Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- Fiction; Police -- Fiction; Science fiction, American
The announcer's voice came on, "... ning up, he's fuming. Doak is
holding Sterrett back. What a beef! Brutaugh's got his nose not two
inches from Frascoli's face, and Brother! is he letting him have it. Oh!
Oh! Here comes Gilbert off the mound; he's stalking over. When Gil puts
up a holler, you know he thinks it's a good one. Brutaugh keeps pointing
at the foul line--you can see from here the chalk's been wiped
away--he's insisting the runner slid out of the base path. Frascoli's
walking away, but Danny's going right aft ..." The controller turned the
volume down again.
The lights on the deAngelis board kept flickering, but by 3:37 all but
two had gone out, one by one. These two showed readings in the high
sixties; one flared briefly to 78.2 then went out. Brutaugh was no
longer in the ball game. By 3:41 only one light still glowed, and it was
steadily fading.
Throughout the long, hot, humid afternoon the board held its reddish,
irritated overtones, and occasional readings flashed in and out of the
seventies. At four o'clock the new duty section came on; the deAngelis
operator, whose name was Chuck Matesic, was replaced by an operator
named Charlie Blaney.
"Nothing to report," Chuck told Charlie. "Rhubarb down at the point at
the Forbes Municipal Field, but that's about all."
The new operator scarcely glanced at the mottled board, it was that kind
of a day. He noted an occasional high in his log book, but most signals
were ignored. At 5:14 he noted a severe reading of 87 which stayed on
the board; at 5:16 another light came on, climbed slowly through the
sixties, then soared to 77 where it held steady. Neither light was an
honest red, their angry overtones chased each other rapidly.
The deAngelis operator called over to the audio controller, "Got us a
case of crinkle fender, I think."
"Where?" the controller asked.
"Can't tell yet," Blaney said. "A hot-head and a citizen with righteous
indignation. They're clear enough, but not too sharp." He swiveled in
his chair and adjusted knobs before a large circular screen. Pale
streaks of light glowed briefly as the sweep passed over them. There
were milky dots everywhere. A soft light in the lower left hand corner
of the screen cut an uncertain path across the grid, and two
indeterminate splotches in the upper half of the scope flared out to the
margin.
"Morningside," the operator said.
The splashes of light separated; one moved quickly off the screen, the
other held stationary for several minutes, then contracted and began a
steady, jagged advance toward the center of the grid. One inch down,
half an inch over, two inches down, then four inches on a diagonal line.
"Like I said," said Blaney. "An accident."
Eight minutes later, at 5:32, a slightly pompous and thoroughly outraged
young salesman marched through the doors of the station house and over
to the desk sergeant.
"Some clown just hit me ..." he began.
"With his fist?" asked the sergeant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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