enough to cause me an awkward explanation when I returned to work the next day, bandage wrapped on my forearm and back from being "home sick."
The scar has since faded and is now mostly lost behind hirsute sprigs of dark hair that betray my Eastern European heritage, but the point was not lost on me. Even though we humans control the actions that lead us on our life paths, sometimes an outside influence smashes in and makes the decisions for us.
* * *
Dirk called me up a couple of weeks after my gig at the Animal House to let me know that once again we had business. But he wanted me to come down to Santa Ana, where he worked, to talk about it.
I had never been to the sheriff's department, or any police station, for that matter. So, as a kid from a small town with no inner-circle access or political connections, I was pretty hyped about my visit. I had visions of walking down a concrete row with prisoners eyeballing me, catcalling, and maybe even spitting on me.
But I'd be grim, resolved, and wouldn't let 'em see they got to me. I've got my freedom, and they don't , I'd think. Then, as we were leaving, I would grab my balls and flip them all the bird, letting them know that the whole time, they were the ones getting punked.
What a disappointment when Dirk asked me to meet him in the alley.
Our latest was a special case, a murder. A sixteen-year-old gang member had been riding in the passenger seat of his parents' car, driven by one of his cousins. A rival gang rolled up on them and opened fire. It was an assault from the front and side; the driver was wounded, and the kid in the passenger seat was blasted apart. Bad luck is a son of a bitch.
The car had been through all the steps: it was towed from the scene, forensics did their kit, the car was impounded, and then finally it was released to the parents. Now it was sitting in their driveway, bloodied, riddled with bullet holes, and in serious need of a cleanup. The parents were hoping to salvage it, since it was their sole means of transportation. There was just one problem—communicating this to me. They didn't speak a word of English, and I only knew cuss words in Spanish. I would need a translator.
When I was in high school in my twenty-seven-thousand-person town, there was a requirement that in order to graduate you had to take two years of a foreign language. The choices were French, German, and Spanish. The smart kids, recognizing the direction the world was heading, all took Spanish. The second smartest group of kids, wisely identifying that two business languages of international trade were English and French, chose French. The dumbasses all took German. Guess which one I took? Ja, und ich sprechen sie Deutch nicht so gut, senf. (Loose translation: Yes, and I don't speak German very good now, mustard.)
To help me with the language barrier, Dirk called in a favor from a coworker named Leslie, who would help translate the negotiations between me and the parents of the victim. She was a few years older than my twenty-six and only vaguely Latina-looking. But as long as she spoke Spanish, she could have been from the un-planet Pluto for all I cared.
I took Dirk's truck for the gig; the fear was that there would be a lot of stuff to get rid of from the scene and my little red Chevy Cavalier, with its broken trunk that hadn't been opened in three years, wouldn't quite cut it. My Cavalier was an embarrassing vehicle to roll up to a crime scene in anyway. I had long been teased for having a "girl's car" and had compensated for that by never washing it, so that it would at least appear masculine and grungy.
Of course, when you are a cleaner by trade and you arrive in a filthy vehicle, your clients tend to cast a wary eye at you. I relished the opportunity to take the truck when I could. Besides, the truck meant my not losing out on gas money that I otherwise wouldn't be compensated
The scar has since faded and is now mostly lost behind hirsute sprigs of dark hair that betray my Eastern European heritage, but the point was not lost on me. Even though we humans control the actions that lead us on our life paths, sometimes an outside influence smashes in and makes the decisions for us.
* * *
Dirk called me up a couple of weeks after my gig at the Animal House to let me know that once again we had business. But he wanted me to come down to Santa Ana, where he worked, to talk about it.
I had never been to the sheriff's department, or any police station, for that matter. So, as a kid from a small town with no inner-circle access or political connections, I was pretty hyped about my visit. I had visions of walking down a concrete row with prisoners eyeballing me, catcalling, and maybe even spitting on me.
But I'd be grim, resolved, and wouldn't let 'em see they got to me. I've got my freedom, and they don't , I'd think. Then, as we were leaving, I would grab my balls and flip them all the bird, letting them know that the whole time, they were the ones getting punked.
What a disappointment when Dirk asked me to meet him in the alley.
Our latest was a special case, a murder. A sixteen-year-old gang member had been riding in the passenger seat of his parents' car, driven by one of his cousins. A rival gang rolled up on them and opened fire. It was an assault from the front and side; the driver was wounded, and the kid in the passenger seat was blasted apart. Bad luck is a son of a bitch.
The car had been through all the steps: it was towed from the scene, forensics did their kit, the car was impounded, and then finally it was released to the parents. Now it was sitting in their driveway, bloodied, riddled with bullet holes, and in serious need of a cleanup. The parents were hoping to salvage it, since it was their sole means of transportation. There was just one problem—communicating this to me. They didn't speak a word of English, and I only knew cuss words in Spanish. I would need a translator.
When I was in high school in my twenty-seven-thousand-person town, there was a requirement that in order to graduate you had to take two years of a foreign language. The choices were French, German, and Spanish. The smart kids, recognizing the direction the world was heading, all took Spanish. The second smartest group of kids, wisely identifying that two business languages of international trade were English and French, chose French. The dumbasses all took German. Guess which one I took? Ja, und ich sprechen sie Deutch nicht so gut, senf. (Loose translation: Yes, and I don't speak German very good now, mustard.)
To help me with the language barrier, Dirk called in a favor from a coworker named Leslie, who would help translate the negotiations between me and the parents of the victim. She was a few years older than my twenty-six and only vaguely Latina-looking. But as long as she spoke Spanish, she could have been from the un-planet Pluto for all I cared.
I took Dirk's truck for the gig; the fear was that there would be a lot of stuff to get rid of from the scene and my little red Chevy Cavalier, with its broken trunk that hadn't been opened in three years, wouldn't quite cut it. My Cavalier was an embarrassing vehicle to roll up to a crime scene in anyway. I had long been teased for having a "girl's car" and had compensated for that by never washing it, so that it would at least appear masculine and grungy.
Of course, when you are a cleaner by trade and you arrive in a filthy vehicle, your clients tend to cast a wary eye at you. I relished the opportunity to take the truck when I could. Besides, the truck meant my not losing out on gas money that I otherwise wouldn't be compensated
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