DUM DUM Zine would like to welcome back Justin Maurer for the second serialization of “Little Armenian Prowler” (read Pt. 1 here!). You may remember work from our past serials featuring Jessica Garrison’s One Dollar Stories, and more recently, Kristen Felicetti’s radio play, “The New York Crimes.”
I began to look at everyone in my neighborhood as if they were the suspect. Was it the six foot tall white guy? Or was it a teenage Mexican kid? Was it a slow walking Filipino guy with a moustache and a limp? Was it one of the homeless black guys? Was it a young Armenian man wearing Adidas? Was it one of the Thai delivery boys, coming back to peep in the window after he delivered food? Was it a mentally deranged Hollywood street person? Was it one of our neighbors we knew? Everyone was a suspect and through dark sunglasses I surveyed the street and took note of all of the faces. There were too many faces and too many people were weird and erratic and it could have been any of them.
At night if I heard a noise I’d throw the side door open and charge out with a baseball bat in my boxer shorts. I never saw anyone. My fishing line got broken but I wasn’t certain if it was the prowler who broke it.
We almost forgot about the whole thing and a couple of months later I was backing her car out. We were going somewhere and were arguing as usual. She was telling me not to scratch her car. I was annoyed as hell. From around the back of the apartments I saw a guy walking out I didn’t recognize. I pointed at him.
“Who’s he,” I said. ”Follow him!”
My girl followed him down the driveway and asked if he was visiting anyone.
“None of your business,” he growled.
“It is my business, I live here,” she said.
“I’m a tenant,” the stranger lied.
He matched Jorge’s description, white guy, 6 feet tall, normal looking.
We followed him slowly down the block in the car. He flipped us off.
“That’s it,” I said and jumped out of the car. I started chasing the guy. He had a white mini van parked on Sunset next to the El Pollo Loco.
He got into the driver’s seat and closed the door. I motioned for him to roll down the window. He fired up the mini van and drove down Sunset Blvd. without looking at me.
“Son of a bitch,” I said to no one in particular.
I memorized his white mini-van’s license plate number. Then I repeated it aloud so many times that I was certain I got it wrong. I had my girlfriend call the Hollywood Police Bureau. She got the answering machine. She called again and put a cop on speaker phone. He had a condescending tone as L.A. cops always do.
“You should have called 911,” the cop said. He sounded like a black cop, despondent that he had to work the phone shift instead of catching bad guys. You could tell he was an actual cop because he spoke the cop language, cop-ese.
“Sir, you could have been in danger. We could have called a helicopter and apprehended the perpetrator.”
“A helicopter,” I mouthed the word helicopter to my girlfriend without making any noise. She covered her mouth so the cop on speaker phone wouldn’t hear her laughing.
“Well, okay, but we’re calling you now, is it okay if we report the guy and give you his license plate number, I asked.
“Sir, again I would like to reiterate. You could have been in danger and you should have called 911 immediately. For all we know he could have been in police custody and we wouldn’t have to have this conversation.”
“Do you want the license plate number,” I asked again, out of frustration.
“Go ahead and give me the plate number, but be mindful that there is a very low chance we can find him at this given time because you didn’t dial 911 immediately.”
I gave the cop the license plate number, said thank you then hung up.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. Then we got rear-ended by some Latina party girls wearing hair extensions and high heels. There wasn’t any damage besides a scratch so we didn’t bother to call the insurance people and certainly not LAPD. They’d tell us we should have called 911 so that they could get a helicopter to see if anyone was fleeing the scene of the accident. Then they could radio a squad car and they could open fire on the perpetrator and then unleash a canine on the victim to bite him as he lay bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds. True story. I didn’t make that up. They did that to somebody.
Justin Maurer was born in Los Angeles but came of age in the Pacific Northwest. He has written 2 chapbooks and 3 novels. He plays in punk bands like Clorox Girls, Red Dons, Suspect Parts, LA Drugz and Maniac. He sells thingies to dentists. He likes his peanut butter crunchy. See more of his writing and music here.