— I still can’t log on. Hold me down going in for a new PDT.
— One-three-three-five, please call me in the sergeant’s office.
The Holy Grail of the police scanner hobbyist.
— Can I get a female for a search?
A Zero-Zero Day.
— Twenty-one-ten.
— Twenty-one-ten, go ahead.
— Anyone know of a Dominick’s near Paulina and Ogden with a Western Union [unintelligible] currency exchange?
Last year there had been over 600 homicides and more than 3,000 “aggravated batteries by firearm” within the city limits. The last time Chicago had a Zero-Zero Day, a twenty-four-hour period, midnight to midnight, with no murders and no shootings, was 1999, and as far as Kimball knew there were no witnesses then. No ears listening in on the scanner with an appreciation of the event as it occurred. No one anticipating the countdown to midnight the way he and dozens like him were doing just now.
— Yeah, uh, we were following a youth on a bike that fits the description of a suspect [unintelligible]. We have him on the hood.
— Twenty-one-ten, is that a negative on the Dominick’s?
In the middle of the Formica-topped table, on the other side of Kimball’s oatmeal but still at arm’s length, was an approximation of a laptop Kimball had Frankensteined from computers so obsolete that cash-strapped schools wouldn’t even accept them as donations. Scanning enthusiasts from across the country were instant messaging with Chicago hobbyists demanding the latest news on the lack of news, and the conversation scrolled up the screen with the speed of a stock ticker. Curiously, cops and dispatchers weren’t even acknowledging the feat over their radios. Maybe they were afraid of jinxing it. Maybe the different shifts and the different districts had no way of comparing notes in real time. Maybe they wouldn’t have any idea what had happened until the CPD command staff had their briefing in the morning. It was funny to think the scanning community shared real-time intelligence better than the Chicago PD. That notion made Kimball chuckle. He spat wet cinnamon and oatmeal onto a small auburn oval of mustache and goatee, then rubbed his face with a moistened washcloth he kept on hand for mealtime grooming.
— I just on-viewed a traffic accident at 95th and Pulaski.Hold me down over here and dispatch EMS for me, please, squad.
— [Unintelligible] medic [unintelligible] contact the station.
— Ten-four. Let me know if you need any more help over there.
His phone rang, a lovely clapper-and-drum trill. He allowed those awful digital tones neither in his home nor in his shop, where the synthetic tweeting might go on for minutes, unnoticed and unanswered under the din of labor, static, and police dispatcher conversation.
“Hullo?”
“Dent!” It was Jen Colino. In the background, her own scanner, an expensive Radio Shack Pro-96, belched in harmony with the homemade one in Kimball’s kitchen. “Amazing, huh? Amazing! Do you think it will hold up?”
“Dunno,” Kimball said, now wondering if the cops weren’t right to observe a superstitious moratorium on discussion of the Zero-Zero in progress. “We’ll know in an hour.”
“Wanna come over for the finish? I’ll open a bottle of champagne at midnight. Like New Year’s.”
Kimball sighed. He didn’t have a girlfriend, hadn’t for a long time, and Jen Colino was the only woman availing herself to him currently. They had plenty in common. She was a scanner-head. She was sweet and kind of pretty, maybe a little fleshy around the face and under the arms, but no more than he was. Jen was plenty attractive enough, was his point. But if they became a couple she would be over every night. She would make chicken and they’d track the scanner together but she would want to talk. Constantly. Over the dispatchers. Over the cops. Over the paramedics. Although nearly every one of his friends was, like Jen, a member of the All Chicago Scanner Club, Kimball believed his hobby was a solitary pursuit, and he wasn’t ready to give up his bachelor benefits for a warm body on the couch just yet. “No, I don’t think so,” he said to Jen now. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
All his life Kimball had chosen paths he could walk by himself. Maybe his parents imprinted that on him when they made him an only child. When he was a boy he loved jigsaw puzzles, and from there it was a small step to taking apart radios and fitting the pieces back together. He liked keeping his own schedule. Answering to no one but his customers, who were in and out of his shop as quickly as it took them to set a television on his counter and get an estimate. The people he felt closest to, the dispatchers he knew by name and the cops he recognized by beat tags, didn’t even know he existed.
Kimball cupped his right hand at his temple and leaned against the kitchen window, peering down at a refrigerated truck idling at the four-way stop below. With his eyes he could follow Grand Avenue east all the way to downtown but Racine only as far south as the Metra tracks on the other side of Hubbard. The Italian joint across the street was playing host to its Monday night lasagna regulars and a fleet of Caddies and Lincolns were squeezed into the angled parking spaces in the tiny lot. Along with the bakery and butcher and the storefront men’s club down the street, Salerno’s was one of the last landmarks of the old neighborhood. There was still an Italian for every yuppie on this thin sliver between the expressway and the meatpacking district, but you couldn’t really call it an Italian neighborhood anymore, not like the Polish and Korean blocks up Northwest where hardly anyone spoke English and you had to check with your waiter twice before you put a spoonful of anything in your mouth. There were still a handful of aging or wannabe wiseguys about. A few of them passed the hot days in lawn chairs on the sidewalk in front of the bakery, telling tales of the great Italian migration of the ‘50s, from Cabrini Green up Grand all the way to Harlem. But in the condo sales brochures and restaurant listings, this neighborhood was River West now, a name as stripped of ethnicity as the realtors could manage.
“I could come over there,” Jen offered.
“That’s okay,” Kimball said. “I mean, I’m kind of tired. I’m going to bed right after midnight.” He added, “Or sooner, if somebody gets capped.”
“Oh. Okay.” The disappointed silence was interrupted briefly by a unit responding to an alarm at a Clybourn clothing boutique and then continued for thirty seconds or more, as Kimball lingered with one ear pressed against the phone receiver and the other listening for the dispatcher.
Then, the buzzer rang downstairs.
“Someone’s at the door, Jen. I gotta go.”
“Who would be coming over at this hour?”
Her words were armed with jealousy and Kimball wanted to defuse them. “Could be a customer,” he said.
“You shouldn’t answer. You’ll miss the Zero-Zero.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Call me.”
Kimball hung up the phone and walked to the intercom, smudged with greasy fingerprints, next to the apartment door. With some frequency, folks from the neighborhood brought their televisions to Kimball’s apartment after-hours. It most often happened on nights of Bulls playoff games. A desperate basketball fan might arrive at his doorstep, TV set cradled in his arms like a sick baby. Kimball tolerated such visits and even encouraged them. His services might not be needed much anymore in the era of disposable electronics, but they valued his skills when appliance stores were closed for the night.