Hauser and O’Brien Character Analysis

Hauser and O’Brien are two narcotics officers in New York City. They are assigned to arrest Lee in his apartment and confiscate all the written materials they find. Hauser and O’Brien have been on the force for as long as Lee has been using drugs, so they all have a familiar, albeit hostile, relationship. After Hauser and O’Brien break into Lee’s apartment, Lee convinces them to let him take one last shot before they bring him in; to sweeten the deal, he also promises to take them to an elusive drug pusher that not even Lee can get meetings with. After injecting the drugs, Lee grabs a pistol and shoots and kills both officers. Then, knowing his hours are numbered, he goes on a frantic quest to find drugs. After hiding out overnight, Lee sees that news of the double homicide has not made the papers, so he calls the bureau himself and is told that there are no officers by those names in the office. Lee is at first perplexed, but slowly he comes to realize that no one is coming after him after all. Rather, Lee—like the two dead officers—has been completely shut out of the space-time continuum, an allusion to the systematic (and systemic) erasure of drug users, criminals, and all individuals deemed unsavory by society at large.