drawing the attention of several members of the murder that made the street home. I leaned over and picked up a rock and pitched it into the tree and watched the crows wing off to look for easier fodder in the alley dumpsters down the street. The sparrows came back.
I got up and closed the tailgate and went upstairs, dragging my hand over the stucco wall of the complex as I walked down the second-floor exterior walkway, listening to stereos and TV shows and arguments and yip-ping dogs behind the doors of our neighbors. I unlocked the front door and walked in and looked at the girl whose nipple I'd stretched the day before at the shop, sitting on the couch in her panties and Chev's favorite Misfits T, with one of my books open in her lap.
She looked up.
– Oh, it's the dick.
Chev walked in, pulling on his boxers, tattoos scattered over his body thickest at the ends of his limbs, thinning as they approached his torso.
He hoisted a tallboy of Miller at me.
– Hey it's the breadwinner.
He dropped on the couch next to the girl.
– This is Dot.
Dot made room for him next to her.
– Yeah, I already said hi.
She held up the big purple and gold book she'd been flipping through.
– So did you really teach over at Hollywoodland Elementary? These kids are so cute.
I walked over and took the book from her and closed it and went to the shelf and found its space with the other yearbooks and slipped it in where it belonged and turned and stared at Chev.
He rubbed his shoulder.
– Sorry, man, I didn't know she was looking at that.
Dot looked at him, at me.
– What? I like kids. What?
Chev got up and walked toward the kitchen.
– Hey good news, working man, you got a FedEx package from Oregon. And it's not berries.
He grabbed a FedEx envelope from the table and scaled it to me. I caught it and headed for my room.
Dot smiled.
– Sorry about looking at your book. I just finished my first year at UCLA in the education department. I was curious. I didn't know you were a teacher.
Chev opened the fridge.
– Told you she was eighteen.
She made a face as I walked past her.
– Oh. My. God. What the fuck is that smell?
I took a long shower. A very long shower. And then I took another one. Longer this time. And then I splashed myself with some of Chev's Old Spice. And a little more. Then I went in my room and turned on my fan and opened my window and tried not to breathe through my nose and prayed that the stink wouldn't get into my bedding and the carpet. And after about a half hour I finally grew something resembling a brain and gathered my dirty clothes and bagged them and took them down to the laundry room, ignoring the various squeals and grunts coming from Chev's room as I passed his door.
Back in my room I opened the FedEx envelope and shook out the bills and an assortment of change.
$567.89. And, true to form, no note. Not that I'd asked for one.
Under certain circumstances, the odd amount would mean Mom had sent whatever was lying around, but that wasn't the case here.
Five hundred.
Sixty.
And seven dollars.
Eighty.
And nine cents.
Five six seven eight nine, an ascending numerical sequence. Sent specifically to bring me luck, to raise my spirits, to lift my fortunes.
I'm lucky there wasn't a crystal pyramid in the envelope.
Five hundred sixty-seven and eighty-nine cents. Enough to cover the new phone, buy some groceries and pay off some of the IOUs on the fridge.
I thought about what I'd do the next day. Sleep in. Have some coffee. Pick up around the place, clean the tub. Go do some grocery shopping. Maybe hit the bookstore for a few novels. Get the latest issue of
I thought about it. How nice and mellow it would be. A day to myself after having to be around people and be at Po Sin's beck and call and hear all his shit.
Yeah, a
I picked up the handset from the phone I'd brought into the bedroom.
– Clean Team.
– Hey it's Web.
– Yeah?
– You find anyone for tomorrow?
– Why?
– Nothing.
– Didn't get any money from mommy today?
– No.
– Well, you want to work, all you got to do is say so.
– I want to work.
PIPE BOMB IN THE ASS
There was a lot of blood at the Malibu beach house. And it was everywhere. Really everywhere.
Gabe studied the thick maroon blotch at the center of a lighter red eruption splashed over the wall and headboard, all of it studded with gray and yellow and pink gobbets of dangling matter.
He fingered a strip of yellow tape, marked like a yardstick, that ran up the edge of the wall. Near the top it intersected with another piece that ran horizontally just over the highest point of the mess. He looked at that point.
– That wasn't a nine.
The deputy coughed in the doorway.
– Yeah, what we thought. But it was. He did it with a mouth full of water.
Gabe looked again at the dry blood.
– That would do it.
I thought about high school science classes. How shock waves travel through water. I thought about what would happen if you filled a soda can with water and stuck the barrel of a gun in the hole and pulled the trigger. And then the deputy filled in the gaps in my imagination. -The water shredded his cheeks. Crushed his nasal passages and ripped his nose off. Some of it was forced down his throat and it turned his tongue inside out and punched a hole in the bottom of his stomach. Goes without saying it took the whole back of his head off. Everything behind the ears.
He rapped his knuckle on the wall opposite the bed.
– Created so much pressure in his sinuses, his eyes popped out. We found one of them over here.
