Jim Gavin - Middle Men - Stories

“Tell me the general area where I need to look. I’ll use my Spidey sense.”

“You’ll get lost. I’ll call somebody.”

The liaison, a snaggletoothed black kid, arrives at the bottom of the stairs, driving an electric cart. Zipping down aisle 97B, a gob of tobacco under his lip.

“How come Easton stays up there?”

“Who?”

“Easton. He works upstairs.”

The kid stops the cart and looks around. “A couple weeks ago, a dude got stabbed over by will call.” Points ominously to a distant vector of the warehouse. “No one upstairs is allowed downstairs until the investigation is over. That side’s run by Cucamonga Dogpatch. Northside Onterios are up here, running all the trim. Most of the foremen are Northside, so that’s where the problem starts.”

“Are you in a gang?”

“No.”

“Well, Christ, be careful.”

“The best part is that the guy who did it already got fired for something else.”

“Does Easton know that?” Clever of young Easton, sending the old factory rep into the kill zone.

“No. We’re all getting longer lunches while they do the investigation. Don’t say nothing.”

“I won’t.”

The kid gets him a mobile stair unit with suction stops. Costello spends an hour aloft, counting boxes one by one, then has a cigarette on the edge of the loading dock.

Later, driving back to Anaheim, against traffic, he pulls off to get some In-N-Out. Orders a double double animal style. Outside on the stone benches, a warm night, the sky gray and pink. Katie worked a couple summers here. Good money for fast food. Gave her acne. Or maybe it was Megan. Cute round face, both of them, like their mother. Would be nice if the kids could come to the WCPA banquet, be there when the awards are announced. But what a bummer for them, hanging around with a bunch of plumbers and toilet salesmen on a Friday night.

He stops at Home Depot and buys shock treatment for the pool. Waiting at the register. The girl trying to change the receipt, looking flustered. There but for the grace of God.

In the fading light Costello stands at the edge of the deep end. The lizard is barely visible at the bottom. He dumps in two bags’ worth of calcium hypochlorite. Burns the nose. White cleansing death.

A year of radiation. A year of bedpans and vomit bowls. Gray wispy hair like cobwebs on her head. All so that we could have our long, precious goodbye. Pointless. It wasn’t for you. I knew the young and dancing you. Disintegrating every day, pale, nauseated, dementia, that wasn’t you. A thing died in our bed — it wasn’t you. I should’ve slit your throat, babe, while you were still you.

• • •

On Friday afternoon, before leaving the office for the tournament, Costello stops by Linda’s desk and asks for help. He holds up the yellow legal pad containing all his ballcock calculations.

“Do you know how to put this in Excel?”

“Just put it there,” she says, pointing to an empty spot on her desk.

“Doesn’t have to be anything fancy.”

She explains that she can email it to the guy at Bromberg as soon as it’s done.

“Great!” Costello says. “Saves me the hassle!”

“You’re late for the tournament,” she says, shooing him away.

Harbor Municipal. Par-three wonderland. The parking lot full of plumbing trucks. One of them just a filthy old milk truck with no windows or decals. Instead, someone has traced “Kelly Plumbing” in the filth, along with a phone number. Blessed are the plumbers. Old guys in coveralls dragging their bags and beer coolers. Young vato plumbers in their Dickies, swinging wedges and putters.

Costello walks up the ninth hole. Jack and Mumbry, totally blasted, are taking practice tee shots, trying to hit a foursome who are putting on the green.

“Fuck off,” one of them yells back across the fairway, his voice muffled by the sound of the 405 freeway, which is hidden behind a line of eucalyptus trees.

Jack gives the guy the finger, takes a pull on his Tecate. Mumbry points to the sand trap by the green, where a solitary figure is sprawled facedown.

“That guy passed out down there about an hour ago.”

“A hundred dollars if anybody tags him from here,” says Jack.

“Maybe he’s dead,” Costello says.

“A couple guys from Dinoffria Plumbing reported back,” Mumbry says. “He’s breathing.”

Ajax has a tent set up. Glorious standards flapping in the wind. A few plumbers stand around drinking, looking through catalogues, playing with the new faucet models.

Mumbry has orange chicken wing sauce all around his mouth.

“You missed the Hooter girls, Marty. They were giving out hot wings.”

Jack puts an arm around Dave Mumbry. “Collectively the girls opted not to fuck Dave.”

“I’m a married man,” says Mumbry.

“So am I,” says Jack. “It’s a common condition.”

Costello sits down on a folding chair. A young plumber is trying to figure out the action on the new ratchet cutters. Costello steadies a piece of one-inch copper and shows him how to clamp it on.

“Is this a sample one?” the plumber asks. “Can I have it?”

“What, free?” Costello shakes his head. “Not in this life, my friend. Who’s your wholesaler? I’ll have him bring some in for you.”

What they call pulling business through. Costello gives the kid his card.

Sirens. An ambulance rolling up the cart path. Everyone scatters as it accelerates down the fairway.

“Maybe that guy is dead,” says Mumbry, but the ambulance gets halfway to the green and makes a hard left, cutting through a treeline and onto another fairway.

“When’s the best ball start?” Costello asks.

“It got canceled,” says Mumbry. “There’s some disorganization going on.”

“Then fuck it. I’m having a whack.”

Costello with a nine iron. Bend the knees, let it rip. Losing the ball in the white sky, then the silence of a distant landing, four feet in front of the sand trap. Costello grabs a wedge and putter.

“If I don’t return,” he says, “avenge me.”

The grass is summer-brown. Hot winds whirling down from the freeway. Sirocco, an old crossword word. A ball whizzes past Costello’s head.

“Incoming!” Jack’s voice louder than the wind. Friendly fire.

The drunk in the sand trap rolls over. Lying there, quite peaceful, with an empty bottle of peppermint schnapps next to his head, is the man himself, Lamrock, patron saint of plumbing contractors throughout the whole of Christendom.

Costello pitches his ball over the trap, over the corpus of Lamrock. The ball rolls onto the green. The flag, at first, is nowhere to be found. But then he sees it floating in the water hazard, along with several empty beer cans. Costello drops his putt, saving par.

A golf cart cresting the hill, plumbers dangling out the sides, wielding golf clubs and forty-ounce bottles of beer. A blond Hooters girl driving, swerving, laughing. She skids onto the green and someone yells, “Marty!”

Rocha, riding shotgun, has his arm over her shoulder. “Hey, neighbor! Are you loaded or what?”

“I’m just trying to get in a few whacks.”

Rocha introduces his fellow technicians from Advanced Plumbing Specialists, and his young cousin, an apprentice. He introduces Mandy.

“This is crazy,” she tells Costello. “Most of the shit they send us to is so boring.”

“Yeah, we have a lot of fun out here,” says Costello, a little too brightly, voice cracking like a thirteen-year-old. Christ, the goofiness, it never goes away.

“Marty’s nominated for sales rep of the year,” Rocha says, drunk, grinning ear to ear, nudging Mandy with his shoulder.

“Wow!” Mandy says, with big mocking eyes.