The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

Todd Robinson Trash

From Last Word

Twenty-five tons of garbage truck made a sharp left onto Mott Street. Will stood on the back runner, his fingers laced through the railing. The summertime stink of Chinatown started polluting his sinuses from three streets away. Those blocks were the worst of the run; the smell of rotting seafood was one that wouldn’t leave his nose for a few hours. It roosted inside his nasal cavity like an Alphabet City squatter.

It was worse than Will could have imagined. Even worse than the detailed descriptions his old man had given him about the bad old days.

The elder Mr. Pokorski had warned Will long before he’d set his son up with the job for the summer. The trash route Will was on was the same that his father had done up until his retirement three years ago. It was a soft scam going back generations. A lot of union guys, especially the ones who worked the roughest summer runs, would pay the sons of other union members ten bucks an hour and pocket the rest of their salary for the additional days off. Some guys, like the one Will was covering, were willing to sacrifice the money for the entire summer so long as it meant they wouldn’t have to deal with Chinatown at all for the season.

Will absolutely understood the reasons now.

Even though the sun had set a full five hours ago, the heat that had been absorbed deeply into the concrete radiated up in waves, cooking the filth like a convection oven. What sat at the bottom of the black garbage bags had been slow-cooking from the ground up.

Like he tended to do, Antoine made the left hard and fast, disregarding the fact that the light had turned full red a good three seconds before he accelerated into the turn. Two cars let loose with a horn blare as they screeched to short stops.

Will was trying to keep the fetid air at bay by keeping his nose and mouth covered with the crook of his elbow as they sped down the street. When Antoine made another attempted Tokyo Drift move with the garbage truck, the centrifugal force nearly tore Will off the back. “Slow down, you freakin’ lunatic!”

Antoine haw-hawed his ass off in the driver’s seat. Will could see his fat frame bouncing up and down in laughter through the big side mirror. Just the day before, a hard turn onto Canal nearly turned a middle-aged woman’s labradoodle into slurry under the truck’s thick wheels.

When he started the job at the beginning of June, Will asked Antoine what was up with the New York City garbage trucks’ disregard for traffic laws and public safety in general.

“Fuck ’em,” was all Antoine answered with.

Back in the day, Antoine was one of the summertime kids, just like Will. Antoine had done the route with his old man, now a lifer with the Sanitation Department.

Will had no intention of being a lifer. Even though he was sorely jealous of his friends who’d all thrown in for a rental down the shore for the summer, Will wanted the money. When he started the criminal law program at Long Island University in the fall, he had no intention of doing so while commuting out of his parents’ home. Will was getting his own place with his girlfriend, Cara. His buddies would still be living in their tiny childhood bedrooms with their Eli Manning posters and high school track trophies. Will was going to finally have his own space to bang his girlfriend without the threat of either his mother coming in or, worse, Cara’s dad, the NYPD sergeant.

It was this promise of carnal freedom that kept Will hanging on to his sanity, kept him from seething at the thought of missing what was probably the last hurrah for high school on the shore.

It’ll be worth it. It’s all going to be worth it, he told himself over and over, every night.

The truck pulled up in front of Lucky Star Restaurant, and Will hopped off. He moved double-time while in Chinatown, wanting to get the hell gone before his gag reflex kicked in. He hurled the trash bags as quickly as he could into the rear of the truck.

One night after grousing about the run at the one bar in Staten Island with a bouncer dumb enough to accept his shitty Times Square fake ID, another customer had asked him how bad could the smell be? He was a garbage man, after all.

“How bad can it be?” Will replied. “I’m a goddamn garbage man, and the smell makes me want to puke. Every goddamn time. That’s how bad the smell is.”

He’d tried to use a facemask for a while, but after a couple of breaths it only felt like the stink was trapped underneath the thin sheet of cotton, pressed even closer to his face.

There was nothing he could do about it other than hope for short summer months or for something inside his olfactory system to finally give up and die.

Will grabbed the last bag off the pile, the plastic drooping sadly next to a mostly disassembled chest of drawers. On the upswing toward the compactor well, the bag caught on an exposed screw and burst open like a ripe cyst, viscous liquid splattering along the front of his jumpsuit.

“Fuck,” Will yelped as the warm fluid soaked through his clothing and boots. He stepped back and felt it squishing wet inside his socks. He was about to reflexively put his hand over his mouth in order to suppress the gagging that he felt rising inside him when he realized that his gloves were covered in what looked like rotting calamari in gelatin.

By the time all his senses could coordinate which aspect to be horrified at (the answer being all of it), Will’s vision swam.

On top of everything else, Will had to worry about fainting out of sheer disgust. Took him a moment — a terrible, terrible moment — but then he noticed that his vision wasn’t in fact swimming. What were swimming, however, were the hundreds of maggots embedded in the fluid that was covering him.

He nearly screamed.

He almost did.

But it’s really hard to scream when you’re projectile-vomiting all over the side of a garbage truck on Mott Street.

All the way down Mott Street...

All the way to Oliver Street...

Back up Katherine Street to Henry Street...

Antoine haw-hawed so hard at Will that he nearly threw up himself. On the corner of Market, Antoine had to jump out of the truck’s cab, heaving and hawing so loudly that a middle-aged Chinese lady started yelling at him out her window.

Will didn’t understand the Mandarin that the woman was shrieking, but it was pretty easily translated into the old classic of NYC sentiments: Shut the fuck up.

Will found himself lagging on the bag tosses. All of his prior instincts and muscle memory from the job abandoned him as he was filled with a new caution that he’d never had on the job before. Only a couple more blocks after Antoine nearly lost his dinner, he was whining at Will to speed it up. They were already a half hour behind from their usual mark, and at their current pace they were only going to fall further behind.

But despite all sense of self-preservation toward his senses, Will didn’t want to have another bag pop open on him. As it was, he was already dreading his girlfriend’s reaction when he got home. She already gave him shit for coming into the apartment smelling the way he did after a normal night on the job, with no exploding bags of Chinatown muck in the mix.

And for some reason he kept thinking about the Hispanic lady at the cleaners, who always looked at him like he was the worst person on earth when he walked through the door of her laundromat. If she held him in distaste before, she was going to love the bag he was going to drop off that night.

He didn’t know why he feared the woman’s ire, but he did.

That said, he carefully eyeballed every bag for telltale rips, lighter areas of plastic where the bag might be stretched to a point of near-breakage. Nor was he cavalierly chucking the bags into the back, either. Each bag he lifted carefully, if not daintily, as far away from his body as he could, then lobbed it in the back with no more velocity that one would underhand a wiffle ball to a toddler.

“You’re killin’ me, Will,” Antoine whined.

Then the loosest of thoughts flittered across Will’s mind as the truck pulled up in front of the Lotus Blossom Massage Parlor. It wasn’t just that there were more bags in front of the tiny storefront than usual, but straight up, why would a massage parlor have so much garbage?

Lost in that thought, Will lifted the first bag, the weight striking, almost making him miss the two dime-sized holes in the bag.

“Whoa, shit!” Will yelled.

“What is it now?” Antoine said.

“Holes in the bag.”

“You’re fucking killing me.”

“You’re mistaking me for heart disease, you tubby fuck.”

That shut Antoine up for a second. Then, “That was a little mean.”

Will rolled his eyes and put the bag carefully back down onto the sidewalk so he could find a better purchase for his grip. Then, as the bag flattened back out under its own weight, two purple-lacquered fingernails poked out through the holes. Fingernails that were still attached to fingers.

“Oh fuck!” Will jumped back like he’d found a live raccoon in the bag.

“What is wrong with you?” Antoine said, with even more exasperation than he’d already had in his voice for the past hour.

“There... there’s a hand in there.”

“What?” Antoine hopped out of the cab. “No way. Just toss it in.”

“We have to call the cops.”

“No. No, we don’t.” Even under the poor light of the streetlamps, Will could see the color draining out of Antoine’s normally ruddy face.

Then Will made the observation that the bag was way too small to have a whole body in it. But then again, there were more bags than usual.

If Will had anything left inside, he might have thrown up again. But this time he might never stop. “Fuck that. I’m calling the cops.”

“You can’t call the cops, you dumb little shit. You’re gonna fuck me with the union that you’re even here. Then you’ll fuck yourself, and your old man. Put the bags in the fucking truck.”

Goddammit. Antoine wasn’t wrong. Will shook his head. “Don’t care. You can take off. I’ll wait here until the cops come.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know! This is the first time I’ve discovered a fucking body.” Will dialed 911.

“Will, listen to me very carefully. Put... the bags... in the truck.”

Will didn’t like the sudden change in Antoine’s voice. He looked up. Antoine wasn’t looking at Will or the bags anymore, he was staring a laser beam into the window of the Lotus Blossom Massage Parlor.

Will followed his stare.

911. What is your emergency?

Will looked at his phone.

“Hang up, Will.” There was a tremble in Antoine’s voice that gave Will a shiver.

Against his better instincts, Will disconnected from the call, then followed Antoine’s gaze.

In the window stood an elderly Chinese man smoking a thin cigarette. His expression was as warm as a marble statue, the only movement in the tableau being his smoke lifting on the breeze and the incessant tick-tock of a waving lucky cat statue on the sill.

“Will, no more fucking around now,” Antoine said.

Will swallowed a sour lump. “I’m not just going to throw her in the back. She was a person. Let’s just go. I’ll call the cops later,” he said in a harsh whisper.

Will looked back to the window. The old man hadn’t so much as blinked. Then he flicked his fingertips toward Will, a long ash falling off the end of his cigarette, urging Will to get on with it.

Will shook his head. “No,” he said softly, nearly a croak. He tried to clear his throat, but it was only dryness in there. “No,” he said, a little louder.

The old man pursed his lips and looked to his left, nodded.

“Oh fuck,” Antoine said. “Who did he just nod to?”

“Let’s just go,” Will said, hopping back on the truck’s runner.

Then Will heard a series of locks disengaging behind the thick door of Lotus Blossom Massage.

“Fucking drive, Antoine!”

“Just toss the bags in! They seen us. They know who we are.”

“They don’t know who we—”

“Listen to me, kid. Just throw the bags in.” Antoine’s voice was calmer than it had been for the last five minutes. Deathly calm.

Click.

The sound came from everywhere and nowhere, the sound carrying on the city night air.

Antoine’s face went ghost-white. “What was that click?”

Will’s skin turned icy. His old man had taught him enough about guns on the range in Staten Island for him to recognize the sound.

Will couldn’t explain the sensation, but he suddenly felt like the back of his head had a target hanging off it.

“Fuck this noise,” Antoine said, reaching for the door handle.

“I don’t think we should move right now, Antoine.”

Even though Antoine might not have recognized the sound of a bullet being chambered, he certainly understood the seriousness in Will’s tone. He froze.

With the gentle jingling of a hung bell, the door to the massage parlor opened.

A woman of indeterminate age due to the long shadows under the neon emerged from the parlor. She was dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans cut off at the knees, but moved with a grace one would normally associate with someone in a ball gown.

She walked over to Will, a slight smile on her lips. Closer, and under the streetlights, Will made her out to be somewhere in her midforties, maybe older.

With a dancer’s grace, she lifted the first bag, the one with the poke holes in it from the painted fingernails. She walked it over to the truck and dropped it in the compactor well.

Will was frozen. He felt like a mouse trapped in the glare of a cobra.

“Wasn’t that simple?” the woman said, just a breath of an accent left in her English.

“You... you can’t do this. That’s a person,” Will said, hating the tremor he heard in his own voice.

The woman tsk-tsked at him like he was a child who simply didn’t understand. “That is not true, young man. What’s in these bags is not a person.” She picked up a second bag, placed it next to the first. “Not anymore. What’s in these bags is an assortment of meat, bones. Nothing more.”

“She... was.”

“Was what? Was, was, was. Why do you even care, garbage man?”

Her question caught Will by surprise.

She stared at him, through him. She waited for his answer.

“I... I don’t know,” he finally said.

The woman picked up a third bag. Will noticed that her fingernails were painted the same color as those on the hand inside that first bag. “We called her Amy. It was the name she’d chosen for herself when she came to America. Did you know that many Chinese adopt Western names when they come here?”

Will shook his head.

“It makes it easier for your kind to remember us, our given names being too exotic for your lazy minds and tongues.” She picked up another bag, dropped it in the well with a wet plop. “After a while we forget our real names. Who we were.”

The woman tried picking up another, larger bag, but its weight caught her. “Help me with this one, please,” she said, her voice dripping with a poisonous honey.

Will could still feel the target on the back of his head. He reached down and grabbed the bag toward the bottom, ignoring the sensation that he was embracing part of a torso, that it was the softness of a breast under the fingers of his left hand.

The two of them tipped the bag over the lip of the truck, where it joined the others.

“Thank you,” the woman said. “Was that so hard?”

Will almost replied, but kept silent.

“Her real name was Chao-xing. Do you know what that means?”

Will shook his head.

“In Chinese, it means ‘morning star.’ Just like the ones we can’t see in this city. Too much light pollution. We forget that they’re up there, but they are. Just like our old names. I used to look up in the sky, wondering where the stars were. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an astronomer. But after so many years, I forgot where they were supposed to be.”

The woman gave a wave over the bags in the truck.

“Amy never forgot. She never forgot who she once was, that she wanted to be a dancer. She was going to be in the New York Ballet. She should have forgotten, but she couldn’t. She cried a lot. Her crying was bad for business. She tried to leave. She tried to forget, but tried to forget the wrong things — forget who she’d become... and who Amy owed debts to.”

With a light flourish, the woman tossed the last two small bags into the truck.

“Why?” Will asked.

“Why what?”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

The woman beamed. “You said that the flesh in those bags was a person. You were not incorrect. Now you know who that person was. Now you tell me, the ending of the story being the same no matter what you know about who Amy used to be, do you feel any better knowing?”

Will shook his head.

“Didn’t think you would.” The woman pulled the lever, activating the rear compactor. The bags crunched wetly, disappearing under the hydraulic press. After the machine completed its cycle, she wiped her hands on her jeans, then pulled a few bills from a pocket sewn tightly to her side.

She walked over to Will and slid the money into his chest pocket, the paper crinkling. Her other hand brushed a caress against his hip. In his ear, she whispered, “Best massage in New York, if you’re ever back in the Chinatown.”

Without his feeling their movement, the woman’s fingers were suddenly in front of Will’s face, the wallet from his back pocket wiggling between them. She stepped back, opened his wallet, and took out his driver’s license.

“Hmmm,” she said. “Mr. William Pokorski, 4489 37th Avenue, Queens.”

Will swallowed hard as her eyes studied his face intently. A suddenly warm smile spread across her face.

“You must be Lee’s son,” she said.

Her words hit Will like a gut punch. “How... how do you know my father’s name?” He realized he’d taken her bait as the words fell out of his mouth.

As she walked to the storefront door, she tossed Will’s wallet over her shoulder. Without looking back, she said, “Always nice to see you too, Mr. Gutierrez.”

Will shot Antoine a look. “How does she know your name, Antoine?”

Antoine’s lips were pursed tight. His eyes dropped and moved around the filthy street, looking anywhere but at Will.

“How the fuck does she know you and my dad, Antoine?”

Antoine silently climbed back into the truck and shut the door.

Will looked at Antoine’s face, set like stone, reflecting back in the rearview.

Then, with numb fingers, Will pulled himself back onto the truck’s runner.

“Young man!” the woman called to him before Antoine could put the truck into drive.

Despite his better instincts, Will looked back.

The woman was still smiling. “Do you remember what her Chinese name was?”

Will couldn’t. His silence hung in the air like the humidity.

“Didn’t think so.” She waved as she closed the door, wiggling her purple fingernails at him.

Antoine and Will didn’t speak again for the rest of their blessedly short route. When they pulled into the depot on Long Island, the sun was already up, the early heat soaking through Will’s coveralls. The stink returned to his senses with a vengeance. Will hadn’t even noticed the smell for the last hour of the shift.

Before walking into the garage, Will pulled out the money from his pocket.

Four hundred dollars.

He looked up. Antoine was staring at the bills with an odd expression. Will peeled two of the hundreds off the top and offered them to Antoine. Antoine didn’t say no, didn’t even shake his head. He just pulled his backpack out of the truck’s cab and walked inside the garage.

Will looked at the bills in his hand.

Her name was Chao-xing.

Will crumpled the bills and tossed them in the back with the rest of the trash.

He hoped he would forget.

But he didn’t.