Incident Report

LEAVING THE SCENE...

THERE IS something like a

Crump!

Someone, in a voice more amused than surprised, exclaims,

"HO!"

There is some surprised laughter, too, a reactive tittering from as far off as the Gulf Station down and across the Avenue whee the lights are out, the pumps down and cars are jammed in for the after hours scene at Gitsis' Diner.



The car that is traveling south on Monroe, passing the end of Wilmer Street, is black and a sleek new model, perhaps a Chrysler. It is occupied at least four times, front and back seats, by young men who are not the driver and who are not caught in the street light from the near street corner, the streetlight that stands in front of Lola's Bistro nearer to the corner than the bus bench where we are.

The young man framed in the open driver's side window is white and in his early or mid-twenties. He has curly dark hair and has a lean face with deep set surprised eyes. And, for an instant, he stares out not back at the corner and the rear of the car that was turning into Wilmer, but over at us on the bus bench further on. He looks over at us both shocked and helpless even as the car is accelerating, leaving the scene of the accident it has just had.

The look makes him seem almost as though he is and isn't the one doing the driving, making the instant decision to go, go and leave the scene behind.

The car speeds off not that much faster than most traffic that leaves the bars this time of night for the expressway and home to the suburbs, for the further sidestreets and the near neighborhoods off Monroe.

But it leaves deliberately and without the least hesitation.



SOMEONE, near by, perhaps on the far corner of Wilmer or perhpas in the older model black car that was struck, itself, turned half into Wilmer and, now, stopped, exclaims,

"'E 'it you, man!"

The car is one of those older, old enough it has a less stream-lined look than those common today. It is one of those reworked but not meant to be classic looking cars that come into the area after hours. This one doesn't yet have the silver hub caps and dual exhausts and only has the polish.

It, too, is occupied four or five times.

It is a Friday morning, not a Saturday or a Sunday morning, near three a.m., or the Avenue would be more jammed with such traffic than it is now.

Now there is only the newer model black car speeding away for Oxford Street and the less occupied end of the Avenue's zone south toward where Monroe rises to the expressway bridge beyond the Hess Station, past the Y and the Branch Library that loom going up to the overpass.

After a moment of hesitation, the older car that was rear-ended reverses and backs abruptly, dramatically out again onto the avenue to face southward, too, and shifts into gear.

Its engine snarls and the car leaps forward.

And, as it jumps and accelerates, for one instant, too, the occupant of its driver's side window is caught in the light. He is young, black and wears a ball cap and a well-filled out white tee-shirt. Poised forward with his hands on the wheel, he, too, is caught looking over at our bench with an uncertain expression.

It, too, gives him something of the look of detachment from what he is doing, if only for this one split second.



PURSUIT...

The car that caused the accident has already passed Oxford at the other end of the long block before the struck car shifts forward.

The avenue south toward the expressway is almost dark and nearly deserted.

A last party of customers that had emerged and lingered before Oxford's is walking obliviously off between the darkened buildings and the cars still parked beneath them. Over at Rookie's Pizza and further up at the yellow rimmed windows of Subway, a few equally oblivious lingerers are on the sidewalk, too.

The pursuit is in stages, the cars receding away two long blocks south where the Hess is a well-lit and open space on the right of Monroe. The pursuit is sequenced with the shifting of the one car's gears, each increase in speed made emphatic with the renewed tearing snarl of an engine straining.

And each time the two cars are brought closer even as they become more distant and smaller.

"Now where are you going?"

"Up there."

By Rutgers the injured car has closed the gap to half the length of the next and final block and, though the pursued is not running for certain, the gap is still swiftly diminishing.

"Why? They're going to be gone! No way that boy's going to be stopping now if he didn't!"

"Don't come!"

By where Dartmouth and Canterbury come into Monroe on this side, opposite the Hess, the two are one right after the other and traveling like they are one car. The first bears left off into Canterbury at speed and, the purser follows like they are both on one rail.

Both cars are done in an instant.

"There's not going to be anything to see up there!"

"Don't follow!"

By Oxford Street the first Blue-and-White cruiser has come down Rutgers with neither lights nor siren. Only the swiftness of its passage the long way down alongside the empty lot at Blessed Sacrament, against the darkened and residential porches to the corner parking lot on Monroe suggests purpose.

It even stops at the corner before turning up toward the Hess where it pulls in off the street and stops to look around.

A second car comes, this time with lights swirling and traveling south on Monroe. It doesn't slow until it comes to Rutgers and turns right up that street's dead-end extension, along the north end of the Hess corner lot. It disappears around the old bricks of the Berkshire Building.



SHOTS FIRED...

Because of the Hess, all lit up white and flourescent, all white and Kelly green behind its canopied pumps, the Avenue seems to open up opposite the complex corner of Dartmouth, Canterbury and Monroe.

Coming up toward Rutgers more Blue-and-Whites are coming into the area from every direction some even with sirens. They go into the extension and none turns into Canterbury.

Up that way one cruiser hangs back and a knot of them with flashing overheads are gathered near the dead ending.

"Wonder if they know, now, they're in the wrong place?"

"Like it makes much difference now!"

One cruiser that has crept in behind the office furniture store on the south end is returning behind some poor civilian sedan caught back there with a girl doing business.

"Some most unlucky son-of-a-bitch!"

"So, y' got to see something, after all! What do you know!"

The first cruiser creeps, turning away of the Hess, and travels off across and up Canterbury, at last.

"Going to see the same nothing-there-anymore we are!"

Coming up to cross Dartmouth, the cruiser is already returning, slow creeping around the point and spot lighting the hedges. The crew-cut and solemn face in the driver window looks over and asks, stopping,

"You two fellas hear any shots fired?"

"No, but we can tell y' what it was about..."



EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION....

After the police, all the buildings around the Canterbury point, belwo and up the overpass rise, are silent. The streetlights leading away down Dartmouth on the low side go up that street receding beneath the deep darkness of the tree-tops. Only Hess, across the way, bright in tis expanse of blacktop, is open and inviting and the lone clerk is outside the door talking loudly with a customer pulled up to it. Loud as he is, his words are all garbled in a staccato of rap music blasting from the car stereo.

"Guy doesn't pull over and exchange insurance 'cuss y' don't on Monroe at three in the morning and other guy chases after him 'cuss he hasn't. And he, or, one of his friends, gets out a gun which is why the first guy's running..."

"And...?"

"Isn't how it's supposta be."

"Y' gotta wonder! You really are from the country!"

Canterbury, on the high side, is more open and well lighted. Past the two or three stories of the building on the south corner, the parking for the hardware is back around its east corner and trees don't begin until your are past the end of Westminster coming in from the north. That rap that is blasting and the loud conversation, which are all that is left of Monroe noise and carrying on, now, carries even up that way little diminishing.

"Now where are you going?"

"Whatever happened it was along here."

"What do y' expect to see the cops didn't not see?"

"If they got a report of shots fired took them to Rutgers and it ws those two cars turned off up this way, it had to have been right along in here."

"You expect to find that black car plugged and expiring if the cops somehow missed seeing it?"

"Hole in rear trunk, street sign; tree trunk with some bark shattered, somebody's front porch column with the paint disturbed...."

The ejected casing of a bullet it turns out is a thing so small, barely as big as the end of the little finger on a man's hand. Something laying on the black shadow and gray asphalt snake skin of four a.m. still street lit pavement of Canterbury just inches before the end of Westminster. Its brass doesn't even shine in the light. It lies thee and only casts its own little bit more of shadow.

Something so small as to seem insignificant that might have meant so much but, now, can only mean something more to add to another dull report.


September 15, 2009.