Julian’s fingers hammered the metal totalizer bar of Register Two at sixty keystrokes a minute.
Chained to the steel drawer by his left wrist, Julian braced his thighs against the safety rail of Mobile Register Annex #04-B as Bus #04 hurtled down the center lane. The three-foot steel chain rattled violently against the cash drawer housing with every heave of the twenty-ton coach.
Beside his elbow, Lin Mei flipped through the yellowed pages of the 1996 Department of Public Works operational handbook.
“Look up Section Four, Lin Mei!” Julian yelled over the roar of the oncoming engines. “Fleet hierarchy rules!
Does a breakdown wrecker hold statutory right-of-way over road sweepers?”
Lin Mei’s finger stabbed a paragraph stamped with the city engineer’s seal. “Section Four, Paragraph B! *A registered municipal wrecker engaged in active emergency recovery holds absolute right-of-way over all secondary sanitation and street-sweeping apparatus!
Any sanitation vehicle failing to yield center thoroughfare to an approaching recovery unit is in gross violation of DPW Fleet Precedence Code!*”
“That’s our clause,” Julian said, his eyes blazing.
