Sidewalk Tiger

You expect cops to keep a lot of things in the trunks of their squad cars. One thing you don't expect: stuffed animals.

by Duane Swierczynski

Editor's Note: Come the middle of summer, I'm all out of opinions. So instead, here's a short piece of noir fiction, broken up into bite-size pieces that will run over the next three weeks. "Enjoy" is probably the wrong word when it comes to noir... but I hope you enjoy it, anyway. �DS

Part 1: Predator in the Gutter

You expect cops to keep a lot of things in the trunks of their squad cars. Vests. Ammunition. Spare batteries. Notebooks.

One thing you don't expect: stuffed animals.

But I saw it happen once, in the middle of a five-car smashup on Roosevelt Boulevard, near Grant Avenue. Saw a woman in her late 20s, unconscious, in a neck brace. Saw her daughter, who was 5 years old, on a backboard, being carried from the wreck. She was crying and trembling. A police officer noticed, walked over to the trunk of his squad car and pulled out a little gray elephant. He put it on the girl's chest, leaned over and said something to her, softly.

The girl squeezed the elephant with her one free hand; she couldn't move anything else.

Later, a lawyer friend told me that most cops keep a couple of stuffed animals in their cars, just in case. Some are donated; some cops pick them up on their own, at Target or Wal-Mart.

"One guy told me it's his least favorite piece of gear," my friend said. "You bring out something cuddly, it means a child is suffering."

Or worse.

•••

I saw the first one in the gutter last week. The blood splatter from the sidewalk extended out toward the street, as if pointing an accusatory finger.

The stuffed animal was facedown, but you could tell what it was by the orange and white stripes.

A tiger.

I tried to walk around the yellow tape and a cop put his hand on my chest.

"I live here," I said, pointing to the second floor, above the shuttered seafood restaurant.

The cop checked my generic state ID, frowned. Face all like, Why don't you have a driver's license? But he let me go up anyway.

I'd only been here a few months. I needed someplace cheap after the separation. Frankford Avenue was very cheap. And near the El, which was good, since I was relying on public transit. I opened my mini-fridge and pulled out a can of beer. The apartment was stifling. Outside my window, the El rumbled past. I stared at the wall a long time and realized my beer had gone warm, the moisture beading on the outside of the aluminum. I poured it down the sink and crushed the can.

I thought about that stuffed tiger.

It was still there; the cops hadn't touched it. Guess they had everything they needed. I wondered what number this shooting would be. It was mid-July, and the city was already inching up into the 240 range.

Two hundred and forty victims.

Back on the street, I crouched down and flipped the tiger over. Its beady eyes were a little too close together, and its whiskers were pointed defiantly downward. The tiger wasn't smiling; it looked like it was too busy stalking its food to worry about putting people at ease.

The front of his T-shirt read: FEELIN' GRRRRREAT!

Yeah, Tiger. I'm sure you are. Facedown in liquid garbage on a street where a 20-year-old man was shot to death just a few hours ago.

Welcome to the jungle.

I went back upstairs to fool myself into thinking I wanted another beer. That I wanted anything at all.

My back still hurt after all this time.

I didn't think about that tiger again until a few days later, when I saw a makeshift memorial near the Margaret-Orthodox El stop. The memorial had been there a while; the humidity and street grime had worked the flowers and stuffed animals and crayon drawings over hard.

Clearly, it was a memorial for a dead child. There was a faded photograph of the child, a little boy, taped to the pole. No indication of what had happened to him.

But there, in the middle of the other stuffed animals, was the tiger.

(duane@citypaper.net)

Next week: Stalking the Game