Renegade Karma Police

For years now, I've dreamed that homocide police were closing in on me for a murder that I gradually remember (in the dream) having committed. It's not always the same victim, neither had I always killed them in the same manner. But I would always wake with, and for a while carry, a dreadful guilt, as though I were actually guilty.

Now, I'm pretty sure I've never murdered anybody. (Okay, I'm sure.) It's not the kind of thing that an integrated personality would forget. There was one time I left a friend's apartment in an alcoholic blackout, then returned hours later and passed out on his floor. The next morning, we found the bones of a whole chicken on the roof of my friend's stationwagon. Not a scrap of meat was left on dem bones.

My friend said, "Damn, Jack! Wha'd you do last night?!"

So, at worst, I may have murdered a chicken.

Back we go to these haunting dreams...

I was back in my hometown for a week last year -- just took a week to spend some time with my folks, and reunite with a couple old friends. Camille dropped me off and returned to Pittsburgh with our one car, so I was hoofing it most of the visit. Early the second day, I saw this Olds 88 beater with tinted windows drive slowly by my mother's house. It had a distinctively rattling rasp when it idled at the corner. The license plate was partly obscured by caked mud. I didn't think much of it.

Later that morning, I hitched a ride to downtown proper -- all six blocks/two streets of it. It was gorgeous spring day, the kind of sunny blooming nature smile that makes you feel like vast achievements are possible. I stood staring in the window of the now vacant G.C. Murphy where I'd bought my first little console stereo when I was thirteen. Too impatient to wait for my father to get off work, I'd carried it home on my back. I was remembering that day, and others, when I heard that distinctive rattle again. The Olds beater was idling at the light in front of the First National Bank. Even through the tinted windows, I could see the silhouettes of two heads facing me. The light turned green, and they made a right and disappeared behind the bank.

I listened to the motor recede. I spun round and looked up at the apartment tower at the top of the sloping street. I remembered the afternoons I'd spent visiting my now deceased grandpa Jennings in his rooms on the ninth floor of that building, and the many times he'd treated me to a movie in the little cinema across the street.

Then I heard the beater motor returning. I watched the intersection by the bank until the Olds came back into view. They made the left and pulled into the curb beside me. I'd spent many childhood evenings running from cops on those same streets and had never once been apprehended. Old habits die hard. I darted into a narrow passage between two office buildings. I heard a door of the Olds open and shut behind me. Then I heard it squeal away from the curb. But by then I had made it to the alley behind Adams (Main) Street, and was negotiating a glass strewn empty parking lot.

I kept running, never looking back, until I was under the high level bridge by the river bank at the bottom of the hill. I climbed a pylon and hid on a narrow ledge under the bridge. Nobody
followed. But I decided I was being shadowed.

It's crazy, but just as I do after having one of my "guilty murderer" dreams, I had the distinct feeling I'd done something wrong. That is to say, I wasn't that surprised that somebody was following me; that I might be wanted for something. At the same time, I knew I hadn't done anything illegal. Not during that visit, anyway.

Back when I was in high school, I had been walking with a tentative friend. Let's call him Tad. Tad came from money. He was nice, well-groomed, a little nervous, sensitive. We were planning to create a comic book together. We'd develop the story lines together, then I was supposed to draw them. We had just left downtown and were on the mid-city bridge when a big black car pulled alongside us and stopped. The window whirred down and there was Detective Ted Offutt leaning across the the wide seat.

"I need you to come with me," he said.

Tad blanched. He looked lost and fightened.

"What's wrong?" he said.

"And why would you need that?" I said, ever the smart ass.

"Just get in."

"Just get lost. We're busy. You're interrupting."

Ted reached over the seat and with one smooth motion unlatched and threw open the back door.

"Don't make me chase you down and put you in myself. I just need you to come to the station and make a statement."

We got in. I rode to the station with Ted and Tad. Ted the mysterious, and Tad of the soiled underpants. It must've been the longest ride of Tad's life. It wasn't easy for me either, though I kept up a carefree appearance.

There was this older guy, lived in the apartment directly across from the back door of our house. We'll call him Todd. Todd had decided to burglarize the Iranian college students who lived across the street. He knew I had been in their home. He also knew they had recently snubbed me after I'd done them many favors. So, he asked me if I could draw a diagram of the inside of their apartment, and denote where the expensive things were. I did.

In my mind, it was all very dramatic, like we were in a movie. It was all a bad boy fantasy. I had no sense of the reality of the situation. Many times, in junior high, my friends and I would very elaborately plan out the burglary of a big department store, with provisions for cutting a hole in the roof, a rope ladder for getting back out, all sorts of details. Then, of course, we never followed through. It was a game.

Not for Todd. He went into the Iranian's apartment that night and took everything he could. In a move which should prabably have gotten him imprisoned for sheer ineptitude, though, he had broken his driver's license in half trying to jimmy a closet door. He never got the door open. He kicked it and split it in half, but then thought he heard somebody coming and took off out the back way. The next afternoon he'd told me simply, "I did it." I think I winked and nodded at him. But I felt my hair stand on end.

Detective Offutt found the half license in the Iranian's closet and arrested Todd. Todd assumed I had turned him in. Todd told Ted I had masterminded the whole and carried out the whole thing. He was only fencing the goods for me. Ted picked up Tad and me, though Tad had nothing to do with anything, and hauled us into the station.

When Ted told me what Todd had told him, I spilled every bean. I guess Todd went to jail. I didn't see him again. I didn't see much of Tad, after that incident, either.

So, to make a long story encylopedic(!), I guess I remembered that way back when day when I realized I was being pursued, and wondered, "What'd I do, this time?"

For the rest of the week, I saw the Olds 88 cruising around town. Several times it had pulled up next to me, and every time I ran. Whoever it was didn't seem too anxious about catching me.

Finally, on my last day home, I stopped into this little drive-through "six-pack-n-snack-shack" for a hot dog or something. As I went in, I saw the Olds beater pull into the lot. They turned too sharp and rolled the front wheel over the high sidewalk. I watched them bounce in their seats. Then I saw, in silhouette, the rider elbow the driver, and the driver shrug. Well, I was disgusted with running, and decided to face them and get it over with. I bought the dog. At the condiment counter, I looked out the window and saw them idling the car. Relaxing. The weather was no longer gorgeous. Dark clouds were gliding over hilltops, and the bulbous shadow of one of them rolled over the Olds.

Back outside, I made a beeline for the passenger side of the Olds. The window slid open as I neared. They weren't dressed like cops, but they had the hair and the body language.

"What?" I said, through a mouth full of meat by-product and preservatives.

"We'd like to talk to you."

"So talk."

"Not here. We'd like you to come with us."

"What is it you think I've done?"

"It ain't what we think, Jack," the driver said, leaning forward. He had a lean, angular face with very fine, sharply crested eyebrows and lips that seemed perpetually pursed. The partner looked more like a football player who didn't take his exercise regimen all that seriously. He had a friendly glow in his eyes. Maybe it was compassion.

"Yeah. But not here," said the driver. "Okay?"

The back door popped open by itself. Clearly, they had a leg up on Detective Offutt. I looked at the sky and a rain drop struck my cheek. I figured on a storm. Maybe I'd ride with them until I got closer to my mother's, or a friend's, house -- keep out of the rain -- then bail out and ditch them again. Nah, I knew I'd made up my mind to get this over with.

I jumped in the back. The door didn't shut by itself. I shut it. It did lock by itself, though. And away we rolled. I tried the latch and the lock. No dice.

"So who are you fellas?"

"Ever heard of the N.S.A.?" said football. "Well, we used to be with them."

Yeah, I figured on a storm. It was about to pour.

(To Be Continued...)