The Dead Janitors Club (23 page)

    "Uh, you know what?" I corrected myself. "Actually, I'm not allowed to do any work without a contract in place," I said, lifting my crate and figuring that would scare him off.

    "Oh, I'll sign the contract tonight, man," he grinned. "I'm not out to give you the high hat."

    "I appreciate that," I said glaring at him. It all just needed to end. And where the fuck was Dirk?

    I took the crate back, hobbled out to the truck, grabbed a bag, and returned to the apartment, angrily tossing the towel and pillow into the trash bag. I could see that Roger's body fluids had leached through the pillow and into the wood floor below. It would be a tough scrub.

* * *

I was out in the parking lot, saying good-bye to the client when Dirk showed up in my car.

    "What's happening?" he asked nonchalantly when he got out.

    "Where have you been?" I asked.

    "I got delayed at work…you know how it goes." He shrugged. There appeared to be a smear of spaghetti sauce on his upper lip.

    I shook my head, attempting to not freak out completely. In the end, I just wanted to get home.

    "Where's he going?" Dirk pointed at the departing client.

    "He's going home. He wants us to do the job tomorrow."

    "Ooh, busy day."

    "Why?"

    "Well, I just talked with Mona Spears over at the Public Guardian's office. They deal with the estates of deceased people. She's got a gig for us tomorrow, and if we do good by them, they'll keep us busy for a long time."

"My back is fucked, boss."

    "It's a crazy gig," he said, excitedly. "This old lady poisoned her son and then her cat and then herself. What's crazy is that the son was sitting in a chair by a window when he died, and for weeks people just thought he was a Halloween decoration as he sat there, rotting."

    In spite of myself, I grinned. "That's pretty disgusting."

    "Yeah, and the cat puked up a bunch before it died, so that should be nice."

    "Sounds great," I agreed.

    "Well, hey," he said, suddenly concerned for me. "Go home, get some rest, take it easy, and be over at my house bright and early, say 8:00 a.m."

    I nodded and started to climb into my car, figuring I would leave my crate in the back of his truck for the next day.

    "Hey," he said. "Take your crate with you in case we get a call from Orange tonight…"

    I nodded slowly and retrieved my crate.

    "Hey, thanks for handling all this tonight. I appreciate it," he said as I drove off.

    The whole way home, I fought back tears, angry about the evening's events, about my pain, and my life at large. I felt like a loser.

* * *

Parking on Frat Row was always an issue, particularly at night, and that evening was no exception. Frat Row was on a small street surrounded by low-income apartments and housing. And most of the surrounding streets were either "No Parking" or "Permit Parking Only."

    This left a square block of parking spaces for the hundreds of cars belonging to people in the frats, the apartments, and the houses. Not to mention all the cars of frequently visiting frat guys who didn't live on "the row"; the friends of people in the frats, houses, and apartments; and all the people who parked on Frat Row and walked the block to school in lieu of paying the $150 it cost per semester for a parking pass.

    The school "graciously" allowed students without a parking pass to park their cars on school grounds, provided the cars were moved by 7:00 a.m., when the parking enforcement creeps made their first rounds, giving out forty-dollar tickets. People could park in the alley behind the frat house, but the city liked Frat Row almost as much as CSUF did, and they sent their own parking enforcement over there almost daily. Parking in the alley was a thirty-six-dollar ticket.

    Other than those four blocks, there was nowhere to park in the surrounding two miles that didn't result in a ticket or a tow. And by the look of it, that evening was one of many party nights on "the row." On party nights, if you didn't have a parking spot by 8:00 p.m., you didn't have a parking spot at all, alleyway included.

    Fortunately for me, after a half hour of searching, one of the dicks from Delta Chi moved his car from behind our alleyway, most likely in the pursuit of roofies. I risked it, parking my car behind the Sigma Nu house. My back feared a ticket a lot less than a two-mile walk.

    Hobbling inside and up the stairs, stripping my shirt off as I went, I was grateful to see Kerry waiting in my room. She was spending the night, which was a rare treat because she hated the unbelievably filthy condition of the frat house. She'd come to drink, though, and was ready to party when I walked in, my face dripping with perspiration. I dropped onto the bed and immediately went into my sob story, attempting to cajole some sympathy out of her. It didn't work until she tried to get me to roll over and realized I couldn't. I was too pitiful for her to chastise.

    The next morning, when my alarm went off at 7:00 a.m., I realized that something wasn't right. The pain that I had anticipated would diminish by morning had somehow intensified to a breaking point. Whereas previously it had only hurt to have pressure on my lower back, now every small movement or twitch was reason for an agonizing sob. I couldn't even get out of bed to take my morning leak.

    I shook Kerry awake and confessed to her that I was in serious pain. It took a lot to coax an admission of weakness out of me, so she snapped awake and into panic mode. She demanded we call an ambulance, but I stopped her, citing the same reason as I gave you earlier. I continued trying to get out of bed, but gave up in frustration. I knew I was fucked. Defeated, I called Dirk and told him I wouldn't be joining him on the day's adventures. In the end, I knew Kerry was right. I had to go to a hospital.

    In America going to a hospital without insurance is one of the lowest and most embarrassing things you can do. You certainly feel the doctors' friendliness decline after they see "NO INSURANCE" on your chart. Your waiting time for treatment increases; your quality of care diminishes; and male nurses have contests to see which of them can piss on you from farther away.

    I didn't try to pass it off as a workplace injury; I couldn't do that to Dirk. Despite his goofiness, he'd still meant well by me and treated me fairly. (Jesus, listen to me; I sound like a battered wife.) If the company got hit with a nasty hospital bill, it would likely be the end of crime scene cleaning and I would wind up back in retail, college degree or not. In the end, I knew I would have to take on the burden and hope the hospital had a "mulligan policy." (For those of you who have insurance, the "mulligan policy" refers, much as it does in golf, to a freebie. Basically, the hospital realizes that you are a deadbeat and lets you off the hook for your care.)

    The hospital ran a few quick tests to confirm that I was definitely in pain and then basically told me to take a hike. Sure, I was given the standard prescription for the generic version of codeine with no refills, but I knew the pills wouldn't make a dent in the pain. When I left the hospital, I still had no idea what was wrong with me.

    Kerry was adamant that I didn't stand a chance of recovering in the frat house and insisted I stay at her parents' place, where she could take care of me, which I nervously agreed to. Back pain or not, it was her parents' house, and she was definitely still their little girl. I was some creepy, letch boyfriend living in a frat house past his expiration date with no health insurance, a busted back, and zero prospects for the future other than a dead-end job scooping up bits of child molesters and truckers (sometimes one and the same).

    I stayed in Kerry's room for two weeks, occasionally coming downstairs to entertain Buffy, the family Boston terrier, and monopolize the TV. During those two weeks, I never took a shit once. Apparently generic codeine had that effect on people. It was just as well; I couldn't maneuver around to wipe, and besides, I was terrified that one of my fat-guy poops would clog their toilet. Bad back or not, there is just some shit you don't live down.

    At the end of my two weeks, I could finally maneuver around well enough to deal with frat-house living. Chris had checked on me regularly and moved my car every Tuesday morning when the street sweeper came around at 9:00 a.m. sharp (thirty-two-dollar ticket), and a slew of other frat miscreants had dropped in to pay respects to their fallen brother. It really made me appreciate the majesty of fraternity and friendship, and the higher meaning of both. Of course, that might just have been the codeine talking.

    When my pain meds finally ran out, I realized quickly the agonizing misery of life in a frat house. In the end, you're only as well liked as the good times you provide. And once you're an injured whiner, pent up in his room, stinking in his bed, you cease to be a source of good times.

    My room was one of the two access points to "the taint," the congregational room of the frat house. As such, I was constantly being given the evil eye by newcomers as they'd pass by taking the house tour. It was a different era, and we were shopping for new recruits, so the place was a hotbed of new faces.

    I would do my damnedest to give them a "what's up?" and thumbs up, "I'm a cool guy" sort of enthusiasm, but I came off more like some desperate and bedridden lonely weirdo. Even the Murder Bed ceased to be a reason for people to visit. Soon, the house tours were being given around my room. I could hear the younger bros taking their friends through the house, and they'd stop outside my door.

NEW GUY: What's through here? (The knob would turn.) YOUNG BRO: There? Oh, nothing. It's where we keep the sewage pipes…Come on…Let's go back the way we came…(Knob stops turning.)

ME (Loudly): There's a man in here! A human being! I'm not some
thing you can kick under a dresser! Can someone out there bring me
a burrito from Rigoberto's?"
YOUNG BRO: (Silence.)

    I spent the better part of the next three months like that, laid up in bed recovering. Sure I got up occasionally to pee and visit the brothers downstairs, even joining them in a few games of beer pong that doubtless slowed the recovery process.

    To help me keep my finances afloat, Dirk gave me a check for six hundred dollars. It was a lot less than I would have made working those two crime scenes with him, but I greatly appreciated the effort. I would be back as soon as I could, I promised him. I wanted to do what it took to help the team.

My first job back came in early January. It was still in the middle of my three months of recovery, but Dirk had a new connection for the business, and he was eager to make it work.

    Back when he had cleaned up the bodies of the old woman, her son, and their cat for the Public Guardian's office, Dirk had used his goofy innocence to strike up a friendship with the field agent, Mona Spears. (The Public Guardian is the county official responsible for dealing with the estate after a person has passed on and a legal nextof-kin has yet to be established.) Mona, in turn, had passed our name around to her colleagues, and they put us to the test.

    My first assignment was for a short Mexican lady named June. She met me out at the victim's house one afternoon so that I could assess the damage to the property in terms of biohazard and write up an invoice to be sent out to the victim's brother, living in Florida.

    If he agreed to our price, June and I would agree on a day, and I'd clean the scene under her supervision. She had to be on the property at all times when I was there, and she couldn't be on the property by herself. It was an intense series of checks and balances within the Public Guardian's office, and no one seemed to trust anyone else.

    Needing money, I knew from the outset that I was going to jack up the bill. It wasn't as if the brother in Florida was going to see what it looked like anyway. He'd have to take my word for it.

    I had picked up a cane in the initial stages of my recuperation, while filling my generic codeine prescription, and it turned out to be the lifesaver that got me through the whole back ordeal. Sure, it was a budget cane made for someone six inches shorter than me, but with my back the way it was, I couldn't walk fully erect anyhow.

    June was forty-five minutes late to our appointment and full of apologies, but I was under strict orders from Dirk to win the P.G.'s office over, so I brushed it off with an easygoing chuckle.

    Using my cane to lift off the stoop, I explained my injury to June, who took it all in stride. I assured her, as Dirk had assured me, that when I did the work, I would have an able-bodied staff member do all the heavy lifting.

    The trauma scene that had occurred at the small, one-story, raised house was different from any I had done so far. I knew that instantly from my position on the porch, mainly because I had never detected the smell of decomposing flesh from outside the house before. It was going to be a bad one.

    Stepping into the house was like entering one of those camper trailers that get towed behind a truck. The house was small, cramped, and poorly laid out. Immediately the spectral, unblinking orbs of a dozen dolls were upon me, silently watching, observing my every move. I moved out of their line of vision and, with my cane, hobbled toward the source of the smell. It was an awful odor, stinging the hairs in my nose, and I didn't want to open my mouth for fear of getting the taste inside.