Sparkle (2 page)

There was one exception, and it wasn’t by choice. The memory came to him maybe six or seven times a year. It always came just before he woke up, and it was always the same thing.

He was seven or eight years old, sitting behind the big plywood fence in the left-field bleachers at a Seattle Pilots game. It was at the decrepit, long-gone Sick’s Stadium, the shabbiest field in major league baseball. The Pilots were the shortest-lived team in big league history, existing for only a season and a half, but they were Joe’s heroes. The day was muggy, windy and warm, and it had started to drizzle on and off.

Joe was huddled next to his big dark-complected dad. Clouds were blowing all over the sky. Sometimes one would cover the sun and it would get dark, and Joe would feel the temperature drop, but then it would get bright again as the cloud moved on. It would rain for a minute and then stop, then start again, and everything—all the people—were damp and steaming.

A posse of hollering kids, Boy Scouts on a field trip, surrounded Joe and his dad. The boys were nearly out of control, heckling Frank Howard, the hulking, crew-cut, homer-slamming left fielder for the visiting Washington Senators.

Dad was letting Joe take sips of flat Rainier beer from his enormous waxed-paper cup. Dad was loving it, laughing and shouting with the kids, towering over them all as if he was a giant drunk kid himself. For once, the Pilots had a shot, and Howard was the Senators’ big gun. The rowdy Scouts worked themselves up until they were nearly hysterical, and then they started throwing junk until left field all around the big guy was littered with Baby Ruth wrappers and Necco wafers. They wanted Howard to turn around, to react. But the guy wouldn’t flinch.

“Hey Frankie, where’s your Maypo?” the kids shouted.

Over and over and over.

Maypo: a slimy, gaggy hot cereal for kids. Howard was the star of a TV commercial that played incessantly between the Saturday morning cartoons, in which he hunkered over the breakfast table and whined, “Where’s my Maypo?”

Now he was paying for it. Big time. The kids wouldn’t let up.

The back of Howard’s head sank deeper and deeper between his shoulders, and the man’s huge bulk shifted from one foot to the other, left and right, left and right, like a caged animal. Things landed all around him and hit him in the back, but he never turned.

Then Frank Howard was no longer in left field. He was at bat. He tapped the bottom of his cleats and pointed his huge bat up at left field. He spit. He seemed to be looking right at Joe. At the first pitch he took one furious swing, and a half-second later there was an almighty crack and the ball was a rocket coming Joe’s way. Headed straight for his glove.

Joe, Dad, and everyone else jumped up. Then Dad moved over and they bumped hard, and Joe went down. He felt a wet splash of beer hit him in the face and found himself on his back among the damp shoes, popcorn, cigarette butts, gum, and rain. Above him, Dad was yelling and holding the ball way, way up in the sky. Dad looked so happy. He didn’t help Joe up, or even seem to notice him there on his back.

But Joe was happy because his dad was happy.

Everything was fine.

When Joe would start to think about how he was going to get up off his back, he’d wake up.

The thing that confused Joe about the dream was how much he liked his dad in it. Loved him. Joe had hated the guy in real life. What kind of asshole would knock his kid down for a pop fly? Because it had really happened.

But every time Joe had the dream, he woke up in a good mood.

The dream had come to him again this morning. The incongruous warm, safe feeling it left behind had been enough to get him out of bed, get himself and his younger brother Eddie together for the workday, get them both out the door and into the van, and get them to the job site.

The stormy, wet May morning was colder by far than the day in Joe’s dream, and the dreary silent drive slowly drained his good feelings. By the time they pulled up in front of the mansion perched on the ridgetop of Queen Anne Hill, the last shreds of his pleasant mood had completely disappeared. Everything about the place was irritating beyond belief.

For one thing, nothing about the oversized, brightly painted Victorian with its expensively manicured front lawn—except the crime scene tape still hanging limply across the door—said murder. In fact, the whole damn block looked as though nothing bad had happened here in a hundred years. The immaculate houses were all on one side of the quiet peaceful street. The other side dropped off steeply, revealing the best view in Seattle: city, bay, and mountains, all laid out in 180 degrees, as though these privileged people owned it all.

The clash between privilege and bad luck tempted Joe to wonder about the occupants—former occupants. Which was something he never, ever wanted to do.

When it came to Sparkle Cleaners’ clients, Joe had a firm rule: Address. Body count. Nothing else.

Business had been lousy lately, and this house was so upscale that it made Joe think he probably wasn’t charging enough for the job. This irritated him further. Feeling bad about lousy business was equivalent to wishing someone would get killed. The job was ghoulish enough as it was.

Joe never wanted to have to think about Sparkle Cleaners as a business. He preferred to consider it occupational therapy for his younger brother, the only thing that could keep Eddie content and on an even keel.

Now Joe had to look at this beautiful dark house in the rain and fight off the urge to think of it as a place that had recently held a prosperous, alive—maybe even happy—family.

A perfectly crummy way to start another perfectly crummy day.

Joe and Eddie were partners. In the six years the Jones brothers had run Sparkle Cleaners, they’d managed to snag a decent percentage of the market in Seattle’s homicide and suicide cleanup business. Business had its ups and downs, but fortunately there wasn’t much competition.

And Sparkle offered one thing that no one else could: Eddie.

Joe was aware that most people who knew about the brothers’ specialized area of cleaning expertise—the coroner’s office, the police, and the rest—felt a little sorry for them. But he also knew that they all agreed: regardless of Eddie’s disability, he could make a nasty mess go away like nobody else. Time and again, the response to one of Eddie’s cleanups was the same: “It’s like nothing bad ever happened here.”

And the next time someone blew out their brains, Sparkle Cleaners would get the call.

At one time Sparkle had been a regular janitorial business, doing mostly high-end residential jobs. But ever since the first request came in to clean up something bloody—the owner of one of the houses they serviced had shot himself in the chest—Eddie had refused to do anything else.

It had taken Joe quite a while and a lot of headaches to figure out the program. The last thing he’d wanted was to get into the blood-and-guts business. Eddie, though, despite his severe difficulties communicating with most people, knew exactly how to get through to his older brother. He had made his wishes perfectly, unrelentingly clear.

Once Joe finally yielded and agreed to make crime scene cleanups their specialty, things seemed to ease up a bit for the brothers. The six-day OSHA certification course had been a real challenge for Eddie, but he’d given it everything he had. Joe was relieved to find out that they could get by fine with the equipment they already owned. The main difference, really, was that they could no longer simply dump their garbage. But they passed along the cost of biohazard disposal to the customer, and they could easily bill four or five times what they could charge for ordinary cleaning. All in all, a great deal.

Once Joe had lugged all the gear up onto the house’s big porch, he went back out to the van and opened Eddie’s door. Eddie sat quietly, hands resting in his lap, looking straight ahead.

“Okay, bro,” Joe said. “Time to come get suited up. You ready to go to work?”

Eddie was more than ready. He was eager.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Okay.”

He silently followed Joe up the stairs and waited patiently as Joe unbagged a fresh hazmat coverall. Eddie mechanically pulled it on outside on the covered porch.

Like Joe, Eddie Jones couldn’t remember much about his childhood even if he’d wanted to. There was one thing, though, and just like Joe’s memory, it came to him over and over again—his mom’s blood.

There was nothing else in the memory, only the blood. Eddie remembered how much of it there was. How rich and earthy it smelled, leaving a slight metallic tang at the back of his tongue. How it started wet, seeming to waver and writhe as its slick crimson dulled to sticky plum, and then crusted over until it was nearly black.

Eddie could only watch as his mom’s blood changed from something alive to something hard, cold, and dead. Unlike Joe’s, Eddie’s memory didn’t leave him feeling good or bad. In fact, the memory had a way of recementing the fact that he usually didn’t feel much at all.

All he could do was watch his own emotions harden and die along with the blood, until he was utterly speechless and numb. The impression was more vivid, real, and immediate than anything else in Eddie’s mind, pretty much the defining characteristic of his existence. Eddie knew blood, in the strongest sense of the word. It had oozed into his cells and marked his soul.

Joe opened the front door. Like most people entering a deserted, gore-splattered house, he was horrified.

The blood looked different to Eddie, though. It was an invitation and a challenge. A beautiful mystery. It made him feel comfortable and whole, gave his life purpose. He was a cleaner—the best.

The moment Eddie stepped over the threshold, he wanted Joe to go away so he could be alone and start spraying Shiny Gold. He knew that he would have to wait a few more minutes, until Joe had acted out his last little routine, but Eddie felt an immediate sense of urgency to do what he could for these people. He could see them, outlined in awkward death sprawls on the floor in chalk. Their blood was the key to unlocking all that was left of them.

But Joe kept standing behind him in the open doorway in the rain, taking too long to go.

“Eddie. You spacing out, bro?” Joe had to fight back competing urges to gag and run, but, as always, felt an almost panicky hesitation about leaving his brother alone in such an awful place.

“Uh-huh. Okay.” Joe’s voice had sounded far away.

“Good, then,” Joe said. “Let me make sure you’re suited up right.” Eddie turned and stood passively while his brother looked him over.

“It’s been a while since we did a multiple,” Joe said. “You might feel a little rusty today. So pace yourself, all right?”

“Uh-huh. Okay,” Eddie processed Joe’s distant words just enough to feel a slight electric fizz of annoyance pass through his brain. “Go, Joe.”

“Remember to eat your lunch at noon,” Joe persisted. “I’ll be back right at five.” He said the same thing every time he left Eddie behind at a job.

Eddie turned to face the interior of the house. The impressions here were so strong, he was having difficulty holding back.

“Okay, Joe,” Eddie said. “Go away. Go away now.”

Joe sighed deeply as he quietly shut the door. He hung his beat-up, official-looking No entrance by order of Seattle Police sign on the doorknob. Not that anyone was going to show up here. Everyone who had known the former occupants, Joe was certain, would want to stay as far away from this fucked up place as possible.

On the big front porch, Joe lit his fifth unfiltered Pall Mall of the morning. He shivered slightly, and rubbed the long thick scar that ran from the bottom edge of his jaw to the corner of his right eye. He hated blood.

Joe looked out at the crazy blowing rain, stretching out over the bay and the city, over the islands and mountains and off as far as he could see.

These people sure had one hell of a view.

Even as it flitted into his mind, Joe cursed himself for allowing a personal thought about the victims to sneak up on him. The rain was pelting the other end of the block. Joe watched it sweep down the street toward him.

A teenage papergirl on a too-small bike raced ahead of the downpour, zipped by, and whipped a Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a plastic baggie toward the porch. She had an arm. The paper hit Joe and sent sparks flying off his cigarette. He clumsily kicked the paper across the porch into a goodsized pile of similar papers, all still wrapped in plastic.

“They don’t need it!” Joe yelled after her in a strangled voice. She didn’t hear. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Get a clue.”

Joe stumbled down the slick steps as the rain hit. He raised his voice and yelled halfheartedly down the street, “They’re dead, for Chrissakes!” The girl was already turning the corner at end of the block.

Wearily, Joe pulled himself up into the dented but clean, badly parked white van with S
PARKLE
C
LEANERS
printed on the side. He started it and lurched off. His cell phone rang. Joe swerved slightly as he fumbled for it, grateful for anything that might take his mind off the scene he’d left behind.

Chapter 3

Jolie Walker, wearing her brown Woodfield Park Zoo uniform, stood in front of the chimpanzee habitat. She smiled in anticipation as she made a call.

“Sparkle Cleaners, Joe speaking,” came the flat, tired voice at the other end. As always, Joe sounded as though he was doing something else and couldn’t wait to end the conversation. Jolie knew him well enough to get to the point. Today, maybe, she’d give Joe something to smile about.

“Hi, Joe. It’s Jolie, from the zoo. I’m calling about Eddie.”

“Oh, great.” Joe sounded irritated. “Is something wrong? Please tell me you’re going to be there tomorrow, Jolie. It’s not going to be pretty if Eddie doesn’t get to see you.”

“No, don’t worry. I just wanted to let you know we got the grant. It’s going to cover my salary to take Eddie on his tour every week.”

“Oh, wow.” Joe’s tone softened. “So…what do I have to do?”

“Nothing, Joe. Just bring him. Like always.”

“Just like that?”

“Yep,” Jolie said. “Isn’t it great? For the next year, anyway.”