The old man’s stuff was moved into the building in early September, on a sunny Saturday morning. The old man himself showed up on foot in the afternoon.

His building is one of six high rises, built in the seventies as part of a public development that provides subsidized housing for low-income families. Most people who live here are hardworking, law-abiding citizens who just cannot afford a place to live anywhere else. Unfortunately, there are some residents who are thugs and criminals.

It has been estimated that fifteen percent of the population in the USA is responsible for all the crime. Assuming this number is a constant no matter where you live, these six buildings house almost two thousand criminals. When you add gangster wannabes to this number it is closer to three thousand. This is a lot of trouble concentrated on the single city block where these buildings make a rough circle, with a common area in the middle. This common area is where the gangs and their groupies hang out, harassing passersby.

The old man did a peculiar thing. He did not walk diagonally through the commons to get to his building but walked in a zigzag pattern. He avoided the islands of trees scattered in the open area. The troublemakers hang out under and around these trees, drinking, talking shit, smoking weed and selling drugs. One of these groups saw the old man picking his route to avoid the clusters of trees, and immediately targeted him.

The old man was minding his own business, enjoying the sunshine and warmth, when he was surrounded by a group of people. Young people, wearing ornate sneakers, baseball caps and red shirts. The men are wearing jeans that are too large for them, showing their underwear. The women are wearing jeans that are too small for them, showing their lack of underwear. The old man calmly looked them over. They were all young, some very young. The kind of age that will make the news call them ‘children’, when for everyone else they are just thugs, ageless and dangerous.

’Hey there pops!’, one of the gangster wannabes blocked the old man’s way. ‘Whatcha got in them bags? You got any candy? Smokes? Lemme see!’. These aspiring gangsters are the most dangerous. They want to impress which makes them behave extra badly. ‘Groceries. No, no and no.’ the old man answers each question, as he moves the bags behind him, out of reach. He speaks clearly with an unwavering voice; he even sounds a little bored! These animals pick up on that immediately, here is someone worthy of their attention.

One of the thugs crouches down behind the old man, right behind his legs, and the wannabe gangster suddenly shoves the old man backwards. He stumbles back and trips over the crouching person behind him. He falls hard and one of his grocery bags breaks, scattering bags of dry dog food over the paved commons area. ‘Aww fuck man, what is this shit?’ one of the redshirts exclaims and kicks a bag, spilling food pellets everywhere. ‘Don’t mess with his food Tyrone, dude’s gonna go hungry if you break all the bags’, the group laughs at Tony’s joke.

’You got any money old man?’ Tony asks, moving closer to search his pockets. ‘No’, the old man says with the same tired sounding tone. ‘Fuck it y’all, this old fool has nothing we can use’, one of the girls exclaims, ‘I want to get out of the sun, and if y’all know what’s good for y’all so will you. I see officer Brown heading this way.’ The group is gone as fast as it appeared. The old man gets up and collects the spilled dog food. Nobody helps. Everyone is secretly happy that this gang of troublemakers is focused on someone else, and not them. They want to remain unseen.

***

Detective Roberts dreads working the ‘Project six block’. This community suffers much crime ranging from petty larceny to murder. The perpetrators and the victims live on the same block, and everyone knows who is responsible, but nobody ever speaks up. At the precinct they started calling this place the ‘Project six block’, like it is something different from the rest of the community, a remnant from a failed experiment. It is Sunday morning. At least this call got him out of church. His wife makes him go every Sunday, believing it will help keep him sane. The only thing that would help his sanity would be if all these criminals just disappeared!

The first body is that of Tyrone Jackson, a known gang banger with a rap sheet as thick as a phone book. A real piece of work he was, arrested multiple times and always out on the street in a day or so for lack of evidence and witnesses. His body was found in a vacant lot behind building five. Roberts looked at the crime scene and the broken body from many angles. Whatever happened to Tyrone happened here. His body was broken in two, and most of his insides were flung away from his body, scattered in a fan like pattern across the unkept lot, hanging in shrubs and stuck in grassy bushes. This is what might happen if someone shoots you with a cannon, and if that happened, he is convinced someone will talk, even though they never do. Nobody saw a thing, and this time he believed them.

The other two bodies were that of Tony Smith and a known accomplice of the late Tyrone, known as Spider. His given name was Jesus Hernandez, and his spiderweb neck tattoo is the origin of his nickname. Another piece of shit who will no longer terrorize the community, Roberts thought. Smith was new to the neighborhood, he moved here with his elderly grandmother six months ago, but was already known as trouble by the local PD.

The way they died was bizarre. Jesus was staked to the pavement with two fence posts. He was facing the ground, suspended between the two posts. Roberts could tell that Hernandez was laid out flat on his stomach before the fence posts were driven through his back, one just below his shoulders, and the other just above his hips. He was then dragged up the two posts to hang there suspended with his hands and knees dangling, probably touching the pavement. This was clear as day when considering the blood and gore still on the posts about three feet above ground. Hernandez is currently on the pavement again, with the remains of Smith on top of him. Well, most of Smith anyway.

It appears that Smith dove from the balcony of his grandmother’s place, 23 floors up, to land headfirst on top of Jesus. This busted up both bodies real good. Smith was identified by his tattoos.

The obvious explanation was that Smith used a cannon to kill Tyrone, then hid the cannon somewhere, came back and knocked out Hernandez, and staked him to the ground before taking a swan dive into his back. Roberts knows from experience that nothing is ever what it seems.

***

Solving a crime requires you to ignore the obvious. First you look at the victim, get to know them, learn about their life, family and friends. Then you interview all these people, always keeping the nature of the crime in mind, looking for the tiniest little detail, a loose thread you can pull to make the whole thing unravel and reveal the guilty party.

The only loose thread here was the old man. Jessica Jones told him about the old man with his bags of dogfood, and how her dead boyfriend kicked one of the bags after the other two tripped him. Every little detail matters. This facility does not allow pets. Why the dogfood then? Roberts heads to the building superintendent to get the old man’s apartment number. He must be sure the old guy is not eating the dogfood himself to survive.

***

The old man’s name is Lou, he is sixty-eight, one hundred and forty pounds, Caucasian, and five foot nine. He has no visible tattoos or scars or any other identifying features. He is not frail and appears in good health. When asked he produced an expired driver’s license to verify his name, Lou Ferrigno. He was not the body builder that played the role of the Hulk many years ago, he just had the same name.

’Why the dog food?’, Roberts asked when Lou returned from the kitchen with a tray containing cups, cookies and a pot with steeping tea. Roberts learned this trick from Columbo. A surprise question that seems unrelated to the case often produces more threads to pull on. Lou answered without missing a beat, ‘Strays, I feed the many strays in the area. You know people often show up here with a pet, just to abandon it because it can get you evicted.’

Lou pours the tea, and hands Roberts a cup on a saucer. Roberts takes note that the cup does not rattle on the saucer, the old man has a steady hand. ‘This world is not kind detective. Humans are unkind to the planet, each other and animals. Those young people that attacked me yesterday, and damaged my groceries were unkind. Unkind to me and many others. They will not be missed. I will not miss them because I did not know them. Those that knew them will tell you the world is a better place without them.’

Lou takes his tea and a cookie and sits down easily. ‘As you can see, I am unharmed. Even if I could, I would not have had need for revenge. And I hear they were pretty messed up, with no explanation on how this could have happened?’. Lou takes a bite of his cookie, looking quizzically at Roberts. Roberts does not take the bait and gets up to leave, ‘Call me if anything else occurs to you,’. He hands Lou his card and takes his leave. This case is bizarre, and Lou is now his prime suspect. How bizarre?

***

People talk, and if they talk long enough, they start to believe what they say. The criminal element of the Project six block talked about Lou, and how their comrades died after they fucked with him. Of course, in their minds Lou became the one responsible for their demise, no matter how improbable, he had something to do with it. This suspicion grew and turned into animosity.

A week later Lou was walking back to his building when someone threw a can of coke that knocked him out. Nobody came to his assistance, and he regained consciousness a few minutes later, got up and went to his apartment.

***

Roberts was back at the block, again on a Sunday morning, looking at a new body. Or at least the parts of a body visible underneath a dumpster. Someone sent for a crane to lift the dumpster of the body, and while he waited Roberts considered the facts. The victim was throwing hoops on the basketball court late last night, with her companions smoking weed on the sideline, when the dumpster fell on her. They all saw it, they swear, stoned or not they saw the fucking dumpster squash the girl.

While interviewing the group of witnesses, one revealed that Shim, the girl’s mother named her Shim, hit the old man with a can of coke the day before. Lou was out cold for a while, and there was no way he saw Shim do it. When he came to, he picked up his groceries and went to his apartment. Apparently he bought more dog food.

***

Roberts spoke to Lou but learned nothing new. He did not know who threw the can and came home to nurse the bumps to his head. The thrown can put a bump on the back of his head, and he struck his head on the ground causing another painful bump on his forehead. He warned Lou to be careful, the gangs would look for someone to pay, and everything told him it would be Lou. Lou refused protective custody and preferred not to have an officer stationed at his front door.

***

Three days later Lou is abducted from his home and taken to an abandoned warehouse a few miles north. His abductors tied him to a pole, and appeared uncertain how to proceed. Lou said nothing, and watched the group talk and smoke a few paces away. During the abduction they could not resist ruffing him up, and Lou could feel a gap with his tongue where he was missing a tooth. Eventually an expensive looking SUV drives into the building. It drives up to the group of thugs, stops, the doors swing open and four well-dressed men emerge carrying machine pistols.

Another person emerges from the vehicle. He is a heavyset man, flamboyantly dressed, chewing on an unlit cigar. The group of thugs approach him respectfully, the armed men watching them intently. They converse for a few minutes before turning their attention to Lou.

’Who are you, old man?’, the fat man asks around his cigar. Lou does not answer, he just stares at the ground, ‘The kids here tell me you have been taking out my mules. I need those mules to move my drugs. When my drugs do not move, the whole process backs up, and then my bosses take notice. So, I ask you again, who are you?’

Lou looks up at the fat man, and grins widely, showing his missing tooth. ‘I am just someone who wishes to be left alone.’ Lou seems to grow taller as he speaks, his sparse frame filling out, his muscles expanding. ‘All I want is to be left alone!’, Lou’s voice has grown deeper and louder. The cable ties the gang used to tie him to the pole snaps and Lou places his fists, now as big as the fat man’s head, on the ground in front of him, his heavily muscled arms now longer than his legs, making him look like a gorilla. ’But you can’t do that’, Lou shouts, ‘you must always pick on those you see as weak. You brought this on yourselves!’

The fat man’s bodyguards step between their boss and the transforming Lou and fire their weapons. The bullets bounce off Lou’s body, and he lunges forward, pushes the men out of the way and grabs the fat man by his feet. He turns on the gunmen and use their boss like a club to beat them down. The terrified young thugs run for the door, and Roberts steps into the building, leveling a shotgun at them. He shoots the fastest gang member in the face, and the rest scatter in all directions.

Lou snaps his head around when he hears the gun shot, and Roberts points at two gangsters climbing crates to get to a window. ‘Get them Lou, I’ll round up the others’.

Lou leaps into action and slaps the crates away, causing the two gang members to tumble to the ground. Lou snatches them up and throws them across the length of the building knocking down the rest of the gang at another window.

When Lou barrels past him, Roberts stops running, out of breath. By now Lou is ten feet tall, and his slapping feet and pounding fists makes the ground shake. When he reaches the rest of the gang, he pummels them with his huge fists in the same manner a gorilla would beat an opponent in a fight. Lou smashes the thugs to a bloody pulp, then turns and advances on Roberts.

Roberts is sitting with his back against the wall, the shotgun next to him on the ground, trying to catch his breath. He holds his hands out to Lou, and manages to speak, ‘Hold on Lou! I am on your side!’. Roberts can see in Lou’s eyes that he is not just a crazed beast, but a crazed thinking beast. Lou stops in front of him and sits down. ‘This will only take a few moments’, he rumbles in a deep voice, before he starts to shrink, steam and water coming of his body. ‘I hope you brought dog food Roberts; I am going to need lots of high calorie food in a few minutes’. ‘Outside, in the car’, Roberts manages, his breathing settling down, ‘I brought a tracksuit and flip flops also. Gimme a second, I’ll go get it’.

***

’How did you know?’, Lou asks between handsful of dog food. They are in Roberts’ car, Lou now looking small in the oversized tracksuit. At least the flip flops fit. ‘It was many things, your name, the dog food, and the way those gangsters died. It wouldn’t add up, it couldn’t. It was the dog food that made me realize. I checked with the city, and there are no strays at the block. And the killings were directly related to interactions with you. Once you eliminate the improbable, whatever remains, no matter how impossible, must be the truth.’ Lou swallows another handful and says, ‘Sherlock Holmes, but you got it backwards. It’s eliminate the impossible, then believe the improbable.’ Roberts laughed, ‘Not in this case Lou, not in this case’.

***

’Now what?’, Lou asks when they arrive at the block. Roberts clears his throat; it still burns from the running earlier. He really must get back in shape. ‘Now I make an anonymous tip about fighting at the warehouse. It’s in my jurisdiction, which means I’ll investigate and conclude that there was a spat between these street thugs and their employer’s middle management, then find a way to tie the events at the warehouse to the deaths here at the block’. Roberts coughs into his hands, dislodging phlegm from his throat, ‘You will not be mentioned. Nobody would believe we have a real-life Hulk amongst us. But you must lay low. When you eliminate these criminal fucks, you must avoid theatrics! Keep it simple, make it easy for me to keep you out of my investigation. Then we can rid the block of this scrounge that makes everyone’s lives miserable.’ He looks at Lou, and extends his hand, ‘Deal?’. Lou grins, takes his hand and shakes on it, ‘Deal!’. Lou is no longer missing a tooth.

Lou collects the bags of dog food and before he gets out of the car Roberts says, ‘Lou Ferrigno! Really? You should change your name Lou and change it quick.’ Lou could still hear Roberts laughing as the car drove away. It feels good to have an ally this time, he might stay long enough to even get a dog himself.