Update and Explanation on the Saga of the Drama with the Excitement on Gregson Street, Part II

Sara is my best friend. Like my BEST best friend. She's that friend that gets me and likes me anyway and isn't afraid to tell me what to do. We used to be stay-at-home moms together but now our kids are in school all day, they go to different schools, and she went back to work (Huh. I seem to be the only one that no longer has an actual child at home all day who hasn't returned to the real world. Weird.). Thursday is her day off. So, Thursday is also my day off. Day off from what? Doesn't matter, really. What matters is that every Thursday I am lucky enough to be able to sit in my living room and have a drink and talk with my best friend. And when we talk, it's AWESOME. We could totally solve all the world's problems.

Last Thursday was Dirty Martini Thursday. (We generally pick a different cocktail every week. Recipes and suggestions gladly accepted). We were meeting at my house at high noon and the plan was that Sara would distract me with the awesome talking while I made fresh salsa. It's tedious, with all of the chopping. Right before noon, my dachshund started barking out in the yard. Not wanting to be the rude neighbor who lets their dogs just barkbarkbarkbarkbark, I stuck my head out the front door and hissed, "Wiener! Knock it offffff......" and then I choked. Because walking up the street past my house (along the cross bar of the T that I live on) were about a half dozen police officers, some in uniform, a couple in windbreakers that said SHERIFF on the back, one in a shirt and tie. All with their guns drawn. As they approached...wait for it...Creepy Gary's house, they trained their sights on his front door. Three of them ducked behind his car parked in the driveway. Two went to the porch to pound on the front door. One scampered one more house up the street and covered the front door with a big-ass rifle from behind a light pole. I decided there was something serious going down and called the dogs inside. And got Sara's ass on the phone.
"Where are you?" (I whispered so as not to tip Gary off that there were cops outside his house).
"I'm almost there! Sorry!"
"K, when you get here, park in front and then RUN to the side door. Hurry! There's cops surrounding my neighbor's house!" (I was yelling now, realizing that Gary couldn't hear me from way over here. That and the cops were knocking really loudly on his door and yelling for him to come out and it was very exciting). "Duck and cover! Hurry!"
"What the hell's going on?"
"I don't know, but it's some serious shit!"
I had no idea how serious it would get.

Sara pulled up and parked crookedly, almost like a movie-car stop. She scurried inside and she and I watched the half-dozen police officers give up trying to get someone to come out of Gary's house. They stood down, signaled to each other and then commenced closing the streets of the T. No one could get in, or out. So we poured a couple of extra dirty 'tinis and settled ourselves in my dining room so we could see out the big front windows and I could chop salsa. A while later, three enormous motorhomes and a bevy of cop cars flooded the bottom of the T. "Mobile Command Unit" said one motorhome. One was painted black. From that one, what looked like Army guys came flooding out. They positioned themselves in scary sniper-type places including the roof of a garage and behind some hedges. After about an hour, there was a small flurry of excitement, and the Army guys surrounded someone on the sidewalk. It was *dun dun dun* Creepy Gary himself. Looking scared and weak and like a crazy pedophile who has been in a stand-off with the cops should look. Wild-grizzled-hair-and-beard crazy. He's a cliche, really. They handcuff him and hustle him off toward the command center.

So we thought at that point it might be over. Wrong! Information about what was going on started trickling in from friends calling and texting. Apparently, Creepy Gary's latest boy toy was in a peck of trouble. He'd killed a young woman that morning; his girlfriend. And was now holed up in Creepy Gary's house with an unknown quantity of guns. Yep. These are the people Creepy Gary is bringing to this sweet quiet neighborhood.

Now I was getting worried. It was almost time to start thinking about children that would need to be picked up from school and there was no indication that the police were going to let Sara or I leave. Not that we wanted to, really, it was just getting interesting. So we made arrangements for our respective children, poured another drink and decided to watch more. But first we went out to the back yard for a minute. You know, for some fresh air.
I live on a corner. So my back yard is exposed to the cross-bar of the T of streets. The up-down part of the T starts at my front yard. This visual will help, trust me.
So Sara and I are in the back yard and can't really see what's going on, but we figure since my house is between us and Creepy Gary's house we're safe. As we're chatting about our current situation, I look up just in time to see a line of Army guys (turns out, they're SWAT team. I didn't know they wear camo) at my front gate. My front gate is locked with a carabiner to keep dogs in and small children out, and the lead SWAT guy can't get it open what with all the big-ass guns he's holding. So--BAM--he kicks in the gate and the whole team just files through my front yard, along the side, through the back yard and out the back gate. Would have been really sexy had I not just about peed myself. As they passed us one of them yelled at us to get inside and into the basement. Really? Yeah...No. We're not about to miss this action. But we nod and thank them for being awesome. Then we run back inside and duck down to watch through the front door and big front window.
Another hour or so goes by. There are little flurries of activity. Someone brings the SWAT guys hunkered around Gary's car a drink. Various official people go by my house, ducking behind Sara's car and using it as a shield which doesn't make Sara happy. A K-9 officer hunkers down behind of her car too. My dogs decide to bark at him, at which point I have to remind them that that dog has a JOB and they should just pipe down. My husband calls for an update and is righteously pissed that they cops kicked in our gate. Were they going to fix it? Pay for it? What the hell?
I gently reminded him that his beloved wife was trapped in the house surrounded by an alarmingly large arsenal of guns and nobody knew how much deadly weaponry was at the house across the street, potentially being tended by a wack-job who had already committed murder today.
"They just better fix our gate."
I feel cherished. Really.
(To give him credit, he called right back and apologized and said he loves me and hoped everything would be okay).

And finally, it was okay. The SWAT team brought out their door-basher-inner and some shield thingies and put on gas-masks. Oo! It's about to go down! They holler on the bullhorn for whomever is in the house to either answer the phone or come out or they're coming in. After some noises and more flurry, they're wrestling with someone on the front lawn. Five of them are dragging him away, right past my house to the command center.

He looks about 15. He's crying and looks like he's the one who peed his pants.

He's a boy. A lost sad boy who killed a girl and holed up with a crazy perv and nearly got himself shot by a sniper.

And it's over. The SWAT guys high-five each other, the cops in plain clothes pat each other on the back. Sara and I hug and laugh nervously and she leaves to get her kid. Cars being held back flood into the T. We neighbors gather in small groups and discuss.

And, to my utter indignant astonishment, Creepy Gary shuffles up the street. Free to go.

Part 3 soon. Must go do real world type stuff.

Update and Explanation on the Saga of the Drama with the Excitement on Gregson Street

Whew. Okay. So.
We moved to this neighborhood when the Girl was 2. Mostly because she was getting to the age of wanting to make friends and we lived in Crack Central and I didn't really want her having playdates at the meth house. We didn't have a lot of money, but we managed to get a sweet teensy cottage bungalow in an old neighborhood on the east side not far from the city. It's a neighborhood that was mostly planted during and after WWII, and many of the houses still contain widows and widowers who have lived here since they bought their first house as newlyweds just after the Big War or their children who grew up loving this neighborhood. Neat yards, trimmed bushes, picket fences, a few odd additions. But lovely. And quiet. And no hookers walking past the house. Nor crying toddlers wandering through whose moms have passed out at noon. It's a small-yet-nice-house neighborhood full of people who love it here.

You know how there's always the ONE house? That one with crap all over the yard, needs paint and new awnings, weedy used-to-be-flowerbeds, either a rental or an inheritance? Yeah, we have one of those. His name is Gary. Bonus that he's a creepy fifty-something year old single man who has Hoarding Disorder. And likes little boys a little too much. He lives across the street from me. (Sort of. If you need a visual to enjoy this story, I live on the corner of a "T". My house is at the top of the up-down part of the T. Gary's hovel is across the street, on what would be the cross bar of the T. Clear? All righty then).
There have always been rumors about Gary. Even someone who doesn't cotton to rumors has to admit that there are just too many stories about Gary to ignore the feeling that we should all keep our kids away from his lawn. And maybe our dogs too.
Gary "rescues" young men with criminal pasts from homeless shelters and jail. He brings them to his house and gives them a place to stay (assuming they can clear a spot amid the piles of stuff in his house, that is). That's all I know for sure. I sure wouldn't want to be accused of slander by writing that we're all pretty positive that he buys them drugs in exchange for sex. Nope. But I have seen him and his creepy friends standing around the front yard and then one or more young men scurry from his house to the bus stop. But I'm sure it was all...innocent. And helpful. And Morally Upstanding. I'm sure his medal from the mayor is in the mail. Is there a sarcasm font yet?
Somehow, he has managed to get away with it. The cops know about him. He has a rap sheet, but doesn't appear on the sex offender list. We've had the U.S. Marshall on our doorstep showing us 'Wanted' posters and asking if we've "seen this man" at Gary's house. It's always a picture of a defiant young man, dark skinned, thin. But Gary is smart in that disgusting slimy way; he knows the line between legal and illegal and he skates it well. He knows the technicalities and he exploits them whenever attention is called to him. (When I confronted him Friday after the whole Saga of Drama with the Excitement, his only response was to make sure I knew that the boy in question is 23 years old. That was all). So we all live with Gary and his drug addicted boy-toys. And hate him. I feel sorry for the boys, but only to a point. They still make their own choices and choose to be there.

I'm a housewife. I'm not going to deny that there could be a chance that my inherent nosiness and writer's imagination may have...exaggerated...what I think is going on over there. I also won't deny that I've looked into how much trouble I would get into if I planted a sign on his front yard that reads: "Warning: Pedophile on Premises." The one time Gary saunter/shuffled over and tried to make friends with me over my fence, I made sure that Phoebe the Great Dane kept barking at him and let him know that she hates people (a lie; she's a marshmallow). I wouldn't let him in the yard. I've told my daughter and her friends to never, EVER talk to him or anyone at his house. EVER. I've let everyone who moves onto the streets of the T know who the Creepy Guy is. Sometimes I felt bad; was I rumor-mongering? Spreading nasty stories for shits-and-giggles because I am, after all, a bored housewife? Hmmmmmm.....

Sorry, gotta go have dinner with that wonderful man I live with. He smoked stuff all day on a grill-thingy for me. I opened a bottle of good wine. Will continue Part deux tomorrow. Or, you know, whenever.