retrieved a pipe wrench and hacksaw from his toolbox. The pipe wrench was useless on the screen bolts, which had long ago rusted tight. He dropped into the grass. A sediment of rotted organic matter pressed against the screen. No one, including any New York City detectives, had opened that screen in a long time. But the screen mesh would be easy to cut. He sawed a large upside-down U and pulled down the flap. He peered in with the light. A long, dark, tight colon of a tunnel. The idea of crawling into it sickened him. But I'm just fucking crazy enough to do it, Ray thought. Plus my father was a great detective. He'd be doing this if he could. He left the tools on the grass, set out his flashlight ahead of him, and crawled in, the flap in the screen snapping back after he let it go.
Go, Ray, go, he chanted. The storm drain was a standard three-foot width that rose steadily as he crawled. The bottom of the drain was silted with sediment, as if he were crawling along a moist streambed. His pants were soon damp and then soaked through. The light revealed leaves, trash, and at least one dead squirrel. He came to a juncture where the large pipe split in two pipes, one going left, the other right. These, he assumed, drained from the two sides of the lot. Which one should he take? His nose told him the answer. The one on the left smelled of shit, plain and simple. He crawled into it and found the smell getting worse. He estimated that he was halfway to the parking lot. The firemen washing out the car would have run their hoses long enough to clean off the lot but not so long that they would driven the excrement all the way through the drains. The subsequent rainfall had been light, but even a few hours of it would have created a fair volume of runoff.
He crawled farther. If he switched off the light, the corrugated tunnel was completely dark. A wet, increasingly odorous dark. He switched his light on again and then began to find what he wanted to find. A tampon. A cigarette butt. He shined his light on the bed of the pipe and saw a toothpaste cap. What do people put in toilets besides waste? Damn near everything. He noticed a scrap of paper and picked it up. Too dark to see what it was. He stuffed it in his pocket. His coat would smell of shit when he was done, he knew. He crawled farther. Saw another scrap of something and put that in his pocket. The flashlight now revealed a long slick of rotting excrement, perhaps six inches deep, and at the far end, perhaps seventy feet away, a tiny square of pale night light where the drain opened to the world above. He would have to crawl seventy feet through shit. But guess what? he said to himself. This is nothing. You've seen much worse, pal. Just use some of the usual tricks. He pulled out two plugs made of tissue paper that he had dipped in mentholated jelly and put these into his nose. Then he unwrapped a wad of pepper gum and started to chew it. Last he pulled an air filter mask around his head. Just do it, Ray told himself. He shimmied forward on his belly, inspecting the detritus lodged in the shit. More tampons, then a baby's pacifier. People drop things in the toilet and think they magically disappear. He pulled a wiry thing and out came a woman's eyeliner brush. He dropped it and moved on. He came upon a slip of paper, a soggy colored napkin, and stuffed both into his pocket. Something else with numbers on it. Into the pocket. As he approached the tiny square of light, the shit became deeper, clogging the drain enough that he couldn't go farther. He reached out with his gloved hand and swept it across the shit. He felt three things. He pulled them to the flashlight. One was the end of a man's necktie. He discarded it. The second item was a dead mouse. A mercy he couldn't smell it. And the last item, he reminded himself. To the left. He swept his hand over the muddy shit until his finger found a child's sock. Useless. He stuck it in his pocket anyway.
He had reached to within ten feet of the drain and could even feel a weak draft of air from it. But the pipe was now clogged with vines. He took one last look around before retreating. What was this? A wet wad of shitty napkins with some kind of writing on them. He stuffed them in his jacket. Time to go. The pipe was too tight to turn around in, so he dutifully shimmied backward, feet first, until he reached the larger storm pipe, and there he could pull himself into a cannonball position, rotate, then shimmy face forward as the pipe fell in elevation before him. Downhill went much faster. He pulled himself through the U cut in the screen, then lay in the grass a moment, next to the tools he'd left there, apprehending how much human excrement he had caked on his knees, thighs, stomach, chest, forearms, and gloves. It was on his mask, cheeks, and forehead.
Things could be worse.
Back at the house, he removed the items from his pockets, set them on the back porch, then stripped to his underwear, left his clothes and shoes outside, and went into the house. After showering and pulling on clean clothes, he placed the items in a pan of warm water, rinsing off the shit and mud that adhered to them. With a bit of soap, the sock proved to be white, with ROBERT PETROCELLI JR. hand-lettered in indelible ink on the sole. The napkins were all cocktail napkins, the kind found at better restaurants. They were printed Jeannie amp; Bill's Wedding and, below that, Sammy's. A wedding reception. The paper with numbers on it was a credit card receipt issued to one Flora Silverman. Another piece of paper proved to be the soggy business card of one Fareed Gelfman, a sales associate at a used car emporium in the Bronx. On the reverse was written 'Call me at home' and then a cell number. The last piece of paper was crumpled around a wad of chewing gum. The paper was so saturated that to pull on it would tear it. This Ray took to the kitchen. He put the wadded-up piece of paper on a plate and set the plate in the microwave. Ten seconds was probably enough to loosen it. When the timer went off he removed the plate and set it on the table, where he gently pulled the edges of the paper and found a photograph of a skinny white man with dozens of ear piercings performing fellatio on an obese black man. Very interesting, except that it was useless to him and he crumpled the paper and threw it in the trash.
The other pieces of information might tell him something. He made a big cup of coffee, then got out his father's old street maps of Brooklyn and Queens. Both were served by the municipal sewerage system, but to the east, as the two boroughs met Nassau County and building lot sizes got larger, making the transition from dense row housing to the classic suburban grid, some houses and businesses still used septic tanks. He looked up Robert Petrocelli and found one listed in Ozone Park, Queens. He marked the Petrocelli address. Then he looked up Flora Silverman in Queens and Brooklyn. There was no listing. But the place of business on her credit card receipt was a sushi restaurant in midtown Manhattan. The sewage certainly hadn't been picked up in midtown Manhattan. She'd crumpled up the receipt and thrown it into a toilet in Queens or Brooklyn. Not much to go on. He looked up the name on the next piece of paper: Sammy's Catering and Music Hall, We Do-Wop Weddings, Anniversaries, Bar Mitzvahs, Birthdays. This address was a mere nine blocks from the Petrocellis, also in Queens. My shitty information is pretty good, he thought.
He dialed Sammy's and spoke to the receptionist. 'Hi,' he said. 'I'm new to the neighborhood and I saw you do a big business.'
'We're always busy,' came the reply. 'What can I do for you?'
'Well, actually I'm wondering if you can recommend a sewage service.'
'This some kind of joke? It's eight o'clock at night!'
'No, no joke. I saw you had a truck out there maybe a week ago and I can't remember the name on the side and figured if you used a service it would be-'
'We mostly use Victorious,' said the voice. 'Sometimes Town Septic. I can't remember who it was last week. It's a big truck, that's all I can tell you.'
'Thanks,' said Ray.
Next he dialed Fareed Gelfman.
'Yo,' came a voice with rap music in the background.
'I'm trying to reach Fareed Gelfman.'
'He's in the hospital.'
'What?' said Ray.
'Yeah, some dude went upside his head, beat him down bad.'
'Why?'
'Oh, you know Fareed, man. He's alway poppin' on the women. Seems he gave his business card with his cell number on it to some girl who had a boyfriend and the dude went apeshit on him.'
'Where'd she live?'
'With her boyfriend. Queens, Brooklyn, some shit like that.'
'Thanks.' Ray hung up. He dialed the Petrocelli number. A little girl answered.
'May I please speak to your mother or father?'
'Wait a minute.'
'Yes?' came the voice of a busy woman in her forties.
'Mrs. Petrocelli, I'm calling from Town Septic.'
'Yes? So late?'
'I'm wondering if you would consider using our services.'
'We always use Victorious. Says Vic's on the side of the truck. Annie, go wash your face.'
