"Shit, Eric," Trent says, "ain't no time to be fiddling with your phone."

"Yeah, well," I say. "America. What a fucking country. Come look at this." I tap the screen. "The cops are responding to a domestic violence call half a mile down Pine. Who the hell beats their wife at three-fucking-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday?"

Roger rolls his eyes and mimes a limp wrist at me, exaggerating his New England accent. "It's 2018, dah-ling. You cahn't be [i]prej[/i]-u-diced like that. Maybe he's beating his [i]hus[/i]-band."

Trent scowls. "Just as fucking late for us. Focus, assholes. I wanna go home."

"Calm your tits," I say, and tap on the icon to expand the report. It loads audio and I listen for a second or two. "Nah, she's a she. Or a trap."

Roger snorts and returns to his work. "Seriously, you're snooping in on 911 calls?"

"In real time," I say with a hand flourish. 

"Miracle of the modern Internet."

"Miracle of the modern [i]world[/i], fam. The app's called Vigilante. They posted some manifesto a year or two back about how—" I hit the About tab— "quote, 'complete law enforcement transparency can reduce bias and injustice', un-quote. And now here we are, assholes like us listening in as some bitch bawls about her bae."

"Fuckin' Eric the poet over there," Trent growls.

Roger ignores him too. "Still, you have to figure Black Lives Matter was all over that, or some such thing. I can't imagine they'd be around if they hadn't gotten [i]some[/i] good press."

"Some accountability BS," I say. "All the suburban housewives flipped their shit when they tried to shut it down. Wanted to know the cops were responding quickly to their neighborhoods. And I read some article about home buyers checking out the call history near places they wanted to buy."

Trent finally gives in and joins the conversation. "Wait, Vigilante? Ain't that the one some of the skinheads were usin' to check for black crime and go beat the shit out of 'em before the cops arrived?"

"Oh, come now, there's a few bad apples in every barrel," Roger says. "I think we can all agree that the benefits of this application outweigh such abuses."

The app chirps. A dot appears just a few pixels from our map position.

"Speak of the devil," I say, picking my sack back up. "Guys, we're done here."

"Fuck," Trent says, sweeping the jewelry box into his bag. "Fuckin' [i]figures[/i]."

I hold the phone up to my ear for a few moments. "Northern neighbor seeing strange lights here after her dog started barking. Good thing we parked on the south side. We'll have six minutes of driving before the cops are on the scene."

"What if they reassign the cops listening to Queen Bitch?" Roger says, disconnecting a laptop from its peripherals.

"Good point. We should drive east out of here, then pull over about two miles out and kill the lights till we're sure we've got a clean shot to the interstate." 

Trent chuckles as we leave. "Miracle of the modern fucking world."