polluting everything outside of the oval, and the sun has not yet risen over Inglewood.
This leaves me with one consideration only: do I take the money? I’ve done the work, so the obvious answer seems to be yes, but this also means I am buying into the system. I will be forever subjected to these random text messages, demanded to perform, day and night, for the unknown span of our working relationship. Eventually I will get caught or killed, or something…all of the jobs cannot go this smoothly. But in the end, the important thing to remember is, $4,600 buys a good chunk of heroin. Tossing the wad of bills into my milk crate, I swap the money for the bullets, and reseal the box. There are worse ways to pay for a habit.
Chapter 5
I cannot sleep before the appointment with my parole officer. An itch comes for me to use, but I am not yet that stupid. In the end, I shower, shave at the light spread of bristles across my chin and cheeks, and decide against breakfast. I spend the rest of the morning in the Trauma-Gone warehouse, cleaning my personal tools as I would in the aftermath of any messy job. When they are surgical, I set them back in my trunk, where they can be scrutinized by any police officer that wants to have a good look at them. This is one of the hazards of being on parole—the police can search my car, apartment, or person at any time, with “parole” being all the probable cause they need. Officer Duane Caruzzi has done two of the three things numerous times. Only once has he come to my apartment, though, and that was in the very beginning. Since then, I have made it my business to appear a model parolee and give him little reason to suspect otherwise, with the lone exception of the one-time needle sore that stubbornly refused to heal in the crook of my left arm. That mistake has not since been repeated.
At 12:30 p.m., I drive down to the Burbank Hooters for a lunchtime sit-down, during which Duane will personally consume fifty of their “Three Mile Island” wings and guzzle close to a gallon of Diet Pepsi, sucking his fingers for spare sauce the whole time as he goes. I do not partake, instead sitting in polite silence awaiting his litany of inquiries as he tears into the meat-speckled bones. He is not a fat man, though his arteries must look like Slim Jims, and he is soggy around the middle. His cheeks are reliably pink, and jiggle with each voracious chew, which means that they are doing so almost nonstop during this marathon luncheon. His silver hair, growing out of a crew cut and into a flattop, reminds me of how my father’s was, but, physically, that is the only resemblance between the two of them.
“Let me see your arms,” Duane snorts. I show them; they are tan from my time at the beach, but pale and smooth in the crooks, no pocks, nicks, or holes to be found.
“You clean?”
“Yes.”
“You staying out of trouble?”
“Yes.”
“You know I don’t like you doing that blood cleanup.”
“I know.”
“Work’s work, though, I reckon, and nowadays you got to think outside the box if you wanna survive Los Angeles. Anything you wanna talk to me about?”
“No.”
“You lonely? You wanna go catch a movie sometime or something?”
“I don’t really have the patience for movies.”
“Okay, I get that. Reality is more interesting to me too. Documentaries and stuff. History Channel. Hey—have you given any thought to what I asked you about before? About the club?”
“Not really.”
“Well, just keep it in mind. We could really benefit from a smart guy like you. And you from us.” The soft sell again. He stares into my flat, near-dead gaze and finds a stony wall. “Okay, well, short meeting then.” He seems wounded. Duane sets a plastic-wrapped piss cup on the table between his stack of chicken bones and me. “Gimme a sample and we’re done.” Not protesting, I take the specimen container and head to the restroom. It has been somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty
This leaves me with one consideration only: do I take the money? I’ve done the work, so the obvious answer seems to be yes, but this also means I am buying into the system. I will be forever subjected to these random text messages, demanded to perform, day and night, for the unknown span of our working relationship. Eventually I will get caught or killed, or something…all of the jobs cannot go this smoothly. But in the end, the important thing to remember is, $4,600 buys a good chunk of heroin. Tossing the wad of bills into my milk crate, I swap the money for the bullets, and reseal the box. There are worse ways to pay for a habit.
Chapter 5
I cannot sleep before the appointment with my parole officer. An itch comes for me to use, but I am not yet that stupid. In the end, I shower, shave at the light spread of bristles across my chin and cheeks, and decide against breakfast. I spend the rest of the morning in the Trauma-Gone warehouse, cleaning my personal tools as I would in the aftermath of any messy job. When they are surgical, I set them back in my trunk, where they can be scrutinized by any police officer that wants to have a good look at them. This is one of the hazards of being on parole—the police can search my car, apartment, or person at any time, with “parole” being all the probable cause they need. Officer Duane Caruzzi has done two of the three things numerous times. Only once has he come to my apartment, though, and that was in the very beginning. Since then, I have made it my business to appear a model parolee and give him little reason to suspect otherwise, with the lone exception of the one-time needle sore that stubbornly refused to heal in the crook of my left arm. That mistake has not since been repeated.
At 12:30 p.m., I drive down to the Burbank Hooters for a lunchtime sit-down, during which Duane will personally consume fifty of their “Three Mile Island” wings and guzzle close to a gallon of Diet Pepsi, sucking his fingers for spare sauce the whole time as he goes. I do not partake, instead sitting in polite silence awaiting his litany of inquiries as he tears into the meat-speckled bones. He is not a fat man, though his arteries must look like Slim Jims, and he is soggy around the middle. His cheeks are reliably pink, and jiggle with each voracious chew, which means that they are doing so almost nonstop during this marathon luncheon. His silver hair, growing out of a crew cut and into a flattop, reminds me of how my father’s was, but, physically, that is the only resemblance between the two of them.
“Let me see your arms,” Duane snorts. I show them; they are tan from my time at the beach, but pale and smooth in the crooks, no pocks, nicks, or holes to be found.
“You clean?”
“Yes.”
“You staying out of trouble?”
“Yes.”
“You know I don’t like you doing that blood cleanup.”
“I know.”
“Work’s work, though, I reckon, and nowadays you got to think outside the box if you wanna survive Los Angeles. Anything you wanna talk to me about?”
“No.”
“You lonely? You wanna go catch a movie sometime or something?”
“I don’t really have the patience for movies.”
“Okay, I get that. Reality is more interesting to me too. Documentaries and stuff. History Channel. Hey—have you given any thought to what I asked you about before? About the club?”
“Not really.”
“Well, just keep it in mind. We could really benefit from a smart guy like you. And you from us.” The soft sell again. He stares into my flat, near-dead gaze and finds a stony wall. “Okay, well, short meeting then.” He seems wounded. Duane sets a plastic-wrapped piss cup on the table between his stack of chicken bones and me. “Gimme a sample and we’re done.” Not protesting, I take the specimen container and head to the restroom. It has been somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty
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