The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  “Boys with toys,” said Stew. “Generals love new tools. And when they get a few bucks, can’t wait to go shopping.”

  The rest was no different than following home a man who had just bought his first Rolex. Only with general contractors, the new tools weren’t worn on their wrists. They were usually in the garage or shed, hidden from their bookkeeping wives. Sometimes Stew would wait for nightfall and the chance to break in without detection. Other times he would simply park behind the contractor’s pickup and meet the victim in the driveway. With a smile on his face and a gun in his belt, Stew would kindly ask for help transferring the tools to a waiting panel van with stolen plates.

  “Like I said,” continued Stew. “Same old shit. Time I unloaded the tools it was nothing more than pocket money. Then came the moment. The epiphany.”

  Stew’s epiphany came when he was driving through all those nice suburban neighborhoods. Those contractors he was stealing from seemed no smarter than Stew, but they were sure living a lot better. Nice houses. Decent cars. Money to burn on new tools. Spurred by low interest rates, the construction boom in Southern California had turned the art of fixing fixer-uppers into marketable properties with a little curb appeal into a license to print money.

  “I mean, there was other stuff going on, too,” added Stew. “By then I’d met Pam. My wife. She was in the Program. What can I say? She pulled me into a meeting. Starting anew sounded good after breaking through the first detox. Leave the old me behind with the dry heaves and cold sweats.”

  “Looks like it stuck,” said Jerome with a trace of jealousy.

  “Most if it, I guess.”

  “Most of it or you wouldn’t have called me.”

  A mild clatter could be heard from the kitchen, followed by the sound of a door swinging open. Stew skipped his view from Jerome to the old Mojo Maker, a jowly man with mostly indistinguishable foreign features. The Mojo Maker walked with a floor-scraping shuffle that Stew thought must always announce his appearance well before he ever enters a room.

  “He’s alright,” said Jerome of the Mojo Maker. “He ain’t even open yet. But I called him so he popped the lock early just for me.”

  “He the guy I talked to on the phone?”

  “That would be him.”

  The Mojo Maker was just another added discomfort for Stew.

  “Let’s talk in the office,” said Stew, gesturing toward the back.

  “Seriously. He’s cool.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not no more.”

  Stew slid from the seat, retrieved his crutches and moved toward the men’s room.

  Whatever, Jerome figured. Then he followed Stew to a men’s room with an odor so putrid some regulars preferred to take relief against the rusty fence out back.

  “Jesus,” said Stew, finding every inch of the men’s toilet as repugnant as anything he could recall.

  Stew remembered using the same shit hole of a bathroom countless times for drug buys or payoffs or to just get out of earshot of all the other bad boys that were Ronny’s Regulars. But the men’s room was a squalid stink pit with paint-peeling walls splattered with a strange, septic residue.

  “Give it a minute,” Jerome said. “You’ll get used to the smell.”

  Stew used his crutch to push the door shut. He didn’t want to even touch the knob with his hands. Hardly a germaphobe, Stew was still momentarily rendered into a stiffer version of himself. He wondered if the stitches in his knee could get infected merely by his standing in the unseemly air.

  Jerome found a jug of disinfectant that was kept under the sink. He unscrewed the lid and splashed some around on the floor.

  “Like that did any good,” said Stew.

  “Improves the smell,” said Jerome. “Now what you got?”

  “Yeah,” said Stew, recovering from his momentary worries over germs and getting down to the point.

  “Old business,” continued Stew. “Way back.”

  “And how’s that supposed to get me paid?” the old junkie spat with a sneer.

  “Got a visit from the heat,” pressed Stew. “Detective. Talking about shit way back when. Culver City shit. Home invasions.”

  “Who gives a crap about old news? We did a bunch back then. Time’s up on all that shit.”

  “Not the one,” reminded Stew. “You remember the one, dontcha?”

  Jerome shook his head. Either he didn’t remember or he didn’t want to. Stew eased closer, stuck his face in Jerome’s and twisted it a tick counterclockwise for emphasis.

  “How’s this?” said Stew. “Remember you had to go swimmin’ to get the shit off you.”

  Enough said. The Sax Man’s grill grew slack as the ugly memory returned. The hollows in his cheeks puffed with the slightest exhale.

  “Long time,” said Jerome. “Fuck all... I’d put that one right out of my head...”

  “Well, somebody put it into the LAPD’S head! Now, besides me, only two guys coulda talked—”

  “Not me, homey. Like I said, I’d, like, forgot the whole—”

  “You and Bebop,” hissed Stew. “You talked to Bebop?”

  “Fuck all! I haven’t seen Bebop since he went short on me. No good, cornhole motherfucker!”

  “How’d they know then?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “C’mon. Sax Man? How’d they know?”

  “I say talk to the Bop!”

  “Don’t think I will? And what am I supposed to say when he tells me to talk to you? Fuckin’ junkie! Look at you! You’re so low you’d sell your nuts for shit!”

  “Stop it!”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Said... stop it... stop it, Stew.”

  “Tell me what you fuckin’ did.”

  “P... P... Puhleeease,” wheezed Jerome.

  “You cocksucker junkie fuck with a big mouth! Talked, didn’t you? Didn’t you?! Who’d you tell, huh? Who’d you tell about it?”

  It’s not that Jerome wouldn’t answer. It’s just that he couldn’t with his windpipe crushed. The man couldn’t so much as gasp for the putrid air he now desperately needed.

  And Stew.

  He was so trained on Jerome’s bulging eyeballs, searching every broken blood vessel for a grain of information, that he hadn’t registered the physics of the situation. Stew’s long arm was stuck straight out, but not near enough to touch Jerome. But in Stew’s right hand was one of the crutches. And the saddle of the crutch, usually reserved for Stew’s armpit, was neatly fitted underneath Jerome’s chin. It was as if every measure of Stew’s power and weight and rage had been conducted into and through the aluminum crutch.

  Jerome was pinned against the sticky wall, totally defenseless. If the man’s arms had ever raised themselves in surrender or resignation, Stew never saw them. Only later would he recall Jerome’s eyes as they strained from their sockets—then the sudden shock of discovering that in his lost moment of uncontrolled choler he had actually killed the Sax Man.

  Stew released the crutch. Jerome’s body listed sideways, sliding down the wall, gaining momentum until it crashed through the stall door. All Stew could see were Jerome’s lower extremities—two equally starved limbs lost in a pair of baggy jeans. Stew stared at the Sax Man’s scuffed loafers.

  Jerome was wearing only one sock.

  Stumbling backwards, Stew found himself nearly cracking the dirty sink from its pedestal. Then it was either wits or instinct that took control. Stew grabbed a handful of paper towels and spun quickly around the bathroom while trying to remember if he had touched anything. No, he reasoned. He had been so disgusted with the foul space that he had kept his hands to his crutches. He calmed his own breathing, then used the towels to turn the doorknob. And like snapping his fingers, he was back in the bar, the Stink Hole, Ronny’s Pub on Sunset.

  The rest was cold, remote, and remembered by Stew as if laid out in a “how to” handbook written by incarcerated criminals. All the steps seemed defined or preordained to happen in the order in which they had
come. The first cue was the sound of another batch of breaded potatoes being dropped into the kitchen fryer. Stew swiftly moved toward the sound, surprising the Mojo Maker as he was tossing a bag of sliced frozen potatoes into a soggy bag of flour. Stew’s initial instinct was to radiate a worried look, inform the Mojo Maker that Jerome had fainted in the bathroom, and then flatten the old man with a surprise fist as he hurried past. But without so much as thinking of a Plan B, Stew simply executed one. The fryer was to Stew’s immediate right. He quickly gripped the rubber handle and flipped the basket’s bubbling contents at the Mojo Maker.

  The old man cowered and screamed under the spray of hot oil and potatoes. Stew came two steps closer. A poke from the rubber-tipped crutch sent the Mojo Man writhing to the floor. The steel-tipped boot on Stew’s right foot worked swiftly to the finish, finding the soft spot in the old man’s neck, cutting off his vocals. Using the crutches for balance, Stew locked his elbows and lifted himself just enough to drive all two hundred forty pounds of himself downward.

  He felt the man’s neck snap and... that was that.

  Next, Stew quickly latched both the front and rear doors, wiped his fingerprints clean off the fryer, and rummaged in the storage closet for some kind of industrial degreaser. He scanned the labels for three words: Contains Petroleum Distillates. Stew found what he was looking for in a junior-sized drum of Greasygone. He liberally splashed the degreasing agent along the paths he had taken through the pub, at last stopping at a bootleg vending machine that dispensed individual packs of cigarettes. Instead of smashing at the lock until the machine busted open with piles of smokes, Stew inserted a five-dollar bill and purchased a single pack of Marlboros.

  Stew put a match to not one, but two smokes. To light his evidence-erasing inferno, he employed a single cigarette as a fuse. Stew placed the cigarette at the edge of the largest puddle of degreaser fluid, then put the other between his lips. He inhaled and closed his eyes.

  At last, Stew breathed. A fuckin’ smoke.

  Stew barely noticed the blistering sunlight as he exited the pub. Nor did he pay much mind to the parking ticket stuck to his truck’s windshield. His only thought was to escape the crime scene without using the crutches. He thought two shiny sticks underneath such a hearty frame might look too conspicuous. So when he left Ronny’s Stew quickly tossed his crutches into the truck bed, stepped off the curb, snatched the ticket from underneath his windshield wiper blade, climbed into his truck, and drove the hell on.

  Pain be damned.

  The cigarette was his reward for the agony of a left knee that felt like it was going to buckle with every wobbled step.

  Drive, motherfucker.

  Drive far.

  Drive yourself away from the killer you once were.

  But while driving north on the 101 Freeway, Stew’s stomach began to grind and his bowels felt as if they would soon turn septic. The feeling was creeping toward the surface, readying to turn to steam the moment it escaped his pores.

  The killer had returned.

  In an instant as quick as a finger snap, the madness inside Stew had pushed the cork clean out. All the hard work, thought Stew. For what? The weeks of detox and sweats. The twelve steps to sobriety. The minutes, hours, days, weeks, years. He had crawled so far out of himself that he was sure the old Stew was dead and decomposed. He had moved on, dammit! He had found Pam. Found love and the salvation of honest work. He owned a home, for Christ’s sake. He even paid taxes. The ugly past was truly something so far in his rearview mirror that he sometimes wondered if it had been little more than a bad dream.

  I’ve moved on, dammit. That’s not me anymore.

  But that was Stew Raymo in the men’s room. The same Stew Raymo who set fire to Ronny’s Pub on Sunset. A blaze that was just beginning to rage while Stew, driving right on the speed limit, was cresting the Cahuenga Pass and beginning his familiar descent into the safe harbor of the San Fernando Valley.

  The same damn Stew who still hadn’t a clue who the rat was. The same damn Stew who knew that once his past had caught up with him, it would cling like cancer until he had scraped himself clean of all malignancies. The rat would have to die. So would anyone the rat might have told.

  Think, Stew. Think it out. You’re not done, yet.

  He needed to stay present. There’s blood to deal with. Trace evidence on his body. Hairs. Microfibers. Blood specks the size of needle pricks. Everything had to be scrubbed. Clothes, the cab of the truck. All of it. Then an alibi established. Killing was work, he remembered. Harder work than anybody gave credit for.

  Stew’s cigarette was burned down to the filter and the pain was coming back. And to think the day was barely half done. Stew fished for the pack of Marlboros and lit another stick.

  “I’m back,” Stew cursed. “Goddammit all, the beast is back.”

  5

  WHILE JANUARY ENDED with a cold snap—by Southern California standards—February arrived with a wave of Santa Ana winds and a rash of brushfires that left Simi Valley under a constant cloud of smoke and ash. Concerned for young, developing lungs, both private and public schools asked parents to keep their children at home and indoors. Ben thought the idea was laughable. Unless a home was hermetically sealed and outfitted with a HEPA air filtration system the size of a Volkswagen, the terrifyingly tiny carbon particulates wouldn’t be stopped from finding their way into the lungs of every child in Simi Valley.

  The day after the winds shifted back into a normal offshore pattern, Simi Valley schools were back in business. This suited Ben just fine. By reinvesting his heart and time into Alex and the girls, the dark clouds in his soul had all but vanished. He had insisted on doing the morning driving, earning him a largesse of points from his wife. Sometimes Ben would even venture to forgo the drop-off lane and would park so he could walk Betsy to her classroom. Those days he would mingle and hang out with other school parents, mostly chatty mothers and a few unemployed fathers.

  Ben never intended to bump into Gonzo.

  After all his plaintive calls to her had gone unreturned, he had actually begun to hope she wouldn’t call back. For if she had, the dark clouds might return. He had even rehearsed the conversation he would have with Gonzo on the day their paths would inevitably cross. She would first apologize. Then, before she could pull at the stitches on his healing heart, he would apologize back for wasting her time.

  He would next beseech her to forget that awful night by the pool. He was drunk. He was melancholy. Let’s put a cork in it. Keep the past in the past.

  But it didn’t quite work out as planned.

  The Simi Canyons headmaster had kindly asked Ben to assist the school in choosing the safest artificial turf to replace the tired sod on the athletic fields. Ben’s first response had been to recommend the school invest in better maintenance of the natural grass. Even before his formal research he had known that real turf was statistically the safest move. He had warned that while artificial turf might be easier to manage, it would most likely increase the risk of injuries, primarily to young ankles and toes. Ben recalled reading warnings about some bizarre condition called Turf Toe.

  Unfortunately Ben was later informed that the school’s board had already voted, the money had been earmarked, and it was merely a matter of choosing the faux grass surface and the overpriced contractor to install it. Typical, thought Ben. Spend first, ask questions later. A terse reminder that school boards were no smarter than most other organizations when it came to spending other people’s money.

  The morning was crisp and sunlit. Ben was alone and at peace, seated in the bleachers while taking in what might be his last look at the school’s three acres of parched and beaten grass. He was grateful that his primary, daily concern had returned to issues of human safety.

  “Asshole got hit by a car.”

  Ben turned at the waist, squinting into the east. Gonzo was standing there in a t-shirt and motorcycle jacket, her long legs fit into a pair of jeans and boots. It was no stretch that
most Simi Canyons parents assumed she was a lesbian. She was a tall cop, had a butch nickname and on her days off, dressed as if she were looking to rumble with a 1950s street gang.

  “Who got hit by a car?”

  Gonzo stepped up onto the foldable bleachers.

  “I wasn’t going to tell,” said Gonzo. “I’d worked it all out. I was gonna lie to you.”

  “If this is about—”

  “I’d lay awake at night and convince myself that you didn’t need any more pain. That anything I said, anything I knew, all I’d be doing is squeezing lemon juice into an old wound that was better left to heal.”

  For Ben, the words were there. All he needed to utter was, “stop” or “shut up.” After that, he could deliver his rehearsed speech and the conversation would end right then and there. All his life, Ben had read or heard about words getting stuck in people’s throats. It was a figure of speech. A cliché. He never thought it would feel so damned literal. He knew what he had to say but his voice felt strangely constricted, as if someone’s hands were around his neck.

  “But then I thought about it this way,” continued Gonzo, unaware of Ben’s plight. “Who am I to decide what’s best for you? I might have my opinions. I might wanna strongly advise you to drop your shit and move the hell on. Live and let live. The world isn’t fair. Lord knows I’m an expert in that stuff. All cops are expert in what a cesspool our world is.”

  Gonzo stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and set her eyes just about everywhere but on Ben.

  “That shit—the bad things that happened to you—didn’t happen to me. I have no fuckin’ clue what it feels like to live inside your skin. You came to me as a friend and asked a favor. I owe it to you to be straight. I owe you what I know.”

  “Okay,” said Ben, unstuck, his unprimed pump curious and churning words he had sworn to himself he wouldn’t utter. “What shit do you know that you didn’t want to say?”

  “Like I said. He got hit by a car. Bad luck it didn’t kill him. But it lamed him up good.”

  “You’re talking about Stew Raymo?”