• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He leaned in, the tabletop tilting slightly under his weight. I remained very still, having, not for the first time, a sudden awareness of his crushing bulk.

—And I don't give that to anyone. What is in my house is mine. Who is in my house I take care of. My name, my reputation, those are in my house, those are for the well-being of my family. And I will not have my house fucked with.

He inhaled through his nose, a long wheeze, and leaned back into the depths of the booth.

—Especially not by an asshole like Morton.

I poked my straw into the melting ice at the bottom of my margarita glass.

—OK, then can you advise me as to how you will be making allowances to ensure I won't be getting beaten again? Because a police complaint is sounding like a pretty good strategy to me.

Po Sin looked at Gabe. Gabe looked at something, but I don't know what, all I could see was darkness and tiny red flames reflected in his glasses.

Po Sin picked up his margarita and drained half of it.

—The thing you have to remember here, Web, this isn't what you'd call a heavily regulated industry. They set the bar pretty low. Two hundred bucks, proof of a fixed address, and a contract with a licensed hazardous waste disposal company is all you need to be a certified trauma cleaner.

My eyebrows went up.

—Bullshit.

—No bullshit at all. You got employees, you have to pass an OSHA class, but that's it. So, see, you get a mixed bag of types drawn to the trade. At worst, mostly, you get people who are just fucking incompetent and lazy. They give the trade a bad name, but they also go out of business pretty fast. But there is a higher class of worst-case scenario, because some folks are just plain crooked as hell. Whether that means overbilling or maybe cutting corners on a job, whatever. Kind of stuff that Deputy Mercer was talking about with Aftershock. Worser case, you get some straight-up thieves. Go into a house, take advantage of being there while the family is staying in a motel because they don't want to look at the bloodstain that used to be daddy, and they clean it out. Family says, Where's the TV, where's the stereo, where's my stamp collection? These guys say Oh, that stuff, it was all contaminated, had to be disposed. Contaminated? Shit was on the second floor at the back of a house where daddy did himself in the downstairs bathroom. Or maybe your aunt dies, chokes on her chocolate-covered cherries, lays there for a week with her Pekinese so hungry it takes a few nibbles. These guys come in, they do a great job with the cleaning, you're happy as hell with the deal. Two months later, new charges start showing up on auntie's credit cards. Stuff like that, we'd like it to stop. But we'd also like it not to have too bright a light shined upon it. Those kind of stories get too much coverage, that's bad for everyone's business.

I scooped some ice from my glass and put it in the middle of one of the red napkins and folded the material around it and pressed it to the knot on my forehead.

—Yeah, OK, no cops. So I'm still waiting for the part where you guys stop trading paint bombs and I don't have to be freaked about this shit happening to me again.

Gabe's phone beeped once. He took it from the clip on his belt, looked at the face, put it back on his belt and nodded at Po Sin.

Po Sin rubbed his nose.

—OK, you've got a handle on that first part. And yeah, there's also been some intimidation happening. Vandalization. Like the paint on the van. Also, job calls come in, you show up at the address and what do you find? Find a vacant lot, find a Chinese caterer where there's supposed to be a private residence. Don't have to think hard to figure who made the call, who's wasting your time and effort. Shit goes back and forth for a few months now. Some tit for tat. The guild trying to show us who's boss. Us showing them we don't work for no one. But you getting beat on, that was new. That was an escalation.

—Oh, lucky fucking me, breaking new ground.

He raised his hand and a waiter materialized from