The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  A suburban Mecca, the San Fernando Valley is a 345 square mile basin of sand and rock surrounded by mountains, only a few short miles from the sea. Were it not for the water siphoned in from the Colorado River, this most populous desert region would find it difficult to support a family of lizards, let alone the millions of families who had settled between the Santa Monica Mountains and the towering Santa Susanas. Where there were once endless acres of orange, grapefruit and avocado groves, now were neighborhoods and malls and seemingly every retail and restaurant franchise that could sprout under the sun. All of it was neatly divided by a mostly organized grid of streets—east and west—north and south.

  But when the heavy rains came, each and every street funneled the water into fast-rising gutters. All the dirt, litter, and oil were washed from the roads and sucked into a series of deep, concrete channels known as the L.A. River. These arteries, so quick to fill with grime and debris, emptied themselves into the Pacific Ocean in places like Santa Monica, Playa Del Rey, San Pedro, and Long Beach. And as much as the city boulevards and sidewalks glistened after these rare drenchings, it was as if all of the valley got the stomach flu on the same day and vomited poison into the sea.

  Few citizens were aware of the massive pollution to the ocean that followed every rain. And most of those who were aware felt helpless to do anything short of blasting their car horns when they saw the smoker in the vehicle in front of them flick his stinking cigarette butt out the window and onto the pavement.

  Stew Raymo knew where the cigarette butts ended up. His answer was to let the fuckin’ fish deal with them. With that, he sucked the last nanogram of tar and nicotine out of his Marlboro, then expertly sent it sparking across the sidewalk and into the gutter that fronted his construction site. Against the black of night, it looked like a tiny spray of Fourth of July pyrotechnics.

  And Stew had always liked fireworks.

  The rain had left the site misty and a little muddy, but not entirely slick. Under the glow of a nearby streetlamp sputtering and gasping to stay ignited, the wood framing glistened like a freshly peeled skeleton.

  Stew had no clue what time it was. All he knew was that it was still dark. That, and that his fix of Jack and Coke had long worn off, leaving him tired and yearning for bed. But the job had to be finished. He had dragged the body into one of the many ten-by-six-by-five-foot holes that had been dug and framed for the new foundation pilings. The hard part was finding a way to fit the carcass through all the crisscrossing of rebar without dismembering his load.

  The streetlamp continued to percolate, flashing on and off, barely allowing Stew to make out what was left of the man’s face, one half bloodied and smashed, the other caked in mud.

  This was the bearded one, he remembered. There were two men. One was stick-thin, dressed in an Izod polo, khakis, and thin sweater, heavily bearded with a circular bald spot at the back of his head. The other, younger and very clean-shaven. That one wore a starched shirt with gold cufflinks to match the gold watch, gold bracelet, and gold necklace. Both were olive-skinned. And neither, Stew guessed correctly, were cops.

  Armenians, he figured. He had spotted them when he had returned inside the Outback Steakhouse. With one methodical scan across the restaurant, all Stew needed to do was match the faces with the silver Lexus. As Stew approached, they didn’t exactly look like stalkers to him. Nor did they appear to have any interest in Stew. They neither saw him approach, nor were they focused on anything other than an oversized plate of nachos and their frosty mugs of microbrews.

  “Hey, fellahs,” said Stew.

  When both men broke from the conversations and looked curiously up at Stew, neither man revealed the slightest hint of recognition. What they saw was that same winning smile Stew had shown Ben on the day they had met.

  “Either of you guys driving a silver Lexus?”

  “That’s mine,” said the skinny one with the beard in a heavy accent.

  “Sorry to bother you, but you’re kinda blocking me. Would you mind at all if—”

  “No problem,” said the skinny one, pulling out his keys and rattling them at his friend. He spoke something in Armenian that Stew deciphered as little more than, “Be right back.”

  “Thanks, man. Really appreciate it.”

  Stew stayed two strides to the rear of the man, politely shadowing him out of the restaurant and all the way to the car in question. As the Lexus chirped and flashed its headlights when the man activated the remote unlocking feature, Stew did a speedy pivot, checking for possible witnesses. The man was reaching for the door’s handle when it dawned on him that he appeared to be blocking nobody at all.

  “Which car am I supposed to be—”

  The Armenian didn’t see it coming. All he felt were Stew’s fingers palming his head like a basketball, then slamming it hard into the door frame. Bones cracked. The man’s knees buckled. But Stew kept him from hitting the ground by snatching hold of his polo shirt’s collar. With that, Stew slipped his other arm around the man’s waist and helped him across the parking lot.

  If there had been witnesses, all they could have recalled was seeing what appeared to be a helpful friend carrying his drinking pal to his car for a safe ride home.

  Meanwhile, as Stew hurried the man over to his truck, he whispered, “Fight me and I’ll fucking gut you! Hear me? I’ll spark up my chainsaw and slice you from Hollywood to Pacoima!”

  The unlikely duo had to travel a short twenty yards. When they reached Stew’s pickup, Stew lifted the man into the driver’s side and climbed in after him, only to palm the man’s head again, guiding him deep into the passenger-side’s foot well.

  “Please...” begged the man.

  “Shut up!”

  Stew popped the glove box, found a roll of duct tape, and quickly bound the man’s feet and hands.

  Through busted teeth the man groaned, “What do you want?”

  “Like followin’ pretty women? Shootin’ yer video? You and your butt buddy with the gold chains?”

  Stew reached across with his leg and lowered a steel-toed boot into the man’s groin. Three hard stomps, then he had the pickup in gear and was easing out of the parking lot onto the six-lane, commuter-cramped Devonshire Boulevard.

  A sudden cloudburst dropped a volley of heavy rain, each drop exploding against Stew’s windshield. It came so fast the wiper blades found it difficult to catch up. All the headlights, taillights, and syncopated traffic lights blended with the downpour and beating wipers into a semi-psychedelic brainwash that Stew found pleasing.

  He lit a Marlboro, cracked his window, and inhaled the mash of sweet rain, car exhaust, and cigarette smoke. But the moment was fouled by the faintest whiff of the tall man’s heavy aftershave.

  “Why you wanna follow her?”

  Without waiting to hear an answer, Stew kicked the man once again. All he heard was the guttural wheeze of a man losing consciousness.

  “Wake the fuck up, asshole!”

  “Just a job,” croaked the man.

  “Since when’s stalkin’ my wife a fuckin’ job, pervert?”

  The man’s eyes first widened, then focused as if truly looking at Stew for the first time.

  “You’re the husband,” said the man, more thinking the words he spoke than expressing them to Stew.

  “Fuckin’ A I’m her fuckin’ husband!”

  “She was first... Follow her first, then you.”

  Stew braked for a stoplight, then swiveled his head robotically. In the darkness of the passenger-side’s foot well, he could barely make out the man’s features.

  “Followin’ me?”

  The man’s eyes blinked under Stew’s hard gaze. Then he nodded yes.

  “Who’s the asshole that wants you to follow me?” The suspicion in Stew’s voice was as heavy as wet cement.

  “Paid job,” whispered the man. “I dunno—”

  The man howled in pain as Stew ground the burning end of his cigarette into his hostage’s exposed calf. Stew pu
nched up the local country station and twisted the volume knob until the music was just shy of earsplitting, masking the screams.

  “Gimme a fuckin’ name!”

  “...Wood... or Woody Somebody...” sobbed the man. “I didn’t take the call.”

  “This Woody Woodfuck? He a cop?”

  The man shook his head violently.

  “No? What about Kashani? He work for Kashani?” pressed Stew.

  Farrokh Kashani of Tarzana was Stew’s money man. A first-generation Persian-American, he had hired Stew to remodel the kitchen of his hilltop home. Farrokh was so pleased he had kept Stew and his crew working for over a year and a half, renovating the entire hilltop property pillar by pillar. It was Farrokh who, after Stew had failed to secure a construction loan through conventional means, had floated him a personal line of credit for the Studio City property. And with the recent delays, Stew had entertained minor worries that Farrokh would lose faith and tighten the leash.

  “Dunno...” muttered the man, once again, shaking his head in fear.

  “Fuck!”

  Stew pounded the steering wheel, causing the whole cab to shudder. If the man worked for Farrokh, Stew was doubly screwed. The other guy he had left behind at Outback would surely go back to this Woody Somebody and report.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Stew said to himself.

  The Jack and Coke was sending an instant message from his subcortex. It played like video, projected across his rainy windshield in widescreen. When Stew had approached their Outback Steakhouse table, both men had looked up from their microbrews in response to his question. Neither had revealed the faintest hint of recognition. Instinct was Stew’s most trusted resource. And it was instinct that informed him now that neither the thick man with the gold chains and cufflinks, nor the tortured SOB stuffed into his passenger-side’s foot well, clocked that he was the husband they had been assigned to follow.

  “But why me?” wondered Stew.

  “...Dunno.”

  “What I do to you? Or that Woody Woodfucker?”

  “Please, sir...”

  “You follow me to Outback?”

  “...You didn’t follow us?”

  That’s when it hit Stew between the eyes. It was coincidence. Pure and unadulterated. The same Armenian pair that had followed Pam, and were next assigned to follow him, had chosen to close out their day at Outback Steakhouse with some nachos and cold beer. Not at all unlike the way Stew had planned to lower the curtain on his lousy day.

  Coincidence or fate?

  The answer didn’t matter a whit to Stew. Believing in fate meant including higher powers into his mental conversations. And coincidence was just another way of saying “shit happens.”

  Just call me lucky.

  Stew had always been lucky. He had wriggled out of most of the bad scrapes in his life. Enough, at least, to claim that he had been left with a winning percentage.

  “Take me back. I will promise not to follow you again.”

  Stew ignored the man. He began thinking aloud, his voice elevated so he could hear himself over the blaring sound system.

  “No going back, Stew.”

  “I got money,” begged the man. The whimper escaping him was buried by the noise.

  “Fuckin’ boozer,” barked Stew at himself.

  “Jus’ let me go—”

  “Boozers are losers!”

  “PLEASE!”

  “YEAH, YEAH!”

  Stew reached across and popped the glove box, fishing by feel until his fingertips brushed a cylindrical shape—metallic, cold and scored with a crosscut pattern for an easier grip.

  And grip it he did, hefting it near the lens and letting the heavy barrel do the work. Sober Stew wouldn’t remember how many cocks of his wrist it had taken to kill the man. But Jack and Coke never forgot. Jack and Coke counted twenty-two swings of the flashlight, each ending with a hard, whipping stroke to the man’s ever-softening head.

  That’s how Stew found himself in the sticky shadows of his construction site, staring into one of those deep, concrete-ready foundation holes. His next order of business was to get rid of the body and deal with the bloody mess in his truck. That, and his clothes would have to be totally destroyed.

  The dead man’s thin body folded with surprising ease through the crisscrossing rebar, coming to rest at the bottom with a muddy splash. Next, Stew stripped down to his underwear, poked the remainder of his clothes into the hole with a shovel and began spading enough dirt on top to cover everything.

  Six inches should do it, he thought. In a matter of hours, it would be covered by fast-hardening concrete. The remaining rain had a cooling effect, turning to steam nearly as quickly as it struck Stew’s skin. He breathed in through his nose, exhaled through his mouth, and worked calmly, composing a list of chores he would need to accomplish in the hours ahead.

  Pickup truck. Hose and wipe down the interior, lose the carpet

  Golfer’s rain suit. In the pickup’s rear toolbox. Wear it.

  Drive the pickup into the barrio. East Los Angeles. Within the speed limit. Leave truck on a side street, door ajar, keys in the ignition.

  License plates. Removed and tossed into a dumpster.

  The Metro. Utilize city busses and railway for return home.

  Home. Shower, change. If Pam wakes, insist you’ll explain it all to her later.

  Report pickup truck stolen.

  Back to site. Drive Pam’s car. Oversee the Morales Brothers re-pour the concrete into the new foundation forms.

  Showered, shaved, and warmed by his dry clothes, Stew stood in the exact position where he had built his mental checklist only hours earlier. It was a new day. And Stew was finally sober. He squinted into the morning sun and quietly watched Hector Morales and his four sons direct a fattened hose spewing wet, gray cement into the form. A gas-powered concrete pump droned loudly, splitting the morning quiet and fouling the air with the stink of burning petrol.

  In that moment, Stew felt sorry for the neighbors. If he lived next door to the site, he could see himself complaining loudly, then later delivering a box of Krispy Kremes to the crew as an apology. After all, they were only doing their jobs.

  And burying the evidence of a capital crime.

  The yellow barrel of the cement truck made noisy revolutions, those brown sombreros turning one over the other. When the first form was filled to the brim with the gray mix, Stew turned the site back over to Henry and made a quiet exit. There was one last task for him to accomplish. A last minute addition to his list:

  Apologize to Pam. Admit falling off the wagon. Make amends and get to the nearest and soonest Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

  Ten years, three months, and eighteen days of sobriety. Flushed down the toilet. Strangely, though, Stew felt renewed and full of confidence. He had cleaned himself up once before and sure as shit could do it again. With the love of a good woman and a clear head, not to mention the support of millions of his brothers in AA, Stew felt as if he could accomplish anything.

  Next task for Stew to accomplish? Finding the man called Woody.

  The drop-off line for Simi Canyons School was a certifiable traffic hazard. Every morning there was a line of gas-guzzling SUVs and luxury sedans backed up onto Tierra Rejada Road, a significant artery feeding both the 118 and 23 Freeways. Parents would queue up in the right lane, sometimes waiting as long as fifteen minutes in near standstill traffic, for their turn to pull into the campus’ driveway. Once they had entered the Simi Canyons property, cars were divided into two lanes: one for elementary school, one for middle school and high school. Parents would then be directed by teachers and administrators, acting as traffic cops, to stop their cars, drop off their kids, and pop their trunks or hatches to unload backpacks so heavy with books they needed wheels. Both drop-off lanes would eventually merge again and horseshoe back onto the already choked boulevard.

  The city fathers publicly screamed and blamed the school for the increased traffic, noise pollution, and eleva
ted carbon-monoxide index. They even threatened to revoke the school’s conditional use permit unless they came up with a viable plan to solve the problem. Quietly though, the politicians continued to curry favor with the upper crust of the parent body, assuring the headmaster and the board that the charter wasn’t in any real danger as long as the school appeared to be making an effort to fix the problem.

  Of course Ben knew otherwise. The problem wouldn’t be fixed as long as the school continued to inch upward in enrollment. That, and slow traffic wasn’t a true hazard. A car stuck in traffic was rarely in an accident worse than a fender bender, noise pollution was in the ear of the beholder, and the consistent offshore weather pattern essentially blew Simi’s excess carbon residue into the yawning gullet of the San Fernando basin.

  Ben treasured the time with the girls. While stuck in the conga line of cars he would spin vintage rock tunes for them, quiz them for their tests, arbitrate petty feuds, and play silly word association games.

  And Ben had decided to expand what had formerly been a once-a-week event for him into a daily routine. At least, for the short term. It gave Alex a break from the drive, and Ben another way to reconnect with his adopted family.

  “If you were a flavor, what would you be?” asked Ben.

  Elyssa was first to answer because, well, she was always first. The oldest girl reserved that privilege along with sitting up front in the passenger seat. She always took her time and turn seriously, knowing she would be setting the bar high with her answer.

  “Chocolate Fudge Brownie,” said Elyssa, grinning broadly while looking to Ben for his secret wink of approval.

  “Okay, Nina’s turn,” said Ben, withholding judgment.

  Nina started with her usual “Ummmm.” Because lately, Nina started every answer with an “Ummmm.”

  “Ummmm,” mocked Elyssa.

  “Ben!”

  “Teasers will lose their turns,” Ben reminded.

  “Ummmm,” began Nina, once again.

  While Elyssa bit her lip, Ben reviewed the morning’s drive. Simi Valley had dried out nicely since the rains. Beneath the golden scrub that blanketed the surrounding hills, Ben had detected a green undergrowth. A good sign, he thought. Green wild grasses significantly reduced the chance of the seasonal brushfires of fall and the mudslides of spring.