Like a broken record, he'd repeated all the same nonsense to her, only this time it was less convincing and less assured. But I was
Jeff
Klima,
and I was determined to show her that the business would be a success. One day, when we were spending my money on a house and going on fabulous trips to exotic locations that only someone with an income in excess of six figures could afford, she'd see, she and all the other naysayers.
We hadn't yet succeeded in getting a truck, vacations, or health care, but Dirk decided one day to take an active stand and slash Schmitty's cut from 50 percent to 15 percent. I thought it was right on, as we'd given Schmitty a lot of money over the year for not a lot of turnout. Sure, he let us use his name, and he referred business to us whenever he got a call from that area, and yes, he hooked us up with his corporate accounts, like the Jack in the Box that Dirk had worked in San Diego. But all that was more like a "15 percent partner" than a "50 percent partner."
Dirk had often said that Schmitty was a bastard and full of hot air. He was always threatening to put Schmitty in his place, and I was always confident that he wouldn't. So I was surprised when he one day announced to me that he had talked with Schmitty and had gotten him to agree to a 25 percent take. It was much better than I would have thought Dirk capable of.
* * *
The dull pain in my lower back had resurfaced and was now constant but tolerable, more of an irritation than anything. I was able to mostly ignore it. Whenever I found myself slouching, I would arch backward and feel things pop back into place. I could handle doing that for the rest of my life, I thought.
I was relieved that Dirk had paid me outright on the Candy Tran job. The work check, plus what Candy had paid me for "burning" her sister's clothes, made for a nice increase in my finances. I promised Chris lunch if he would tag along for a trip to the bank to cash the check and go grocery shopping. He agreed, as his job at Home Depot wasn't yielding him the kind of hours he needed and he'd been living off ramen and microwavable popcorn.
We'd had a good laugh around the frat at Candy Tran and her murdered sister's expense, telling and retelling the story of how a Vietnamese broad was wandering around heaven with no clothes on, and I was well paid for it.
While I was at the bank, though, karma decided to kick in and have a laugh of its own. I reached for the bank pen to endorse my check and accidentally dropped it on the floor. I bent over quickly to pick it up and suddenly, feeling a sharp pop in my lower back, collapsed in pain.
Chris stood idly by as I attempted to lift myself back up, finally settling for crawling over to a row of seats by the entrance. I sat for a bit in blinding pain, desperate not to call attention to myself. I was scared. Not having health insurance, I knew that what was on the check wasn't near enough to cover an ambulance ride to the hospital, much less any kind of stay there.
Grinding my teeth together to the point that I thought they might explode under the pressure, I had Chris get the car and I hobbled out the door bent in half. He drove me home, and I made the agonizing trip upstairs to my room, where I lay on the newly assembled Murder Bed for the rest of the day.
The next morning, I awoke with the same nagging sensation in my back, but at least I could stand, if not completely straight. I convinced myself that I had to take it easy, but that night I was playing beer pong and puffing on a cigar like I didn't have a care in the world.
Several weeks went by before we had another call for a crime scene, and I was beyond ready. While I hadn't exactly taken it easy like I promised myself I would, my back hadn't worsened beyond that constant dull pain. The latest call was for a Motel 6, though, and I'd be working it alone.
A Motel 6 was pretty much the worst gig in the crime scene pantheon. We did them because Schmitty had the contract for them, but there was no real money involved. Correction: there was money involved, but the flat-rate chump change I earned for a Motel 6 corporate gig seemed like a waste when I could be earning eleven hundred dollars for four hours of reasonably easy work elsewhere.
We didn't set the bidding price for corporate gigs; rather, there was an established set of rates that Schmitty would charge. We never knew what the money was going to be like, but we could always count on it being low. Dirk's theory was that Schmitty didn't like us lowering his fee rate, and as such, he stuck it to us on the Motel 6 gigs.
No matter what we did or how long we were there, I could expect the same flat fee of $250. That might seem like a good chunk of change, but when you're scrubbing up a murder scene that starts in a bed and ends behind the toilet and involved the victim spraying blood on all the walls, carpeting, and ceiling, $250 seems like charity.
Motel 6 gigs were sometimes our salvation, though, so I was thankful for them. But there was a lot of work involved in cutting apart a mattress and box spring, bagging the pieces, removing what was left from the room, cleaning the walls, pulling all the furniture out, and then cutting out all the carpeting and insulation…especially when you're alone.
My back hurt, but I had been dealing with it for so long with no medication that I just accepted it as the norm for a lower-class working stiff with no health insurance in America. I made it through most of the grunt work—lifting, bending, and pulling—and had the mattress and box spring loaded in the back of the boss's truck. It was only when I was yanking out the last of the carpeting that I could tell something was wrong.
I had been bent over and pulling, and when I went to stand fully erect, I found I couldn't. Every time I tried to force it, I felt a searing pain that burned across the span of my back like a flash fire. I dropped the carpeting and, with tears springing to my eyes, leaned back against the wall behind me.
Stubborn pride wouldn't let me quit. Gritting my teeth, I leaned backward until my butt and my shoulders were flush against a wall I had cleansed of blood minutes earlier, and then I walked my legs backward until I was upright.
The pain was complete now, encompassing the entirety of my back, and had the bed still been in the room, blood or not, I would have flopped down on it and sobbed. I felt like my spine was a rollercoaster car gearing up to be launched through my asshole. But my pride persisted, and I squatted with my knees to lift the carpeting.
Moving slowly and deliberately, I was able to work the carpeting out the door of the motel and over into the truck. Then I had the notso-simple process of moving all the furniture back into the small room, which ended up taking another hour. Finally I was able to close the motel-room door for good, climb back into the truck, and drive over to the office, where I dropped off the electronic key card and collected a signature on the invoice, which Dirk would then ship off to Schmitty.
But I had made it; I was home free. I would be able to drop off the truck to Dirk, let him worry about taking the stuff to the dump, take my car, and head for home. After that, it would be a bag of ice on my back and bed rest until the next crime scene came up, hopefully a month away.
But it never works like that in the crime scene business.
Before I could call Dirk and let him know I was headed in his direction, he called me. "We've got another one," he said enthusiastically.
Stubborn pride or not, I was hurting. "I don't think I'll be able to do it…I threw my back out today."
"Do you think you can hold out for one more? Please…I'm not out of work yet, and I already told this guy you'd meet him. It's across the county, and I don't want to keep him waiting…please?"
I shook my head no but said, "Yes." Being on the phone, he only caught the "yes" part.
The apartment in question was clear out in the boondocks of Orange, and it was dark by the time I got there. It was especially irritating because Dirk was only fifteen minutes from being off work anyway, and had he asked the guy to wait, it wouldn't have been an issue. But that was Dirk, always afraid of missing out on the bigger, better deal.
Twenty minutes later the client arrived, and I was furious. Dirk could have met the asshole right on time and didn't need me at all. He still hadn't arrived himself, of course. I climbed out of the truck walking with the awkward, limping gait of Frankenstein's monster. The client, a long-haired, ex-hippie-looking motherfucker, didn't seem to notice.
"Hey, man, it's great that you could come out," he said enthusiastically.
"No problem." I said with a wince, and slowly followed him along the winding path to the victim's apartment, carrying my red crate full of supplies.
"Man, Roger was a saint, man…a saint. And he will be missed, man."
"Who's Roger?"
"Roger is like…Roger was like, my friend, man…just a beautiful human being, right? Well…I guess he was pretty unhappy in life…he had some darkness, you know? He killed himself."
I followed the guy into Roger's apartment, wincing instantly at the familiar smell.
"Roger's been here awhile, huh?"
"Yeah, apparently, man. He used a pillow to muffle the sound of the gunshot, and I guess nobody heard."
Roger's apartment was like stepping into a record store on Haight-Ashbury at the height of the 1970s. Posters of The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Strawberry Alarm Clock littered the walls while stacks of records filled up most of the free space.
The place would have reeked of patchouli if not for the overwhelming stench of death emanating from the bathroom. I shuffled toward the scent, and each step was electrified agony. The crate was heavy, made heavier by the addition of my Hudson sprayer full of the enzyme solution. There was nowhere to put it down without my crying out in pain, so I held it limply in my hands.
Roger had clearly been a considerate person in life, for in death he had prepared himself accordingly. Some assholes just don't give a damn and go flinging their guts all around the place. But not Roger. He had laid out a series of blankets on the floor to rest on, with a pillow to support the back of his head and another pillow beside it to catch the spray. And just in case blood and brain matter came out the front, he had laid a towel across his face.
"Man, Roger was a hell of a guy. He played the drums, did you know that?"
"How would I know that?" I retorted, not caring.
"One time, for his birthday…Hey, check this out," he said, realizing I wasn't really paying attention. "One time, for his birthday, I took him to this club, because Stan Millbauck was playing guitar, right? Stan goddamn Millbauck! Well, I knew the owner of the club, so I got there early and asked Stan if it was okay that Roger came up on stage and jammed with him for a song. And Stan said okay! So I took Roger there, and he had just a great night. It was his fortieth birthday, man."
The guy's story sounded like he wanted me to think
he
was a hell of a guy, not Roger, but I simply said, "Wow."
Needing to assess the amount of damage to the wooden flooring underneath the blankets and pillows, I squatted down once more slowly and maneuvered my crate off to the side. The coroner who'd taken Roger's body must have replaced the gray towel, as it was stretched over most of the pillow, obscuring it.
"Man, Roger really liked music, man," the guy babbled in the background.
"Would you shut the fuck up?" I wanted to say but didn't.
I yanked the towel off quickly, as one might remove a Band-Aid, and despite my back, moved quickly upward. The grease of Roger's head as he melted had provided a wonderful source of nutrition for the hundreds of squirming maggots that were filling the indentation in the pillow.
"Oh, my God, those things are evil," the client said from behind me, repulsed.
I dropped the towel in disgust, and several maggots dropped from their perch on it, hitting the floor like so many gummy bears. Their pale white skin looked like they themselves were the dead, with small tapered bodies that squiggled and moved out of sync with those on the towel.
I didn't know why I was so repulsed. The maggots were really just like me; they were there to clean up the dead, get what they could off the victim, and then leave, moving on to the next meal ticket. I was a maggot, feeding off the dead.
"Hey, man, don't let them get away!"
I looked over to see several of them crawling across the floor and slowly put out a large, black sneakered foot to squash them.
Bending slightly at the knees once more, I pulled my clipboard from the crate and reached inside it for a pen and a fresh invoice.
"Hey, man, is it all right if we do this tomorrow?"
I looked at him, incredulous. "What?"
"My old lady is already hassling me about being out here tonight. I gotta meet her for dinner…are you available tomorrow?"
"Sure, sure," I said, putting the pen back in the clipboard. Really, I was grateful to be off the hook for the evening. If my back were anything like it had been the first time, in the morning it would be good for another couple of months. I slowly lowered myself down to pick up the crate.
"Hey, do you think we could kill all the maggots tonight, man? I'd feel bad if any of them got away."
I was wondering what had happened to the whole "love and peace toward all living creatures" sentiment, but I said, "Sure. " I then realized I'd left all my trash bags in the truck.