The
Bystanders
by
Kenneth
James Crist
Darkness. Wet streets pooled
with reflected city lights. No rain now, but rain-smell still thickening the
air. Other smells, too. Blood. Oil. Antifreeze.
Spinning red and blue lights,
strobing hypnotically off windows, people's faces, other traffic.
Sounds of two-way radios
crackling, amplified over speakers on the fire company's engine and the police
vehicles.
Patrolman Donovan Penchley
noticed the hooker in the short yellow dress as he looked up from some measurements
he was taking. A light-skinned black girl, quite pretty in a dusky, tarty way.
All done up in mesh stockings and too much makeup. Half her ass showing. She
was with the rest of the "looky-loos," behind yellow crime scene
tape. Her dress was a perfect match to the crime scene tape and much too short
for the cool weather. Visible steam rose from busted radiators, and the red and
blue of the emergency lights sparkled off her earrings and her eyes, and off
glittering broken glass underfoot.
"Hey, Marty," Donovan
said quietly to his partner, a few steps away, "check her out." Marty glanced
up briefly, then went back to his work
with a derisive snort. "Wonder what corner she came off of?" he said.
When they had finished up the
accident scene and the crowd began drifting away, Donovan looked for her again,
but she was already gone.
* *
*
"Hey, Donovan. There's your
girlfriend." Marty nodded at the crowd and Donovan turned to look. It was
later in the shift. They were uptown in the projects, where a mother had shot
her boyfriend over his continuing advances toward her twelve-year-old daughter.
The hooker's stare was very direct and there was no doubt it was the same girl.
Same dress, same stockings, same makeup. It was colder now, and he could tell
she was freezing her ass off by the way she stood stiffly with her jaw
clenched. Why didn't she put a coat on?
When he and Marty were getting
ready to leave the scene, she had again faded into the urban squalor.
As the days passed, Donovan
found himself paying more attention to the crowd.
* *
*
"She's really got ya hung
up, hah?"
Donovan looked across the table
at his partner and he could feel himself reddening. Marty was an older, more
cynical cop, and he was taking great delight in giving Donovan shit about the
hooker. They were having lunch, and Donovan had been deep in thought.
"Naw, I just think there's
somethin' goin' on. Somethin' weird."
"Only thing weird is how
you could get a rise in yer Levis over that
gal."
"I don't have a rise, as you put it, but have you
noticed it's always the same people?"
"Yeah. Goddamn ghouls. All
they give a fuck about is seein' some blood."
"But Marty . . . how do
they know?"
"Whattaya mean?" Marty
laid his fork down and suppressed a belch.
Donovan leaned forward in his
chair and his voice got quieter.
"Sometimes they get there
before we do. I mean, we got radios, red lights, sirens and fast cars. They're
on foot. How do they do it?"
"It's just yer imagination,
kid," Marty said, picking up his water glass, "they just happen ta be
in the area."
"Well . . . I dunno, seems
pretty strange to me." Donovan didn't want to dispute his partner, but he
thought Marty was full of shit.
In his case book, he began
writing down descriptions of persons in the crowd. He couldn't get them all,
but once in a while he would jot down someone who caught his attention. During
the next two weeks, he saw the hooker in the yellow dress twice more, once at
another wreck six blocks from uptown and once at a fire they'd been sent off
their beat to handle, miles away in a warehouse district. Donovan wondered how
the hell she got way out there.
He diligently recorded descriptions
of a burly white man with a red plaid coat and gapped teeth. A Mexican kid on a
chrome bicycle. Two old bag ladies, pulling granny carts. A postman, always in
his uniform, but never working. His record of the crowd kept growing, and a
pattern seemed to confirm itself. The same people seemed to show up in the
crowd, no matter where he went. Not every time, but often enough to be
disturbing. How the hell did they know?
How did they zero in on tragedy? How could they find where the next wreck was
going to occur, where the next person would get shot or stabbed? To Donovan,
with his analytical cop's mind, it was baffling.
Of course, Marty just sipped his
coffee, ate his jelly doughnut and smiled tolerantly at the Rookie, seeing
patterns in everything.
"You're just goin' through
yer conspiracy phase," he told Donovan. "It happens to all rookies.
Ya start thinkin' everything's connected ta everything else. That all this shit
really makes sense. When ya finally realize that it doesn't make any fuckin'
sense at all, that it's just random
violence, you'll be a better cop. You'll start gettin' tough and salty."
Donovan wasn't convinced. He was
sure something strange was going on.
The next time Donovan noticed
the hooker, he and Marty were going to yet another "hot" call,
running with red lights and siren to the report of a jumper on a building. He
was watching for familiar faces, curious as to whether he would see anyone he
recognized before they arrived. Then, two blocks from the scene, he saw that
yellow dress.
"Marty! It's her! Look,
behind us!"
"Yeah, I see her. So
what?"
"She wasn't there a minute
ago, when we passed by. Now she's there!"
"Yeah, she was probably in
a doorway, givin' some guy head."
At the scene, the jumper had
already done his thing. His sprawled and exploded form was on the sidewalk,
covered with an old blanket. As Marty interviewed witnesses, Donovan watched
the crowd. There was the postman, there the two bag ladies. Over there, the
burly man with the red plaid coat. They were all here and he began jotting down
times and locations.
* *
*
"You still keepin' track of
all that shit?" Marty asked.
It was several days later, and
Donovan's impromptu investigation of the crowd continued.
"Yeah, I'm keepin' a list
of everyone I see in the crowd more than once. I'm logging where they show up,
and whether they get there before we do or show up after."
"A waste of time."
"Maybe."
Donovan was adding new ones all
the time. Some never showed up again and were eventually crossed off as
"normal." Others made the list by showing up time and again at varied
and widely spaced scenes around the city. He had begun to suspect there was a
whole other world he knew nothing about, co-existing with the familiar.
"I bought a police scanner
and put it in my car." Donovan said.
"What the hell for? Ya
don't get enough-a this crap in eight hours?" Marty asked.
"I've started going to
calls off duty, just to see who shows up."
"Now I know you've lost it,
kid." Marty said, rolling his eyes.
"Marty, this is important.
These people never sleep. It's impossible, but they're always out there. They
show up at one scene after another, 'round
the clock. They're attracted to the blood and suffering. Tell ya the truth,
they're startin' to scare me a little."
For once, Marty had nothing to
say.
Donovan really started getting
scared one afternoon when he tried to follow his hooker away from a scene. He
was in his own car, and he watched her walk along the sidewalk until it went
into the dark of a railroad underpass tunnel. He drove boldly through, knowing
she wouldn't recognize him in civilian clothes, in his own car. The tunnel was
empty. Donovan felt the hair on the back of his neck trying to rise. He went back
and looked again. She was not there. She had swung her flashy ass into the
tunnel and simply disappeared. Donovan nurtured a feeling of dread all the way
home.
* *
*
"Check this out,
Marty." Donovan handed his partner a mug shot.
Marty looked at the picture of
Donovan's hooker and then read the back. "Charlene Pryor, 27, B/Fe, 5'
7", 127 lbs., black hair, brown eyes. Yup, that's her. She's even wearin'
that same dress."
"Yeah, an' guess what? She
had six busts for prostitution and pandering, nine years ago."
" Nine years? Hell, she
looks just the same now as in her mug."
"Yeah. Exactly my point.
Nothing since then, either."
"What, ya think she cleaned
up her act?"
"Naw. Not likely. But I
took her rap sheet over to Vice."
"What did they say?"
"Well, I had trouble
finding anyone who even remembered her. I finally found one old vice cop who
said she'd disappeared a long time ago. They just assumed she'd left
town."
The day after Donovan found the
hooker in the police records, he and Marty were parked in an alley downtown.
Donovan hadn't slept well and neither of them felt like doing much.
"Hey, there's the guy in
the plaid coat!"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah! He's in a hurry,
too! Crank it up. Let's see where he's headed."
As they drove up the street
there was a horrendous crash at the intersection ahead and cars spun around,
bouncing off lamp posts and coming to rest. The man in the plaid coat was just
running up to the scene. So was Donovan's hooker and the Mexican kid on the
chrome bike. As Marty cut on the emergency lights and the red and blue flashes
illuminated the crowd, Donovan began to feel as if he was caught up in some
drama that would never end. The cast of characters would always be the same and
he and Marty would always respond and speak their lines. His sense of déjà vu
was so acute that for a moment he knew exactly what Marty would say next and
precisely where his hooker would be when he next looked at the crowd. Then the
feeling faded, and Donovan took a shaky breath and crawled out of the squad car,
and they got to work.
During the next month, Donovan
watched for any of "his people" running or heading in one particular
direction. On two occasions he was led to scenes where the crime or accident
had not yet occurred. On two others, he was just barely late, and at one
shooting scene they caught the perp coming out the door of the liquor store
solely because he had seen the two bag ladies loitering out front and had
turned around and driven back.
Now Marty was starting to take
as much interest as Donovan and they were trying to figure out how they might
capture and question one of "Donovan's people." They decided they'd
get together over a few beers on their next night off and try to come up with a
plan.
* *
*
Donovan and Marty were headed
home. They had been to O'Reilly's Tavern, a popular cop watering hole and it
was after midnight. They really hadn't come up with much in the way of a plan,
but they'd had a damn good time. They were both half lit, and Marty was driving
a little faster than he would have normally, when Donovan saw the hooker. She
was running at a fast clip, straight ahead. Then he saw the postman, in
uniform, running the same direction.
"Step on it, Marty! There's
somethin' goin' down up ahead!" Then he saw the Mexican kid flying down
the sidewalk, nearly bowling over the bag ladies, who were hustling as fast as
they could go in their hunched-over shuffle.
"It's gonna be somethin'
big, Marty! They're all here!" As they reached the intersection, Donovan
had just enough time to see the truck bearing down on them and to open his
mouth to shout a warning. He died with a scream frozen in his throat.
* *
*
It was almost five months before
Patrolman Marty LaFange got back to work. Part of that time was spent in the
hospital, recovering from injuries he received in the wreck that killed his
partner. Part of it was spent at home, on suspension from the drunk driving
charge. He was lucky he didn't wind up doing time. The fact that the truck ran
the red light, and the driver was charged worked in his favor.
He had been to the department
shrink any number of times, trying to deal with the loss of his partner and the
memory loss he was also experiencing. They had finally released him for duty
and dumped him right back into the fray.
* *
*
Darkness. Wet streets pooled
with reflected city lights. No rain now, but rain-smell still thickening the
air. Other smells, too. Blood. Shit. Dog smell.
Spinning red and blue lights,
strobing hypnotically off windows, people's faces, other traffic.
Sounds of two-way radios crackling,
amplified over speakers on the fire company's rescue squad and the police
vehicles.
It was his third night back on
the job, and Marty was at a scene where a lady had been mauled to death in her
own front yard by her neighbor's three pit bulls. He looked over the crowd and
saw a young black hooker in a yellow dress. There was something familiar about
her, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. The guy she was hanging all
over bore a striking resemblance to his former partner, Donovan Penchley, too.
Marty stared for a minute, then
shook his head and went back to work. Goddamn
looky-loos, he thought, they never
seem to get enough blood.
Published in The Edge, Feb.,
1999
