“Let’s see your work,” Dewey said, heading for the door with the tweakers at his heels.
The sweaty tweaker pointed out the key to this house and Dewey tried it in the lock. It worked perfectly and he pushed the door open.
“We changed the front-door lock on all six houses, no problem,” the tweaker said. “Can we get paid now?”
Dewey said, “How did you get in to change the locks?”
“Four had an unlocked window. One had a back door that you could slip with a credit card. One had the back door hanging wide open.”
“Careless,” Dewey said, shaking his head. “Everyone’s so careless these days.”
“Our pay, Mr. Willis,” the sweaty tweaker repeated, and Dewey could almost smell the addiction on him.
Dewey opened his wallet and gave the tweaker $150.
“What’s this?” the tweaker said. “We finished the jobs, changed the locks, and bought you extra keys.”
“That’s what we agreed on, one Franklin and one Grant per house,” Dewey said.
“We did six houses,” the tweaker said.
“So you say,” Dewey replied. “As soon as I inspect them, you’ll get the balance.”
The Latino spoke for the first time. “So we say, man.”
He said it so softly that Dewey was unnerved. Spittle was dripping over the guy’s lip stud, and his eyes had narrowed.
“I’ll meet you at Pablo’s Tacos in three hours,” Dewey said. “After I inspect the others.”
“You ain’t going nowhere with our money,” the Latino said.
This guy didn’t seem to Dewey like the spun-out tweakers he occasionally had to deal with. This guy seemed calm and focused and very serious. “Whadda you say about this?” Dewey said to the sweaty tweaker. “We’ve done business in the past. Whadda you say?”
“I gotta go along with my partner,” the white tweaker said. “I got the joneses real bad. I can’t wait three hours to buy me some crystal.”
Dewey took another look at the Latino, who never blinked those slitted black eyes, and Dewey took seven more $100 bills and one $50 bill from his wallet. “I’m trusting you two,” he said lamely.
“You can trust us, Mr. Willis,” the sweaty tweaker said, snatching the money from Dewey’s hand. “You got more jobs for me, just drive by the taco stand any morning after nine. I’ll be there, looking for work. By the way, the keys were fifty bucks extra.”
Dewey was furious, but he reluctantly gave the tweaker another $50 bill, and as they slouched away from the house, whispering to each other, he had a sudden stab of panic. What if they decided to kill him to take what was left in his wallet? What if that’s what they were whispering about? Dewey was ready to run as fast as he could if they turned and came back at him. He was enormously relieved when they got in their car and drove off.
Dewey quickly locked the door, went to his car to retrieve a “For Rent” sign attached to a wooden stake, a roll of tape, a ball of string with brightly colored pennants attached, and a hammer. The sign said “Brad Simpson Real Estate,” along with one of Dewey’s cell numbers on it. He strung the pennants across the front porch posts and pounded the stake into the desiccated front yard.
Dewey drove to the next house on his list, desperately hoping that the tweaker had not lied to him. But he had. The second set of keys did not work, and he was positive that when he drove to the other four houses, they would still have the original locks in place. Fucking lying tweakers! He hated them all. He hated this work. He hated thinking what Eunice was going to say when she found out he’d been fleeced.
Eunice, ever the anal planner, had made Dewey place the ads in the PennySaver and on craigslist from a computer that he’d rented for an hour at the 24/7 cyber café, where lots of drug dealers and hookers did business online. And because he was nearly computer-hopeless, she’d written detailed instructions for him on how to do it. Eunice later told him she’d quickly received several phone calls from eager prospective tenants who’d jumped at the rental price, so Dewey knew she’d now be impatiently waiting for his call, no doubt on her forty-eighth cigarette of the day.
“Good to go” was all he said when she answered.
She said, “I got several prospects dying to be the first one to see the places. I’ll send a client to destination number one at six thirty.”
“Jesus Christ!” Dewey said. “I’ve had a long day. I’ll meet them tomorrow.”
“People gotta work for a living,” Eunice said testily. “You’ll close the first deal this evening and then wait for number two. I’ll have another good prospect there by seven thirty. The rest you can do tomorrow. Understand?”
He didn’t have the nerve to face a broadside right this minute, so he said, “They’re not all done yet.”
“So?” she said. “Get somebody else to do them if the guys you picked won’t do the job. What’s the problem?”
He was silent for a moment and decided on a partial confession. “They made me pay them in advance for the others. I paid them for the whole job.”
The line was dead for at least ten seconds before she said, “Made you? Made you? How?”
“They made me. That’s all I can say right now.” Then he lost his nerve again and lied. “But they’re gonna go back and finish the jobs. They promised.”
“Goddamn it!” Eunice said. “You accepted the promise of a fucking burglar? You’ll never see them again!”
“I told you they made me!” he said, and now his voice had jumped a few frets and he hated her more for causing it. “It’s gonna be okay!”
“How come nobody ever made Hugo do anything he didn’t wanna do?” she said. “Tell me that!”
“They made him go to jail, didn’t they?” Dewey yelled before clicking off.
It was all Dewey could do to keep from smashing that phone on the sidewalk in front of house number one. He went to his car, put the Brad Simpson Real Estate cards in his shirt pocket, and waited for the first good prospect to arrive for the appointment. Then he heard the chirp from one of the four cell phones he was carrying.
Malcolm Rojas was a half hour late in dialing the number of the man he knew as Bernie Graham. When he got his man on the line, Malcolm said, “I’m sorry I’m late, Mr. Graham. I’ve been real busy.”
“Who is this?” Dewey said.
“Clark. You know, from Pablo’s? You gave me your number?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dewey said. “Did you decide you wanted a job?”
“In the late afternoons and evenings,” Malcolm said, “after I leave my regular job.”
“Gimme your number,” Dewey said. “I’m busy right now, but I’ll phone you later.”
After giving his cell number to his prospective employer, Malcolm put the cell phone in his pocket and it clicked against the box cutter. He was on a residential street a few miles from that apartment with underground parking, on the other side of Hollywood. He wondered why he’d driven over here and why he was watching the women leaving the shopping center. He’d been sitting here in his car for more than an hour. He tried to concentrate on other things, such as the job he might be getting with Bernie Graham. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be making real money, not the shitty wage he was getting from the home improvement center for unpacking boxes.
Thinking of that made him look at his hand. Just before leaving work, he had sliced a tiny laceration near the base of his thumb with his box cutter while opening a crate containing power drills. It was small, but deep enough to sting. The boss had given him the first-aid kit, and he’d sprayed and patched the wound.
Then Malcolm felt it coming again. It always began in his belly and worked its way up until he felt that his face was on fire. His head would throb with it. In comic books, anger was often drawn in red, but his wasn’t red. His was darker, black maybe. He felt almost smothered by dark vapors that made it hard to catch his breath. He could taste his rage, and it tasted like the blood on his hand. It scared him but he was excited by it.