Tom Schreck - Out Cold

"Them," Karl said, softer than his usual voice. "Them, what's their story?" He pointed with a nod of the head. In that direction was a group of kids dressed in black, with the requisite black boots, dyed black hair and dark tattoos.

"C'mon, fellas. Those are the resident Goths. They're the wannabe angry teens trying to make a statement by being different-all of them being exactly the same different at the same time," Jamal said.

"Duff, I got a feeling." Karl turned toward Jamal. "You remember Chipper Newstrom. He was the quarterback on my VHS team?"

"Yeah, sure. He could play a little ball. It's weird you bring him up because I-"

"He was here wasn't he?" Karl broke in.

"Yeah. I saw him in the parking lot before class. How did you know?"

Karl looked up at me. So did Jamal.

"Holy shit." It was all I could think of saying.

We followed the kids in black after school. Eight of them and they smoked cigarettes behind the bowling alley, five blocks from McDonough. We sat in the El Dorado, two blocks away, watching the area they disappeared into through the woods and broken-down cement half wall that used to be part of a garage years ago. After 45 minutes, three of them came out, and looked like they were headed home. They laughed and walked like any other kids, except they all dressed in black and all had the same tattoos on their forearms. The one in the middle had another tattoo on the back of his neck.

"Karl, how long are we going to sit here?" I said after another 45 minutes of watching kids through the trees and bushes.

"I don't know, but it feels like we've got to do something," he said.

"So far the most nefarious thing we got them doing is smoking cigarettes. You want to call Richie and Potsy and tell their moms?"

"Either Newstrom has intervened already or he's still working on them. This thing could be going down tomorrow."

"Or never," I said, starting to feel pretty stupid. Fifteen more minutes went by without us talking. It was getting darker. I didn't see the use of waiting around much longer.

"Karl, I can't just sit here, it makes me nuts. I'm going to visit our friends in black."

"Duff, I don't think that's a good idea. They could be dangerous."

"Yeah, well, sitting around in a car listening to the two of us breathe is dangerous to my mental health." I opened the door and headed to the brushy area behind the bowling alley. I heard Karl's door open and close a few seconds behind me and his running footsteps as he caught up with me.

"What are we going to do when we get there?"

"They're scrawny kids. What are they going to do? Pop a zit on us or something? We're adults and they'll be scared of us because they'll think they're about to get in trouble." We got to the edge of the bowling alley. I looked at Karl. He raised his eyebrows as if to say 'What the hell?' I nodded as a signal to go.

We walked around the corner, stepped over an overgrown hedge, and looked into a cleared circle with empty beer cans, cigarettes, milk crates, a tire, and an old bike frame. There were no kids there. It looked like every kid's spot for bush drinking I had ever seen.

Karl walked ahead of me looking around.

"They went out this way." Karl pointed to a hole in the fence that went to the back of the bowling alley. He bent over and picked something up.

"Duff, you better see this."

I walked over and looked at Karl's find.

"Those are shell casings to a high powered assault weapon. They're similar to the ones I used. Newstrom would have access to them. He's been training them and he's equipped them."

"How do we know it's not kids screwing around and this is their clubhouse type of thing? Maybe there is nothing more serious than target practice going on."

"BB gun, slingshots, CO2 pistols are one thing, Duff. These are high-powered assault weapons. Where would McDonough kids get them?"

I didn't have a plausible explanation for any of it and I knew it. It felt like something awful was about to happen and I didn't have a clue what to do about it. I decided to call Jamal and tell him what we had found.

"Duff, I'm at practice. Can't this wait?" he said after picking up his cell phone. I told him I didn't believe it could wait and asked him for some of the kid's names. He told me the ringleader, if you could call him a leader, was Andy Katzman, and his two best friends were Michael Corona and Eddie Stain. He didn't know their exact addresses, but said they lived north of Jefferson Hill on the west side of the city.

"Hey, Duff, what makes you so sure they're going to do something?"

"Sometimes you get a feeling, Jamal."

"How have your instincts been serving you lately?" I didn't have a good answer and hung up. Next I called Kelley and begged him to come see what Karl and I had found by the bowling alley. He wasn't pleased, but agreed to meet us there in a half an hour. In the meantime Karl and I went the six blocks over to the public library to look up the kids' addresses. We found three addresses for kids with the names Jamal gave us in the West Jefferson neighborhood.

We got back to the bowling alley and saw Kelley had beaten us there. His cruiser, parked like any other car in the lot, idling like he was taking a break.

"You got something to show me?" Kelley sounded just a tad more impatience than usual.

"Follow us," I said. The three of us walked back to the area behind the bowling alley.

"We found some shell casings to some serious assault weaponry. This isn't kid stuff," Karl said. We got to the back of the bowling alley, each of us swinging our legs over the half wall. In silence, the three of us walked to the center area where Karl and I had been about half an hour ago.

"They're not here. They were here just a minute ago. Somebody must've come and scooped them up to cover their tracks," I said.

Kelley just looked at me for a minute. Then he put his head down and kind of gently kicked the gravel. He looked up at me again.

"He's not crazy, Officer," Karl said. "I saw them myself. They were from a military issue."

Kelley kind of squinted at Karl; then he looked at me, and he put his head down again. He sniffed a little bit, looked up at me again, and then exhaled hard. It looked like he tried to say something, but he couldn't find the right words. Then he started to walk away.

"C'mon Kell, I'm not nuts, I swear to God I'm not nuts." He kept walking and didn't slow up.

Back at the Blue it was time to make a plan. Everyone who knew me at all thought I was crazy. I knew Karl was crazy and Karl called himself crazy. I don't know if we made the foundation of a real strong think tank. Fortunately, we had a Black Muslim basset hound to help us-though his arch enemies appeared to be the sparrows.

"Karl, if we're going to go through with this, we have to at least get some handle on what Newstrom and his high school buddies are going to do and when," I said. I paced back and forth in front of the couch where Karl sat with Al's head on his lap.

"Yeah, that's kind of the tough part," Karl said.

"Let's break down what we know. Let me think out loud and you fill in the gaps," I said. Karl sat up with his elbows on his knees. Al let out a heavy exhale and spun around on the couch three times.

"Go Duff," Karl said.

"Alright, what's Newstrom's goal? Money, right?"

"It's only part money. The rest is power and control."

"Okay, what are his resources? He must have the backing of someone or some group."

"His resources are almost endless. He's literally got billions of dollars at his disposal."

"What are our resources?" The room got quiet as we looked at each other and Al. "Okay, let's not focus on our resources too much." I chewed the end of my thumb because that's what guys in movies did when they thought deep thoughts. I was no Brad Pitt.