Read Drink & Be Merry

A week has passed since the body of a man turned up in the unlicensed rooming house across the street. Beyond the initial reports of the body having been there for several days prior to ‘discovery’ this is what we have learned so far:

a) The dead 44-year-old didn’t live there.

b) The person who occupied that room and didn’t ‘notice’ the dead body for several days has not been around lately. Speculation among the neighbours is that the body expired elsewhere and was brought to the house.

c) The owners have actually paid the water bill for two months in a row and they currently have running water (it’s been cut off twice this year alone – I guess the owners payment on their brand new Mercedes is more important…).

d) The police, having spoken to people claiming to be residents instead of the actual residents, actually have the death listed as a ‘pending matter’. Considering the house cleaning prior to their arrival I doubt there was any evidence left and they don’t seem to be treating this very seriously. Let’s keep the murder rate down through creative record keeping.

New developments for the house include a return of most, but not all, of the normal residents. Drug activity, which was down over the weekend is starting to pick up again. Oh, and a new city agency has them in their sites.

Yep, we’ve city building and zoning inspectors sniffing around. Normally that makes all of us residents nervous as most of our houses are in various stages of renovation (yes, rain gutters are on my list but I’ve got other things to do first…) but they are all interested in the ‘house across the street’. I don’t know what got them started. It may have been my multiple phone calls over the years. It wasn’t the body (they didn’t know) and it certainly wasn’t Councilwoman Ellen Robertson (who only gets really involved with the community just prior to an election – she comes by our house each election cycle, I complain to her about the rooming house, she says she’ll look into it, nothing happens.).

Whatever it was the city inspector is pissed. There never seems to be anyone home (he should sit in the middle of the street and honk his horn like all their other visitors/customers) and he can’t get in. He says he knows it’s a rooming house but they don’t have the permits for it and it lost it’s ‘grandfather’ status due to a re-zoning (single-family homes only) of the neighbourhood which went into effect when the house last sold in 2004. The inspector has vowed to shut them down. Of all the people in life I do not want to have annoyed at me it’s a city building inspector.

It’s kind of sad. The police have allowed a known drug house to continue operating for years and look to be more interested in managing the ‘numbers’ of the murder rate rather than investigating a very suspicious death. No, instead the most dangerous house on the block will not be shut down by the men in blue but instead by a bureaucrat enforcing regulations. Who needs detectives and forensics when you can just be caught by the red tape.

If I felt the need to deal drugs I would be very low-key about it. When engaging in activities that law enforcement agencies frown upon it is wise to keep a low profile. The neighbours in the unlicensed rooming house across the street seem to have missed this little nugget of advice. I doubt anyone on the block would care one way or another what they were up to if they kept it quiet. Instead we have heavy traffic stopping in front of their house, blasting horns at all hours, questionable individuals standing in their front yard yelling or throwing rocks at windows for attention (obviously none of these people have heard of doorbells or cell phones…).

The number of phones calls made by me and others to 911, the 4th precinct, and various other government agencies has reached the point to make the house a big red blob on any of the local crime maps. So it was no surprise that I was met with boredom or more correctly – ‘What have they done now?’ – when I called several numbers last night.

Sitting in my kitchen last night I watched as the same green Explorer kept driving down the block. Sometimes it would stop, sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes someone would yell something from the front porch, sometimes someone would run out to the car for a quick chat. Usually when someone runs out to a car you can see a quick pass of cash and small bags. Tonight it was only words that were being passed. Watching closer I noticed small bags and cases being brought out, regular tenants getting into their cars and driving off and many new people arriving. A lot of new people. People we had not seen before.

My calls to the police seemed to produce nothing except a couple of new numbers for me to call during business hours so I was a little surprised a half hour later when I noticed flashing lights in front of our house. Fire Trucks, EMS, police cars. Finn was very excited, I was curious. Something was going down. The evening progressed, we tried to watch Top Chef but kept getting pulled away as something new arrived or left outside (Thankfully we have a DVR and were recording the show). Then there was a knock at our back door…

M had been IM’ing our neighbour, S, and he had snuck around back to come over to our house with news and in hopes of a better view of the house across the street. Seems they had a body in the house. Seems the body had been there for a few days. Seems the police had been scammed….

The police had been told that no one had noticed the body (or the smell). Problem with that is the body was in a room belonging to someone else and he had been around all week. Personally, I would notice a dead body in the room with me, but I could be wrong. So the body was moved in the house or from somewhere else. Prior to the arrival of the police the house was ‘cleaned’, both literally and figuratively. What do you think was in all the bags and cases removed in the hours leading up to the ‘discovery’ of the body? The people the police questioned about the body were not residents (We’ve secretly replaced your paroled and wanted tenants with people having fewer legal issues…) but purported to be – all the real residents left earlier.

One can also not underestimate the stupidity of your average drug addict. You would think he would notice all the police cars parked on the street when he drove up, he didn’t. As he stopped and blasted his horn, waiting for someone to run out with his fix, I can only imagine the look on his face as the officers turned to look at him.

Slowly things began to quiet down. The police and EMS left. Scott’s Funeral Home’s hearse arrived. The body was manhandled down the stairs (rather roughly I might add) and whisked away. Don’t know the guys name. Probably never will. I find it a bit sad that the closest he may come to being remembered is right here on my blog. Hopefully he has some family or friends somewhere that will remember him better than this.

The new people at the house will hang out there for a couple of days. The regulars will trickle back and business will resume. And I will still hate my neighbours.