Charlie Huston - The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

He shook his head.

– You sleep a lot? You sleep like the fucking dead, is what you do. I was yelling, running around yelling your name for five minutes. Saw you under the bed, I freaked out. Oh, shit, Web's fucked up. Almost had a heart attack. And I don't mean that figuratively.

He squinted at me.

– You sure you're not high?

I buttoned my fly and looked at him.

– Man, I smoked grass once when I was eleven and got so paranoid I thought the air was trying to kill me. Only time I ever got high. I hate drugs. I never do drugs.

He licked his lips.

– OK. Fine. Then help me with something here.

He walked to the outer door and swung it open and pointed at the empty parking spot out back.

– Help me and tell me where the fuck my van is.

I took a step toward the door.

– I.I.I.

He nodded.

– Yeah, and when you figure out the answer to that one, you can tell me this.

He unballed one huge fist and showed me the pair of blue panties in his palm.

– Who the fuck do these belong to and why are they in my office?

The thing about getting beat up twice, spending big chunks of time cleaning up other people's blood, seeing your dad for the first time in two years, getting in a fight with your best friend, and having sex with someone you think you might really like a lot and then totally going psycho on her, all in a twenty-four-hour period, is that it's likely to affect your judgment. And if your judgment is pretty much for shit to start with, that may result in some spectacularly lame lies.

I'm not saying it's cool or anything.

I'm just saying that when I proceeded to tell Po Sin exactly what had happened that night, the fact that I left out the part where I drove to Carson to clean a bloody motel room and then brought one of his clients back to his office and had sex with her, just didn't seem relevant. I mean, nothing happened to the office while I was away, man. So why bother him with the information that I'd, you know, gone and used his equipment to sterilize a crime scene? And the van was clearly stolen while I was in the office asleep. That would have happened even if I'd spent the whole night here. And as for telling him the girl who'd come over to keep me company on a long lonely night was Soledad, well, that just would have required I tell him the rest of the story. And I just explained why that didn't matter.

So I streamlined things to make it easier for everyone involved.

But I digress.

– Stop lying to me, Web.

– I? What? Lying to you? I would never.

He took his face from his hands.

– Before you say anything else and really fuck up our relationship, let me tell you something about modern technology.

– Uh. OK.

He leaned back in his chair.

– Modern technology is an amazing thing. It allows us to do amazing things. Go to the moon. Cure disease. Watch TV. It also allows us to communicate over vast distances.

He reaches for the phone.

– And check our messages remotely.

He pressed a button on the phone.

Urn, hi, this is, uh, this is Soledad Nye. The woman in Malibu. You cleaned my dad's messi I mean, oh fuck, that was horrible. You cleaned the house. Anyway. I was hoping I could get in touch with one of your employees. Web. I wanted to talk to him about… anyway. My number, well, he should call me on my cell. The number. Hang on. Hello? Hello? Crap! Crap! Uh, Web?

Yeah, yeah, it's me. Oh fucking crap! Jesus. Are you OK?

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

– Motherfucker!

– Didn't we already cover that?

Po Sin stopped hammering his desk and faced me.

– What?

– Nothing.

He put his hands on his knees and rose from his chair.

– Are you certain of that?

– Yeah.

He took a step.

– Because I'm just about positive I just heard the guy, the guy who had a female client, I expressly told him to stay away from, over here when he was on watch last night and played fuck games on the job till he passed out under the bed and my van was stolen, I think I just heard that guy make something like a joke. Am I mistaken? Because if I am not mistaken, I would take it very poorly.

– I.

The phone rang, cutting off whatever verbal strategy I might have mustered to keep him from crushing my spine.

Po Sin raised a finger.

– Hold that thought.

I wondered if he meant whatever I'd been about to say, or the thought that he was about to crush my spine. This leading to the sudden worry that perhaps he could read minds. Sleep deprivation, etc, having clouded my reasoning a bit.

Po Sin picked up the phone.

– Clean Team. What?

He looked at me, slitted his eyes.

– No. He is not.

He hung up the phone and pointed at it.

– Do you know what this is not for?

– Urn, I'm sorry, the structure of the question got me a little confused.

He raised a finger.

– We did just talk about what a bad fucking idea it would be for you to be making jokes at this moment, didn't we?

– Yeah, yeah we did.

– OK.

He pointed at the phone again.

– So, do you know what this is not for?

I shook my head, assuming this was one of those rhetorical things that would allow Po Sin to make a point and lead, soon after, to him chilling out a bit. I was right about part of that assumption.

He opened his mouth and a small hurricane wind blew out.

– It is not for your fucking personal use, motherfucker!

He made a fist, raised it high, brought it down slowly, and rested it on top of my head.

– It is not for desperate young women to call you on, looking for comfort in the middle of the night, and it is not for your buddies to be calling on during business hours asking if you're around. Understood?

I tried to nod under the weight of his hand.

– Yeah. Totally. No personal calls.

He took his hand from my head.

– OK. Now. I, I'm a man. As evidence, I have a wife and a couple kids. I know all about screwing and how great it is. I also understand that when a chick calls you in the middle of the night and asks if she can come over, only a fucking corpse says no.

– Or a gay guy.

He made the fist again.

– Web! -Right. My bad.

He relaxed the fist. Sort of.

– Now I'm not saying you're off the hook. But, you know, I get it.

He brought up both hands, cupped my face in them, from crown to chin.

– As long as you were here, Web. As long as you were here when the van was stolen, I can understand. But if you guys were down the street messing around at the Stardust Lounge, or making a run for condoms or something, if you were not here as you were supposed to be, that is a very different matter. Yes? You do understand? You were here?

OK, this part here, I won't lie, this is bad. You might want to look away and not acknowledge the fact that I did what I did.

God knows I don't.

I brought up my hands and covered his.

– Po Sin, Yes. I understand. And I was here when the van was stolen.

True, every word. And, in an odd case of transmutation, also one of the worst lies of my life.

He took his hands from my face.

– OK. OK. Now. I need to, I need to start formulating a response to this act of aggression from Aftershock. You. You need to make yourself very fucking useful right now.

I looked around, saw a broom, grabbed it, looked at him.

He nodded.

– Yes. Start with that.

I started sweeping.

Gabe came to the open office door.

– Where's the van?

Po Sin brought his leg back and lashed it at the wastebasket and garbage exploded over the office and the tin basket hit the cinder-block wall and folded in half.