Neighborhood Shitshow Continues...

So, a while back we had some issues with the house directly behind us, which we were beginning to suspect was actually being used as a chop shop.

We eventually decided that that wasn't what was going on. Unfortunately, we're still not quite clear on what actually is going on. Whoever is living there is clearly a hot mess (and not in any sort of good or exciting way), and at one point a whole bunch of people - probably extended family - showed up and hauled a whole lot of trash out of the house. (And basically piled it by the alley in a way that essentially guaranteed that the city wouldn't pick it up.) Since then, various of the extended family have been there at various time, including a few more cars that seemed to be on their last legs. (Yes, I wound up helping a teenager/early twenties guy push the car with no transmission around to the front of his house, and yes of course it was that same house.)

So on Sunday morning Beautiful Wife and I took a walk, and went by the front of the house. There are two cars (both in pretty bad shape) parked out front. (This is pretty typical.)

In more or less a straight line from the cars to the front door, we found:
-An unopened bottle of Michelob
-A cell phone

How drunk do you have to be to manage that? (Don't answer that. It's rhetorical.)

I took the items up to the door and knocked, but nobody answered and I couldn't hear anybody moving around. Oh, and also? The front of the house has acquired two new broken windows, which have been covered over with cardboard from the inside. Plus, there's one of those realtor's boxes, the kind that holds a housekey and requires a combination to open it, clipped around the door knob. These people are a grade-A mess.

So I tucked both items between the wooden main door and glass door, and we went on with our walk.

Which really should have been the end of it: just another entry in the growing catalogue of oddities and mild unpleasantness associated with that house and its current occupants, whoever they actually are.

But... no.

At dinner time we were interrupted by the sound of screaming. Long, loud, repeated screaming. It sounded, I swear to god, like someone was in the process of being beaten to death. So I went outside to see what was going on, and of course it's coming from that house. Only I can see along the side of the house to where an ambulance is parked in front of it. The flashing lights are hard to miss.

So I give up and walk around the corner.

The screaming is coming from a young woman who's with a handful of other people on the front lawn. An ambulance and a fire truck are blocking the street in front of the house, and after a minute I spot a police car as well, kind of wedged in between two other cars.

I shake my head, go back inside, and eat. But of course, things are still going on out there, so after a few minutes Beautiful Wife and I go back out there. There are now more people on the lawn and sidewalk, and from the way they keep moving around each other I'm not sure whether this is about to be a family reunion or a minor riot. Nobody starts anything, though, and every so often one of the family demands to know if somebody is going to be okay. The firefighters say reassuring-but-non-committal things; the EMTs are still busy inside. I must not have been the only one concerned about a fight, because two more police cars show up and all four new officers head inside for a look, then come back to stand with the crowd on the lawn.

Eventually they wheel in a stretcher, and a bit after that they wheel somebody back out on the stretcher and put them in the ambulance. One or two of the family members hop into the ambulance, and off they go. More family members arrive. The EMTs start bringing their equipment back out to the fire truck. Another family member arrives, and there are shouted accusations, recriminations, objections.

Finally it starts raining, and the whole crew files into the house while the last of the emergency personnel leave.

I'm going to have to get in touch with the local emergency services and get somebody to provide a copy of the actual report on this, because I am baffled by the whole situation. Best guess? The old guy who I'm pretty sure is living there gave himself a near-fatal case of alcohol poisoning, was found by family members, and is now in the hospital. But that's only a guess. All I'm certain of is that whatever is/was going on over there is messy and horrible.

Well... Probably not car thieves

So on Saturday an actual moving van arrived. And the same guy was there, and was definitely directing the movers, and with a bit less familiarity than he'd shown with the the tow-truck driver. And at this point, the covered car in the driveway is no longer covered.

So I'm forced to assume (contingently, and also grudgingly) that he's actually just a guy moving into a house, albeit in the weirdest way possible.

I still feel like there's something going on, but now I'm wondering it's much more sordid and mundane than what we'd originally suspected: divorce, maybe, with the husband moving into the former-couple's rental house? Or maybe it's just like I said, and he's just some guy moving into a house in the weirdest and most suspicious way possible.

Regardless, he seems like a decent guy so far.

Pretty Sure Those Are Car Thieves

So, the house across the alley from us has been a rental property ever since the elderly couple who lived there moved out and sold it off about a decade ago. It's gone through a couple of families (generally pretty congenial) until a few months ago when the most recent set of renters moved out. (I think that was because the owner had raised the rate.)

The time since has been... weird. For a while the house was just sitting empty. Then, starting a few weeks back, we had people going in and out through the garage, and producing a lot of trash in the bins. Mostly, it looked like they were just fixing the place up, though there was an odd moment where there were people inside and a minivan parked in the (open) garage, honking for/at them.

For the last week, the house has been sitting there empty with the garage door open. Which, even in our very-low-crime neighborhood, is odd.

Then last night at about 8:30, there was a large truck in the alley, which I didn't get a very good look at; I thought at the time that it might be a moving van. There was also a car parked on one side of the garage (which I also didn't get a very good look at) and a second car parked in the driveway in front of it, effectively blocking it in. The car in the driveway has one of those car covers on it, though it was either thrown on hastily or it was designed to cover an entirely different vehicle. I honestly didn't pay that much attention to it, mostly because aside from the large truck beeping loudly when it backed up, there wasn't any reason to. I mean, yeah, that seemed a little late to be trying to move in, but that kind of thing does happen.

Except that about 10:30, I heard the large motor and the beeping again, and opened the back gate to find that a very large tow truck was in my driveway, apparently trying to angle itself to deliver a car to the house across the alley. I bent down to inspect the license plate on the truck, which was when another guy (not the driver) came across the alley and half-shouted some sort of defensive explanation about how the tow truck hadn't hit my garage door. I asked him what it was doing here at this time of night, and he said he was moving in. (I was dubious but didn't contradict him.) I told him that the thing was awfully loud, and that I had school-age children asleep inside, and that he should finish this up.

So... that took until about 11:00, by which point I was increasing suspicious that something nefarious was going on, so I went outside again. I got out there to find the guy (who's "moving in") directing the tow truck in how to get angled so it could drive back out of the alley without hitting any of the various obstacles around it (fences, electricity exchange, etc.) Now, I'm sure the driver needed the help, what with trying to drive a ridiculously oversized tow truck (this is the kind of thing where the card actually rides up the bed of the truck, which can tilt down to be a ramp) in a suburban alley... but Guy Moving In was shouting directions to him by name ("Angle left, Michael!" "Okay, you're clear Michael!"), which seems a bit odd if you've simply hired someone to transport your vehicles for you. (And why would you transport them that way in the first place???) Then, once the truck was properly lined up and it drove off down the alley, he apparently hopped into yet another car and drove off after it.

The house itself doesn't look ready to be inhabited. There's little if any furniture, and there's still some stuff visible on the floor through the living room windows - looks like a pile of pulled-up carpeting or something similar. But now the garage door is closed (at last) with two cars presumably inside and a third (covered) car parked outside.

Now, maybe in a couple of days he'll get settled in and he'll turn out to just be a guy who collects cars and owns a towing company, and we'll find that Michael was one of his employees who got commandeered to help the boss move.

Maybe.

But the whole thing looks dodgy as hell right now.