Austin Noir, page 12
“Do not say my name, old man.”
I held up my palms. “I’m not here to disrupt what you have going on. I met … her and thought she needed some help. That’s it.”
Tyler didn’t take his eyes off me when he stabbed a finger at Sandra. “Do you need help?”
“No,” she said.
Tyler moved forward and I shuffled backward until I could feel the ledge behind me.
“Well,” he said, “I guess you’re free to go, sir.”
I was scared. I was so scared that I could hardly breathe. Tyler wasn’t a big guy, and a few years and a hundred pounds ago I could have stared him down and left him shaking. But I had dropped my cane somewhere along the way and he could topple me over this wall without straining a muscle.
“You’re free to go.” Somehow Tyler was now even closer to me. His face was just inches from mine, and I could smell his breath of sickly energy drinks and junk food. “But she’s coming back with me and we’ll talk about you for a good long while. Are you okay with that, sir?”
Then Tyler was coming right at me, though his eyes were surprised and I realized he wasn’t moving toward me, he was falling on me. I slumped to my side, landing on the hood of my car. The pain in my chest shot through my body and the world went white with pain, yet I could still see my cane in Sandra’s hands and Tyler flailing toward the ledge. I kicked out my leg and caught him in his hip, which spun him around and allowed him to see Sandra jab him, hard, in the chest one more time before he went over the side.
By my count, it took about six years for his body to hit the sidewalk. A week ago, I told myself Sandra would have lived if she’d jumped.
I guess I was wrong.
“He was a kid,” I said. “He was just a kid.”
Sandra helped me off the hood and handed me my cane. “Tyler was young. But he wasn’t a kid.” She peered over the ledge and grimaced. “Now he’s not much of anything. You all right?”
I shook my head.
“Yeah,” Sandra said, “neither am I, but look, I’ve got to go. I can’t be here when the cops come, though you need to stay because there are cameras on the entrances. This is fine. He tried to mug you, you whacked him, and he fell. Look pitiful, tell them he was on drugs, and they’ll give you a medal or something. But I’ve got to go.”
She turned to leave.
It took me a second to catch my breath and even then my voice was barely a whisper: “Wait.”
Sandra stopped and looked back at me.
“What happened here? Where will you go?”
“You helped me. You did, you really did. But,” she pointed her palms toward the sky, “I don’t have to go anywhere now. Call your wife and kid, then tell the cops you defended yourself. You’ll be home before rush hour is over.”
Then she was gone.
SAPPHIRE BLUE
BY ALEXANDRA BURT
Stratford Hills
The tires of the Subaru sail across the gray asphalt. Redbud Trail crosses the Colorado River and Nina’s in meditative bliss. Her eyelids are heavy. She should be in bed right about now but Hank, her boss, called her just as she got out of the shower.
“I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t urgent,” he said. “Help me out here, I’ll pay you double.”
Nina finished a move-out cleaning downtown earlier and she’s drained and there’s the lingering hangover from the cheap red from the Valero the night prior. And there’s Belle, she’s only seven, and Nina can’t leave her home alone. Money’s tight and so she calls Belle’s father, who, true to form, doesn’t bother answering the phone. He’s either at his shift at Brown Distributing Company or on top of some woman. He barely shows for scheduled visits and she doesn’t bother leaving a message. If bringing Belle to work is going to cause problems with Hank, so be it. It’s not like there’s any other option.
A car with blinding lights passes and a howling horn knocks Nina from her stupor. She checks the rearview mirror. On the backseat, Belle stares out into the night. She is a quiet, sullen child. She’s skinny but healthy, with freckles on the bridge of her nose and untidy black curls.
Nina turns onto Stratford Hills Lane. She slows to a crawl and beholds the clean, tree-lined streets. Various structures are perched on steep roads within lush rolling hills. Stratford Hills looks unfamiliar but construction has been booming around Austin since, well, forever. She hasn’t been in the area for quite a while, doesn’t recall any of the Bel Air–meets–Park Avenue vibe. Look at those hills, she thinks. And the trees. So many oak trees. Boxwoods everywhere, neatly trimmed. Some shaped into globes, some half-erect, others weeping. Her bedroom window at the Spanish Palms looks onto the dumpsters and if she leaves her window open and the wind blows just right, she can smell the stench drifting by. The clutch slips and a grinding sound escapes from the bowels of the ancient Subaru. The car has been giving her trouble but tonight’s job will more than cover a mechanic to take a look and fix it up.
Nina passes an L-shaped ultramodern structure, spreading like a concrete snake along a sandstone embarkment. She glances at her phone and pulls into the adjacent driveway. A gaudy French country facade stares at her and oversized stairs lead to grand iron entry doors. She spots Hank’s van immediately. CSI, the vinyl decal reads. Clean Scene Incorporated. It’s funny and stupid all at the same time. Nina pulls up next to the open doors of the van and rolls down her window. Hank turns and does a double take on Belle in the backseat. His eyes narrow.
“You’re kidding me, right?” he says.
“Couldn’t be helped,” Nina replies.
Hank’s a short, stocky guy. If one were to compare him to an animal, he’d be a walrus. Round face, rosacea cheeks, mustache untrimmed, small, round glasses. “Well,” he says, and strokes his facial hair downward, “it’s blood and guts, so you’ll have to think of something.”
Blood and guts mean death scene. Even if he had let her know over the phone, she couldn’t have made arrangements, but she’s not telling Hank that. Instead, she cocks her head and says, “And when did you plan on telling me?”
“It’s common sense, Kowalczyk. Don’t bring your kid to this kind of work.” Hank pronounces her name Cow-wall-sick. It’s Ko-val-chick, but she’s given up on correcting him.
“The kid can hold a mop,” Nina says with a smirk.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“Just chill, okay. Joke’s on you, her dad’s coming to get her,” Nina lies, and steps out of the car. “He’s on his way.”
“Look,” Hank says, “I don’t know what to tell you, but this isn’t a place for a kid.”
“Like I don’t know that.” Nina grabs a hazmat suit and a mask from the back of the van.
Not a place for a kid.
Her grandmother cleaned houses; her mother cleaned houses. Nina cleans houses. She used to accompany her mother on jobs and there were years of her life when she thought the entire world was divvied up into those who clean and those who don’t. Death pays, she found out. Hank’s been giving her jobs here and there, it’s his side hustle, that’s what he calls it. It’s a hustle because he’s not certified, but she’s seen her fair share of hoarding, squalor, and trashed properties. There’ve been a few homicides, suicides, all kinds of death scenes, really. Once she did a methamphetamine lab cleanup. When she tells people about the meth labs, they gasp, never see it coming. She’s only been working those jobs for a few months but she got a lifetime of death and stench and squalor during her first week. She hasn’t set foot in a death scene without a mask since.
Behind them a high, groaning sound, like a rusty gate swinging shut. They turn and watch Belle use the weight of her bony body to push the Subaru door shut. The girl stares at them, her eyes blinking rapidly. Nina sighs.
“Stay in the car, your dad’s on his way,” Nina says, and watches Belle as her eyes widen and she cocks her head to the side. You can’t fool that little girl, she ain’t with the bullshit. “Get back in the car and wait, you hear?” Then Nina turns to Hank. “Let’s do that walk-through.”
“So here’s the deal,” Hank says. “Something came up and I have to drive to Waco to get my son. He, well, let’s not get into details but I need to bail him out. So you’re on your own. Nothing you haven’t done before. Just be finished by morning.”
Nina zips up the hazmat suit and pulls the hood tight. Once a house infested with fleas did a number on her. She slips on a mask and in the reflection of the van door a longhorn beetle stares back at her.
“All the equipment you need is in the house. Just to be clear, I don’t know anything about your kid being here. Never saw her, she never saw me. But she can’t be inside. Okay?”
Hank opens the front door and Nina steps into a foyer and from the foyer into a kitchen. Through the mask she hears herself breathe in a soothing in-pause-out-pause rhythm. A HEPA air scrubber sits on the tiled foyer floor next to chemical-spill boots, fifty-five-gallon biohazard waste containers, and a large plastic bin. Stacked in the corner are mops and buckets. Arranged like a terra-cotta army, an array of spray bottles and cans, flanked by sponges, brushes, and putty knives, crowd the kitchen counter. There’s a bunch of rags and more gloves and more suits. Sometimes the suits rip. Nina doesn’t have the proper training––but it’s all common sense, Hank said.
Nina observes a giant potted fern in front of a window nearby, its palm-like fronds long but listless. Above it, flies are buzzing sluggishly up and down the window pane. Once she notices the flies, she’s tuned into movement and she spots hundreds of gnats circling a fruit bowl like an ever-changing slow-motion murmuration of birds moving in unison through the sky, performing a highly synchronized ballet. The oranges are globes of white, green, and bluish spores.
“You scrape that off, it’s pure penicillin.” Hank’s voice is muffled through the mask. He stoops down to inspect the oranges.
“Put one in your pocket then,” Nina says jokingly. “I hear it works for gonorrhea.” She takes a step toward the counter and spots coagulated liquid on the kitchen floor. “What’s the story?”
“Probably a murder-suicide. Isn’t it always the same: the woman pisses the man off and there’s a gun and that’s that?”
Nina can easily imagine countless other scenarios but doesn’t say anything.
“All kidding aside, it’s nothing juicy or scandalous. Just an old lady,” Hank says. “Welcome to the death scene of Barbara Martin. Sixty-one. They caught hell recovering her body. She weighed somewhere around six hundred pounds. Needed special equipment and the fire department to get her out. Died all alone in the house. A cleaning service comes once a month and found her. Here’s the kicker, though: there’s problems with the electricity. Something about faulty wiring. When you run equipment, it might cut off. The lights flicker. Either way, never lasts long.” Hank flips a nearby switch several times. “Couldn’t tell you if it’s on or off.” His phone rings and he runs his hand along his thigh and curses, unable to retrieve the phone underneath his hazmat suit. “Damnit. I can only be in one place at a time.”
Nina snaps on her gloves and explores the kitchen. Boxes stacked six feet high obstruct the view to the dining area. Stamped on the sides are the words McKesson Underpads. The kitchen opens up to a large family room which in turn opens to a vast stone terrace. The living room is the size of Nina’s apartment. She follows steps down to a subterranean room which is filled with wine racks all the way to the ceiling. The room next to the wine room is an eight-seat home theater leading into a game room with a pool table and its own bar. Everything is clean but looks abandoned at the same time.
She makes her way up the stairs. The bedroom right off the top landing has a fireplace and an adjacent sitting room which opens directly onto an upstairs terrace. A photograph sits on the bedside table. A woman with permed hair and chunky oversized glasses. A cheesy eighties-style portrait taken at a mall, a sideways shot hovering on a black background and a different portrait image floating above the main one. The woman’s neck is a triple layer of flesh. There’s a visible hump on her upper back between the shoulder blades. Barbara Martin. Nina can somehow hear the woman’s voice as if she’s introducing herself. Breathy and croaky at the same time. Bah-bra. Nina can hear her low and rough voice bounce off the venetian plaster walls. Bah-bra. Bah-bra. The California king has one of those adjustable bases with a dingy mattress. Two oversized walk-in closets flank the bath, and very few clothes leave the space vast and empty. The only shoes Nina can make out have stretched at the seams as if they’re about to disintegrate. She makes her way down the hall and opens a small metal door––an elevator.
Back downstairs Nina calls out to Hank, “I can’t find any type of death scene anywhere. “Is there a room I missed? A basement maybe?”
The overhead fixture comes on, bathing the kitchen in a harsh light.
“Just in time,” Hank says. “Cleanup’s behind those boxes in the kitchen. The woman was bedridden. Fire department told me her housekeeper fell ill and died and no one bothered to check up on Barbara. I have no idea how she ended up down here.”
“There’s an elevator,” Nina says, and points in the general direction of the metal door.
“I guess that’s what happened. Well, you have everything you need, I’m gonna leave you to it then …” His voice trails off and the front door slams shut behind him.
The house is silent until Nina hears a sound. It’s not the gurgling waterfalls off the lower terrace, it’s musical, like a melody. Not one you hear on the radio but an intermittent whir followed by loud beeps accumulating in a chime.
A door slams and Nina jerks around. Belle stands in the middle of the foyer.
“The man left,” the girl says.
“Jesus, what the hell!”
With one hand, Belle presses a wad of papers against her body, with the other she clutches her prized possession, a purple velvety bag with gold embroidery. One day she’ll realize the bag is a Crown Royal sack.
Nina guides the girl toward the long kitchen table. “I guess it’s just you and me. How about you sit over here and I’ll see what needs to be done, okay?”
“Where are the dead people?” Belle’s voice is small and timid but demanding at the same time.
“No dead people. Just what’s left of them.” Nina swallows hard. She feels uncomfortable in her skin, which is clammy underneath the layers of clothes and the hazmat suit. “Go sit, and don’t move.”
Belle’s eyes blink rapidly and she slides between a chair and a table so large it can easily seat twenty people. She looks even smaller than she really is.
There’s the sound again. It’s so … celebratory. Nina slips off her mask and pulls the hood down the back of her head. She takes in a deep breath and faintly detects the layers of death: feces, mothballs, rotten eggs, a foul garlic-like odor. The stench isn’t too bad––the body has long been removed and there’s no carpet or curtains where the odor could linger.
“Do you hear that melody?” Nina asks. She feels disoriented. It’s not the smell, it’s more a I don’t have a good feeling about this place, not a good feeling at all.
Belle just blinks. “It stinks in here.”
“I know,” Nina says.
“I want a mask.”
“They don’t make those for children,” Nina says, and places a finger to her lips. She tilts her head. “Listen! It sounds like, like …” She can’t find the words but the melody originates from near the boxes. She steps behind the cardboard box wall.
A slot machine sits in the corner with a metal swivel barstool in front of it. Nina takes in the space and knows immediately what’s happened. The bedridden woman took the elevator downstairs and sat in that padded swivel barstool and died playing slots. She doubled over but the slot machine must have kept her upright. Six hundred pounds don’t just tip over. She was an unmoving blob but then toppled with only one way to go. The stool must have given way and sent her onto the floor where she hit her head and her wispy thinning hair became a crater of crimson. There’s a dark patch on the tile, a pool of blood that has curdled and caked and turned the color of copper. Then her body bloated and decayed and Bah-bra poured her life out on the travertine tile as enzymes began eating her cells from the inside out.
“What happened?” Belle appears next to Nina, unaware that she’s standing in pinkish sludge. Her glitter high-tops with the unicorns are ruined.
“I told you not to move. Go sit down.”
“But it’s boring.”
Nina wants to say, I told you not to move, I told you to stay put, but you don’t listen. But what’s that good for? It’s as if the girl can’t remember what she was told mere moments ago.
“I used to go with my mom when I was your age. With grandma. I was always a good girl.”
“When I grow up, I want to be just like you and Grandma,” Belle says.
Nina hears a buzzing in her ears, doesn’t know if it’s the flies or not, but regardless, it’s making her stomach heave.
* * *
Nina used to accompany her mother cleaning houses, watched her scoot around on her knees, stand on top of footstools while her very own tiny hands held her mother’s ankles, observed her kneel in tubs and listened to her barking and hoarse cough from oven fumes. Her mother cleaned every inch, every tile, every counter, every baseboard, nook, and cranny in those houses. She must have scrubbed and wiped and scoured away layers of floors and walls and tiles and windows.
She watches her daughter as she situates herself on her knees, scooting forward and reaching across the table for crayons. “Bah-bra was a big woman,” Nina says to Belle. It isn’t lost on her that she uses this imaginary voice she’s convinced the dead woman sounded like in life. “Wherever she is, probably in a drawer at the morgue, she’s left the cleaning to others.”
Belle doesn’t look up from the picture she’s drawing. She seems frozen in place until there’s a faint movement, a ripple in her demeanor. She raises the crayon. “Did she know she was going to die?”
