"Drop the... gun!" ordered Det. Chris Colelli, drawing his weapon.

"I don't have no gun," Jaime offered meekly, dropping what turned out to be a hammer.

Colelli holstered his pistol and searched the man.

He wasn't no criminal, Jaime explained, just a simple mechanic at work. His pockets held cash and a bag of coke. He reluctantly lowered his hands, placed them behind his back to receive the cuffs and trudged away to the hot back seat of a black-and-white.

"He had that 'Aww, (crap)' look on his face," noted Lt. Tony Ruelas.

Behind where Jaime had been working on his large collection of cars, Det. Al Martinez cracked open the door of the converted carport with a Thunderbolt ram. Someone had turned the parking space into a little party room, complete with bikini babe posters and expensive beer signs. Were it not for the sweltering heat and heavy odor of spray paint, it would have been a fun place to hang out.

"My compliments to the art director," one cop grinned as he looked around the garish walls.

A license plate check revealed the black Toyota Tacoma was a g-ride, reported stolen six months earlier. The coppers called a tow truck and some code enforcement officers, who red-tagged the party pad as an illegal conversion. Large signs went up, warning no one to enter.

Chief Robert Ordelheide, a big guy with a bunch of stars on his uniform collar, stopped by to check out what his crew had found. He took a tour of Jaime's bar, then the storage room next door. The walls were so spray-painted, the whole thing looked like a gigantic bruise, with slogans and tags running together on every conceivable surface. Even the washing machine was marked up.

Ordelheide just shook his head and thanked the cops.

"Nice work boys," he said, then headed out.

Jaime, booked on suspicion of possession for sale of cocaine and grand theft auto, went to jail, starting off a long weekend in a cell.