much about the environment, well, they just dumped their used paint into the gutter. Come to find, ten years later, that stuff is coming to roost. House on Fisher Island blew just this morning.”
“Oh, my,” the man said. “Well, how much time do I have to gather my belongings?”
“None,” I said. “We found a fester under this street. We gotta get all of you out so we can get a hazmat team down there to spray it all with one of those secret government potions.”
“I have a dog. Can I grab my dog?”
“Yeah, old Fido is probably more susceptible, actually. I’d get him out in the next ten minutes there, buddy.”
“Why wasn’t this on television?” he said. It was a good question for him to ask. He should have asked it about five questions previous.
“Sir, we can’t have a pandemic on our hands. We start telling people there’s a fungus-humongous growing in the ground that will blow them up, we’ll have widespread panic. National Guard would get called out. It would just be like giving Al Qaida a blueprint on terror, you know?”
There was no color left in the man’s face five minutes later when he came running out of his house-a barking Maltese under one arm, a laptop under the other. On the corner, Sam ushered a family of five out of a cream- colored split-level.
That left just one more house on the cul- de-sac to evacuate: the Banshees’ smartly appointed factory. Over the course of the last twenty minutes, while Sam and I flushed out the other six families found on Me-Laina Court, I kept my eye on the house for any activity. I saw nothing. The same Volvo SUV that was depicted in the photo Sam pulled up on his computer was parked in the driveway, but oddly there wasn’t a drip of oil to be found beneath it on the pavement.
I walked up behind the car and acted very interested in my clipboard while I took a basic inventory of what was known.
The back window of the Volvo SUV was covered in stickers. OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT.MY SON IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT CASTLE ROCK
ELEMENTARY.
MIAMI DOLPHINS. WE LOVE OUR COCKER! All innocuous enough, except that the window was caked with dirt and the stickers were pulled away from the window.
Inside the Volvo?
Nothing.
Not a scrap of paper.
Not a bottle of water.
Not a toy or a patch of fabric pulled up by the beloved Cocker.
I knelt down to tie my shoe and to see the underside of the carriage.
The SUV had a lattice of thin metal cable running in between all of the tires, in effect locking the car in place. If you tried to tow the car, you’d need a flatbed truck and special equipment-in short, you’d need to make a production of the event, which would provide the homeowner plenty of time to take note of the activity.
If you want to keep law enforcement from sending a battering ram into your garage, park an immobile 4,500 -pound block of metal directly in front of the garage door.
Better yet, rig it with explosives. The Banshees did that, too. There was a bundle of C-4 between the two back tires. There was a bundle between the two front tires. There was also a bundle under both passenger doors.
The gases in C-4, when they explode, expand at over 26,000 feet per second. One pound of C-4 would be enough to blow up just the SUV and kill anyone within fifty feet.
There were at least twenty-five pounds of C-4 rigged to the SUV, or enough to take out the house, the truck and the rest of the cul-de-sac, leaving just a steaming crater behind.
The Banshees clearly understood the value of their property. If they’d put that much C-4 on the SUV, what was the inside of the house like?
I walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. I listened for an echo, but instead the bell was muted inside the house. Even from just outside the door, I could feel the electric energy from inside. There was a discernible hum coming from just beyond the portico where I stood. I waited, and when nothing happened after a few minutes I rang the bell again.
This time I heard the sound of someone walking. The shutters beside the door opened and I made out a man’s face. I waved at him and smiled. Just a guy on your porch to tell you that fungus is going to explode under your house. The shutters closed and a moment later that door cracked open.
“I don’t want whatever you’re selling,” the man behind the door said.
“Not selling. Just telling. We got a situation involving noxious-” Before I could finish, the door slammed shut.
I rang the bell again. It opened just a crack again. “You know how to take a hint?” the man said.
I couldn’t make out the man’s face, but his voice made him sound like maybe he was missing something crucial, like, say, initiative.
Drive.
Will.
It’s the sort of lazy drawl that creeps into common intonation when you tend to get high from your own supply.
I wedged my foot between the door and the frame and then pushed the door open a few feet. The man didn’t even say anything. He just looked at my foot as if it were an interesting bug or a colorful leaf. Surprisingly, the man didn’t look anything like a biker. He was maybe twenty-five, wore a plain white T-shirt and tan cargo shorts, and had on a pair of Crocs. He looked like he could be sitting in a lecture hall at UC Santa Cruz learning about the fascinating sex life of the tsetse fly.
“You gotta get out of here,” he said. “This is private property.”
“Sir,” I said, “look around. We’ve evacuated all of your neighbors. There’s a noxious fungus growing beneath your house. You don’t get outta here, you could die. We need you out of this house in ten minutes.”
The man cocked his head slightly, like he was figuring out an equation. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
I checked my clipboard, flipped over a couple of pages, and then took a pencil from behind my ear and started scratching out some notes.
If you want someone to fear you, take notes in their presence. If you want someone to fear you who might be naturally paranoid due to an overconsumption of marijuana, take notes and ignore the person completely.
“What are you writing there?” he said. I didn’t reply. “You can’t take notes about me. That’s against the law. You can’t just start falsely recording my words, man. You hear me?”
Nothing.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t even live here. I’m just watching the place for some friends. I can’t just leave the house. I promised them I’d stay until they got back. They got, uh, valuable stuff and things and stuff here. You know?”
I looked up from my clipboard. “I’m just noting your refusal to leave here on the form. When the fungus catches fire-did I mention the fungus is flammable? — the state isn’t responsible for any loss of life. So if you’re gonna stay, maybe let any pets out before they get cooked.”
The man stared at me, his mouth slightly agape. It was more than he could take in at one time, apparently.
“Nine minutes,” I said. “That’s how long you’ve got now.”
“Man, you don’t understand,” he said. “The people I work for will be pissed if I leave. Pissed like they will beat me to death pissed. These aren’t nice people.”
“Then why do you work for them?”
“Man, I ask myself that all the time. What I think? My dad was not a big part in my life. All I can figure.”
I looked over my shoulder. Sam stood behind the Volvo with his arms crossed. He was smiling, which told me he appreciated the fine workmanship that went into rigging that SUV up to take out most of the block.
“What’s your name, son?” I said.
He shifted from foot to foot, like maybe he had to pee but didn’t want to tell his dad. “Max Yennie,” he said.
