The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

CODE ENFORCEMENT

I forgot to set my alarm clock. Which was OK because Chev didnt forget to set his and snuck into my room and put it on my pillow when he came home from the shop.

After I spent a minute banging it against the floor to get it to stop buzzing, I swore revenge and crawled back under my covers. Then the phone started ringing. Very loud and just outside my bedroom door. It rang. And it kept ringing. And it kept ringing. And I got up and opened the door and picked it up.

– What? What the fuck?

– Is this Web?

– Yeah, what the fuck?

– Yeah, my name is Curtis.

– What do you want, Curtis?

– Nothing. I was in White Lightning last night and I got this boss Tas-manian devil on my shoulder and the guy, Chev, he said hed knock twenty bucks off the price if I got up at six and called you and made sure you were up.So?

– What?

– You up?

I hung up the phone and threw it across the hall and it put a dent in Chevs door and I heard laughing behind it.

– Fuck you, Chev. Fuck you!

But I was up so I turned on the coffeemaker and got in the shower.

The Cutlass Cruiser station wagon idled at the curb, all gloss black paint, buffed chrome and dark tinted windows. One of the windows slid down and a driver just a shade lighter than his car looked out from behind mirrored sunglasses.

– Web?

I pulled my hoodie tighter around my body the morning air still carrying a chill.

– Yeah.

The driver tilted his head at the passenger seat.

– Lets get rollin.

His window zipped up and I walked around the car. He pushed the door open and took a black suit coat from the passenger seat so I could sit. I climbed in, glancing at the rear of the cruiser where the back seats had been removed to make room for a gurney. And stashed just behind the front seats, a tightly packed bedroll and three milk crates filled with various pieces of camp gear tucked neatly on the floorboards. Coleman stove and lantern, hand generator emergency band radio, tent bag, ground tarp, a coffee can of rattling iron stakes, four small red fuel bottles, shrink-wrapped bundle of flares, boxes of waterproof matches, a hatchet with a well-worn leather handle, binoculars, a large plastic canteen, an Army surplus mess kit in a nylon pouch, a black cast-iron skillet with a heat-warped bottom. And more.

I pulled the door closed.

– Going on a trip this weekend?

He dug a finger behind one lens of his glasses and rubbed an eye.

– Do me a favor and buckle up, OK?

I pulled the seatbelt over my shoulder and lap and clipped the silver tongue into the buckle.

He stuck out his hand.

– Gabe.

I took his hand, calluses on his palm scratching my skin.

– Web.

He loosened his black tie and undid the top button of his white short sleeve shirt.

– Some coffee there if you want it.

I took the large white cardboard cup from the holder clipped to the dash.

– Thanks.

He put the car in drive and pulled from the curb.

– No problem. Didnt know how you liked it. Some creamers in the glove box.

I opened the glove box and found a couple creamers bouncing around on top of registration papers weighted down by a huge ring of at least a hundred keys, and a thick flipper of leather with a little plastic handle jutting from it. I closed the box and peeled back the top of my creamer and poured it in my cup.

Gabe pointed at the paper bag in the middle of the front seat.

– Garbage in there.

I dropped the empty creamer in the bag.

He drove us a couple blocks up Mansfield, past several two-story apartment buildings stacked like stucco cakeboxes in pink, aqua, terracotta, yellow and mint. Across Fountain the street gentrified slightly into a sprinkle of trendified craftsmans and renovated 1930s Spanish revival apartment blocks that were going to be squeezing out the drifters at the BHS Hollywood Recovery Center in due course. He stopped at the corner next to the Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse, and I watched some skater kids across the street working the steps of the Liberal Household Arts Building at Hollywood High. He found a hole in the commute traffic and turned right, the Hollywood Hills rising just north of us, early summer smog settled on their tops. We started and stopped our way down past a few motels and strip clubs and stopped for the light at Highland.

A school bus crossed the intersection.

I closed my eyes for a moment, when I opened them it was gone. I looked down the street, knowing it must have just turned the corner, but unable to keep myself from thinking other thoughts. Thinking about the Flying Dutchman. Ghost ships. Haunted freighters, lost souls that manifest and dissolve, unbidden. Just the usual.

The light changed and I sipped my coffee.

– So where we headed?

Gabe glanced at his right blind spot and changed lanes.

– Koreatown. Code enforcement. Second day. Guy had stuff piled floor to ceiling. No egress. Blocked himself out of his own bathroom. Been filling gallon milk jugs with piss. Shitting in little individual ziplock bags.

– Ah, man, Po Sin said it wasnt a real shit job!

He looked at me, my face reflected in the mirrored lenses below the deep, horizontally scored forehead and cropped graying hair.

He looked back at Sunset.

– He lied.

Po Sin was waiting when we got there, studying several large red splotches of paint on the back and sides of his Clean Team van.

He watched us get out of Gabes wheels and pointed at the van.

– Motherfucker.

Gabe walked over, pulling the tie from his neck and folding it into a neat roll that he tucked in his pocket. He touched the paint with the tip of his finger, leaving a slight imprint.

– Couple hours after midnight. Maybe three or four AM.

Po Sin kicked one of the vans tires.

– Motherfucker.

I took a look. The paint covered the name of the company on both sides of the van and dripped down over the phone number and web address.

– That sucks.

Po Sin turned his face to the sky.

– Motherfucker!

Gabe picked a scrap of yellow rubber that was stuck in the paint.

– Water balloon.

– Motherfucking water balloon!

– Where was it parked?

Po Sin pointed north.

– At the shop. Around back. They didnt just drive by and heave one out the window, they parked, got out, walked around, and pelted it. Only reason they didnt get the windshield was because I had it nosed in against the fence back there.

– No one at the shop?

Po Sin walked to the back of the van, taking a set of keys from his pocket.

– Someone was supposed to be at the shop. Someone was sure as hell supposed to be at the motherfucking shop!

He pointed a finger at the sky.

– Theyre asking for it. There is no denying they are asking for it! And they are going to fucking get it!

Gabe hooked a thumb in a belt loop of his black slacks.

– How you want to go about it?

Po Sin looked down from the sky.

– Eye for an eye.

Gabe took the sunglasses from his face. Crease-cornered eyes, the faded black outline of a tear tattooed beneath the left. He nodded.

– OK, Ill make some calls.

Po Sin looked again at the van.

– Motherfucker.

He unlocked the van and opened the rear doors.

– Lets get to work.

He pulled out three white packets and handed one to me and one to Gabe. I watched them shake theirs out until they unfolded into paper jumpsuits. Po Sins the size of a mainsail, Gabes meant for a normal human. I did the same and stepped into mine and watched how they tied the flaps on theirs. I was tying mine closed when I heard a long loud rip and watched Po Sin pull a huge roll of duct tape around and around his ankle, sealing the leg of the Tyvek suit to the top of the plastic shoe cover hed slipped over his boot. He did the same with his other ankle. And then both wrists. And then the neck. He passed the tape to Gabe who did likewise.

Gabe offered me the tape.

– Do it yourself, or need a hand?

I got taped up and hooded and Gabe showed me how to fit the goggled filter mask over my mouth and nose and I followed him into the hotel, Po Sin trailing behind us, glancing back at his vandalized van.

– Motherfucker.

The roaches swarmed me. The first bag I shifted disturbed their routine and they swarmed me, simultaneously revealing what my feet had been crunching on when I walked into the dark apartment, and what the constant background rustling sound was caused by.

So I freaked a little.

A couple hundred cockroaches come spilling out of the shit-encrusted nooks and crannies of a dead shut-ins festering den and start racing each other up your legs to see which can be the first to crawl in your facial orifices and see if you dont freak.

Po Sin watched the freaking. Stood there with his arms folded, framed by towers of piled trash and bundled newspapers and plastic gallon milk jugs filled with urine, and watched all the cockroaches in creation crawling on me trying to find holes they could climb into.

– Cant handle this, you cant handle the job.

He stood in front of me, his torso being populated by swarms of roaches combining into continents, pieces breaking off and drifting and forming with other masses. The geophysical history of the earth enacted by roaches on a globe of a man.

He extended an arm and elegantly brushed a few from the sleeve of his Tyvek.

– Worse things to be covered in, man. Let me tell you.

Gabe walked past me, edging down the open corridor between the piles of refuse, making for the dim light at the back of the place where theyd excavated a couple windows the day before.

– Lots worse things.

He disappeared, lost in bugs and towering waste.

Po Sin watched me.

And, not wanting to at all, I thought about worse things.

Po Sin crunched over.

– OK?

The legs of one of the roaches tickled the exposed rim of skin running between my filter mask and the edge of the Tyvek hood. I flicked it to the floor and stomped on it. And, incidentally, about a dozen more.

– Yeah, Im fine. Youre a dick, but Im fine.

He nodded and pointed toward the back of the apartment.

– Then head back there. Gabe is bagging the shit. Start hauling it down to the service elevator.

I started down the hall, the smell of rancid crap already seeping through the mask.

– You suck, Po Sin!

Appearing in front of me, Gabe shook his head.

– Heres the thing. You dont want to yell like that. It will break the seal of your mask around your chin and jaw. Theyll get in. You take off the mask to get them off and theyll be all over your face. Be in your nostrils.

Roaches in your nostrils. Pretty bad. But still, like I say, there are worse things.

So I got to work.

I hauled shitbags. A lot of them. The shut-in who lived in the place, he must have shit like a dozen times a day. He must have eaten nothing but beans and broccoli and topped it off with Mьeslix.

Hauling the big black garbage bags filled with little bags filled with shit between the teetering masses of putrefying garbage, the smell of fermenting waste in my nose hairs, I tried to do some math. I tried to figure out how many years the guy must have been shitting in bags to create this kind of poundage.

I took another load of the bags down in the service elevator and out the back to the bin Po Sin had rented for the job and had parked in the alley. My face itched under the mask and I wanted to take it off, but I knew the reek coming off the bags would kill me without some kind of protection. I started taking bags from the dolly I had piled them on and began flinging them over the side of the bin.

I tried to remember how much Chev said a new cellphone was gonna cost. Almost two hundred. At least twenty hours of shit-flinging to pay that off.

Crap.

One of the bags snagged a flange of steel at the top of the bin and tore open and little ziplocks of shit spilled down onto the asphalt.

– Crap!

I bent and started picking them up.

Three hours in, and my back and knees and arms and shoulders were killing me. I remembered my dad and his cronies sitting out on the porch behind the Laurel Canyon house, sipping bourbon and water and playing Worst Job Ever. All trying to one-up the others.

Gas-pump jockey.

Bellhop.

Stable boy.

Cabby.

Janitor.

Cow inseminator.

Night watchman.

High school teacher.

That last one from my dad. The trump that beat everyone and ended the game in laughter. Nearly all of them having been public school teachers at some time or other before they got involved with the movie business.

Wish I could get a round of that game going. Put some money on it. Id clean up.

Shitbag flinger.

– Ho, whos that on shitbag duty?

I looked up at the guy coming down the alley tying himself into a Tyvek.

– Whos the man behind the mask?

He came close, tugging at the shoulder seams of the Tyvek, trying to get the garment to give some breathing room to the thick muscle wadded around his neck and arms and torso.

He stopped.

– Hey. Who? Who the fuck are you?

I tossed a bag of shit into the bin.

– Who the fuck are youi

He ducked his head back.

– What?

I pointed at my face.

– Sorry, I got this mask on, it must have garbled my use of the spoken word. Allow me to employ sign language.

I crooked my index finger into a question mark.

– Who.

I held up my middle finger.

– The fuck.

I pointed at him.

– Are you?

He pushed his head forward.

– The fuck you think you are?

I shook my head.

– No, see, were still having communication problems here. It must be because Im speaking English and youre speaking Dickanese.

He grabbed the finger I had aimed at him and pulled up on it.

– What?

Pain shot up my arm and my knees started to fold. I quickly calculated how much harder it would be to fling shit with one of my index fingers snapped off, and how much longer it would take to pay off Chevs new cellphone, and made a strategic decision about how to handle the situation.

– Whoa, whoa, man! Whoa, my bad! Just foolin’ around! That hurts, man. Easy big guy, my bad. Uncle. Uncle!

He gave my finger a twist and let go.

– Thats right you call uncle. Fuck with me, smart ass.

I flexed the finger, making sure it would still fling shit.

– Yeah, thats me, smart ass. Its a habit.

He tilted his head as far as his neck would allow.

– You still trying to be funny?

I shook my head.

– No, man, Im not. Seriously. I mean, I wasnt trying to be funny in the first place, I was just trying to communicate on your level. Sincerely.

He grabbed my finger again and I went to my knees in the little bags of shit, many of them popping open under me. From the corner of my eye I saw several roaches that had been clinging to me bailing off, abandoning the ship that was clearly going down.

He added torque to the back pressure on the finger and I fell to my side in the shitbags.

He stood over me, straddling my body and the crap piled beneath me.

– Man, you are funny. You are so fucking funny, you know what I did, youre so funny?

I writhed, trying to take some of the tension off my finger.

He gave it a jerk.

– I said, You know what I did, youre so funny?

– No, no, man, I dont. Please, please tell me.

He leaned down, putting his pocked face in mine, his breath fogging the lenses of my goggles.

– I forgot to laugh, thats how funny you are.

– Knock that shit off.

The guy looked at Po Sin, coming out the service exit at the back of the hotel, pushing a hand truck stacked with rotting cardboard boxes.

– Uncle, who the fuck is this?

Po Sin pointed.

– Let go his finger, Dingbang.

He let go of my finger and turned.

– Man, Uncle, dont call me that. Told you my handles Bang. Just Bang.

Po Sin lifted the mask from his face, flicking a couple roaches from the exposed skin.

– OK, Just Bang.

– No. Just. Bang. Not Just Bang. Man.

Po Sin looked at me.

– Just Bang Man. Its like hes asking for trouble.

I laughed.

Bang turned.

– What you laughing at, shitbag? Lying in a pile of shit. Whats so fucking funny about that?

Po Sin came over and offered his hand to me, looking at Bang.

– Go home, Nephew.

– What the fuck, man. Im here. Im ready to work.

Po Sin gave my arm a tug and it almost came clear of its socket as he hauled me up.

– Job started three hours ago.

– Told you I was gonna be late.

– No you didnt.

– I did. I called Aunt Lei and she said shed tell you.

– No you didnt. And dont bring your aunt into it.

Po Sin pointed at the bags scattered at our feet and looked at me.

– Get these in the bin and change into a Tyvek with no shit on it, Web.

Bang pointed at me.

– Who the fuck is he?

Po Sin put a hand on his shoulder and turned him toward the end of the alley.

– Hes the guy who got here on time this morning.

Bang stood his ground.

– Bullshit, man. Thats bullshit. This is my job.

Po Sin leaned slightly, putting his weight behind his hand, and moved Bang off his ground and down the alley.

– That was your job, until you didnt spend last night at the shop like you were supposed to. That was your job until the van got plastered with paint because no one was there keeping an eye on things.

– I was in court yesterday. I told you. I had a violation. Fucking cop pulled me over because Im Asian. Total profiling.

– He give you a DUI because youre Asian?

– Fuck does that matter? Thats not the point. He had no reason to pull me over in the first place. I was driving fine. He wasnt profiling for Asians, he never would have known I had an open container. And thats not the fucking point anyway. I had court. I told you I had court.

Po Sin propelled him farther down the alley.

– You didnt tell me.

– I did! I did! I called! And after court I had to go explain it to my mom and she got upset and didnt want me to drive because she didnt understand that it was OK, that I hadnt been suspended and I called to tell you I couldnt be at the shop, man.

– No you didnt.

Bang dug in his heels and shrugged off his uncles hand.

– Fuck your hand off me anyway. I do all the shit work! All of it! You, that fucking round-eye Gabe, you never pull your weight. Not that anyone could pull your weight.

– Nephew.

– No, fuck you! Fuck you and this shit job. I fucking quit! See how long that scrawny fucker lasts doing the heavy lifting for you. See how long he lasts when theres trouble. Fuck you and fuck your fucking wife who cant take a fucking phone message and.

Whoever else was meant to be fucked had their name deleted by Po Sins hand wrapping around his nephews throat and shoving him into the graffitied brick wall of the hotel.

Po Sin held him there. Bang turned red.

I took a couple steps.

– Po Sin.

He looked at me. Looked at his nephew. And let go.

Bang slumped, gagged and wheezed. Po Sin put a hand on his chest.

– Dingbang? I. Dingbang.

Bang knocked the hand away.

– Dont call me that!

He pushed from the wall and ran to the end of the alley.

– Gonna pay for touching me, man! No one touches Bang!

He took a step, stopped, and pointed at me.

– You too, shitbag, youre dead!

And he rounded the corner of the alley and was gone.

Po Sin stood there for a second, turned and walked toward me.

– Sorry. Hes my nephew. But. He.

– Hes a dick, Po Sin.

He pulled the end of his moustache.

– Well. Yes. Like father like son. Nothing like working with family to bring out the best in a man.

– Or to make him want to strangle them.

He smiled.

– Dont know about you, but some of my family, I dont need to be anywhere near them to want to strangle ‘em.

– I find it helps that my mom lives out of state.

– Never had a problem with my mother. My dad I could have throttled a couple times.

– My dad spends all his time in a bar out in Santa Monica. That far west, may as well be another state. Hes safe from me.

– Yeah, distance makes the heart grow fonder.

– I didnt say that.

He started for the service entrance.

– My mother and father are both permanently out of reach. And my brother. Well. Were out of touch. Last thing I need at this point is less family.

He stopped and stared at the end of the alley where Bang had disappeared.

I bent and picked up a shitbag and tossed it in the bin.

– He was asking for it, Po Sin.

He kept looking down the alley.

– Hes a boy Im a man.

He turned his head to me.

– A man should be able to retain his composure.

I looked at the shit at my feet.

He made for the entrance.

– Its about lunch. Finish up with that and well go grab a bite.

– Where?

He waved a hand over his shoulder.

– Doesnt matter. With a job like this, wherever we eat its gonna taste like shit.

I watched him go inside. I massaged my finger and rotated my wrist and swung my arm around, making sure it all worked. Then I started. Putting more shit in the bin.

He was right about lunch.

What with the smell of well-marinated crap in our hair and on our clothes and up our noses and down our throats, lunch didnt have much appeal for me. Not so, for the more experienced hands. I watched Po Sin tear into his third cheeseburger, and Gabe scrape the last of his chili from the bottom of the bowl.

Po Sin washed down a bite of burger with chocolate milkshake.

– Different things bother different people.

I picked up one of my fries and took a bite of it. It still tasted like shit.

– So youre saying I shouldnt be disturbed by the fact that having my nasal passages smelling like dung ruins my appetite? What relief. I was worried it was me, I was worried I might be some kind of deviant not wanting to eat when all I can smell is ass butter. What a load off, knowing that Im not alone and everyone has their own problems.

Po Sin wiped his mouth.

– Thought thatd make you feel better.

I dropped the fry and pushed the unfinished bulk of my meal to the middle of the table.

– So what bothers you?

Po Sin grabbed some of my fries and shoved them in his mouth.

– Me? Nothing.

Gabe rubbed his nose.

– Nothing but kids.

Po Sin looked at me.

– Kids are hard. No one likes kids.

I looked away from Po Sin, watched some teenagers at the Fatburger counter shove each other around, laughing, and chose to ignore whatever the fuck point he was trying to make.

– I like kids. Kids are OK.

Gabe drained the last of his ice tea.

– Dead kids. No one likes dead kids.

Po Sin threw me another look, I refused to catch it, and he ate another fry.

– On a trauma job. When its a kid. Thats rough.

Gabe leaned back, the table warped in the lenses of the sunglasses he hadnt taken off since coming out of the hotel.

– Doesnt really count anyway. Kids bother everyone. None of the other stuff bothers you.

Po Sin shrugged.

– Do the job long enough, you see it all.

He dipped his head at Gabe.

– Gabe cant stand the smell of mold.

– Mildew.

– Right, mildew. Water damage. Doesnt like it.

I looked at Gabe.

– Mildew?

He didnt look at me.

– Yeah.

– Rancid mounds of feces are cool, but mildew freaks you out.

He scratched a scar that ran down the top of his left forearm.

– I dont like it much. Thats all.

Po Sins phone rang. He looked at it and answered.

– Clean Team. Uh-huh.

He felt his back pocket, found a notepad, and reached behind his ear for his stub of pencil.

– Sorry to hear that. Uh-huh. Im sorry. Yes. Yes we do. Uh-huh. Well, were on a job right now, but we could be there tonight. Or tomorrow morning. Uh-huh. Im sorry to hear that. Yes it is. Yes it is. Ill. Yes. Well, Id like to ask a few questions if I may. Well, it gives us an idea of whats involved. How many of us might be needed and such. Uh-huh. Well, most important is, have the police and the coroner released the scene? Good. OK. And can you tell me what room it happened in?

I watched him write bedroom on the notepad.

– Sure. And if I may, can I ask how? Right. I know.

Gunshot.

– And if I may, the type of weapon?

Handgun.

– Do you happen to know the caliber of the weapon?

9mm.

– I know. I know.

He took the phone from his ear and rolled his neck around. I could hear crying, cut off as he put it back at his ear.

– Can you tell me if any doors or windows were open? Can you tell me how many?

2 doors.

– Uh-huh. No. Well, its pretty much impossible to give an estimate on the phone. Sure. What well do is, well come out, tonight or in the morning, whichever you prefer, and well take a look and well do an assessment and well tell you just how much time it will take and how much it will cost. No, free of charge, we do that free of charge.

He talked a little more, wrote down an address in Malibu and a phone number, and hung up and dropped the phone in his pocket. He picked up the last of his cheeseburger and put it in his mouth.

– Nine millimeter in the mouth. Gonna be an earner, that one.

Gabe nodded.

– The bigger the gun, the bigger the mess.

I knew that already. That bit of wisdom about guns and the messes that they make.