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About 4am this morning
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a guy got murdered in my driveway. I was on the internet; I heard the shot; it was loud. I didn't call 911 because I hear shots relatively often out here, and arguing and cars screeching tires and that sort of thing. By about 4:30 the road had been blocked off on every side, and I told the scant facts to several cops. They spoke very loudly, so Ludmilla woke up. The first two cops were alright; I noticed the younger one was tearing up a lot, but he didn't look emotional or anything, just had tears running out of his eyes. He may have come into contact with some kind of solvent fumes or something. He had come to my door to back up the cop asking the questions, who was kind of heartbreakingly cute: mexican extraction, that way-too-far-forward hairline, Voice Immodulation Disorder, and huge serious eyes that flashed a beacon of "THERE'S A BODY UP THERE". They were both a little unnerved by me. It's because I'm tall and I happen to be up at that hour, and not afraid of bodies nor cowed by little boys playing at being cops. Welcome to the big city.
They told me a detective would talk to me, so I waited up. Eventually I got sick of waiting around so I went outside and hobbled up the hill-part of the driveway to where the cops were. They all paused as if I was catching them in the cookie jar or something; there were one or two cops I recognized - one of them is this inexplicably super-hot blond lady that looks like a short-n-skinny version of Euphorbia; she looked at me kind of levelly; I don't know what her deal was, really, but she knows who I am; ANYway these are the kind of details I retain, so - a particularly ugly and smelly cop strides over to me with that leather-boy-tough-fag-cowboy walk that some cops seem to think is really impressive, and tried to frighten me with tough talk. I tried not to smirk too directly into his acne-scarred fuckface, and just gave him such facts as I was able to provide. I told him about getting mugged in the driveway last week; he didn't even register the information. He just kept looking at me with a blank and typically redneck mask of hate, a tough-guy shit headed half-lidded glower that blinked in the flashing blues. I looked over at the blond, more or less thinking something like "what the fuck is this asshole's problem?", but her face was inscrutable. She was looking over at us, but also busy with some deal involving a tape measure and a couple of technicians.
Asshole-guy told me to wait while he went over to a detective, and I took that time to give the corpse the last human interaction he'd be likely to get in corporeal form: I knelt down and looked into the face to see if I could recognize him at all; I didn't. One of his shoes was off, and his foot was *white*, totally alabaster, which is weird for a black guy, ey. I wish I'd had a camera; it was quite a scene. His killer had shot him in the head. There was a small pond of blood making a small and truculent stream that was eking across the pavement toward the detective's car. Once I'd determined I didn't know the guy at all, I stood back up and looked over in their direction, starting to get a little annoyed.
The detective didn't cross the street when the cop spoke to him; he looked up from a clipboard and shouted, "Is there SOMETHING I can HELP you with, SIR?" at which point I meant to cross the street and give him the facts, because, unlike a sack full of fucking assholes, I'm not prone to shouting details of a murder at the top of my lungs in a residential neighborhood at that hour of the morning. He screamed "DAMMIT DON'T WALK ACROSS THERE", so I turned around walked back to my front door (well away from the scene), stood there for a few minutes glaring death and hatred at the fuckers that bust druggies and potheads, and swarm like flies on shit to the *aftermath* of crime, but can't be bothered to, say, send a patrol car past this location *ever* despite the fact that there are violent crimes on this street no less than twice a fucking week since spring began.
Officer Bruno, who gave me a ticket for illegal lane change not so long ago, saw me and nodded recognition (he was right to; I was a menace that day). Right then it occurred to me that, without exception, black cops I'd dealt with in Decatur were all cool and stand-up, while the white cops I've dealt with have been, with two exceptions, total redneck dickheads with serious IQ deficits.
At around 6am another detective came to the door, obviously sent by the universe to verify my earlier assessment: a bald black gent, totally rocking the "homicide detective" style with shoulder holster, cream shirt, and nice shoes, being cordial and grateful to talk to someone with a brain, clearly. We joked a bit, and I wished him a better one, just like in Blade Runner.
Mom's freaking out and says she'll pay for us to move "wherever you want" but somehow that mysteriously involves us putting everything into storage and moving into her basement. While I'm shocked and totally heart-warmed that she'd suggest it, of course I'd rather eat my own eyeballs than move into her home (but, on second thought, her husband does have the line on really amazingly good schmab (but: come on; I ain't moving into my mom's basement just yet - feels too much like the death-knell)).
Blargh!!!! Decatur turns out to be five times as crimetastic as metro-Atlanta proper. WTF? And it's always Americans doing this shit, even though this area is at least 60% immigrant settlers and farmer's-market-rescues (fugitives from around the world flock to the Your Dekalb World Farmer's Market because it's a sweet job and there will be at least three other people there that actually speak the same obscure language fluently (a lady that works there told me that it's not too uncommon for fugitives from two entirely different countries to meet, fall in love, marry, and procreate before entirely learning one another's language, which I find ultra-sexy)). The murdered guy was wearing a cool tee; it featured a grande-sized post-Naegle-style bust of a woman wearing a green hat and smiling. His pants were white, but not as perfectly white as his foot.
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