They entered a room never sure what they would find, prepared for the worst. This is what they trained for, Friday afternoons at the Everclean garage in Glendale, once a month, once every six months, whenever the state safety reps came down from Sacramento and stood sweating in the heat in their dark suits, watching the techs work through simulated clean-ups on the set Bob and Darby had built in the parking lot, a mock motel room, a floor and three plywood walls, open to the sky. The techs had arranged an assortment of thrift store furniture inside, two twin beds and a night table, a broken TV on a thick oak dresser. They’d hung curtains over the window holes, tacked strips of mismatched carpeting to the floor. Somewhere along the line, someone had procured some authentic motel room art, Bob probably, blurry pastel watercolors of seascapes and sand dunes in chipped wooden frames, and these were hung on the walls over the bed and dresser.
They rehearsed using different props, set pieces they’d constructed, a narrow air duct they could crawl into, a short staircase leading nowhere. Every job was dangerous, potentially. Every room contained invisible pathogens, some air-borne, some fluid-borne, some deadly, some merely unpleasant. Herpes Simplex Type 1, Herpes Simplex Type 2; Hepatitis A, B, C; Trichophyton; Giardia; Human Immunodeficiency Virus; Escherichia coli; Campylobacter; Staph; Strep. The names cycled through Darby’s head at a job site. The list of potential miseries. The respirator masks and rubber gloves and Tyvek body suits were protection against the list, although there were hidden dangers at every site, rusty nails and broken glass and pinprick syringes discovered under mattresses, in dark corners.
They worked through every eventuality on the set in the parking lot—natural expiration, accidental expiration, murder two, murder three—though suicides accounted for maybe eight jobs out of ten.
Bob and Javier Molina, a friend from his old neighborhood, had started Everclean ten years before in Molina’s mother’s garage. Molina handled the business end while Bob handled the cleanups. Things had gone well. It turned out there was a need for their particular services. The company had grown to include Darby and Roistler, Mrs. Fowler in the dispatch office, the two vans and enough equipment to warrant the Glendale garage.
The garage sat near the end of a dry, sun-exposed industrial strip, amid long, flat, stucco-and-cinderblock warehouses and machine shops, a small salvage yard, a couple of empty, trash-strewn lots wrapped in chain-link. Behind the garage, on the other side of a high fence, was the long drop-off into the concrete trough of the Los Angeles River. The river was dry most of the year, just shallow pools of oily water around swollen trash bags and discarded shopping carts. A chain of small islands stretched off to the west, each maybe thirty or forty feet of high weeds and brush. There were homeless encampments clustered along the islands, and at night the techs could see the flickers of cigarette lighters and cooking fires, shadows jumping along the river’s graffiti-striped walls.
Bob maneuvered the van into the garage and Darby climbed up into the back, emptying out the equipment, spraying the walls and floor with disinfectant. The phone rang in the dispatch office. Darby could hear Mrs. Fowler’s sunny sing-song answer, Good morning, thank you for calling Everclean.
There was a waiting area at the other end of the garage, a couple of chairs, a coffee maker, a table with a spread of muscle car magazines, a TV on a metal stand. The TV showed a live news shot from some outlying location, a brown, bleak place, dust and long sky, a low ridge of mountains in the distance. The camera zoomed in on a large barn without windows or a visible door, then pulled back to reveal a pair of smaller buildings, a garage, a water tank, all behind a high deer fence topped with concertina wire.
“Where is that?” Bob said, squinting at the screen from halfway across the garage. “The Tehachapis? Looks like the Tehachapi Mountains.”
Roistler stood in front of the TV, head forward to hear the low volume. “Some kind of survivalist group,” he said. “Been living there for a few weeks. They’re going to wait out the Millennium Bug.”
“Where is that?” Bob said. “Roistler, turn up the goddamn sound.”
A female reporter was now in the shot, holding a microphone, standing in front of a satellite news van.
“Twenty-five, thirty people,” Roistler said, relaying what he heard. “They all met in an online message board. These reporters found their web site.”
“Can you please turn up the goddamn sound?” Bob said.
Darby hopped down out of the van, still shaking the last of the headache from the job site. He patted his waist, his belt. His cell phone was gone. He kept the phone in a leather holster clipped to his belt, set to vibrate in case The Kid needed to reach him. The entire holster was gone. He checked the front of the van, under the seat, behind the seat. He tried to remember if he’d had the phone with him when he’d left the house the night before, if he’d clipped the holster to his belt next to his Everclean pager, if he’d had it in his hand when he stood in The Kid’s bedroom doorway, watching him sleep.
Molina came out into the garage from his office, looked at the TV. He pulled at the collar of his white dress shirt, too tight around his wide neck. A bird’s claw tattoo poked out from under his cuff, the man that the businessman had once been showing through a little.
“Have you seen this?” Roistler said. “Tell me you’ve put a bid in on this.”
“There’s nothing to bid on,” Molina said. “Nothing’s happened.”
“Give them a call. Get us on a list. Someone’s starting a list, government bids.”
“Roistler, they can’t take bids on something that hasn’t happened.”
“Big job,” Roistler said. “That’s going to be a big job.”
The Kid had convinced Darby to buy the cell phone, had come up with an entire system for its usage. Darby hadn’t wanted to leave The Kid alone in the house when he went out on night jobs, but The Kid didn’t want to stay with anyone else, so one evening, nine or ten months before, The Kid laid his cell phone plan out for Darby on the front porch. The plan took up an entire two-page spread in his notebook—diagrams, arrows, the whole nine yards. Darby would buy a phone and subscribe to one of the monthly calling plans The Kid saw advertised during the late-night talk shows. The Kid would be the only person with the phone number. If there were any problems at night while Darby was at work, The Kid would call Darby and relay a series of dot-dash-dot bleeps using the keypad of the kitchen phone. Morse Code. Bob had bought The Kid a book on Morse Code for his birthday that year, and this had sparked his whole idea. In his notebook, he’d copied over a few phrases he thought he’d be using in his transmissions to Darby: Help, Come at once. What is your position? Calling for assistance. S.O.S.
Darby stood in the middle of the garage, scanning the cement floor. No sign of the phone or the holster.
“Here you go, jefe.” Bob handed Molina the paperwork from the cleanup. He turned up the volume on the TV, pulled a three-ring binder down from the shelf above the set, slid the Before and After photos into a plastic sheet at the back. These were the sales binders, the case study binders. Molina would sit in his office with potential clients, property managers and county administrators and representatives of hotel chains, and take them on a tour through the binders, a pictorial history of Everclean cleanups, selling them of the need to plan for the unthinkable. He showed them the Polaroids of how the rooms looked before the techs got to work and waited as they flinched, as they turned their heads or covered their mouths, as their faces blanched, as their lunches rose. He always made sure they’d eaten well before they sat with the binders, a rich and heavy meal on the company credit card, a visceral reminder of how unequipped they’d be to deal with something like this. When he was sure he had their attention, he showed them the next set of pictures, the After photos, the disappearing act, the rooms good as new. That was how clients were acquired, contracts were signed. An ad in the yellow pages, word-of-mouth from cops and EMTs, a binder full of Polaroids.
“They’ve come from all over the
country,” the TV reporter said. “Single people, couples, possibly entire families now living in this compound at the foot of the Tehachapi Mountains.”
“I knew it,” Bob said. “Used to camp up there.”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Fowler said into the phone. She had one finger pressed into her open ear. “I can’t hear you. There’s a TV here that’s turned up too high.” She slid the plexiglass window between the dispatch office and the garage shut.
“What are you looking for?” Molina said. He’d turned from the TV, was watching Darby scan the floor.
“Lost my phone.”
“Check the vans,” Roistler said.
“Already did.”
“Call,” Bob said, shouting over the TV.
“What’s that?”
“Call your number from the office, listen for the ring.”
“Bob,” Roistler said. “You are a goddamn genius.”
Bob poured himself a cup of coffee, flipped Roistler the bird.
Darby went around into the dispatch office. Mrs. Fowler was off the phone, had her reading glasses perched back up on her nose, her face pressed into a paperback romance. Darby slid open the window, shouted out into the garage.
“It’s set to vibrate, so we have to cut the noise.”
Bob turned down the TV. Darby dialed the secret number. Mrs. Fowler lifted her nose out of the book and they all kept still, listening for the sound of the phone.
“I think it’s lost,” Roistler said, finally. “I haven’t felt a single vibration.”
They stood against the wall in the school courtyard, backs against the brick, boys only. The girls were somewhere else, playing soccer, running relay races. The boys lined up according to height and The Kid generally ended up at the short end of the spectrum, next to Matthew Crump, the shortest of them all. It didn’t really matter where he stood to start the game though, because after a few throws everything shifted and reshuffled as boys ducked and jumped and got hit and fell out of line and The Kid always found himself smack dab in the middle of the line of fire.
The boys with the ball were always gunning for The Kid. Brian and Razz were their names. Brian was from another sixth grade class. Razz was from The Kid’s class, though he really should have been up in seventh grade. His real name wasn’t Razz, it was Ramón, but Razz was his tagging name, the name he used when he was spray-painting on walls around the neighborhood. His older brother was in a gang, that’s what the other kids said, and Razz would be in the gang, too, in another year or so, which is why he kept his head shaved down to the scalp and wore his clothes as baggy as he could without getting sent home from school. Brian was tall and blond, a real athlete, always won the relay races and push-up contests in P.E. class. He had a throwing arm like a big league pitcher. Whenever Brian had the dodgeball, girls came over from whatever they were doing to watch him throw and cheer him on and giggle to each other about how strong he was.
The dodgeball was hollow, red rubber, basketball-sized, and when it bounced off the wall behind the boys’ heads it made a loud, vibrating punching sound, and when it bounced off the boys themselves it made the same sound and hurt like heck.
Brian and Razz found The Kid wherever he stood in line. They were helped by other boys who stood next to The Kid and held his arms so he couldn’t duck or jump or fall out; not even surrender, not even quit.
The line winnowed down as boys fell out or got hit. Matthew Crump fell out, Little Rey Lugo got beaned in the stomach and stumbled forward from the wall, clutching his middle like all of his guts were going to spill out. The Kid got hit right above his left eye, but there was a rule someone had made that if you got hit in the head it didn’t count toward elimination, you had to stay in the line, so over the course of a game The Kid could get hit in the head six or seven times and he just had to stand there while the other kids got hit in the stomach or shoulder or fell out.
The Kid adjusted his notebook, made sure it was safe where he always kept it during P.E., tucked into the waistband of his shorts, covered by his t-shirt.
The rule about getting hit in the head was not an official rule, was not spelled out by the P.E. teacher when he ran down the instructions for the boys before the game began, but the P.E. teacher was over on the other side of the courtyard anyway, supervising the girls’ relay race and talking to Miss Ramirez, telling her his loud, dumb jokes, so the made-up rule about getting hit in the head was in play and strictly enforced.
One by one, the other boys were eliminated. After they got hit or fell out they became spectators, standing in loose groups behind Brian and Razz, watching the game. The Kid could feel the cold-slap sting in the places where the ball had hit him. Cheeks, forehead, chin, neck. Brian stood fifteen feet away, dribbling the ball, planning his next throw. The Kid tried to avoid eye contact with Brian, tried not to antagonize him, get him angry.
Brian made a few quick stutter steps toward The Kid and fired the ball. It slammed into the right side of The Kid’s head, bounced off and away into the courtyard. Cheers from the other boys. Someone ran to retrieve the ball. The Kid stumbled, woozy, but he stayed upright, kept his hands at his sides. It was important not to cry, not to show that the ball hurt, although of course everyone knew that it hurt, could see that it hurt. Crying or covering up would only make things worse in the long run. The Kid knew this from experience. So he stood as straight as he could after getting hit, kept his head up, his hands at his sides, ready for the next throw.
Brian did his stutter step and hurled the ball again, his face twisting with the effort. The Kid ducked but still got hit, this time in the forehead. More cheering from the boys as the ball bounced out in a long, high arc.
The Kid watched the P.E. teacher’s back, hoping that he’d turn around, see that it was just The Kid left against the wall and blow his whistle, stop the game. But the P.E. teacher was busy yelling at Michelle Melendez, who all the kids called Michelle Mustache. Michelle was tall and fat and had dark hair on her upper lip, and she never hustled or ran or even seemed to care in P.E. class or in school in general, for that matter. The P.E. teacher was yelling at her because she was refusing to run during the relay race. She was just grabbing the baton from the girl who passed off to her and then walking her leg of the race in her heavy, rolling swagger, shoving the baton hard at the next girl on the team when she reached the end.
Brian stepped and threw, hitting The Kid squarely on the nose. The sting was bad enough to make The Kid’s eyes fill, to blur his vision for a few seconds. Hoots and hollers from the crowd of boys. Was his nose broken? He felt it with his hand. It didn’t seem like there was any blood. Someone ran to retrieve the ball for Brian. When The Kid’s eyes cleared, he looked for Matthew in the crowd, Matthew’s round head, Matthew’s black face among the brown and white faces. The Kid had dinner at the Crumps’ house once a week, had what Mr. Crump called a standing invitation, and tonight was that night. Mrs. Crump always made meatloaf or shepherd’s pie or ground chuck casserole, something thick and hard to digest, but at least it was homemade, it was a break from the frozen pizzas his dad made, the takeout Chinese food, the drive-thru windows they visited.
The Kid couldn’t find Matthew in the crowd and this made him worried, both because some kids could have dragged Matthew back out of sight to do bad things to him but also because it was good to see his friend standing there during the dodgeball game, it was reassuring to think that there’d be something after this, dinner at the Crump’s house and making comic books up in Matthew’s bedroom.
Brian stepped and threw, hitting The Kid in the side of the neck. Stepped and threw, hitting The Kid in the throat. Stepped and threw, hitting The Kid in the mouth to a thrilled round of Oooooos from the other boys. Every time The Kid got hit, the boys closed tighter around the scene, this secret thing, blocking it from outside view. Brian jogged in place, impatient for someone to retrieve the ball so he could throw again.
The Kid tasted something in his mouth, hot salt and battery tang. Bloo
d between his teeth. The freshness of the mouthwash was gone. He worried that the blood in his mouth would give him bad breath, would give the kids in class something to complain to Miss Ramirez about. But he worried more about spitting it out, a red blotch on the concrete, showing Brian and the others this inside thing. He worried more about what the sight of blood would do to the crowd of boys.
He finally found Matthew, standing on the other side of the courtyard talking urgently with Miss Ramirez and the P.E. teacher. The P.E. teacher turned and saw the crowd of boys and The Kid alone against the wall and blew his whistle. When the crowd didn’t budge he blew it again, louder this time, the whistle screaming over the noise in the courtyard, and the boys started to disperse, reluctantly, the edges of the crowd dissolving first, pulling away from the heart of the group, making their way inside to the locker room. Brian held fast at the center, though, bouncing his weight from leg to leg, gripping the ball, readying for one last throw.
The whistle had blown. The game was over, technically. The Kid no longer had to stand against the bricks waiting to get hit with the ball. The game was over, officially. He could walk away from the wall and the game.
Brian made a last stutter step and threw at The Kid but The Kid ducked away from the wall and the ball ka-rannged off the bricks, bouncing far out into the yard. Some of the other boys laughed at the missed shot, hooted at Brian for missing The Kid with his final throw.
Untouchable Page 3
