Not that crime scene, this one

About an hour ago, the Governor lifted the “shelter in place” order, saying that it seemed that the suspect had gotten away. Minutes later, we headed outside for a walk in the Arboretum. Quite a few people had the same idea, despite the threatening weather. As we headed back home after 45 minutes in the park, we started to hear multiple police sirens. Given the occurrences of the day, the multiple cars made us a bit more nervous than usual. Might this bombing guy have come to Roslindale?

At least eight emergency vehicles came by us as, one after the other. They all seemed to be stopping on Washington St. not far from the back of our house. For some reason, Vince and I decided to walk up to Washington St., curious about what had happened. Sure enough, all of the police cars and ambulances were blocking the street, just a few yards from the baseball field. We could already see yellow police tape securing an area that extended into the street. As we stood watching from some distance, two young women came walking toward us.

“What happened?” we asked.

“Somebody got shot…see, the yellow tape is the crime scene.” They were shockingly matter-of-fact about it.

A uniformed man in a nearby car asked, “Are you sure they got shot or was it a stabbing?” The girls just kept walking.

Vince wanted to go see the scene, but I’d had enough for one day and we headed home. I could care less whether it was a shooting or a stabbing. Our story is that there was an “accident” on Washington St. No one here needs to know about more craziness.

Back in the house, Connie was making a fruit smoothie, which was very welcome. She was skeptical about the accident story, but decided to leave it alone. Instead, she only wanted to know how we can close the storm window on the back door.

Liz immediately told us that the police apparently had the remaining bombing suspect cornered under a boat in Watertown. Maybe that’s one threat that’s finally over, but the deeper, closer feeling of insecurity can’t be solved by a SWAT team, or two or three.

Not Exactly the Same Old Place

For once, on Sunday night Liz was the first one to get the e-mail. “There’s been a shooting at The Same Old Place. Boston.com says that one person was killed and several people were injured.”

The mild euphoria resulting from the Patriots’ dramatic victory over the Colts drained quickly out of the Parent Imperfect. “Who? How? Why???”

“According to Chuck, an argument inside turned into a gunfight, but no one knows what really happens.”

The Same Old Place is just that. It is one of the few eating establishments (as opposed to bars that serve food) that has survived the waves of commercial gentrification that have turned Jamaica Plain center into a trendy shopping area. It was there when the PI moved to the neighborhood in the mid-1970’s, and nothing much has changed. The food is still OK, the workers are still friendly and the owner, Fred, remains as ornery as they come.

Fred apparently wasn’t in his shop when the shooting started and was probably still in shock when the newspaper asked him for a comment. “Nothing like that ever happened before.” Miraculously, although the place was riddled with bullet holes, none of Fred’s employees or any of the other Sunday evening patrons were hit.

It wasn’t until the next evening that the PI found out that three young men were dead and a female passerby was wounded, Three stories that could have gone so many different ways ended in a moment. Police sources immediately suggested that this was a gang-related conflict, but no one could know that quickly what really happened. With his mouth open to inhale his breakfast quesadilla, Vince paused at the Metro section on his way to the comics.  Attracted by the headline, “Man held after 4 shot in pizzeria,” he carefully read the entire article about the pizza place he passes every day on his way to school and, again, on his way back home. The article didn’t mention any fatalities.

Waiting for some deep reaction, all the PI got was, “That’s crazy. They even shot a lady that was walking by on the street.” And then he was on to the comics.

“So what do you think about all these people getting shot in a place we go all the time?”

“I said…it’s crazy. What do you think about it?”

The PI would up for a long one about “the two Jamaica Plains” and “no jobs” and “the homicide rate among young African-American men,” but he could see that Vince was already onto the the next thing.

“It means that no matter where you are you need to pay attention to what’s going on around you.”

As if to comment on the profundity of his father’s comment, Vince let go a massive yawn (it was, after all, 6:15AM. The PI pulled himself off the stool and headed back to Vince’s turkey sandwich for lunch.

To no one but the cat, he said, “Are we really so used to living in the middle of all this that four people get shot down the street and we barely pay attention?”

That night, the PI took Vince to soccer practice just before 7:30PM, almost exactly 24 hours after the shootings. As they approached the Same Old Place, the PI noticed that the sign was turned off.

“Wow…he’s closed. He never closes.”

But when they got to the store, they saw that someone had just forgotten to turn on the sign. The place was open and quite busy.

After remarking that they had replaced the front window that had been shattered by bullets, Vince had the explanation for the decision to not miss a beat. “He probably knows he’s going to get more business now.”

Difficult Denial

The news in Boston today has shaken even the Parent Imperfect out of his consultancy cocoon. According to the Boston Globe, very early yesterday morning, someone (or someones) shot and killed four people in the neighborhood of Mattapan. The dead included a young woman holding her two-year-old boy, both shot in cold blood so that there would be no witnesses. A fifth person is on life support and not expected to live. The males in the group were all found naked in the street. To one witness, this suggested they were all rousted out of bed, but The Globe quotes an investigator saying that this, in fact, suggests a drug deal gone very, very bad. Those who know aren’t talking…or are they?

The killing of three young men in this way is shocking, in its own right. But the deaths of the mother and child bring the horror to another place in the public mind. A local resident suggests that back in the day there were rules about these kinds of things. You didn’t touch women and children. But, says he, with the youth of today, there are no rules.

No rules. The PI listened to this story on the radio as he took Connie to school this AM. When he realized that he was, in fact, not alone, he immediately turned off the radio and asked what she thought of this. At first, she acted as if she hadn’t been listening, but eventually got around to, “Why did they have to kill the little baby?” The PI, of course, had no answer to this question, but did manage to mumble something like, “No vamos a saber hasta que se dan cuenta realmente que pasó.” This is a girl who doesn’t like to sleep with the window open on the hottest night of the year. How does she hear these stories?

According to the all-knowing Google Maps, the house at 40 Woolson Street is 8 minutes,by car, from the one that Connie lives in, and that’s taking the long way around on Morton Street. The Globe reports that one-third of the murders in the City of Boston this year have occurred in a tiny section of Mattapan that is not much bigger than the property that Fenway Park sits on near Kenmore Square. 40 Woolson Street sits right in the center of that section of town.

Pre-parenthood, it was easy for the PI to live in a certain kind of denial about this sort of violence in his adopted city. It happened to other people in other places. By staying out of certain situations, one could limit the chance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all, he made it through a civil war in El Salvador, didn’t he?

But now the danger has a different texture. He has a little girl that sits in the back seat and wonders. She then goes to school with other kids who live the reality of Woolson Street every day…and talk about it. He also lives with a 13-year-old boy who, resisting house arrest,  is spreading his wings and moving across an ever wider arc of this same city.  Denial, in this context, becomes more difficult.

The police promise arrests, and arrests there will probably be. But arresting two or three seriously damaged men will be a lot easier than arresting the deep social problems that continue to change so many rules.