-I want to work.
PIPE BOMB IN THE a.s.s.
There was a lot of blood at the Malibu beach house. And it was everywhere. Really everywhere.
Gabe studied the thick maroon blotch at the center of a lighter red eruption splashed over the wall and headboard, all of it studded with gray and yellow and pink gobbets of dangling matter.
He fingered a strip of yellow tape, marked like a yardstick, that ran up the edge of the wall. Near the top it intersected with another piece that ran horizontally just over the highest point of the mess. He looked at that point.
-That wasn"t a nine.
The deputy coughed in the doorway.
-Yeah, what we thought. But it was. He did it with a mouth full of water.
Gabe looked again at the dry blood.
-That would do it.
I thought about high school science cla.s.ses. How shock waves travel through water. I thought about what would happen if you filled a soda can with water and stuck the barrel of a gun in the hole and pulled the trigger. And then the deputy filled in the gaps in my imagination.
-The water shredded his cheeks. Crushed his nasal pa.s.sages and ripped his nose off. Some of it was forced down his throat and it turned his tongue inside out and punched a hole in the bottom of his stomach. Goes without saying it took the whole back of his head off. Everything behind the ears.
He rapped his knuckle on the wall opposite the bed.
-Created so much pressure in his sinuses, his eyes popped out. We found one of them over here.
I looked through the open door that led to the master bath. Blood s.p.a.ckled the white tile and porcelain and bath towels. My reflection in the mirror over the twin sinks was glazed with dried streaks of red. Beyond, through a door at the far end of the bathroom, and let me just say that it was a really big f.u.c.king bathroom, I could see more blood spattering the carpet, chair and desk in what looked to be a small den. Small by the standards of this house, that is.
But those rooms were nothing compared with the bedroom. The bed-room looked painted in blood, but not well painted, mind you. Painted, in point of fact, by a collection of one-armed troglodytes employing bundles of reeds rather than brushes and rollers. Painted in dripping and splotchy reds, maroons and purples punctuated by bits and clots of gray and white and black, and the occasional twisted knot of tendon.
-This is unf.u.c.kingbelievable.
Gabe and the deputy looked at me.
I held out my arms, bugging my eyes.
-What? Am I wrong? I mean, this is unf.u.c.kingreal. This is. Water in the mouth? Water in the mouth gets you this? Myf.u.c.kingG.o.d.
The deputy looked at Gabe.
-Where"d you find him?
Gabe picked at something imbedded in the wall, his fingernails rimmed with dry yellow paint.
-Po Sin knows him.
-You tell him about the pipe bomb?
Gabe took a Leatherman from the nylon case on his belt and unfolded it into pliers.
-Be my guest.
The deputy put his hands on his hips.
-Guy was ex-military He looked at Gabe.
-Right?
Gabe closed the tips of the pliers over whatever was in the wall.
-I think so, yeah.
The deputy looked back at me.
-OK, ex-military guy wanted to off himself. So he made a pipe bomb.
I put my hand to my forehead.
-No.
-Yeah. And to do it, what he did was, he sat on it. And I don"t mean sat on it, I mean he sat sat on it. Full insertion. on it. Full insertion.
I put my other hand on my forehead.
-Oh no.
He nodded.
-Yeah. Pipe bomb in the a.s.s. And, here we go, he does this while seated on his water bed.
-Oh s.h.i.t.
-You"d think. But here"s what happened. The, what, the internal dynamics internal dynamics of a bomb in the rectal pa.s.sage were such that the force of the explosion went straight up. Not only did the bed not burst, but by giving slightly while still offering resistance, it helped to focus the blast upward. Thing went off, it scoured his viscera, guts, lungs, everything, shot them up through his head and out the top of his skull. Like a fountain. The whole room got sprayed, but other than looking a little bloated, and, you know, his head being gone from the eyebrows up, he was intact. And the bed was peachy. of a bomb in the rectal pa.s.sage were such that the force of the explosion went straight up. Not only did the bed not burst, but by giving slightly while still offering resistance, it helped to focus the blast upward. Thing went off, it scoured his viscera, guts, lungs, everything, shot them up through his head and out the top of his skull. Like a fountain. The whole room got sprayed, but other than looking a little bloated, and, you know, his head being gone from the eyebrows up, he was intact. And the bed was peachy.
He made pistol fingers and pointed at me.
-That was a f.u.c.king mess.
Gabe twisted the pliers and pulled something free of the wall and inspected it.
-Yeah. It was a big job.
He dropped the object in his palm and walked to the deputy, folding the Leatherman away.
-You need this for anything?
I walked over and looked at the large silver-filled molar he was showing the deputy.
The deputy shook his head.
-No. We finished in here. No way to fake a scene like this. Don"t need teeth in the wall to tell us what happened. He made it easy. Note. All that.
I walked to the door and looked down the hall. I could see Po Sin on the couch next to the girl who"d let us in. The two of them going over papers on a clipboard, the girl signing her name. Po Sin taking a travel pack of Kleenex from his breast pocket and handing it to her as she set the clipboard aside and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
I looked back in the room.
-So why"d he do it?
The deputy looked at me.
-Brain tumor.
He pointed at what had been a head, now gored all over the wall.
-Guess he showed it who was boss.
In the driveway Gabe and I put on our Tyveks and I watched Po Sin palm the deputy a fifty.
-Thanks for the referral, Mercer. Hope we can do some more business over here.
Mercer pocketed the cash.
-No problem.
He opened the door of his patrol car.
-Far as I"m concerned, Aftershock"s off the referral list. Last job I put them onto, a teenager did her wrists in the bathtub, right. Found out she was pregnant or something. Anyway, door closed. Hardly any splatter at all. Plastic shower curtain. Couple towels. Easy as h.e.l.l. A month after they were in there, the girl"s brother uses the tub for the first time, to wash the family dog, right. Has Fido in there, running the water to get it warm how his best little friend likes it. What happens is, the water starts backing up, starts filling the tub, and it"s f.u.c.king red. Drain was choked with dry blood and feces from the girl. Those Aftershock rocket scientists, they poured some Drano in there and called it a day. Little boy is already traumatized from his sister having to take a real long nap a real long nap, and now b.l.o.o.d.y water"s gushing up from the drain and his dog is spazzing out. Family calls Aftershock, pretty justifiably upset, and Morton tells them it"s not his problem. Tells them he did his job and they signed off on the work. He"ll be happy to send someone over, but he"ll have to draw up a new invoice. f.u.c.king p.r.i.c.k. And guess who gets the next call? They have my f.u.c.king card "cause I was first on the scene. Want to know why the people I suggested to them to clean up after their tragedy tragedy won"t take care of their responsibilities? Want to know what I can do about it, right? Well, last thing I need is these people getting upset with me and putting in a call to the Civil Litigation Unit and end up with those f.u.c.kers asking me what the h.e.l.l I"m doing giving referrals for private contractors. So I call f.u.c.king Morton and tell him to get his a.s.s over there and take care of it before I call a friend in Parking Enforcement and see that his f.u.c.king van has a ticket on it every time it"s on the street. won"t take care of their responsibilities? Want to know what I can do about it, right? Well, last thing I need is these people getting upset with me and putting in a call to the Civil Litigation Unit and end up with those f.u.c.kers asking me what the h.e.l.l I"m doing giving referrals for private contractors. So I call f.u.c.king Morton and tell him to get his a.s.s over there and take care of it before I call a friend in Parking Enforcement and see that his f.u.c.king van has a ticket on it every time it"s on the street.
He took his hat off and tossed it inside the car.
-So f.u.c.k them and f.u.c.k the guild. From now on, you"re top of the list west as well as east side. And I"ll spread the word.
Po Sin gave him a thumbs-up.
-Much appreciated.
-My pleasure. I refer you guys, you get the job done. And you"ve never stiffed me.
He got in the car and pulled down the short drive to the PCH, waited for a hole in the traffic, and headed south.
Po Sin came over to the van, stripping off his Clean Team shirt and reaching for the Tyvek Gabe held out to him.
-To protect and to serve, Web, to protect and to serve.
I scooped brains.
I scooped them with a wide plastic paint sc.r.a.per from a ninety-nine-cent store, and I wiped them onto blue industrial paper towels, I dropped the towels in red biohazard bags and dropped the bags in a fifty-gallon plastic garbage can with a Clean Team sticker on the side.
Po Sin watched.
-Spray some more up there.
I took the spray bottle from tool belt and sprayed some hydrogen peroxide, and specks of blood and brain I"d missed on the counter foamed white.
Po Sin nodded, pursed his lips.
-See, you miss stuff. No matter how close you look, there"s always more.
He took a step toward the bedroom where he and Gabe were dealing with the real environmental disaster.
-And stop taking off your mask.
I blew out my cheeks.
-What, it doesn"t smell or anything, there aren"t any c.o.c.kroaches trying to crawl in my mouth.
-No, but there"s dry blood, and it will flake and go airborne and you"ll inhale it.
I pointed at the fogger in the bedroom.
-I thought the Microban killed everything.
-It does. It should. But it"s still considered a bad idea to breathe other people"s dry blood. Trust me on that one.
-Fine, fine.
I put the mask over my mouth and went back to sc.r.a.ping and wiping. Cleaning the blood and brains. Throwing away the ruined terry-cloth towels and bathmat and a thick robe that had been draped over the shower rod, and the fuzzy cover on the toilet seat. Opening the cabinet doors and looking inside and spraying hydrogen peroxide, in case one of them had been open when the guy did it. Doing the same with the drawers. Checking the back of the shower curtain liner. Peeling the liner from the curtain and looking between them. Finding spots of blood in the grout between tiles and getting down on my knees and working at it with a toothbrush, trying to scrub it from the porous material. Spinning the roll of toilet paper on its spindle and finding a dry pink blot soaked through dozens of layers. Tossing the roll in with the other hazards. Finishing. Standing in the middle of the huge bathroom and turning in place, finding no sign that death came here.
And liking that feeling. Things back as they had been. Better than they had been. Like nothing had ever gone wrong.
Clean. Blank. New.
I nodded to myself.
-Never know the stupid f.u.c.ker was too lame to just eat some pills or stick his head in a plastic bag or some s.h.i.t like normal losers.
-Oh my G.o.d.
I looked over at the open door of the den, and found the girl who had signed the contract with Po Sin standing there.
She stared at me, both hands covering her mouth.
-Oh. Oh, my Gaaawd!