The Park Street Under Blues

THEY HAVE THIS CONTEST at Dunkin' Donuts. Buy a coffee or a cruller and you get a small, rectangular card. Back in the car, coffee resting on the floor, scratch the little wax squares off the card with your thumbnail; some luck and you've won "Tic Tac Dough." On the back are the odds against winning--an even chance would require drinking something more than a million cups of coffee.

But who's saying a million cups is impossible? Every night--every morning, really--a young Boston Globe reporter climbs into a beat-up sedan and sets off from Morrissey Blvd., driving just driving, all over the city. Waiting for someone to get hopped up and shoot a friend, or angry and beat up a girlfriend, or tired of drinking coffee and rob a Seven Eleven. When it happens, someone calls on the walkie talkie to tell him, and he drives like hell, pulls out a notebook, makes sure the names are spelled right, and then turns it into a brief for the Metro section, or maybe, if it's something powerful, a story that could crack the front page.

Every night something happens. "It's the worst around five in the morning--that's when people take hostages, or shoot each other," the reporter says.

AND SO he cruises waiting for the squawk of the radio that would mean news, or tragedy, depending on your outlook. Dorchester, with its distinct line between the white and Black sections, is quiet. So too Brookline, and downtown Boston, where workers busily sweep up a day's worth of bakery wrappings from the Quincy Market plaza. In fact, it looks like it might be a bad night, real quiet.

But when it's hot, it's almost a guarantee--somewhere in Boston someone will snap. "City desk to Eddie Moran," the radio squawks around 2:30. "We have a sniper in the Old Westwood Apartments, Norwood--the place is crawling with cops." And he's off, travelling fast down the deserted Southeast Expressway towards Norwood. A few wrong turns, but still there in twenty minutes--just in time to see the policemen return to the station. The desk sergeant says come back tomorrow, no information available, still in booking process, details in the morning, can't help you. But two officers who had just been shot at watch the reporter as he comes out; "want a scoop?" they asked, "Get in the back."

They drive the reporter back to the scene of the crime, a wood-siding townhouse in a complex dotted with speedbumps. Turned out sniper wasn't quiet the word. A young man, upset that his girl was seeing another man, roared up to the door in his snub-nosed car, pulled out a rifle, and threatened to blow away not only the new boyfriend but the old girlfriend as well.

WHEN THE police arrived, they stood outside the door and identified themselves. Within seconds a figure came charging out the door--the new boyfriend. Behind him stood the man with the gun. "He started to raise it, and I got ready to squeeze one off. But my partner got in the way, and he squeezed one off instead." Added his partner, "All I could see was the barrel of that shotgun--looked this big." Obligingly, one points to the hole in the wall where the bullet hit. Then the gunman fled upstairs--a few minutes later they talked him down to the landing, then wrestled the rifle away from him. "Was the safety off?" "Yeah, turned out it was."

The photographer, travelling in a different car, arrives to take a few pictures, and then they roar off, back toward Boston. Just another assault, deadly weapon, except there's a good lead for the story. One of the policemen was celebrating his birthday that night. "I turned 33 this morning--and 38 tonight," he says. Great quote, it'll make the story.

The city is still asleep, but not for long. Dawn slowly works its way over the horizon, lighting up a two-car wreck in Rte. 2

* * * *

In the nighttime shadows next to the Park St. MBTA station, Roger paces up and down, peering into the dark beyond the yellow edge of the streetlight. He launches into his spiel as someone approaches, voice as quick and confident as the man who sells vegematics on UHF channels. "Spare a quarter, dime, nickel, anything?" he asks; depending on the audience, the end of his pitch differs. If it is an older person, Roger needs a bath, some food, and he surely does. When young people pass, Roger explains with perfect frankness that all he lacks is a few cents so he can get high, which he surely needs as well.

Experimentation, trial and error, mean as much to Roger as to any rats and pigeon man. Experience shows that young men out for the evening with their girlfriends present the best targets. If they want to impress with their sensitivity, they will hand over some change, or even a bill. And if they've had a little much to drink, if they want to impress with their meanness, often their companion will talk them out of it.

ROGER LIVES IN Boston Common, and, as he will tell you, it's not everyone who has musicians and roller skaters and pigeons and sunbathers in his house. And, as he will tell you, but only if you ask, it's not everyone who gets to spend their nights on a park bench, awakened three or four times each night by the Boston Police, bothered by kids who won't let him enjoy his high in peace, who want to steal his dope or just jabber with him because they're still soaring.

Paths dissect Boston Common; at the widest point on any trail, you're maybe 20 yards from another of the walkways. But only a few are wide enough to accomodate a police car, and these are far less populated than the others, for the police do not like people gathering in their park. "You should have been here five minutes ago," one young man tells two others as they stroll up the path to his bench. "Motherfuckin cops took a case of beer off me, and all I got was one can." An hour later, with a replenished supply of beer, they sit on a bench, talking and drinking. The police return and tell them to move on, and to leave the beer behind, and so they walk across the Common to another shadow, find some more beer, and resume.

* * * *

An old man waits at the Boylston St. Green Line stop, leaning back on the bench. Everyone else looks down the tracks toward Brookline, waiting for the trolley so they'll make the last subway out of Park St. But the old man seems less interested in catching the train than in catching some sleep--perhaps the bottle at his feet...

Past 10 p.m. on the Boston subways the people divide into two groups. Most of the people are going somewhere, and the rest are not. Those who have a destination, usually home, travel in pairs, and the alcohol in their blood makes them sparkle. Those going no place are alone, and the alcohol in their stomachs makes them weary.

There are transitional cases, and most of them ride the Blue Line. They are going home, but from Wonderland or Suffolk Downs, and the older ones are beginning to look, well, sad. They leave before the last race at the dog track and walk out across the vast parking lot, clutching their superfecta tickets. Someone catches the finale and dashes out, just making the train. And though the men would rather go home not knowing, they always overhear. They had the 4-3-7-1, and wouldn't you know it, they came in 4-3-1-7, and the tickets are ripped in half and thrown on the floor.

Three stops up the track at Suffolk Downs, its the same scene, but not as bad. The men are younger, better dressed. You've sunk pretty low when you spend every night with the puppies.

THE OLD MEN who spend every night in the stations were hard hit by last week's T fare increase, not because they have to pay a quarter more, since most of them, when they leave, come back in through the exits. But because there are fewer people with spare change now that everyone has 50-cent tokens. The recession began for these men five years ago when street musicians started playing in the stations, and commuters began demanding songs from the pandhandlers. Seems you need a skill for everything nowadays.

The last train leaves Park St. a little before one, and three or four men remain standing on the platform.