Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Community busybodies, thin-skinned control freaks, they complain about the traffic reports on DRVR Radio. The Graphic Traffic Updates. That voice announcing the tag line: "We Know Why You Rubberneck…" Naturally, the Transportation Department is behind that radio show. The transportation engineers simply wanted to see if drivers would continue to gawk if they knew exactly what they'd see. If a radio personality was telling them the grimmest details, would traffic still snarl?

The transportation agency monitors paramedic frequencies and passes the DRVR announcer the gory facts. A majority of the general public adores that show. People swoon over traffic accidents. A quick peek or a good long gape.

Echo Lawrence (Party Crasher): Yeah, I wanted Rant to do yoga before Party Crashing. Everybody should, just to stay limber and avoid getting hurt. Yoga and stretching. I showed him the Down Dog pose and the Rabbit. We were practicing the Archer when he asked me about the hit man Tina Something goes around with, her boyfriend, Karl Waxman. Rant really admired the asshole's teeth.

Tina Something (Party Crasher): I don't give a gaddamn what the police say. Wax did not kill that hillbilly.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Long before modern Party Crashing, the traffic engineers were running each other down. The videos show them, four geeks in each gray car: one engineer steering, one in charge of documenting with the camera, two engineers on lookout for other gray pool cars covered with dents and scratches. Each car the same government issue: four-cylinder, automatic-transmission, three-point seat belts, and a big "No Smoking" sign riveted to the dashboard.

The pool-car boys loved to hunt each other. Those gray pool sedans were so easy to find, especially after bankers' hours ended. With full-coverage health insurance, driving a car not their own, with complete permission and encouragement to crash—and getting paid overtime wages, to boot—the infrastructure teams treasured their work.

Jarrell Moore (Private Investigator): Our firm was able to locate one likely candidate who fit the client's vague description for a biological father. An individual by the name of Charles Casey. That's the good news. That Charles Casey, aka "Charlie," attained Nighttimer status and housing under the I-SEE-U recruitment program. He did work a variety of city-government jobs while enrolled in college.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Event Prompting was so exciting that when the study window ran out and manpower was reassigned to flow studies and traffic-light timing, these traffic geeks couldn't give it up. Even without a paycheck attached, and forced to wreck their own cars, those original engineers kept up their games. Naturally, outsiders caught on. No matter how diligently you keep something a secret—accidents do happen.

Jarrell Moore: The bad news is, the Charles Casey we found has been missing and presumed dead for almost sixteen years. He'd been a traffic-flow engineer for the city and died in a work-related car accident. It seems he'd requisitioned a car from the department motor pool, then ran it head-on into another car, driven by a female co-worker. The woman and her husband were both killed. Their daughter, who'd been asleep in the backseat of their vehicle, was left handicapped by the accident.

Charles Casey's body was not recovered at the scene. The couple he killed, their names were Larry and Suprema Lawrence.

Irene Casey: By the last snapshot that Buddy sent home, you can tell that crippled girl, she's not sanding and refinishing a baseball bat. That thick pink club she's rubbing on with sandpaper and steel wool, and staining with shoe polish and old tea bags, it looks exactly like some giant's sex thingy. A girl like that, with a gimp arm, making herself a dirty, bigman thingy…It's a stretch to see that girl as the mama of my future grandbabies.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms: Strange as it sounds, emergency service personnel continue to channel Tina Something the gory details of each drive-time accident. Everyone with a government letterhead will deny this, but it's true.

It's all connected. The I-SEE-U Act. Team slamming. Night versus day. Graphic Traffic. Our tax money was the springboard for what eventually became the Party Crashing culture. The pool-car boys, those unsung engineers, their study recommendation split this country into day and night. And they brought us the number-one-rated daytime radio program in this market.