Still with me? How the hell would I know if you’re not, eh?

So.

I’m getting hungry. Popcorn’s not very filling. Maybe I’ll make some pasta.

So at this point I called the cops. I gave them the deets, they said they’d gotten another call from someone here, I described the 5’5″ or so Caucasian male in his twenties, but weathered-looking, thin, very DTES, “you know, he looked like a junkie” wearing a hooded jacket with the hood up and a backpack. There was reflective stuff somewhere about the jacket or backpack, I don’t know which, but it was pretty unmissable.

Hey, that subcutaneous cyst I just had lanced isn’t gone yet; there’s a wart or something there for sure, and something under the surface of the skin as well. I should go back and get it fixed up properly. I can’t hold a pen with this thing on my hand.

So it turns out the buzzer is not working, as per usual, so they call back and I trot out and let them in. They’re keeping their voices down but I blithely babble away and of course it doesn’t occur to me until now but they weren’t trying not to wake up the neighbors, but trying not to let the perp know where they were. And they were, according to the dispatcher, EVERYWHERE, completely surrounding the block. Say what you will about them, when they do come out for something on the DTES, they come out in force. I think they’re terrified of the Chinatown Business Association.

So, in they come, three of them: one at the gate to presumably let the SWAT team, a tall, lantern-jawed (what does that actually mean? Does anyone even know? but it’s always in the descriptions of these kinds of guys) uniformed dude with the most gorgeous German Shepherd I’ve ever seen, and a shorter, stockier plainclothes dude dressed much like the perp in this case, although I’m sure he’s not chubby, just bulletproof vest-wearing.

They review what I already told the dispatcher, and they look at the ladder and are greatly relieved I didn’t touch it, although I did think about it. Since the guy was out of the apartment, there didn’t seem to be any point taking the ladder down, and besides, where would I put it. So I am sure that’s where they had the dog take her scent from, although you could tell she knew already, she went straight over to the patio door. Perhaps junkies have a unique smell and she’s been around so long she knows it’s ALWAYS the junkie-smelling one who’s the perp?

You know, maybe “she” was a he, although I don’t think so. The dog was momentarily distracted by the potted plants…but then, maybe the junkie had peed on them or something.

They wanted to go down to the parking garage, but I don’t have the key thingy that gets you down there, so they took the stairs instead. I phoned the manager’s answering machine and left a message asking for one of the key thingies, because this is twice in four days I could have used it for the nice uniformed gentlemen.

I don’t think they have many policewomen and the ones they do have generally seem to work days.

In any case, once they went off to the stairwell there was nothing for me to do but say “If you need me I’m right in here” and (thanks for the reminder, max) make sure they’ve got my cell number.

Perhaps three-quarters of an hour later (enough time to do all the stairwells and the parking garages, both of them) as I was standing out on the patio scanning the sides of the building for robes ropes, sorry, Harry Potter moment, he’s just entering the C of S now and Lockhart is snoozing quietly, I heard a knocking upon my door.

It was them. It was they? It was cops.

No joy. They asked again about ways down to the South parkade, and again I had to say that I couldn’t take them down there, and then they left.

fin