The valet parked Gabe's Cruiser behind the van and Gabe got behind the wheel.
Po Sin held up a finger to him and looked at me.
– Dingbang has keys to the shop.
– So let
– Web, Dingbang has keys to the shop and I haven't had the locks changed yet.
It took a second. I like to think I'm smart, but still it took a second. Then I got it.
– Fuck that!
He ran a knuckle over his moustache.
– Listen. Listen up here. We're gonna go talk to these guys. Have a couple beers at a place not far from here. It's nothing. It's exactly what they say it is. A negotiation to make sure no one gets carried away. But Gabe, he's a little more cautious than I am, a little less trusting, and he thinks they could use this as a way to be sure the shop is empty. Go in there and mess shit up.
– I know, I get it. That's why I said fuck that.
– It's not gonna happen. OK? All you do is go in, turn on all the lights and hang out. Clean if you want, or watch the TV in the office. Dick around on the computer. Nothing is going to happen.
– Then I don't have to be there.
He looked over at Gabe, back at me.
– I know, you're right, but it will give Gabe a little peace of mind. And one of the things I pay him for is so he has peace of mind. Because when he has peace of mind, I know everything is cool with everything. Make sense?
I shrugged.
– Sure, makes sense. I'm still not gonna sit there and wait for Dingbang
to show and kick my ass again.
– Dingbang will be at the sit-down. To be disciplined. That was part of
the deal. And even if someone comes by, the second they see the lights on,
see someone in there, they'll take off. No one is looking to hurt anyone.
What happened to you was the exception.
– Maaaaan. Crap.
He took me by the elbow.
– Web, this isn't a regular job. This is not nine to five. We clean blood and brains. We scrub shit. We vacuum maggot shells. We inhale gas from rotting corpses. This is not a regular job. And you will rarely be asked to do regular shit if you hang around. Sitting watch on the shop for the night, that's about as normal as it gets. Make sense?
I looked at Gabe, waiting to roll. I looked at the valet, waiting for us to get the fuck out of the way so he could bring the next car around. I looked at Po Sin, waiting for me to do or be something I didn't quite get.
I nodded.
– Makes sense.
He let go of my elbow.
– Then get in the van and get over there.
I got in the van.
– Web!
I looked out the window, he stood in the open passenger door of the Cruiser. -Anything
I shook my head.
– Yeah, that I can manage.
He waved and got in the car. Gabe nodded at me through the windshield, and tossed me a slight salute.
The man paid to have peace of mind.
Where do I get that fucking job?
NO WOMAN'S TOOL
North of Ventura Boulevard, on a street off Burbank Boulevard near the 170 on the edge of North Hollywood, there's a strip of light industrial zoning. Cinder-block buildings that work sheet metal, rent construction equipment, rebuild tractor motors, salvage copper wiring from scavenged conduit, or simply seem to provide nothing but a center point around which to wrap chain link and concertina wire for large barking dogs to patrol without cease. Beat-to-hell late-model pickups, the same ones seen circling West Hollywood loaded with leaf blowers and weed whackers on weekday mornings, line the curbs. Telephone poles drop power lines to the corrugated roofs of the buildings.
In the middle of this glory I perched on a workbench and stared at a row of three coffin freezers stuffed full of rags, bits of bedding, carpet, sofa cushions, paper towels, and all the other debris soaked in every effluvium of the human body that gets removed from trauma scenes. Biohazardous material awaiting transfer to Saniwaste, then to be trucked to Utah, where such things are burned en masse.
Or so I read in the Saniwaste brochure I'd found on a rack in the office. It was that or the back issues of
I slid off the edge of the bench and walked around. I poked at a machine that, according to another brochure, recycled formalin. I wondered what they did with the specimens they removed from the formalin before they processed it. The eyeballs, biopsy tissues, amputations, perforated intestine and whatever that had been preserved in jars of the stuff, the material the brochure referred to as
I went back in the office and turned the TV on and flipped a couple channels and turned it off. I moved the mouse around on the computer, thought about looking at some porn, imagined the implications of jerking off in that particular environment, and discarded the idea. All I needed was another disturbing mental image running around my brain banging at the walls.
Thinking about disturbing mental images made me think about disturbing mental images.
That sucked.
I sat on the edge of the twin bed that was parked in the corner of the office doing duty as a cot. A regular cot being, one assumes, out of the question for Po Sin's needs. I looked at the clock. It was just after midnight. I tried to remember the last time I'd been up that late. Crap, I tried to remember the last time I'd been up past nine PM. It'd been awhile.
It's not like it's a mystery or anything, all the sleep.
Sleeping was just easier than being awake.
So why fight it?
I curled up and stopped fighting. A daily ritual of the last year. Giving up.
– Urn, hi, this is, uh, this is Soledad Nye. The woman in Malibu. You cleaned my dad's mess? I mean, oh fuck, that was horrible. You cleaned the house. Anyway. I was hoping I could get in touch with one of your employees. Web. I wanted to talk to him about… anyway. My number, well, he should call me on my cell. The number. Hang on.
I didn't quite kill myself when I jerked out of sleep and slammed my already damaged head into the shelf that hung too low over the bed, but I came close enough that I had to crawl across the floor to answer the phone on the office desk.
– Hello? Hello? Crap! Crap!
– Uh, Web?
