We hear a lot of ruckus, living by the Parade Grounds' edge of Prospect Park, and tonight was no different; around 12:30 a.m., as I sat puzzling over an error message at my computer, I heard some hollering and the sound of breaking glass. It didn't even sound intense enough to bother getting up and going to the window, but now I wish I had: When Spouse took out the garbage minutes later, a police officer asked him if we'd heard or seen anything, because a man had just been stabbed in the street. Sure enough, the intersection of Marlborough Road and Caton Avenue was cordoned off with crime-scene tape.
I spoke to the officer, offering my paltry bit of information about the sound of breaking glass. From our porch, I saw what looked like blood in the crosswalk (where the two cops are standing in the picture, above). The officer said the victim was "cut up pretty bad, we didn't think he'd make it, but now the hospital says he will." He made no mention of having found a weapon, and seemed to think it might have been whatever I heard shatter. Two suspects were apparently seen by a passing driver, disappearing into the Parade Grounds just after the crime, and as we spoke, a chopper roared overhead, raking the soccer fields with its floodlight.
This isn't the first time we've had blood shed outside our windows, but it's the first time in many years. A disturbing flashback to the bad old days of the crack '80s, in fact, when we'd hear zombie-like addicts screeching in the street (and, once, watched as the cops organized a surreal impromptu line-up under a streetlamp for a beating victim swaddled on a gurney outside a waiting ambulance). We have just returned from a week of deep and blessed peace in a tiny hamlet in the verdant Berkshires. Right now, I miss it more than ever.
Update, 2:13 a.m.: Three NYPD detectives just rang the doorbell; they're going door-to-door hoping somebody heard or saw something. They were nice, jokey guys in crisp white shirts and colorful ties; they reported that the victim is young and will indeed survive, and that "our guys are all over the park" looking for the perp. One of them gazed up at the house and cracked, "This whole thing yours?" We replied that not only was it all ours, but that they followed in the footsteps of their fictional counterparts on Law & Order, which has filmed here twice (both times using our house as the residence of a scruffy perpetrator). They proclaimed their superiority to Dennis Farina and company, thanked us for our (paltry) help, and went on their way.
It's the middle of the night, the wee hours of the morning; right now, with my adrenaline jolted by the doorbell, it feels like "the city that never sleeps." I wonder who he is, that young man, trussed up in tubes and gauze right now in the brightly-lit ER or ICU. Is he alone, or is his mother or girlfriend with him? Could he guess that a bunch of smart-alecky, hard-boiled guys in ties are pounding the pavement, trying to get whoever got him? And where are the guys who did it? From the reported severity of the injuries, it must have been a messy altercation. Have they washed off the blood yet, and if so, where?
It may be hard to get to sleep tonight.
Update, next morning: There is still blood on the street. Meanwhile, the maunderings of a passing white supremacist (of all the strange creatures!) have been deleted, because this particular cyberpark enforces the rules against verbal littering; thanks to supportive commenters. (And for the record, "Conrad" in your spiked helmet and jackboots, the only thing we missed in the Berkshires was the diversity of Brooklyn...)