Chop Shop Read online

  andrew post

  Chop Shop

  FLAME TREE PRESS

  London & New York

  Chapter One

  Frank Goode was having a nightmare about being back in prison. Even if it was a client ringing his doorbell that woke him up, he was fine with that. He sat up, his throat sore from sleeping with the air conditioner going full blast all night. A hangover blossomed in his skull as he sat up, blood moving back through the booze-burned parts of him.

  The doorbell rang again. Three quick pulses.

  Growling at lower back pains, Frank kicked his feet into his slippers and stepped out of his bedroom. He ducked through the hanging plastic sheets that kept his dining-room-turned-operating-room mostly sterile, and approached the front door. He leaned in, keeping quiet, and used the peephole. In that fisheye view of his front porch and patchy lawn, there stood a girl pacing from foot to foot, twenty to twenty-five, cracking her gum, looking over her shoulder three times in the couple seconds Frank stood watching her, estimating her, trying to think if he knew her.

  He didn’t open the door. He asked through it, “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, hey, I was told you take care of people here.”

  “I take care of my friends, that’s true, but I don’t know your face.”

  “I’m Simone Pescatelli.” She didn’t need to say more than her last name – and knew it.

  He couldn’t see her baby bump through the peephole since all of her looked so distorted then. But when he opened the front door he sure could.

  She cracked her gum. “So, yeah, I’d like to not be knocked up anymore. My uncle says you patch up the boys so I was wondering if…you know, you do girls too.”

  Frank waved her in. She clicked onto his living room’s hardwood floor on four-inch leopard-print pumps, leaving a trail of perfume that dragged a knife across his brain. His wife wore that. Wore it on their wedding day.

  Before closing the door he surveyed the street, the row of little houses across from his. The cars parked there were all family-man minivans and Mexicans’ pickup trucks with the Old English script of their fallen loved ones’ names across the back glass. He was familiar with each of these vehicles; the only one out of place was the sky-blue Honda at the curb at the end of his walkway directly ahead.

  “That yours?”

  “Yeah,” she said. Gum crack. “Ain’t pretty, I know, but it’s like a disguise you drive instead of wear. The Slavs don’t know it.”

  “I see.” Frank closed the door, threw all four deadbolts.

  She stood in his living room watching the TV he’d left on all night for the company. Standing as she was, he got a good look at her in profile. Her baby bump was peeking out from under her thin, spaghetti-strap tank top. At a guess he’d say she was five months along, but wasn’t sure, so he asked.

  She shrugged tanned shoulders. “Dunno.”

  “When was your last period?”

  She stopped chewing her gum. “Kinda personal, don’t you think?”

  “I won’t be able to help you if you’re past your first trimester.” He stepped into the kitchen to get the coffee started. He lit a cigarette and stepped back into the small, bare-walled, low-ceilinged living room and sat on his stained Goodwill couch. “Have a seat.”

  She sat on the other end, eyes glued to the TV again. He shut it off. She blinked, and finally looked over at him, jaw working, denting her cheek in time with each slow grind. “What? I don’t know, okay? It’s not like I got a fucking journal for every time I bleed. Me and Joey started going without, you know, using rubbers and shit. He says he used to work around magnets a lot at the car-crusher place and he’s shooting blanks because of it – but here we are, right? So, you gonna fix it or what?”

  “I don’t fix. I treat. And if you’re past your first trimester, which it appears that you are, I won’t be able to help you.”

  “Won’t or can’t? My uncle says you sometimes drive a hard bargain, so if that’s what you’re doing, you ain’t gotta worry, I brought cash.” She clicked open her leopard-print purse. A knot of dough the size of Frank’s head could barely be held in her one hand, clutched hard with her eagle-talon nails the color of strawberries. “Name your price. I gotta be at the salon by noon, though.”

  The coffee maker chimed in the other room, full pot ready. He got up, trying not to let it show that he’d just about shat himself seeing that wad of money, and poured himself a cup. “You want some coffee?” he asked.

  “Nah, I read online it’s bad for your skin.” Gum crack, a pause, slow blink, mulling something. “And if you’re pregnant.”

  “Water?”

  “I’m all right. So, we gonna haggle or what? I mean, I might’ve just had this one but I got my cousin’s wedding this weekend and I don’t want this fucking thing forcing me to have to get a new dress – I like the one I got. It’s silk with this high slit on the side, kinda like you see them Oriental chicks wearing in the movies.” She added with coquettish pride, “I’m the maid of honor.” Gum crack.

  Frank sat again, with coffee. She had laid the bundle of cash, nearly as big as a coffee can, on his end table. She wasn’t even watching it or keeping it close by, she just laid it down in a stranger’s house without even a thought – like it was something she idly plucked ripe off a branch on her drive over here.

  “Five thousand,” Frank said, starting higher than what felt polite – but she did wake him up, after all.

  “Okay.” She peeled a few bills, didn’t bother counting twice, laid them on his coffee table, stood, and took off her shoes. “There you are. So, we doing this here or in there or what?” She paused, looking toward the plastic sheet dividing his makeshift operating room from the living room. “You ever help any of the Petroskys?”

  That name rung something for Frank, but it wasn’t anyone he’d ever treated. He knew all of those names by heart; part of his training, to always remember a patient’s name without having to double-check their chart. Shows you care. Or at least gives the impression you do. “No,” Frank said. “No Petroskys.”

  “Meaning you never fixed none of them before? Or that they’ve asked but you refused?”

  “The first one. I’ve never treated anyone with that last name.”

  “Ever hear of them?”

  “On the news.” Maybe. Or somewhere.

  “Well, color me glad – for your sake – you ain’t never had them darken your doorstep because they’re all pieces of shit, fucking Russians.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Frank said. “But about your case, if we could focus on that a minute, you know that’s way more than the clinic would’ve charged, if you’d gone in earlier.”

  “Fuck’s that supposed to mean? I thought doctors were supposed to, you know, not get all judgey and shit.”

  “I apologize. In here, if you would.” He held the plastic sheeting open for her to step through – and again caught a whiff of her perfume that dredged to the surface so much he both loved and hated to think about.

  “Fucking say shit like that,” she muttered under her breath. Gum crack. “And here I didn’t say nothing about your ugly little house or nothing. Wanted to, but I didn’t.”

  He let the plastic fall back and began washing his hands to the elbow. “If you want to remove your underwear and hop up on the table there, we’ll get started.”

  Simone dropped her purse to the floor beside the table with a heavy clunk, like she was walking around with a lead brick in there.

  As he scrubbed in at the cracked porcelain country sink he’d installed in the former dining room, Frank watched in the reflection of the glass-front medicine cabinet next
to him as she wiggled and shimmied to draw a fire-engine-red thong down her legs, the delicate string hooked on a long, bejeweled finger. She kicked it aside and hopped up onto the table. She put her feet in the stirrups, looked up at the ceiling toward the light fixture that used to light the previous owners’ dining room table, and cracked her gum.

  He shook out two pills for her. “Need a glass of water?”

  “What are they?”

  “For the pain.”

  “Aren’t they bad for the—?” she started, stopped. “Nah, I don’t need no water. Thanks.” She swallowed them dry and opened her mouth to flash her pierced tongue side to side and up and down. He didn’t ask for her to prove she’d swallowed them, but smiled at the curious little display anyway.

  Frank tied on his apron and when he turned, she giggled. “That doesn’t look very doctorly.”

  Glancing down, he saw he’d put on the apron for his other job. Jerry’s Organic Grocer & Wine Shoppe. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “it’s the only one I have clean right now.”

  “Long as you washed your hands, I don’t care. You been doing this long?” she asked, hands folded on her belly and staring up at the ceiling, chest rising and falling.

  “A little under a year.” Frank got the tools he’d need from the disinfecting oven and arranged them on his wheel-about tray – a microwave stand he found at a garage sale, five bucks – and pulled it over toward his operating table.

  “Uncle Robbie says you took real good care of my cousin Louie. Saved his life.”

  Frank gave his stool a couple cranks to bring it to the right height and sat. “Well, I do what I can.” Louie Cassell had come in after a bar fight had resulted in a steak knife being stuck, to the wooden handle, in his shoulder. Three stitches and a sling. Robbie Pescatelli, with a handshake, passed him eight grand in hundreds and a friendly slap on the cheek for his trouble.

  “So are you a for-real doctor?” Simone said. “Or did you just learn to do all this off the internet?”

  He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. Last pair. Shit. “I went to school,” he said. “Can you hold your skirt up for me?”

  She did. Her dark pubic hair had been shaved into a heart shape.

  He must’ve paused long enough for her to wonder what was going on and she sat up a little, peeking down at him over her rounded belly.

  “Cute, right? My girl Becky does them.”

  “I’m Frank,” he said, not sure why now would be a good time to introduce himself.

  “I know. So, are we gonna do this thing or are you just gonna stare at my business? Because I know it’s pretty and all, but.…”

  “Are you ready?”

  She lay back. Gum crack. “Yep.”

  Frank did what he was getting paid to do.

  “If you don’t mind,” she said when it was through, “could you put it somewhere I don’t see it when I sit up?”

  “Of course.” He laid a cloth over the pan and set it, with care, in the sink.

  When she tried getting off the table, her feet connected hard with the floor and she paused, head rolling loose on her shoulders. He took her by the arm and had her sit. “I’m feeling kinda weird. I don’t do pills much.”

  “Just sit here a second. Take your time.”

  She glanced over toward the sink, closed her eyes, and whipped her face in a different direction, away. She remained that way, eyes squeezed shut, chin on her left shoulder, hands wringing together in her lap. He expected her to begin crying, as they sometimes do, but when she spoke her voice didn’t quaver in the least. “I don’t think I can drive,” she said.

  Frank pulled off his gloves and tossed them in the trash. “Can you call a cab? I actually have to get to work, I’m already late.”

  “But ain’t this your work?” Her eyes were still closed but she started chewing her gum again. “Right, the grocery store. You said that already.”

  Using his body as a curtain so she wouldn’t see, he brought over the garbage can to the sink and deposited the pan, with the child inside it, in with the used gloves, coffee grounds, and cigarette butts. A quick yank on the drawstrings and the bag was closed and the worst part over.

  He set the garbage bag aside and stepped over to her. He put a hand on her shoulder; her skin was firm and cool to the touch. “I have to ask you to leave. There’s a bus stop up the street. Nobody will steal your car in this neighborhood.”

  “It ain’t just that,” she said. “I don’t really wanna go back. I mean, I know I have to. If I don’t, Uncle Robbie will send everybody out to look for me, and I don’t wanna make no drama, I just…need a minute, if that’s okay. Maybe I could lay down on your sofa for a while, watch some TV, clear my head? They think I’m at the salon. I said I had an early appointment but it ain’t really until noon. I’ll go when it’s time to get for the real appointment, okay?”

  “I’m sorry, but you have to go now,” Frank said. “I can’t lose my other job because then I’ll lose this one too – because I’ll be in prison.” Again.

  “I won’t steal nothing. I can even lock up when I go. I just need a little time.” She pushed through the hanging plastic sheet and sat down, carefully, on his couch. “Where’s your remote?”

  Frank stepped out behind her with the garbage bag in hand. He noticed her look at it, hanging low at his side, when she sat.

  She found the remote, and once the TV was back on, would stare at nothing else. He watched her raise her hand, slow, to bring it up alongside her face, blocking her view of what he had in his hand with her chipping red nails. “Five grand plus another two if you just let me sit here for a while. You can go to work. You do good shit for my family and I wouldn’t fuck you over and mess that up. Please. It’s eight now. I won’t stay past ten, I promise.”

  “Fine. Just make sure you lock the door on your way out. Just use the one on the knob and pull it shut behind you.” He snatched the money off the coffee table, with the additional two grand she’d peeled off from her massive roll. Frank left by the side door, went out to the garage, tossed the garbage bag in the back seat, backed his Lexus out, and left – not okay with having a stranger sitting in his home while he wasn’t there. But what could he do? She was related to his most frequent flyer. Whatever she said, even in Frank’s own house, became stone law.

  Once he got to University Avenue, he dialed Mikey. “Hey, are you working today? Good. I need to drop something off.” The garbage bag stared at him in the rearview mirror. “I’ll be by in a minute.”

  Frank turned into the Taco Duck parking lot, bypassed the drive-thru lane, and went around behind the building where Mikey, with a face of acne like he’d caught a mouthful of buckshot, stood by the set of dumpsters in his work polo and visor with a mallard wearing a sombrero stitched onto its front. Pulling up close, Frank hummed down the back window. Mikey reached in, took the bag, tossed it in the trash and dropped the lid, gone. Frank rolled up the back window and lowered the passenger side and reached across to slap two hundred dollars in the teenager’s soft hand.

  “What was it this time, Mister Goode?”

  “A fetus,” Frank said, leaning to stuff his wallet back into his shorts pocket.

  Mikey was laughing, then wasn’t. “Wait, are you serious?”

  “Just pulling your leg. See you around.”

  * * *

  Amber Hawthorne was thrust out of dreams about Hawaii by a roiling stomach. And even though the bathroom door was closed and the hiss of a showerhead going, she burst in, dropped to her knees, and got most of the acid-hot deposit into the bowl.

  Next to Amber still spitting and hacking – a long line of drool connecting her bottom lip to the toilet rim – the shower curtain rustled. Jolene asked through the shower spray, “Are you pregnant?”

  “No,” Amber croaked. “Just really fucking hungover.”

  “You hope anyway
.”

  “Well, yeah.” Spit. Flush. “Of course I hope not.”

  “You gonna be all right today?”

  “What’s today?” Amber dropped the toilet lid and sat, face in her hands. She had comets streaking her vision. She’d always been a violent puker, one of the few things she gave her all to. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “It’s almost noon. And we’ve got Mister Petrosky’s funeral in an hour and then we got Mister Wicks and Missus Tamblyn getting dropped off tonight.”

  Amber stood, fought the bathroom floor that shifted side to side under her feet, and started brushing her teeth. She left her reflection hidden behind the fog on the mirror. She didn’t want to look at herself right now. “Can I borrow those gray leggings of yours?” she asked around her toothbrush.

  “Fine,” Jolene said. With a squeak, the shower’s hissing ended. Pipes rattled in the walls. “Do we have any clean towels?”

  Amber turned around, surveying the towel racks – each empty. Around the buzz of her electric toothbrush, she said, “Nuh-uh.”

  “Is it your week to do laundry?” Jolene said. One arm reached from behind the curtain to feel around the bathroom floor. Finding a dirty towel in the hamper, she pulled it back in with her – then a second to wrap around her hair. “I don’t mean to nag, but.…”

  “You’re not doing a very good job then,” Amber said. She spat into the sink. Her toothpaste foam was brown. She twisted up her face, and killed her incoming queasiness by quickly looking away and running the tap for probably longer than necessary. “I can take a load tonight.”

  “The Laundromat closes at ten.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “We’ve got a lot of shit to do.”

  “I know. It’ll get done.”

  The shower curtain’s metal loops shrieked and Jolene stepped out, stood next to Amber, and got her glasses on. She paused, looking at the set of toothbrushes in their holder – and which one looked wet.

  “Get me a new toothbrush while you’re at it, if you would.”

  * * *

  Jolene poured knock-off Cap’n Crunch – Admiral Tasty – into a coffee cup and added a splash of two percent milk that came in a bag. She took her breakfast into the office and sat in the wingback chair Amber’s father had left when he’d signed the place over to his daughter before splitting for Hawaii, the same chair he’d done his business in for nearly thirty years. It was truly amazing to Jolene sometimes that in just a handful of years since taking over they’d nearly run the place into the ground. It was almost like something you’d have to work at, fucking up that routinely and universally bad each time, but they had certainly managed to do so.