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My heart. It won’t stop jumping in and out of my throat. At this point, I’m surprised I haven’t become the victim to cardiac arrest. Spinning the steering wheel to the right, I quickly pull back off the road. Once again the cop gives me a short blast of his siren and pulls up behind me. This time, I don’t wait for him to approach the window. I get out, head into the road, and begin collecting the big fifty-gallon tub, the rubber gloves, and one of the aprons. As luck would have it, none of the two-gallon jugs of hydrochloric acid have fallen out since I stored them separately. If they had fallen out, they would have burst and burned a hole in the macadam.
“Looks like you also have a problem with your hatch lock,” Officer Danish says. “You’ll wanna get that fixed too. Need a hand?”
“I’m fine, Officer,” I say, tossing the rubber gloves and apron into the plastic tub and carrying it back towards the rear of the old van.
That’s when he gets between me and the hatchback. He opens it up wide for me, which is precisely what I was praying he would not do. His eyes go wide at the items laid out in the back. The bag of lime, the multiple two-gallon jugs of acid, the goggles, the oxygen masks...
What choice do I have but to act totally as normal as possible.
“Excuse me,” I say, shoving past him, and setting the tub back into the van. Reaching up, I go to lower the hatch, but he also reaches up and stops me from closing it.
“Now just you hold on a second,” he says. “If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Jones, what on God’s earth do you plan on doing with all this....um...equipment?”
This is the part where I need to think quick while acting perfectly normal. Thinking quick is not something I’m used to. It’s never been a necessary talent in my day-to-day existence. I work for the postal department. Every day I get baskets upon baskets of mail and junk mail tossed in my lap. It’s my job to sort it, haul it, and deliver it as on-time as possible. It’s not very challenging work. That is, unless there’s a rabid dog involved or a violent domestic dispute in progress.
On the other hand, I’ve been propositioned by a lonely housewife or two while the husband was at work. Not that I took them up on their kind offers. I could never cheat on Joanne. We are both Catholics after all, and the guilt would be way too much. In any case, that doesn’t happen much anymore. If fact, ever since I turned the corner on fifty, Joanne hardly looks at me with that cute sexy grin like she used to. I guess these days we’re more like best friends than lovers. But my mind is drifting and I need to come up with an explanation for all this stuff and do it now.
“I’m making an acid wash,” I lie.
I don’t even really think the fib through. The words just sort of come out. The officer turns to me, his open-eyed expression one of curiosity rather than suspicion.
“You don’t say,” he says.
“My back patio is constructed of old brick that’s got so much mold grown all over it now that it looks like a garden. I decided this year is the year I’m gonna clean it all up, restore it like new. And that takes a whole lot of acid. Or so it says on YouTube.”
If I don’t say so myself, this is a better excuse than the one I gave the kid at the Lowe’s about the mother-in-law’s filthy basement. It’s more believable, you ask me.
“YouTube,” he says.
“Yeah, YouTube is great for learning all sorts of new tricks,” I say. “I’m surprised anybody goes to college anymore when you can find out exactly what you need to know about any subject right on your smartphone.”
Officer Danish purses his lips, crosses his arms.
“You got that right,” he says. “I got some friends on the force who are trading Bitcoin. They’re constantly watching Bitcoin videos on YouTube. And they’re getting rich doing it. They’re all planning on getting out of the force soon as they hit their twenty years. The very day they hit their twenty years. I’m thinking about getting into Bitcoin too. But I’m not leaving the job. No siree Bob. I’ve got me some big plans.”
Just then, a tinny voice bursts over the radios mounted to his chest and inside the still idling cruiser. He pulls the transmitter off his chest, brings it to his mouth.
“This is Danish. Over,” he says.
The dispatcher spits out something about a crime going down in the northern end of the city. She uses one of those daffy number sequences all police use to describe a crime “in progress.” You know, a three-one-niner or a zed-niner-seven, or something like that. She says it so fast it flies right over my head.
But I can tell Danish is alarmed.
“On it. Over,” he spits into the radio.
He reattaches the transmitter to his chest.
“Good luck with your acid washing, Mr. Jones,” he says. “Gotta go serve and protect, even if the governor and the mayor wanna defund us. Don’t forget to get that hatch and taillight fixed. You don’t wanna get ticketed a second time.”
“Thank you, Officer,” I say. “Stay safe.”
He jumps back behind the wheel of his cruiser, and the tires spit gravel as he pulls out onto the road. I feel a start in my heart when he hits the sirens.
Ten minutes later, I’m finally home, and sitting behind the wheel of the van inside the garage with the overhead door closed. I’ve shut down the engine and I’m just trying to catch my breath while my pulse slowly returns to normal levels. A huge part of me is proud of the lie I made up for Officer Danish, but another part of me knows just how bad it all could have gone had he not bought my story of acid washing the patio. He could have easily sent more squad cars to the house to investigate. Maybe Joanne wouldn’t have let them in, but he would have had enough reasonable suspicion to obtain a warrant. I’m pretty sure that’s how Joanne would put it, seeing as she binges one crime series after the other.
She opens the back door and gives me a look like I’m sandbagging.
“You gonna start bringing that stuff in, Bradley?” she asks. “Or do I have to do it myself?”
For a long beat I just gaze upon my wife of three decades and counting. At the way her arms are crossed tightly over her still ample chest, her big brown eyes wide, her dark hair veiling her still pretty but oh so familiar face. The way her jeans hug her still narrow hips and the way her white Keds have turned a bit gray from wear and tear. She’d probably gladly pay for a new pair if we weren’t so broke all the time. But then, now she can afford to buy the most expensive sneaker on the market if she wants. Once we get the drug money laundered, that is.
I shake my head, break myself out of my spell, open the door.
“Let’s do it and do it quick,” I say.
Together we unload the bottles of acid and everything else, carry it into the bathroom off the front vestibule. The bodies and the body parts wrapped in the now blood-soaked blankets and sheets already occupy the tub. So far, trying to make two grown men disappear has been back breaking work, but we’ve managed to get it done without injuring ourselves or making too much of a mess. But God knows, if the cops were to show up right now, we’d be screwed.
My eyes gaze down at the bodies wrapped up like mummies in the old blankets. The hand on the guy who lost his arm is sticking out of the blanket. He’s got a thick gold ring on his middle finger. Neither one of us has mentioned the ring, but I’m guessing it goes without saying that we will remove it prior to dissolving them in the acid. Something else comes to mind then too.
“I guess I didn’t need to buy the big fifty-gallon tub,” I say. “You think we can return it for a full refund, Jo?”
My wife gives me yet another one of her looks.
“We have two dead Mexican gangsters lying in our bathtub,” she says, almost too calmly. “The same bath where I bathed my baby boy. The same bathtub where you and I made love many years ago when we were young. The same bathtub I was hoping to bathe my grandchildren in one day soon. And all you can think about is getting a twenty-dollar refund from the Lowe’s.”
“Thirty-five actually,” I say. “And it’s on our maxed out credit card which means we haven’t even paid for it yet. And besides, you’re the one who made the shopping list.”
She rolls her eyes. “I added it just in case the bathtub didn’t fit both men, which it obviously does. Now can we please just get this over with so we can get to the money laundering and drug smuggling part of the program? If this were a Netflix show, I’d be bored already.”
I nod. “Let’s put the protective gear on and get rid of these two guys.”
We do exactly that. We put on the black rubber aprons, then put on the gloves, the caps, and finally the oxygen masks. Together, we glance at ourselves in the medicine cabinet mirror mounted to the wall over the sink.
“We look like we work in Frankenstein’s laboratory,” I say, my voice sounding strangely muted through the clear plastic mask.
Don’t ask me why I do it...don’t ask me what comes over me...but I reach under the apron, pull out my smartphone, and before Joanne can protest, snap a selfie of us both.
“What the hell are you doing, Brad?” she asks, her voice also sounding muffled and funny under the oxygen mask.
“We look so funny,” I say. “So different. I don’t know. We’re doing something together for a change. Something really dangerous. Something so out of the ordinary for you and me, that it would seem a real shame not to document it, don’t you think?”
She shakes her head like I’ve suddenly gone and lost my marbles.
“Just make sure you don’t mistakenly show it to anyone,” she says. “The police will be all over us.”
I return the phone to my pocket.
“First of all,” I say, “I almost never use social media unless it’s to FaceTime Brad Junior. Second of all, if this picture were to go public, people would think we’re pulling a prank, like Halloween came early this year.”
“Good point,” she says. “But from now on, go easy on the pics.”
Bending at the knees, she picks up one of the two gallon jugs, sets it on the sink counter. Carefully, she unscrews the cap, tosses it into the sink. The open jug in her hand, she about-faces and stands over the tub.
“Well, here goes nothing,” she says.
“Wait, wait!” I bark. “Not yet.”
Dropping to my knees, I grab hold of the now cold, exposed hand. Taking hold of the gold ring, I pry it off the stiff, fat finger. Straightening back up, I shove the ring in my jean’s pocket. I sort of feel bad about stealing it like that. But it’s not like the owner is going to be needing it anymore.
“Are we finally ready?” Joanne begs, the sarcasm in her voice all too apparent even under the mask.
“Yes, Jo,” I say. “We are finally ready.”
Tipping the jug, she slowly pours.