For more on the Bitter Merchant, see The Bitter Merchant and the long slow slide Part 1 and The Bitter Merchant makes a Bum Call.

The Bitter Merchant took off for the weekend (without his trophy wife) to check on his ‘house’ and when he re-appeared on Monday morning, he was reticent to say just what had happened, other than it was, a ‘negative’ experience.

It took several days before we got the full story. The Bitter Merchant had started an ambitious home building project which, alas, had been put on hold, half built, due to lack of funds. Apparently the skeleton of a half-built multi-million dollar home in a posh neighborhood had upset some of the neighbors. Several of the contractors, who happened to be Russian and rather nasty, had been left unpaid in the process. The Bitter Merchant had arranged to meet with them, or they had somehow got wind of his visit and exacted their revenge.

Following the Bitter Merchant to a park, they Russians anonymously called the police, reporting a man with an exotic sports car waving a gun around. Then sat back to watch the fun. The police show up in full force ready for anything. The Bitter Merchant was surrounded and searched at gunpoint. And, of course, was mouthy to the cops, so they were rough with him. The took him downtown, impounded his car, and left him to cool his heels in the drunk tank overnight. No gun was ever found, so they had to let him go in the morning, but satisfied themselves with making things as unpleasant and inconvenient as possible.

And how was the drunk tank? Any further cutting edge adventures in the holding cell? Some interesting people? We will never know! The Bitter Merchant refused to discuss the incident further, other than to say it was very ‘negative’ and ‘not nice!’