The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  Stew’s mom never did look into the school transfer. In that one week, Stew had been betrayed by the two most important women in his life. From that day forward he vowed to never let another woman get under his skin.

  Then came Pam.

  Stew met his first and only wife at the end of a painful rehab. Both were vulnerable and needed someone of the opposite sex to hang on to. In that window of life they both appeared to have discovered love and redemption in the same fix-it package. Eighteen years after Stew had pledged to himself he would never be vulnerable to another woman, he had exchanged that personal promise for the vow to love, honor and obey.

  As for the heartbreak? Stew hadn’t a glimmer how to soothe that kind of wound. To shake the image of Ben with his arms wrapped around Pam, Stew thumped himself in the head with alternating fists. Motorists driving past saw an aimless, rain-soaked behemoth, shuffling down the sidewalk, looking like a homeless veteran who had lost his shopping cart.

  None could have known that Stew was fast forming his own agenda. His single plan of action was to walk himself into the first open establishment serving liquor. That turned out to be a Ventura Boulevard bar called Gaby’s, a twelve-stool joint with scattered tables and booths with a single six-foot pool table in the rear.

  Stew didn’t bother to sit before he pushed up to the bar and ordered.

  “Double Jack and Coke!” he said hoarsely.

  Stew started hacking like he had been struck with a case of pneumonia. Then he spread a wet hundred-dollar bill on the bar to show the smoky, boozy-looking broad behind the bar top that he meant big business.

  “I gotcha, hon,” said the woman. “But you gotta stop drippin’ on my bar.” She found a clean bar rag, wiped the bar clean then tossed the towel to Stew.

  “Sorry,” croaked Stew in a voice that sounded nearly humble.

  “Wet out there?”

  “What do you think?”

  The woman stuffed a tall glass with ice and set it on the bar in front of Stew, poured four fingers of Jack Daniels, then used a soda gun to top it off with a carbonated RC Cola mix.

  The instant she retreated, Stew had the tumbler in his fist and was guzzling the entire cocktail without so much as a breath.

  That’s one to settle the nerves.

  “Another?” asked the woman, though it wasn’t much of a guess.

  Stew nodded, she poured, then he pounded the brew back just as quickly as the first.

  Two. To ease my fuckin’ mind.

  “Again,” said Stew.

  “You drivin’ anywhere?”

  “If I was drivin’ somewhere, you think I’d be this fuckin’ wet?”

  “Point taken.”

  There was a threat to Stew’s voice that some, if not most, bartenders would have taken as a reason to cut a fellah off. But the woman bartender revealed a crookedly wicked smile, then fixed Stew another drink exactly like the first two.

  “Last one,” she said. “But what’s left over is my tip. You with me?”

  Stew pushed the drenched hundred-dollar bill across to her, then pumped the last drink into his body. The wash of foam and syrup coated his throat. The pinch between his shoulder blades slackened. His core began to warm.

  Three. To clarify the rage in my soul.

  “Bathroom?” asked Stew.

  “Left at the felt,” she said with a head-tilt.

  Stew’s next move was to find a drug dealer.

  Every dive bar had a local narcotics seller who sometimes doubled as a pimp. It was only a matter of spotting the guy. Or of being spotted, as Stew already had been by the poseur-looking elf in a paisley shirt seated on a stool at the opposite end of the bar. The man was sharing a Mai Tai with a hooker in black go-go boots, a rubber dress, and a blonde, faux-fro wig.

  On his way to the men’s room, Stew simply nodded with an ever-so-subtle jut of his jaw. Stew had barely enough time to unzip his pants before the dope dealer walked in from behind and locked the door.

  “Need air for my tires,” said Stew. “Got any tweekers?”

  “Are you, by chance, a cop?” asked the dealer.

  “No,” said Stew. “So now that the formalities are over, is it a yes or no?”

  “How do I know you’re not Johnny Law?”

  “Saw me walk in, didn’t ya? Wet and stupid and thirsty as fuck. What more do you need?”

  “Show me the money.”

  Stew zipped his pants, never bothered flushing the toilet, and pulled another wet hundred-dollar bill from his front pants pocket. But the dealer merely held his hands up in disgust.

  “Dude. You wanna wash your hands first?”

  Before the dealer could so much as yelp, Stew had him pinned against the door, his knotted forearm wedged underneath the little man’s chin. Stew fished around the dealer’s coat pockets and came up with a set of car keys with a nifty blue and black BMW remote button.

  “That’s right,” choked out the dealer, scared enough to nearly pee in his pants. “Tweeks ’n’ shit’s in my car.”

  “Where’s the car?”

  “In the back alley.”

  “Okay,” said Stew. “Stay at the bar, I return your car. Leave, and well...”

  Stew helped the threat sink into the dealer with an extra few square pounds of pressure from his forearm.

  “I got friends,” squeaked out the dealer.

  “Sure you do,” sneered Stew. “But what good are friends if you’re dead already?”

  Stew left the bar without looking back.

  As he made a hard right turn out of the men’s room, he barely acknowledged the biker wannabes playing pool. He steered himself for the rear door marked with a red-lit exit sign, made three long strides into the alley, then hit the remote button on the car keys until he heard the high-pitched chirp from a black, BMW 3 series. The head and taillights of the Beemer flashed twice.

  And that quickly, Stew was behind the wheel, starting the German engine, and splashing through every pothole in the back lane corridor.

  The booze in Stew’s bloodstream finally reached his skin, warming him all the way to his fingertips. But like a soup that needed to simmer before adding the last measure of ingredients, Stew craved both the tingle and tangle of alcohol merging with methamphetamines. To Stew, it was the addict’s way of splitting the atom.

  In an effort to make his actions appear normal, Stew pulled into a nearby gas station and feigned that he was buying fuel by loading the delivery nozzle into the Beemer’s gas receptacle. He popped the trunk, figuring that like most respectable drug dealers, the owner of the BMW hid his stash somewhere in the wheel well under the trunk mat. Stew’s theory proved correct. Just underneath the spare tire was a gallon-sized Ziploc bag stuffed with a potpourri of drugs, mostly prescription meds like OxyContin and Percocet. Scattered amongst the unmarked bottles of pills were tubes of colored Ecstasy tablets and tiny, thumbnail-sized jewelry bags filled with two different textures of powder. It had been ten years, but even under the trunk’s pale twenty-five-watt bulb, Stew recognized the brownish-white powder as heroin, and the glassy, crystallized substance as the meth he was craving. But without a proper pipe to smoke it in...

  Damn!

  Stew shook the bag then flipped it sideways. There, he saw one small bag that appeared like something akin to processed sugar. It was pure methamphetamine. More expensive and refined enough to snort. With two fingers, Stew extracted the tiny baggie of pure meth and slipped it into his shirt pocket. He slammed the trunk lid, returned the nozzle to the pump, and folded himself back into the black leather car seat.

  If anybody was watching what he did next, Stew didn’t much care. He pried the baggie open, made a seal between the baggie and his right nostril, and inhaled every last granule. At first, it burned his sinus cavity, then scorched at the lining of his lungs. Stew’s blood vessels would soon absorb the chemical and put the evil mix to work on the receptors in his brain. What few fears Stew had stored would be temporarily vanquished. And what morals he
had earned from his ten years of sobriety and marriage would be flushed forever into the dark recesses of his psyche.

  The sky gushed, turning each street and boulevard with the slightest pitch into a culvert for channeling water. San Fernando Valley storm drains were already overwhelmed, and in some neighborhoods, six-inch city curbs were the only defense against millions in costly flooding. Cars on the freeways were in danger of serious hydroplaning. During the downpour, Caltrans officials scrambled to respond to reported pileups on almost every major artery.

  And now with the wind becoming a factor, sectors of the city’s electrical grid were losing power as downed trees compromised power lines. The danger was, if outages occurred in any number of sequences, the Valley could be plunged into a nearly total blackout.

  Stew sat inside the safety of the stolen BMW, staring across the street to his beloved construction site. From there he watched the power transformer attached to a pole behind the unfinished house arc, spark, then blow, dunking the street into sudden darkness. Through Stew’s toxic prism, the blue flash was a beautiful sign that affirmed just why he was there.

  First my house, then her house.

  No longer was the construction site just a skeleton on foundation pilings. It now resembled something closer to the architectural schematics, a two-story, single-family, dream home complete with a pool. The roof was fully installed and window frames had been cut into shearing walls nailed with plywood. For looks, Stew had even had Henry hang a proper entry door to sit atop a temporary stoop formed from old brick and cinder blocks.

  For Stew, the timing couldn’t have been much better. While the neighbors were surely scrambling for flashlights and candles, Stew stepped from the stolen car and strode across the street. It was misting the last time he had made a nighttime visit to the site. He had stripped naked and buried both his victim and the evidence of his crime in a five-foot deep foundation form. Then, the wet air had carried with it the sting of relief.

  No longer.

  Stew, workman-like in his gait, yet narcotically impregnable from pain, peeled away the chain-link, ducked inside the fence, and felt his way down the property line toward the backyard. Along the way, he tripped over a leftover piece of half-inch galvanized pipe, reached down for it and dragged it with him to the pair of refrigerator-sized supply boxes parked beyond the pool. After feeling around a bit, Stew wedged the pipe between the padlock and the latch on the first container and let leverage do the work. Snap! Stew heard the padlock hit the dirt. He pushed up the lid and breathed in the heady mix of lubricant and gasoline. Inside the box were a compressor, air hoses, and a gas can.

  The second box was just as easily peeled, but required a frustrating five minutes of prowling with his fingertips and whispered gripes until he found both the flint sparker and the propane torch.

  Now Stew hurried.

  He wanted to get the first half of his chore over and done with. He carried the tools inside the house where, considering the volume of rain, the slab floor remained mostly dry, but icy cold to the touch. Then he uncorked the gas can and began splashing the liquid between studs stuffed with fiberglass insulation and pre-stubbed electrical wiring. The wind howled through the upper floor and sent a chill down the stairs where Stew set the propane torch. He opened the valve and scratched out a spark. A flame issued and with it, just enough illumination for him to give one final regard to the sum total of nine months of his righteous handiwork.

  It was good house, solid, full of promise and prosperity for the man with the vision to construct it.

  Or the desire to destroy it.

  Stew pulled the front door toward him, exited onto the temporary doorstep, then wheeled and bowled the propane bottle back into the entry. The torch rolled, then spun and skittered across the concrete floor until it slapped against a gas-soaked wall.

  I’m on a rampage! And this is what it feels like!

  As Stew rushed to the car, he found himself imagining how the newsmen would describe his actions. Not that he gave a flying rat’s fuck about anything those talking TV blowhards had to say about him. They could spew whatever they wanted and Stew wouldn’t care. He would likely be dead by then. Put down, and out of his misery, by a stranger’s bullet. Most likely by a cop.

  But not before he had his revenge.

  Stew never looked back at the house. Not even once to see if the fire had caught. He had glimpsed the flames in the rainy reflection off the windows of the stolen BMW as he climbed in. But that was all he ever saw of it. He started the engine and drove on, preferring to remember the unfinished house as it was, and not as a burning shrine to his unrepentant rage.

  Despite the heavy rain, the fire Stew left in his wake was fed enough oxygen and dry fuel to overcome the buckets of water that fell from the sky. Neighbors rushed from their homes. In awe, under umbrellas and rain jackets held securely over their heads, they watched the pyre roar. They jawed with each other about whether the fire was caused by a downed power line or even, possibly, a million-to-one lightning strike delivered from the angry sky. Not a single man or woman suspected arson or foul play from the kind and solid contractor-cum-speculator they had come to know as Stew Raymo.

  “I know I said I’d be there by eight,” said Gonzo, “but something’s come up and I won’t be able to get him until I don’t know.”

  With her weak plea, Gonzo hoped the kindergarten mom who had brought her son home for an afternoon play date would respond with minimum grief. Better yet, the kindly mom might offer up an extra pair of jammies and invite Travis for a midweek sleepover. But there was no such luck for the LAPD cop. Instead of understanding, Gonzo got an earful from the frustrated mother, who appeared at her wit’s end from dealing with two little boys who had failed to get along since dinner.

  “I really understand,” said Gonzo, trying like hell to sound appreciative. “Let me see what I can do about getting out of here, okay? Really get it. Sorry for any inconvenience—”

  The frantic mother cut Gonzo off, muttering something curt and unintelligible before hanging up.

  Getting out of here now!

  “Here” was Jack in the Box, where Gonzo splashed a pocketful of quarters onto the counter in exchange for a Jumbo Jack and Diet Coke. She danced between raindrops and cars waiting in the drive-thru in a dash to her checkered cab. She would eat and drink on the way back to Simi Valley.

  But not before one last sweep by Stew Raymo’s house.

  What would her final fool’s errand accomplish? Most likely, the same disappointing result. She had now slowly rolled the cab past Stew’s North Hollywood house too many times to count, parked, watched, knocked on the door, poked around the back under both daylight and dark and even jimmied the door to Stew’s spanking new pickup truck in hopes she might uncover information as to where the hell Stew might be.

  And while waiting for Stew to magically appear, she had burned up her cell phone minutes, calling anybody whom she could imagine might know or have seen where Ben Keller had disappeared.

  All the while, Gonzo continued to rehearse her speech. She had composed it in her mind and repeated it aloud to herself until it was pitch perfect. Her agenda was to leave no room for improvisation. Her only question was whether or not she would need to insert the muzzle of her Beretta 9mm into Stew’s mouth to ensure his inability to argue.

  Stew Raymo? Remember me? Lydia Gonzalez, LAPD. We met when you were post-op. Remember me now? Yeah? Got two words for you. Ben Keller. I want you to stay the fuck away from him. Understood? And I’m not talkin’ ten feet. I’m not talkin’ ten miles. I want you gone. The fuck out of the Valley, the city. Out of the fuckin’ state. Otherwise, me and every cop I know—and I know a lot of ’em—we will drop a heavy fuckin’ hammer on you. And just so we’re clear, I’ll tell you how. You drivin’ to work? Maybe you get pulled over. Maybe we find a paint bucket in the back of your truck and that’s fulla crack. Or maybe you got a concealed weapon in your toolbox that’s a dead-fuckin’ ballistic match for some
unsolved murder. You hearin’ all this? You better because I am one dedicated bitch! And if you don’t make this happen, I’m gonna personally grease the pole that slides you into a tub of boiling hot fuckin’ hellfire. You hearin’ me? Nod if you get me? Yeah? Yeah? Good.

  For the last time, Gonzo maneuvered the cab into a right turn onto Morrison Street. She instinctively cracked both the driver’s and front passenger’s windows. It was a trick she had learned as a rookie while patrolling the boulevards of South Central. By slightly lowering car windows and keeping the speedometer under twenty miles per hour, cops could employ their eyes and ears. And in the case of sudden gunfire, hearing the direction from where bullets were flying could save a smart cop’s life.

  Gonzo listened as her tires slowly splashed through potholes and crunched across asphalt loosened by the downpour. The rain had momentarily eased from a tumult to a steady drizzle. Without so much moisture, the cab’s windshield wipers began to squeak with every cycle. The air smelled fresh and sweet and green.

  Ahead on Gonzo’s right, was Stew’s home. It was a house that reminded her much of her own little Simi Valley residence. The modest pale green stucco house sprouted from the neatly landscaped yard behind a white picket fence. As the cab approached, the home appeared exactly as she had left it before her dinner dash to Jack in the Box. The windows were dark, as were all porch lights. The only illumination was on the path and driveway, each dimly trimmed by rows of twelve-inch, solar-powered garden lamps in the shape of bent tulips. The same three newspapers lay un-retrieved on the driveway near Stew’s pickup, yellowed and disintegrated from the deluge.