by Jeff Klima
"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 fina
nces 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.
CHAPTER 13
welcome to the dollhouse
When someone collects dolls, they are seeking to compensate for the imperfections they detect in their real children.
—Psychological analysis
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.
June had outfitted herself with a respiratory mask to stave off the noxious fumes of the rotting dead. Part of my making a good impression on her and her office was forgoing the mask. Jeff Klima and the company he represented didn't have a problem with bad smells.
The little old lady had died in her bedroom, beside a large bed with a simple frame. Since my own bed-frame acquisition, I noticed other people's bed frames and rated theirs against mine. In this case, mine won.
It was an awkward scene because the lady had clearly been in the bed shortly before she had kicked the bucket, and at some point in her sweet-old-lady death spasms had tumbled to her right, dropping down onto her thick, green carpeting. The carpet material wasn't quite shag, but it was dense and plush and plenty ripe.
"She was in here for three months," June said from her position in the doorway. She didn't want to come any closer. "She just rotted away with her cat in here. The cat lived. It ran out when the police finally busted open the door."
"Three months?" I said, looking down at the amazingly in-depth outline of her body, crystallized perfectly in the fibers of the carpeting. Something looked off inside the outline, though, and I put on my black latex gloves to check it out.
Using the corner of the bed, I slowly lowered myself down onto the floor, keeping my back as stiff as possible and leaving nothing to chance. I was used to the greasy residue from a decomposing person leaving a haloed effect in their final resting place, as if the dead had attempted snow angels on their respective floors. But this was more filled in, more viscous than I had seen in a decomposition case.
June watched with an eerie sort of eagerness, and I knew that I had to act like a true professional and show no fear. I planted my hand down into the thick of the carpet, where her heart would have been, just to feel the difference. Imagine my repulsion when my fingers sank through the saturated carpeting and a chunky brown stew of melted guts slimed over the top of my hand, encasing it in a foul liquid nightmare.
Three months or not, the old woman was still very much a part of the room. I retracted my hand too quickly and felt compelled to man up in front of June. "Yeah, she's ripe," I confirmed from my crouched position. I could feel the coldness of her innards clinging fiercely to the glove with a Vaseline-like viscosity. Unable to escape the feeling of clammy corpse mulch through my skin, I ripped the glove off and stood as quickly as my back would allow.
"It's saturated," I nodded, as if there had been any doubt. "We'll definitely have to cut the carpeting out."
I spent the rest of the time helping June search for a will, which, given the sparseness and size of the tiny house, shouldn't have been a problem. Searching through her house, we discovered many more dolls, each porcelain and perfect, frozen for eternity with a penetrating gaze.
They actually freaked me out a bit, and I didn't know what had possessed her to start collecting the little devils in the first place. I had seen too many horror films at too young an age to even comprehend putting one of the creepy fuckers where I lived. We still hadn't found a will, though.
There was one door directly opposite the bedroom, which, unlike the rest of the house, was locked. The will hadn't been in any other room of the house, so June made an executive decision. "We need to break that door down."
I'd also seen enough adventure movies to jump at the chance to do some legal breaking and entering. Bad back and walking cane or not, I was determined to push through that door and into the room on the other side. Perhaps I'd even discover some long-chained-up offspring, so grotesquely deformed that the woman had made the ultimate choice to seal them up rather than let the cruel world put them on display. Or maybe it would be a manufacturing room for crystal meth. I was determined to find out.
I lowered my shoulder as I'd seen done in many a movie and ran forward, feeling surprisingly pain-free. I hit the door once and bounced back but kept the momentum going and hit it again. I was hoping that the door would burst inward, fragmenting into a thousand tiny shards as if it had been decimated by a barrel of dynamite, but the simple lock on the jamb gave long before the rest of it did. The entranceway extended inward, and my trajectory carried me into the darkness. June was quick to follow, reaching for a light switch.
I found myself surrounded by hundreds of perfectly angelic-looking monstrosities. Dolls, too many to count, lined five rows of glass shelves on every wall of the room, row upon row of them, like some macabre miniature army. Each one in the collection wore tailored clothes that represented an aspect of the thing's personality. The giant closet of hand-painted dolls had been locked away from view, too valuable to the old woman to leave accessible. If she had any children during her lifetime, they could've never h
oped to live up to their mother's ambitions.
I retreated from the room quickly, expecting unnatural movement from the hordes, and yanked the door closed as best I could, but I knew that it would be too late. The overpowering stench of the woman's remains had invaded the inner sanctum; the fetid particles would attach themselves to the dolls' whimsical costumes, and for the better part of their eternity, the dolls would wear their mother's dead essence like hideous cologne.
Without a will, June would have to make do with taking the impressive stack of small bills she had found in the old woman's makeshift office. When we had finally exited the house, I thought my job was done for the day and I wished her the best, promising to fax her office a copy of our invoices.
"Not so fast," June stopped me. "I'm not allowed to just take things from the house undocumented. I need you to be my witness while I note all this money."
For the next hour and a half I stood, shifting uncomfortably, watching her write the serial numbers of each dollar bill she had taken on a long ledger sheet. She didn't have a problem with how long it took; she was billing the estate at ninety dollars an hour. On the other hand, I would receive a flat fee from Dirk of twenty-five dollars for going out and making the assessment. It was only help to offset my gas costs. And I would receive that only if we didn't get the job.