So I'm lying in bed with man-flu, re-reading the miraculous
tome 'Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets', the book of true-life reportage
around which the TV series The Wire was based.
Unfortunately, I hear a knock at
the door. And again.
There's a rather emphatic quality to it, that prompts me
to get out of bed and go to the front bedroom window for a view of the street.
I look down and bloody typically, I see a UNIFORMED COP.
Like any
battle-hardened denizen of Baltimore's worst housing projects, I instinctively
duck out of sight. I do a quick inventory-check in my head:
'Have I murdered
anyone lately? Threatened anyone? What about those close-calls on the bicycle the
other night because I was in a hurry to get some cough sweets before the corner
shop closed?'
I close the file on that and open the one labelled 'white-collar
crime': 'Have I attempted to manipulate the LIBOR? Swindle the Americans by
selling fictitious Triple-A rated housing bonds?'
Only when I gave myself the
all-clear did I answer the door, by which time the officer is three doors down,
and having no luck, as is the norm in these neighbourhoods where life is cheap
and there's a cooling corpse with a dumbfounded expression laying sprawled out
on a curb, at intervals of every half an hour.
I go: 'What's up, officer?'
He
goes, 'Did you see anything suspicious in this street on the night of the
tenth?'
I go: 'What's the date today?'
'Erm....The thirteenth.'
I do a quick
calculation and conclude that my commute ended at 11pm again, and so therefore,
I would have missed the incident.
'What happened?' I ask nervously.
He looks at
me gravely and says, with a completely straight face,
'Three cars were egged on
this road that night.'
