.380 ACP

 We got a kid arrested today.

We spent the morning cleaning the lot behind us. The lot used to hold a club called the Jazz Club, which had gone out of business some years before we came around. 

I offered to buy it in the early days after we got here. "I'll never sell," the owner told me over the phone. Derrick Celestine knew him, and we called from where Derrick was working on his trucks at the old horse farm his aunt owned up on Willow and North St Antoine. 

Then one day I came back from doing Reserve duty and the club was gone, except for some rubble and a bare concrete slab. 

Homeless people had been breaking into the club, and I guess the city had enough and decided to bulldoze it. We applied to get it through a process called adjudication. The city stuck the previous owner with a $20,000 bill for the demolition, which he wasn't interested in paying.

When we sold the land where the Star Theater used to be to Habitat for Humanity so they could build houses, they parked a dumpster on the lot next to it where the Jazz Club used to be. 

Way at the back of the lot a lone, derelict blue Portalet had sat for years. We had seen it but never really done anything about it. Generations of drug users had used it to smoke or shoot up. 

When the new neighbors moved into the houses Habitat had built, they were concerned about the condition of the lot and the presence of the Portalet. The lot was overgrown, providing concealment for people trying to break into the houses. The Portalet was an attractive nuisance, still providing occasional shelter to the drug users.

We knew we needed to do something about the lot. Habitat called the police precinct Captain and asked for help. He offered to send a crew of inmates to clean up. 

We decided to cut down the overgrowth and pick up to set the stage for the inmates. Once we started working, I decided to see what I could do to tackle the Portalet.

The inside was horrific. Generations of drug-smoking implements made from bottles, cans, and plastic pens. The toilet itself was clogged with pound after pound of shit-soaked clothing. 

I pulled as much out as I could, using a piece of rebar to get the clothes out and into a few contractor bags. 

Then I called my buddy Chris, also a former soldier, to come help. We were able to get it on a dolly and wheel it toward the curb, where we chained it to a telephone pole.

So, feeling pretty good about the work we had done, Chau and I went back to the house we were working on to hang some door jambs. 

While we were doing that, we heard a single shot. I ran outside, to see the neighbors looking at the lot we had just cleaned. I saw some kids on bikes coming from behind the trees of the lot next to the cleaned lot. We knew these kids, having seen them rob a homeless person back in the winter. It was pretty clear one of them had a gun. 

The neighbors confirmed they had seen one of the kids when the shot went off. The kid pedaled off on his bike.

I called the cops. When the cops rolled up, we gave them a description. One of the neighbors showed them the footage from her webcam. 

About an hour later, a police car rolled up on us slowly while we walked back to our house with our tools. 

"We got him," the policeman said. He showed us the gun. 

"What caliber is that," I asked. 

".380 ACP"

I say kid because he's a juvenile. We don't know how long he'll be detained, if at all