The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (35 page)

The ghetto birds are buzzing over Hollywood.

I look up from under the hood and watch two of them as they cut diagonals against the grid of streets below. I set the socket wrench on the fender and walk down to the foot of the driveway and shade my eyes.

One of the LAPD copters freezes. The other tilts slightly into the wind and zips west. Sirens break out on Highland. Glancing down the street, I can see two squad cars run the light several blocks away. I take my new cell from my pocket and make sure it's on. More sirens on Sunset. I look up to where the first copter hovers. Not too far away, no more than a mile. I think about walking over, take out my wallet and look inside and find I have no cards. Crap. I walk back up the driveway. If it's something I should know about, I'll get a call. Deputy Mercer will give me a ring and give the victims a referral. Right now the starter is more important than drumming up business.

I get my head back under the hood and pull the last plug and wipe it clean. I squat and find the gapper in Chev's toolbox and fit the proper hoop of steel into the plug's spark gap. Too wide. Like the others. I press the top of the plug against the pavement, closing the gap, and check it again. The gapper passes in and out of the gap with a slight tug. I rise and replace the plug.

The tone of the helicopter's chop shifts, and I look up again and watch it through a screen of ficus branches as it wheels and heads east toward K-town or Rampart or Boil Heights or Skid Row, where it no doubt has more pressing business than sitting watch on a Hollywood crime scene in the middle of the day.

I mark its path, trace it back to where it had hovered.

There's a ninety-nine-cent store over there. I could take a look. Stop at the store and pick up the stuff we'll need tonight.

I bend and start picking up tools, making a mental shopping list as I go.

Scotch-Brite pads.

Wire brushes.

Paint scrapers.

Large sponges.

And those little nylon scrubbies.

Those are great, the ones that are like little wads of netting. Great for cracks and corners, perfect for snagging bits of skull and brain. Perfect for a shotgun job.

Next day I take the Datsun over the Hollywood Hills.

Just got it running and it's still a little balky, the way only a thirty-six-year-old 510 can be, but I'm not getting on any more fucking buses. Getting better is one thing, but there's a limit to how much healing I'm interested in doing. I was willing to deal with it. Too much to be done to wait for a ride all the time. But it was a white-knuckle job. Sweats. Nausea. Passed out once. That was charming. Passing out on public transportation is like begging the LAPD to give you all kinds of crap.

But riding the bus, I did start to see certain things.

Like the fact that I'm never going to be well. I'm never going to get over it. That there are things you don't get over. And why should you want to? I don't want to. Ride the bus enough, it might make me numb, but it won't make me better.

I don't want to be numb.

I drive up the Canyon, past the turnoff for L.L.'s place. Once every couple weeks over there is plenty. Place is clean enough now. Well, not clean, but not a death trap. As if L.L. gives a damn.

By all means, Web, whatever form of therapy you wish to indulge in, feel free. Yes, yes, certainly, come to your father's house and take away all traces of individuality. Do what you must to abnegate his personality and create a new reality where that man no longer exists. I can't wait to see how you fare with this effort, sweet child. By the way, I had a call from the dear bitch. She seemed to think I wasn't at my best. I wonder where she may have gotten that idea. Asked if I'd like some pies. Suggested I should perhaps drink a little less. All of this accompanied by the gurgle of a hookah. I don't suppose, no, I must be wrong, but I don't suppose you had anything to do with that, you little fucker?

My mistake.

I hadn't meant to tell Mom anything about L.L., but she'd been lucid enough one evening to ask what I was up to, and kept asking more questions, and I kept answering. It took me a half hour to realize it was a hit of X that was making her so avid. I never expected her to remember enough of the conversation to act on it.

She actually did send him a couple pies though.

He refused to eat them.

She'll have baked them full of hash. Or arsenic. In either case I don't care for the effects. Hand me that bottle, Web.

I took them home to Chev. He liked them. So did Dot. That's still going on. God knows why.

North of the Canyon, I hop on the Ventura going east and jump off in Burbank and drive to the far end of Flower and park in front of a long low house with a waist-high stucco wall closing off a yard that's half lawn and half patio.

I get out of the car and walk over and swing my legs over the wall and start across the grass.

Xing looks up from her dolls.

—You have to use the
gate
and walk on the
-path.

—I'm in a hurry, Xing.

She stands up and plants her fists on her hips and opens her mouth and emits a sustained shriek that just barely misses shattering every window in the neighborhood.

—You have to use the
gate
and walk on the
path!

I go back out to the sidewalk, use the gate and walk on the path.

—Better?

She shakes her head at me.

—You suck. You can't do
anything
right.

I reach in the bag I'm carrying and show her the fuzzy white kitty I brought for her.

—See this, Xing.

She claps her hands and her eyes get big and she nods.

—For me for me for me?

I drop it back in the bag.

—Nope. Not this trip. Maybe if you're nice next visit you can have it.

I walk past her and she kicks me hard in the back of my leg.

—You suck! Yousuckyousuckyousuck!

I knock on the door and open it and walk in.

Lei is coming down the hall.

—You sure?

—Yeah, but just two hours, right?

—Yeah. Yes.

She grabs her purse from a hook next to the door.

—I'll be back. I just have to take Yong to his speech therapist or.

—Yeah.

—Yong!

Yong wanders down the hall, zipping his backpack. I reach in the bag and take out a fire engine Lego set and hold it low where he can see it. It catches his eyes and he comes toward it in a daze.

I shake the box.

He looks up at me and I nod and he grabs the box and runs out the front door.

Lei follows him.

—Thanks. Back in two hours. Xing needs a bath and dinner then a half hour of TV and then bed.

She squeezes Xing's shoulder as she goes by.

—Try not to kill Web.

Xing sticks her tongue out.

I take the kitty from the bag and toss it out the open door and it hits her in the back of the head.

She looks at it and turns up her nose.

—I don't
like
kitties.

I push the door closed.

—Some other little girl will find it, then.

Before the door closes she has the kitty in her arms.

I go down the hall, following the sound of the TV, the blare of a late-afternoon talk show; couples fighting, a conversation made up almost entirely of
bleeps.

I raise my chin as I come into the room. Po Sin lifts his cane at me, reaches for the remote and hits mute.

—I love that shit. This one, those two there, they're sisters, they both married the same guy, but he's not a guy, he's a transsexual. Used to be a girl. Got a fake dick. Funny thing, the two who married him, both of them trannies, too. Both used to be guys. Brothers.

He goes to push himself from his chair and I wave him down.

—Sit. No, don't get up.

He gets up.

—Need to move around. They want me getting exercise. Took a walk yesterday.

—Yeah?

—Around the block. Thought my lungs would explode. Give me that shit.

I hand him the bag and he takes out the invoices.

—What's this?

I look.

—Decomp.

—You bill this?

—That my handwriting?

—Don't fuck around.

—I billed it.

—You underbilled for materials.

—You want it out of my pocket?

—No. I want it out of your hide. What's this expense?

—Day labor.

—For what?

—We had to do the job at night. Gabe was doing accommodations. I needed to pay someone.

—Who?

I look at the families fighting on the TV.

—Dingbang.

He grunts.

—He show up on time?

—Pretty much.

He looks at another invoice.

—Shotgun job?

—Gabe did the invoice.

—I know.

His eyes go over it.

—What was it?

I sit on the edge of the bed.

—Guy put it to his chest. Knew his wife was the open-casket type, didn't want to blow his own head off. Maybe, I don't know, upset someone. Did it out in the backyard in their drained swimming pool. Blew out half his lung, missed his heart. He flopped around, actually tried to climb out of the pool, pumped blood over the whole thing. Handprints on the tile all the way around.

—How'd you?

—There was pathology on the side of the house from the blast. I did the detail work there while Gabe got the chunks out of the pool. We couldn't just hose those.

—Yeah, clog the drains.

—Yeah. Had to cover that. Ended up.

—I know.

—Filled the pool partway.

—Chlorinated the shit out of it. Scrubbed and pumped it out.

He runs a finger over the invoice.

—That's a good one.

We sit there till I stand up.

—You gonna eat? Want me to?

He shakes his head.

—The stuff I'm allowed to eat, I'd rather fast. Lost fifty pounds. I'd known I could do that, I'd have had a stroke ten years ago.

—Start a diet craze.

—Man, it's sweeping the nation.

I go to the door.

—I'm gonna see if I can get Xing in the bath.

He puts his hands together in prayer.

—Best thing about this whole deal, not having to wrestle with her. You want to borrow my cane to beat her?

—No, I brought a belt.

—Good man.

He picks up the remote.

—You know Lei won't make it back in two hours.

—She never does.

—Woman can't be on time for shit. You got something going tonight, you take off. I can handle Xing once she's run down a little.

—No, I'm cool. Hooking up with Soledad later. See a movie. Try to distract her a little. Tomorrow we have to get the last of her stuff out of the Malibu place and into her apartment. Fed will have it up for auction next week.

—Fucking Fed.

—Well. Her dad did the crimes. So. Anyway.

I go out in the hall.

—Web.

I go back to the door.

He looks at the TV, looks at me.

—I'll be back at it soon enough, and I'll forget how much help you've been and I'll just push you around on the job like the peon you are. So. Thanks for all this.

I touch the nearly healed cut on my forehead. It's going to scar bad because I never bothered to have it stitched.

—Yeah, sure. After all, not like you ever did anything for me.

Po Sin nods.

—Nothing I can remember.

He aims the remote at the TV and unmutes the escalating melee on the screen.

—These people, they're living proof that a human being can live with any old stupid shit they can dream up.

I look out the window and watch Xing on the front lawn, kicking her new kitty around like a soccer ball.

—No argument here, Grandfather Elephant.

He waves the remote.

—Holy! This chick is gonna claw that asshole's eyes out.

He bumps the volume up, and I turn and leave the room, the raised voices of brawling families following me down the hall as I go to bathe his daughter.

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2009 by Charlie Huston

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Huston, Charlie.

The mystic arts of erasing all signs of death: a novel / Charlie Huston. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-345-51307-6

1. Crime scenes—Cleaning—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles County (Calif).— Fiction. I. Title.

PS3608.U855M97 2009

813' .6—dc22 2008035293

www.ballantinebooks.com

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