by Tim Dorsey
Coleman grabbed another cushion. “You sure this is legal?”
“Not only is it legal—it’s our job. I already explained this to you. Twice.”
“I was fucked up.”
“We were hired to clean out dead people’s houses.”
“That’s a job?”
“An excellent one.” Serge pulled out a lower drawer full of real silverware and dumped it into a suitcase that already contained sterling candleholders. “It’s this economy. To survive, you have to find the weirdest jobs that nobody else thinks of. And with all the retirees in Florida, there’s a booming, under-the-radar industry of people who get houses ready for probate sales. And it pays a ton better than cleaning up the homes of the living. Plus the best part of this job: The boss is dead . . . I used to put that in my résumés. ‘Seeking fifty-K-plus, flexible hours, dead boss.’ But it never worked because I guess everyone else was asking for the same thing.”
“Why does this pay a ton better?”
“Because the people we’re working for don’t give a hoot.”
“I thought you just said the boss is dead.”
“Actually we’re working for his estate, the kids and all.” Serge made room in the suitcase for a new food processor, which was a late-night infomercial impulse purchase that the deceased couldn’t remember arriving. “It’s all found money to the adult children. And that’s why retiree-rich Florida leads this business: The heirs are a million miles away. Sure, they fly down for the funeral and the reception with barbecue-glazed mini-weenies and a casserole from a recipe on a bottle of Kraft ranch dressing. But then they can barely wait to rush back up north from where their loved ones retired.”
“Michigan?” asked Coleman.
“Sometimes. And they definitely ain’t sticking around the house to get it ready for resale. They hire lawyers and real-estate agents and tell them: ‘Just get it done.’ And then the people they hired hire us and pay ridiculous fees because nobody’s counting. It doesn’t come out of their end; they just want to turn the property. And most people are creeped out by this kind of job, especially if they didn’t find the dude for a week and you have to deal with the mattress. It works out even better if they’re like this guy and die intestate.”
“They cut his balls off?”
“Coleman! . . .”
Coleman took a toke and giggled. “I see dead people’s stuff.”
“So how about giving me a hand with the stuff?”
“Okay.” Coleman crouched down and reached under the couch. “I think I found one of the miniweenies.”
“In case you’re wondering, that goes in the trash.”
Coleman leaned and reached again. “But I thought you said your personal code only allowed you to steal from other criminals.”
“What I specifically said was I don’t steal when it makes me feel guilty. Criminals are just the best example.”
“Still sounds like you’re ripping off innocent people in grief.”
“Hey, I don’t know from these kids.” Serge held a gold pocket watch to his ear. “If they cared, they’d be in the room with us right now, helping out, and then I’d get to know them and feel guilty.”
“And then you wouldn’t rob ’em?”
Serge stopped to rub his chin. “Michigan’s a tough call . . . I’d probably still do it but feel bad enough to put a couple bucks in the poor box, especially since I’d have to conk them in the head with the candleholders because it goes without saying you can’t have them follow you out to the car, yelling in front of all the neighbors, ‘They’re stealing forks and pocket watches and the Kitchen Pro Slice-O-Matic!’ ”
“I still don’t know,” said Coleman, lying on his side with his arm all the way under the couch. “What’s that big word you use that means when you make excuses and fib to yourself?”
Serge opened a drawer on the TV stand. “ ‘Rationalizing’?”
“That’s it. I think that’s what you’re doing.”
“Of course that’s what I’m doing.” He grabbed a silver-dollar cowboy belt buckle handcrafted by Indians. “And here’s how I rationalize my rationalizing. God gave us the ability to rationalize so we can stomach all the horrible things we’re required to do every day just to survive the concrete jungle. ‘Yeah, it was shitty for me to eat some of his pudding cups from the employee refrigerator, but I was hungry. And he’s a jerk.’ ”
“Do animals in the real jungle have to rationalize?” asked Coleman.
“No, some predator sees food or an enemy, they rip its face off without a second thought,” said Serge. “But when we humans vote for candidates to take away the other guy’s benefits—‘but keep your fucking hands off my Medicare’—we need to lie to ourselves. It makes us special.”
Coleman pulled his arm out from under the couch again. “How’d you learn about this job in the first place? . . . Here’s a button.”
“From probate attorneys. They’re recession-proof. They’re everything-proof. Nothing can touch them. Why? Because people will always die, and heirs will always like to receive found money.” Serge’s hands fanned through an invisible stack of currency. “When Armageddon reigns, and survival on this planet gets down to brass tacks, the last three left standing will be cockroaches, viruses and probate attorneys. Fade to black, check please.”
“I’ve never heard about this,” said Coleman.
“They don’t teach it in business school, but whenever the economy comes unglued like House Speaker Boehner watching Brian’s Song, we can survive and even prosper just by imitating exactly what probate attorneys do. Except we can’t because we’re not probate attorneys. The attorneys made that rule. So here’s what you do. Let’s say you’re approaching middle age and suddenly remember you forgot to go to law school. Not the end of the world. Probate attorneys can’t do it alone. They have to farm out the dirty work, and there’s a whole, invincible, ambient economy surrounding them like a holy aura as they walk down the street. The answer is to study them and pick up tips for sidestream income in a down market. Or even better, follow them. Twenty-four/seven. That’s what I do. They don’t really like it. And that’s why selling yourself is so important. My guy’s name was Steve. I introduced myself real polite: ‘Can I call you Steve? I mean since I’ll be following you. Or actually have been following. I got your name when I peeked in your mailbox, just before I peeked in your windows last night. But only the kitchen and your home office while you were licking stamps. But definitely not the bedroom, because personal privacy is number one with me! Let’s get that out of the way from the get-go, in case you’ve heard the talk. Want some of this coffee? No? Good, ’cause I want it all. Excuse me while I kill this. Glug, glug, glug. So, anyway, I’d like to hear all your invaluable tips on secondary recession income . . . Why are you backing up on the sidewalk? Wait, slow down. Stop running . . . Face it, Steve, you can’t outrun me. See how I’m easily keeping stride, and you’re breathing and sweating like Rush Limbaugh being whipped by a jockey up a pyramid? I can do this all day. You don’t want to turn down that alley; there’s only the parking garage . . . Okay, you did it anyway. And you just made another careless error, running the wrong way on level one. I know this garage—you’ve just boxed yourself in. But since I now have you cornered against those walls, a few golden drops of your wisdom, please . . . Man, Steve, you’re really shaking; dress shirt all stuck to your chest and shit. Are you trying to kick H? If you are, I know these cats. Revolutionary new technique. Forget nine to twelve weeks in a mountain chalet with Liza Minnelli. One week, pow! You hire them, and they grab you off the street without warning, sack over your head and into the back of a van. Variation on tough love, but incredible success rate . . . Steve, I’m trying to talk to you, but you’ve got your cell phone out. Am I not giving you my undivided attention? Don’t call the police . . . You’re still calling them. Gimme that thing. I’ll give it back when we’re done. You know
those fantastic nature documentaries in high def where they get stupid-close to those big fuckin’ sharks, and the one fish the sharks don’t tear to a bloody mess are the little guys that clean their skin and eat the sidestream chunks of flesh that get stuck in their teeth? Get it? Sidestream income, sidestream flesh? I want to be your skin cleaner. That melody is Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer.’ What ever happened to him? . . . Steve! You’re fainting! . . . Goddamn, that’s the biggest forehead gash I’ve ever seen.’ . . . And then I had to call 911 . . .”
“Guess you didn’t get any of his money tips,” said Coleman.
“Just the opposite,” said Serge. “It’s how we landed this job.”
“You mean the place where we are now?”
Serge nodded and pocketed cuff links. “And the six houses before this when you weren’t around. After the parking-garage mishap, I called Steve at home.”
“You had his number?”
“No, I was calling him through his bedroom window,” said Serge. “I promised no bedroom windows, but he wasn’t answering the phone. And I’m standing there in the bushes saying I think his phone is broken, and his wife turned out to be a real screamer, and he motions for me to meet him at the front door. I finally see his face in half-decent light from the street, and I’m like, ‘Jesus, that’s one big-ass bandage over your stitches. Couldn’t the doctors have used anything smaller that doesn’t tell everyone you faint for no reason?’ . . . And he begs me to leave him alone, and to call his office in the morning. Of course I do, and his secretary explains this job about cleaning up after the dead and gives me an address, and then a few days later, a check from the real-estate agent arrives at the same address. Since then, whenever I need some extra cash, I just call Steve’s office, and the secretary immediately gives me another address. It’s almost as if she has a list taped to her phone. Steve’s polite like that, respecting my time . . .”
Banging and whimpering from the closet.
“Serge,” said Coleman. “The ATM guy . . .”
“He’ll get tired of doing that.”
Coleman herded dust bunnies on the floor. “But where’d you learn how to do this job?”
“What’s to know?” Serge shrugged. “I don’t even think they care how well I perform, because once I did a really crappy job. Showed up for an hour but got distracted by Fantasy Fest in Key West and didn’t come back for three weeks, and when I finally remembered, I went to the real-estate agent’s office to apologize, but her secretary says she’s not in, and then I see some woman running out the back door and speeding away in a car. And the secretary suddenly hands me a check, full payment.”
“That’s weird,” said Coleman, staring at the banging closet.
“Steve must have talked to that agent about me,” said Serge. “Put the ol’ probate boot down on her neck: ‘You want to keep riding this gravy train? Don’t fuck with my people.’ ”
“Wow,” said Coleman. “Steve must really like you.”
Serge nodded again. “It’s great having a probate attorney as a friend. They’re very loyal.”
LATER THAT NIGHT
It always seems to be a full moon in the glades.
The sugarcane flowed like an ocean, waves of stalk in the wind. Million acres to the horizon in every direction. Whitecaps where the light reflected just right.
The lonely road south from the lake passed through a vacant crossroads called Okeelanta, Florida’s version of the crop-duster scene from North by Northwest. Then emptiness. Just a long, desolate drive—one of the longest in the state—with no public turnoffs or safe harbor to pull over for three counties, unless you wanted to take your car swimming in a drainage canal.
Nothing but an elevated causeway of limestone and fill dirt that gave a nice crow’s-nest view over the landscape, first the agricultural tracts, then the glades in full force. Just swamp and gators for another long run until hitting some truck stops on the outer outskirts of Miami.
It was cool and breezy up in the livestock bed of a cattle truck that crossed the railroad tracks in South Bay. Standing room only for the migrants packed in the back. They had to hold their bladders. Nobody spoke.
Up front in the cab, the driver turned on the radio, and the passenger turned it off.
“What’s the deal?”
“Shut up,” said the passenger. “I’m trying to think.”
“About what was on TV today? The intercepted buses and raided clinic?”
No answer.
The driver stared ahead. “Maybe we should cool it until after the crackdown.”
“You idiot,” said the passenger. “How do you think the policía knew where to go?”
The driver shrugged.
The passenger simply held up an untraceable cell phone.
The driver did a double take. “You tipped off the cops? But why?”
“Those fucking hillbillies. This is our territory. They think they can just come down here and take what’s ours?” He spit out the window.
“So you’re trying to drive them out of business?”
“No, I want them in business.”
The driver turned with a questioning look.
“As our customers,” the passenger explained. “First I cut off their source. No more of this going straight to the clinics themselves and smuggling it out on buses. Then we’ll be the only source, and they’ll have to do business with us.”
“I don’t think they’ll go for that.”
“They won’t have a choice. They’ll have to pay a lot more, but they’ll still make a bundle on the back end.”
“But the police have been hitting our clinics, too.”
“That’s why we have to change tactics. They’re looking for packed parking lots, and sending undercovers to look for lobbies jammed with people.”
“Is that why we got those motel rooms on U.S. 1?”
“Don’t talk anymore.”
The passenger stared out the window at the moon. Gaspar Arroyo. Immigrant story. Crossed over at Laredo in ’98, then hooked around the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Biloxi. Worked the Florida farm circuit in Immokalee, then east to La Belle and Belle Glade. Nothing to show for it. The farms overcharged for food and claimed everything for housing, which was usually little more than a termite-ridden, clapboard barracks. It was either that or an INS jail cell awaiting deportation. The only migrant who made anything was the one whom the farm gringos deputized to keep each barracks in line however he saw fit. They picked the most sadistic.
Five years ago, Arroyo took his first beating from the barracks captain. The next morning, the captain couldn’t be found. That afternoon he turned up in the blades of a harvesting machine. There was talk, but nothing more. The gringos put Arroyo in charge of the barracks. He wanted more.
Through a series of whispered circumstances, Arroyo became the only illegal immigrant with an executive’s title and salary at one of the largest cane processors in Florida. He never went in the office, and everyone was happy about it.
Gaspar had bigger dreams as he gazed off the side of the causeway at the moonlit cane.
“Pull over,” he told the driver. “I have to take a leak.”
The truck stopped on the road, because there was no shoulder. Gaspar walked to the edge of the canal and trickled into the water. He zipped up. “José, get over here. I see something.”
“What is it?” yelled the driver.
“I hope it’s not what I think. Hurry!”
José hopped down from the cab and ran to the bank. “What’s the tire iron for?”
“In case of snakes while I’m peeing.”
José turned his head toward the swamp. “Where am I looking?”
“In the reeds on the other side of the canal.” Gaspar crouched and pointed. “At the waterline.”
“Still don’t see it.”
“Are you blind? It’s right there.”
José leaned closer. “You mean that? It’s just an empty milk bottle bobbing.”
“You’re right,” said Gaspar.
José straightened up. “This weird lighting played a trick on your eyes.”
Gaspar stepped behind him. “No, I mean you were right about a lot of our clinics getting hit. Someone’s been talking.”
Gaspar swung the tire iron with all he had, smashing José at the base of his back and sending electric jolts both ways through his spinal cord.
A horrible, high-pitched scream emptied into the sugarcane.
José fell onto his back, limbs bent weird. “Oh God! I can’t feel my legs!”
“That’s the whole idea,” said Gaspar, leaning over him and brandishing the iron. “You thought I wouldn’t find out that you’re ratting on me?”
“No, Gaspar! I can explain—”
The next swing hit José’s right elbow. Another scream, then another elbow whack, and so on.
Gaspar finally dropped to his knees and rolled José onto his stomach. “This is what you get for fucking me!”
“Whatever you’re thinking, please! . . . I still can’t feel my legs . . .”
“Whatever I’m thinking? Here’s what I’m thinking!” Gaspar gently caressed the back of José’s neck. “I’m thinking of one of these cervical vertebrae. Then you’ll forget about your legs. You won’t feel anything, except your head. You’ll be able to smile, frown, blink, even talk, except nothing will come out because your brain won’t be able to tell your lungs to breathe . . . Consider it quiet time to mull over what you’ve done.”
“No! Please—”
Wham.
The blow would have sounded like a dull thud to anyone standing around, but inside José’s skull it was the sharp clap of a rifle shot. Then Gaspar rolled him over so he could face the night sky. His lips moved silently.
Gaspar stuck the tire iron in his belt and climbed the shoulder of the road. He looked up at the truck’s bed. Everyone turned away. They were in the middle of forty same-looking miles. Even if they wanted to, there was no way anyone could pinpoint José’s location before the alligators did their thing.
