Venice Neighbors #2

I encountered him at midnight one night. The dogs next door were going crazy and I knew the neighbors were gone, so I went out to look. He was standing in the middle of my front yard, with my water hose in his hand, spraying the dogs across the fence with water. He said their barking was keeping him up. I ran him out and told him next time I found him in my yard I would call the police. (Actually, I had met him a week before. I was sitting on my porch reading a book on a Saturday afternoon and he was walking up and down the street trying to find the owner of a car whose alarm was honking endlessly)

The nanny told us that he had come by during the week to complain because my son was blowing a whistle and disturbing him. She had brought the kids inside to get away from him.

One Saturday my wife was out front with my son and her twin sister (who were about three or four) and there was yelling and I could hear her yelling. I stumbled out and she told me that he had just returned and was screaming at her about the whistle. She yelled back. He had gone down the alley. I followed and caught up with him and told him I didn't want him anywhere near my house and he was not to scare the kids. He laughed at me. I hit him. Pretty hard. He took off and I followed him. He went to his building which was on the opposite side of our block and there were friends of his out front. They interceded. I told him I did not want to see him near my house again.

He filed a police complaint against me. I had to appear at an arbitration hearing. I had actually had surgery the day before our encounter (a vasectomy) and I took that paperwork with me. The guy who was my age, brought his father. He claimed I had cost him pain and an enormous dental bill because his teeth and jaw were damaged by my blow. I denied hitting him.(There was one witness, but he refused to say he had seen anything- it was the neighbor that had the dogs sprayed down) I showed that I had had the operation the day before and that there was no way I could run after him and/or engage in a physical battle. The arbitrator told us to stop having arguments and that was the end of it.

One morning, I was on my bike on my way to work, which took me by the front of his building and he was out there. He started screaming, calling me a liar and some other names. I circled around and came back to the gate where he was standing. I told him to look around. Did he see another souls anywhere? When he realized he was alone, I told him I would deny hitting him a second time. He recoiled as if I had hit him.

He wasn't done, he turned a hose on a party across his own fence. I was hoping he would discover the gang house across the street and they would take care of him, but he never did.

I got home one evening and was told by a neighbor that he had been found dead in his apartment, apparently a drug overdose or something, maybe an heart attack. The police never called me to ask me questions, so it must have natural causes.