The Art of Disposal (5 page)

Once, he quit for a long time—maybe a whole year. He got more and more animated as the months went by. It was like God had given him mouth-to-mouth. There was all of this spirit, this fire, and he was frantic with ideas. I thought he'd started in on Eddie's stash, the blow he was selling, but nothing ever came up short.

A man can be reborn. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. You could have the toughest, dumbest son-of-a-bitch in San Quentin get his GED, read the classics, and next thing you know he's written a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Our destination isn't known. The story can change. I like that about life. I like watching the different stories unfolding, even if some of them have sad endings.

So when Thin Y No corked up the bottle, I was proud of him. Sometimes I'd play him a game of checkers on a Thursday afternoon and we'd drink a San Pellegrino mineral water. He still smoked like he had a bet with the Grim Reaper, but a guy can't give up everything. His girlfriend stormed in and out of his life and apartment, and they sometimes cursed at each other in Mandarin. She was about four feet tall and ninety-five pounds, and he called her Cricket.

At first it was just the one pug. He said he bought it for Cricket. Then, when they broke up for good, Thin Y No wouldn't let her take the dog. Not because he loved it, but just because he knew that she would treat it even worse than he would. I forget that first pug's name. Thin sold it just a few days after Cricket moved out.

“Dude, Ronnie, dude, you don't even know. These pugs, dude, they're hot right now,” he said. He'd paid one-fifty for the pug and sold it for three hundred.

Thin said
dude
all the time, at least once per sentence. It was an Americanism that had taken over him, and there was no way to stop it.

“Dude, I doubled my money, dude,” he said.

The next Thursday I knocked and heard a grunting sound like a tiny demon was waiting for me on the other side of that red door. Thin Y No opened the door and a pug rushed out onto the patio. Then it ran around in circles.

“I thought you sold the dog,” I said.

“New dog, dude.”

“What do you want with another pug?” I looked over his shoulder. “Cricket's not back, is she?”

“Nah, that crazy skank. Dude, I got the dog on Craigslist. I'm marking it up a hundred and selling it right away. I got some lady stopping by tonight, dude. It's genius.”

I had to think about it for a minute. I sat down on the couch and picked up the envelope full of Eddie's money. The little dab of red wax was there like always. It made the whole transaction seem like it was something better, something grander. I liked the dabs of red wax.

With some guys I'd open the envelope right away and flip through it to make sure it was all there, but you could trust Thin Y No. He was more reliable than a Swiss Army knife. Plus, Eddie liked breaking open the wax seals. “Kid's got style,” Eddie would say with a one-sided grin. When Eddie is truly impressed, or genuinely happy, he smiles a little crooked and his eyelids get heavy.

I picked up the pug and looked at its smashed-in mug and dark chocolate eyes all wet and glassy. Its tongue was hanging out and its breath was like an open can of tuna.

“Basically, you're dealing pugs,” I said.

“That's it. That's exactly it, dude. But I'm just getting started. They're hot right now, dude.”

He made his hundred on that one, and then he was in full-on business mode—the Donald Trump of shady pug deals. I know it sounds ridiculous, but he was making good extra money selling Craigslist pugs. And what he was doing wasn't exactly a crime. It wouldn't win you any
Man of The Year
awards, but it wasn't illegal. Dan the Man and Ricky Cervetti loved the whole thing. A true criminal admires any crafty way to make a buck, and the more creative it is the better. Sometimes we'd all stop over there to see how he was doing with the pugs. Even Eddie went over there once just to hear about the operation straight from Thin Y No.

“I only keep three at a time. That way, when the person comes over to buy, I only have to hide two of them back in the bedroom, dude.”

“What's your take?” Eddie said.

“Depends. I can almost always get three hundred, dude. Pugs are hot right now, boss.”

“But how much do they cost?”

Eddie is all about numbers.

“A lot of times I can get 'em for like a hundred bucks. Dude, it's easy money.”

“But who's selling?”

“Families mostly. Maybe they bought a pug and it turns out their kid's allergic, boss. Or they're moving and they can't have a dog. They only had it for a year so they're not too attached.”

“So you take it off their hands and bring it here,” Eddie said.

“Right, right… then I come up with my own story about why I can't keep my dog. I'm moving or whatever. And I put an ad right back on Craigslist.”

“Sometimes he even uses the same picture,” Dan the Man said.

“Right, right… then some chump buys the pug from me. At twice the price!”

Thin Y No lit up a cigarette and smiled big. He had crooked, yellow teeth.

Eddie played with the pugs. I once saw Eddie Sesto and Dan the Man choke a guy with a dog leash, and smack him around, down along the river path. They didn't kill him, but they scared him good. We'd been walking behind the guy, and he kept cursing at the dog and smacking its back. When he gave it a rough kick in the gut, Eddie snapped.

The three pugs sat at Eddie's feet, staring up at him like he had all the answers. “You look like one of them little monkeys,” Eddie said as he patted one on the head. The pug tilted its head to one side, as if considering the weight of Eddie's comment. “What's his name?” Eddie said.

Thin knelt down to study the stout little dog that looked like a butter bean.

“This one is Lacy. It
was
Daisy, but I changed her name.”

“You change their names?” Eddie said. His crooked smile faded.

“Yeah, dude. I can't be sellin' a dog with the same name as the dog I just got a couple days ago. Not on the same website, boss.”

“One time a long time ago,” Eddie said, “I worked at this corner store, sweeping and taking out the trash. There was this hot blonde used to walk by. One day I see her and she's got this hound-dog on a leash. He's poking and smelling and dragging her along.

“Well, I'd been dreaming about how I might break the ice and talk to that blonde, so that was my in. 'What's his name?' I say to her one day when she's walking past with the dog.

“'Barney,' she says. And that dog was most definitely a Barney. Everything about him just screamed out Barney. The look in his eye, the droopy ears, the way he pulled the leash and got into every nasty thing on the ground.

“'I'm only watching him for a few weeks,' the blonde says. 'Then I get to decide if I want to keep him.' Must've been some kind of adoption thing I guess.

“Few weeks later I see her again, walking Barney down the street. I lean my broom against the wall and walk over. 'Howdy, Barney,' I say and reach down to let him sniff my hand.

“'His name is Mystery now. We changed his name,' she says.”

Eddie messed with his ring finger and cracked a knuckle.

“I'll tell you what's a mystery,” he said, “is how that dumb broad could ever change a hound-dog's name from Barney to something hippy-dippy like
Mystery
. I tell ya, that dog was born to be named Barney.”

Thin Y No shot me a look that said,
please help me out, dude
. He was still a little scared of Eddie. So I knelt down and rubbed Lacy's back until she flopped over to get some attention on her belly. She kicked her leg over and over like she was pedaling an invisible bicycle.

“She looks like a Lacy to me,” I said.

“Me too,” Ricky said.

“Pug's a lot different than a hound-dog,” Dan the Man said.

“Can't sell merchandise that someone might recognize,” Ricky said.

“That's right, that's right,” Thin Y No said, pleading his case. But by that time it seemed like Eddie had forgotten all about the hot blonde and Barney.

“What about our product?” Eddie said. “All of this pug nonsense might bring heat.”

“No way, dude. I mean boss. No way, man. I'm careful. I'm real careful.”

“He is,” I said to Eddie. “And he quit drinking.”

“That's good,” Eddie said.

Eddie never has a drop. And people are smart enough not to ask him why. But I've heard all about it from Dan the Man. Eddie's first wife left him because of the boozing.

Then Eddie asked Thin to show him where he kept the stuff, and Thin walked us all back to his bedroom closet, moved a few shoeboxes, and opened a little secret door in the floor boards that even had a homemade padlock attached to it.

Inside was a fat Ziploc bag full of uncut blow. Probably two pounds. Thin pointed to it, flashed his yellow teeth, and locked it up again.

In our kind of business, we deal in large amounts and get rid of it quick. Let someone else take the risk peddling out nickel and dime bags. Eddie saves the leftovers for Thin and gives them to him free. Thin takes all the risk doling the stuff out, but he never has to sweat the big deals—the kind that can go horribly wrong. He splits the profits 60/40. Sixty for us, forty for him.

All of the money Thin brings in is just icing on the cake. That's good business. That's why Eddie Sesto is the man. Thin makes dough with zero upfront cost, and he's got our muscle backing him up. No thug is gonna bust in and pull something on a guy who's connected. No thug who wants to keep his head on his shoulders anyway.

“One dog at a time,” Eddie said.

“Sure boss, sure,” Thin said.

“You ain't making enough money with the stuff I give ya?”

“Hey man, you gotta hustle. And pugs are hot right now. Hot.”

“As long as none of 'em ends up Szechuan spicy hot,” Ricky said.

“I got another hustle—on the internets,” Thin said, and told us the story.

Here's what he'd do: he'd buy panties at the Goodwill downtown, the smallest silkiest ones (a tall order at the Goodwill). Then he'd sell them online to the panty-pervs. He had a business account under the name of “Tasty Trish,” complete with a picture of Cricket's panty-covered can. Thin Y No was charging thirty-five dollars a pair, and getting it. Easy.

We were all in stitches that day. Ricky Cervetti was literally crying at one point, he was laughing so hard. He was waving his hand at us as if to say, “stop, stop!,” but he couldn't get a word out. And when Eddie told Thin that he should put the panties on the pugs for a day or two, and charge more for scented, I thought we might never stop laughing. Those are the best times. If there's a heaven, I bet you walk around feeling like that all day long; like you're crying from absolute joy.

Thin Y No kept peddling the coke and bringing in extra money for us, and I'd stop by each Thursday night to pick it up. Dan the Man rode along sometimes. There was always a pug or two running around, and Thin would tell us “this one's new name is Marcus,” or “this one shits in the hallway… no wonder they wanted to get rid of him.”

He was still off the sauce, drinking nothing but those green bottles of San Pellegrino, and I told Dan the Man that we would have to give him a new nickname if he kept it up, since he wasn't a very good wino anymore.

But like it always does with those kind of guys, a trigger went off in his brain after Cricket stopped by one Thursday night. I could hear Cricket in there screaming in Mandarin. When she let me in, Thin Y No was laid out on the couch. He was awake, but he'd uncorked a bottle of something a few hours before, and the dark red soul of it was flashing in his eyes.

Cricket stood there in an unbuttoned white blouse, cradling a pug in one arm. All she had on under the shirt was her underwear and bra.

“I don't know his problem is,” Cricket said, waving a hand around. “Can't live like this, people stopping by all hours. Back drinking again.”

I shook Thin around and smacked his face, and he grinned and laughed with those foul yellow teeth. He had catfish eyes, floating around but never quite looking at anything. I hadn't seen him drunk for so long, and I hated him for making me see it again. I grabbed the envelope. Cricket begged me to help, but even that made me mad. I pushed her away. When I was walking back to my car, I noticed that there was something about the envelope that felt wrong. I stopped and counted the money. It was all there. It took me a minute to realize that it hadn't been sealed. There was no dab of red wax.

I had a nightmare that night. Thin Y No was working in a morgue, sealing up a never-ending row of coffins with dabs of red wax.

The next Thursday, no one answered when I knocked on Thin's door. One of those pugs was grunting and groaning and clawing on the other side. I knocked and knocked and rang the doorbell. Finally, I turned the knob. The door was unlocked. A rush of cool air poured out from the darkness.

It smelled sweet in there. Death leaves a sickening sweetness, and a room where death has been always has a heaviness, like the Grim Reaper's morbid work has exhausted the whole room. So I knew, even before I found him, that Thin Y No was dead.

He was on the couch. On the coffee table were a few different bottles, most of them empty, one of them half-full. He was on his back and his hands were kind of curled up like he was grabbing for something that wasn't there. His head was cocked back against a pillow and his mouth was open. When I looked down at his face, I could see that his mouth was full of vomit.

I picked up the envelope with Eddie's cash and put it in my bag. Then I went back to Thin's bedroom and moved the shoeboxes out of the way. That pug was stuck on me. If I went forward, so did it. If I knelt down, it froze and waited for me, or crawled up my knee and licked my chin. I cleaned out the hidden compartment (I knew the padlock combination) and threw the cash and the blow into my messenger bag. I don't like to carry around that much trouble, but I didn't have much of a choice.

That's how long it takes to lose a person. They're here, you blink, they're gone.

I stared at that red front door, and thought about all of the doors I've gone into and out of throughout my life; nothing but different doors inside and outside of every house, breaking the world up into neat little boxes. I pictured the brass knocker on the door of the apartment where I lived with Emily, who married me because that's what you're supposed to do—and what did she get for all of her trouble? Nothing. A big, fat zero. I bought a goldfish when she moved out.