegal act. That really got things riled up:

“Whoever did it should get a reward.”

“Damn right.”

“Yeah, if the city’s not gonna put in speed bumps, they should hire the guys that did it on a permanent basis. Then we’d see cars crawling up that street.”

A couple of weeks later, I got a call from Peter Loomis.

“Virgil, can you hear that sound of jack hammers?”

“Peter, I’m always hearing the sound of jack hammers in this neighborhood.”

“I know, man. But this is special.”

“How’s that?”

“They just started putting in speed bumps on 17th.”

“Well, I’m amazed.”

“I’ll just bet you are, Virgil. You and Billy take care, now.”