Sidewalk Tiger

The second installment of a short noir story.

by Duane Swierczynski

Editor's note: This is the second installment of a short noir story.
Part 1, "Predator in the Gutter."

The tiger had the same expression as the one in the gutter. Same beady eyes.

Same T-shirt: FEELIN' GRRRRREAT!

Right in the middle of the ruined memorial for a dead kid.

These kinds of memorials are all over the city. After a while, you tune them out. It'd depress you to think about all of them.

But now, after seeing that second tiger, I started to pay attention.

It was too much of a coincidence.

I took the El a few stops down to K&A, where I found two memorials. Then back on the El to West Philly, where I wandered around until I found three more. And finally to Southwest Philly, where I came across another two. All of them children, cut down by cars or bullets, presumably.

Out of the half-dozen, three of them had the same tiger, posed right in the middle of the display.

At home I opened another can of beer I wouldn't drink and sat in my superheated apartment and called my lawyer. Asked him if he knew anything about stuffed tigers being found at the scenes of homicides.

"Are you joking?"

I assured him I wasn't.

I told him what I'd seen so far: stuffed tigers in the middle of four sidewalk memorials.

So? he asked.

Then I told him about the guy who was shot outside my apartment a few days ago. The victim, according to the daily paper, was linked to the shooting of a 6-year-old boy just a few blocks away.

And there was an identical stuffed tiger in the gutter, next to his body.

"Somebody's leaving a message," I said. "Anybody who hurts children in this city has to pay."

"Aren't you reading into things a bit?" my lawyer said. "You really need to ... "

I told him I needed to know. Would he ask? He had friends on the force.

My lawyer said he'd see what he could do.

I tried to find the store next. If I could find the store that made these things, maybe I could get a fix on who was buying them in bulk.

I made a bunch of calls and learned that the usual chain toy stores and big boxes didn't carry them. I should have known. The tiger had a distinct discount/dollar store vibe to it. It wasn't based on a TV series or a movie or anything else commercial. It was just a toy. Something cheap, sewn together in Indonesia, imported by the thousands.

I went back to the memorial down the street and checked for a tag on the tiger's T-shirt. Couple of guys passing by with 40s in their hands taunted me. I ignored them.

There was no tag.

Was this something you won at the shore? Bought in a tourist shop?

My wife might know. If she would speak to me.

I sat in my cheap hotbox apartment and dialed the most familiar number I knew. Our old number.

The machine picked up. I left her a message, wondering if she was sitting across the room, at our old kitchen table, listening.

I opened another beer. It sat on my counter while the sun went down and the El rumbled by more times than I could count.

The phone rang.

It was my lawyer. I let the machine answer. I didn't want to talk.

"Are you there?" he asked. "I got a funny reaction when I started asking about stuffed tigers. They wanted to know why I was asking. Then it occurred to me that I had no idea, which is why I'm calling you. Is there something I should ... "

I turned off the machine.

I knew where I had to go next. The dread had been building up in my stomach all day. Why couldn't my lawyer have waited until tomorrow to call? Why tonight?

I had one last makeshift memorial to visit, just to be sure.

My daughter's.

Up at Roosevelt and Grant.

Next week: Let Us Prey.