Because over the past few weeks, the Portland police have been putting on light shows in this neighborhood that put to shame even the most intricate of holiday displays.
One Monday afternoon a few weeks ago I was on the phone with a friend, when an onslaught of blaring, glowing cop cars descended on the corner that’s not more than 50 feet from the window in front of my desk. Holy shit, I thought. I told my friend I better go and went to the opposite side of the house to have a better look. I stopped counting police cars at 12, and there were many more. Then, not one ambulance but two, and a fire truck, and then two of those vans with satellite equipment on top and television logos on every other surface. There were news cameras set up on the side street, so I put my jacket on and went outside.
I have never heard the word “motherfucker” sequenced quite so skillfully, with so much variety in tone, placement and volume. I asked the painfully pretty television reporter what was going on, and he said that they’d heard on their scanner that there had been gunshots. Indeed. Grandma, it turns out, blasted Grandpa in the stomach; Grandpa, whose very shapely torso was drenched in blood, finally, after 45 minutes of nonstop mother-fuckering, was brought out to the street on a stretcher. Before he was loaded into the ambulance, true to his neighborly and friendly nature, he waved at the cameras. And with that he was gone. From what I’ve heard, via Grandma’s very loud cell phone calls, which she conducts outside for some reason, he’s doing quite well – in detox.
The other night I could have sworn I’d been woken up by the sound of sirens, but happily so because the noise was followed by that swirled, kind of disco-esque display of red and blue swooshy lights that danced up and down and on and off the walls, the floor and the ceiling. I asked a couple of neighbors if they’d seen or heard anything. No, they had not. A dream, I thought.
But, just as some time passed, here, on my corner, some lights flashed: it was a transition. On Monday night there was an even better display. Reds and blues and perfectly round spots of white danced behind the oatmeal-colored curtains in my living room. I stood in front of my couch holding a plate with two pieces of toast slathered in butter and honey, getting ready to sit down. I peered out the door and saw that the police cars were in the intersection, up the street, down the street and, based on the blare of sirens, many other places as well.
Outside, I learned a couple of things. First, the noise and lights from a few nights before had not been a dream. There had been a high-speed chase at 3 in the morning, which was witnessed by one of my neighbors, who was, he explained, still up working on his computer. And second, all the commotion on Monday night was in response to a robbery. I stood outside and watched the cops talk a guy out of a white car and command him to take three steps back, then three steps forward, then put his hands on his head, then kneel down on the pavement, and on and on. Then a dog barked and, guided by so many high-powered flashlights that it reminded me of a vigil, began to sniff at the trunk of the car.
The first story was that someone had robbed someone at gunpoint on the sidewalk. Then, someone had robbed Walgreens. Then, of course, both: There had been two robberies, both at gunpoint, and the suspicion that the neighborhood is going straight to hell is turning out to be truer than any of us had imagined. But on Tuesday morning there were news reports that what had actually happened even more seasonal than the festive lights courtesy of law enforcement: Someone had pointed a gun to the cashier’s head over at the Christmas tree lot at Safeway, and then made off with an undisclosed amount of cash. The guy whose car was searched a block from my house turned out to be, in fact, the wrong guy, so the police are still looking.
