Since he was discovered driving Peter’s stolen car last year, Andrew Clark Bergman been on a multi-state crime spree. On November 25, 2010, he was arrested and booked in Las Vegas for grand larceny and burglary. On January 12, 2011, he was arrested in Kimble, Texas for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. The day after Cinco de Mayo, our security cameras recorded a guy who looks an awful lot like him riffling through my car and stealing a CD. On May 17, he was arrested for motor vehicle theft in Fresno, and arrested again in the same city in July for the possession of an illegal substance. He’s been a busy little criminal, and these are only the instances in which he was actually caught. More impressively, he has not a single conviction for any of these crimes, since he’s demonstrated to us that escaping conviction is not done by being innocent and/or having a good defense, or but rather by posting bail and skipping town. (Or alternately, going to a criminal-sanctuary town, like Fresno.)
I have no idea of his current whereabouts, but the possibility that he may be hiding out down the street, ready to pimp-roll himself into our driveway each night makes him the perfect boogeyman. Don’t leave anything valuable in the car, or Andrew Clark Bergman will smash the windows and take it. Lock the car doors, or Andrew Clark Bergman will crawl into your car and leave a layer of skeeze behind. Lock the front door or Andrew Clark Bergman will ooze in and steal your homework. And just think, Andrew Clark Bergman could be skeezing through your neighborhood, too!
To memorialize the anniversary of the theft and brief return of Peter’s PT Cruiser, we bought additional locks for the garage and back yard, purchased a laser sight for one of our pistols, and accidentally rousted a fugitive (though not, alas, Andrew Clark Bergman.)
To be fair, Andrew Clark Bergman is not our first family boogeyman. Until he came along, our family boogeyman was a former colleague-of-sorts whom I’ll call Flounder. Flounder had bad manners and a particular, peculiar enmity with the department I was working for at the time, so he constantly stymied my project. My supervisor hated him, and worst of all, every time Flounder called me, I‘d get chewed out.
I never actually met Flounder in person, and I doubt he lives up to the character we built up for him as a family. Peter attached a picture of Jabba the Hut to Flounder’s contact information in my contact list. We still have Halloween boxes which Kelly decorated with a worm like figure with eyes and mouth, with stink lines coming off, with the words “Flunder” underneath them. After all, Flounder was the scariest figure we knew.
But poor Flounder! Now he’s all but forgotten, and unlike Andrew Clark Bergman, who’s wanted in at least three states, Flounder is undoubtedly not wanted at all, anywhere. And this year’s Halloween boxes may have another set of Andrew Clark Bergman mug shots on them to properly spook them up.