Hazardous Materials (2 page)

TWO

T
hey'd been at the job for more than a week when Jarrod found it—the door. It was behind a bank of skate lockers. Ludwig had said not to bother yanking the lockers out, citing something about the Dumpster being full almost to capacity and how they'd charge him double if they had to empty it again, full or not. But Jarrod had been raised with the simple edict that if you were going to do a job, you should do it well. Do it well, or don't do it at all.

The door had no knob, and judging by the dark rectangular footprint left by the locker, it was clear that it had been blocked off a long time ago, perhaps decades ago. “Ludwig, come over here.”

His boss thumped over from the opposite side of the rink. “Thought I told you not to funk around with the lockers.”

“Look.”

“That's weird. Blueprints don't show a door here.”

“Storage, you think?”

Ludwig smoothed down his mustache. “Be a bit hard to get into, that's the case. And check that out there.” The jamb had been welded shut. Ludwig ran a finger along the metal keloid. “
Really
hard to get into. Nah, I reckon someone was hiding something.”

Jarrod pressed his palm to the door. “Hiding what?”

“Only one way to find out.” Ludwig turned for the exit. “Time to get the Sawzall in here.”

As much as Jarrod wanted to imagine a pile of gold bricks on the other side of that door, his mind showed him only worst-case scenarios. An abandoned drug lab, dangerous chemicals still on the shelf. A dog-fighting pit filled with the bones of long-dead combatants. Some sicko's cache of child pornography. Or something even worse.
Anything
could be buried in there—bodies included. Brooklyn hadn't always been a hip home for Manhattan exiles. He knew that. It was only a couple of years back the police thought they might
have located the corpse of the slain Judge Joseph Crater, missing for three-quarters of a century, beneath the boardwalk at Coney Island. Brooklyn had a lot of skeletons in its closet, a lot of ghosts.

One hour and three busted Sawzall blades later, they had their answer. A long-abandoned arcade still filled with video games. The dark consoles stood on either side of the low-ceilinged warren like silent sentinels. Jarrod's flashlight beam bounced off one glass screen after another. There might have been a dozen of them in total. As odd as it seemed, he couldn't shake the feeling that they were judging him. And like the mural they'd torn down, something about this room was off.

“Video games!” Ludwig hooted. “Real video games, not that
World of Warcrap
.” He ran his hand across the chipped particleboard façade of one cabinet. A fold of dust bunched up, exposing the title:
Dragon's Lair.
“Man . . . I used to live for these things when I was a kid. Show up with two pockets of quarters and watch 'em disappear faster than coke up a pole dancer's nose.” He flicked a stray joystick. “Bet you never saw anything like this, huh?”

Jarrod didn't answer. He had seen console arcade games, of course. Every hipster watering hole had at least one of them, the more ironic the better. But those things were simply ornaments, bells and whistles added to spice up the
real
games, the ones played by peacocking barflies every weekend. This was different. This was a temple to the games themselves.
They
were the only the reason to enter this lightless box. Each one an altar to be worshipped at. Each one ready to receive offerings of money and mind.

“Look at 'em now. Just junk.”

“Why are they all here?” Jarrod asked, unable to help himself.

“It's an arcade, Jare. That's where they put video games.”

“Yeah, but why are they all
still
here? Why was that door welded shut?”

“Like I said, junk,” Ludwig answered, but his voice quavered with a new uncertainty. “More expensive to cart 'em off, I bet. Seen a lot of things get walled off like this. People making their own private landfills. Found tons of crazy stuff over the years. Crazier than video games. Heck, I found a gyno table once.”

“A what?”

“You heard me,” Ludwig answered, his swagger returning. “Gyno table. Stirrups and everything
.
Looked pretty used, too.”

“A
gyno
table? Like, as in gynecological? As in—”

“Yes, gyno-co-logical. The vinyl on this thing was pea-soup green. The kind of green you'd see on the inside of an old Plymouth . . .”

Ludwig's words went soft in Jarrod's ears. They diminished to a distant drone. Jarrod kept staring at the games. He wanted to step closer to them, but it was as if his boots were Velcroed to the floor.

“. . . and it had gone all crackly like—like old vinyl does, you know? So someone had gone and patched this thing up with duct tape. Duct tape!”

“What's that?” Jarrod asked, his eyes still fixed on the dead consoles. He didn't just
feel
as if they were staring back at him now. He could
swear
they were.

“Gyno table. Thing was patched up with duct tape. 'Magine that, some chick goes to the kitty doctor, and the cootchie table's covered in duct tape.”

Jarrod shook his head, forcing himself to look away from the games. “And you found this thing where? In an old doctor's office?”

“I reckon so.” Ludwig scratched a thatch of salt-and-copper chest hair that peeped from his V-neck. “Actually, might not have even been a doctor's office at all, now that I think about it. Just in some basement we were stripping. Near the boiler.”

“And you didn't think that was the tiniest bit, I don't know, creepy?”

“Seen creepier.”

“So what did you do with it?”

“Took it home.” Ludwig's voice rang with a surprising timbre of pride. “Took it
right
home. Got a couple hunderd beans on eBay for it.”

Jarrod sighed. He knew that salvage was a major perk of his boss's gray-market let's-just-look-the-other-way-for-a-moment-and-not-say-nothin'-to-nobody business. Ludwig wouldn't report what he found in any of the buildings, and for his “trouble,” he got to keep what he wanted.

“A couple hunderd beans,” Ludwig repeated. “You'd be surprised what people'll pay good money for.”

“Yeah.” Jarrod wasn't surprised. Just saddened. He knew all too well where the
good
money went and where it didn't. “Why just leave them, though? I don't get it. They've got to be worth a fortune. More than a few
hunderd
beans, that's for sure. I mean, people collect this kind of stuff.”

Ludwig narrowed his gaze at the twin rows of consoles. “I'm gonna drag the genny in here and see if these puppies still got any life in 'em.” He turned, leaving Jarrod with nothing but the scant illumination of his own small flashlight.

Jarrod knew that look, the avaricious glint in Ludwig's eyes. There might as well have been a pair of cartoon dollar signs there. Ludwig was about to score big, and all Jarrod would get out of it was the privilege of carting his boss's haul out to the curb. He could have put his fist right through one of the screens. He was the one who had pulled down the lockers. Ludwig wouldn't have even found this room except for Jarrod and that stupid,
stupid
Yankee work ethic his father had drilled into him. His father and his father before him and his father's father before that—father after father after father of crusty New Englanders telling their sons to do a job right or don't do it at all, as if the second choice was even an option.

His hands went clammy, grabbing reflexively at the sides of his cargos. Ludwig would give him
something
, right? It was only fair. Jarrod almost laughed out loud. When did
fair
ever have anything to do with it? All he'd really wanted out of life was to feel a little special. He'd wished for that desperately from his parents. But there was always his brother, Simon, standing in the way. First as the favorite son. Then as the war hero. And now as the ghost who every year inched closer to sainthood, at least in their eyes.

Stop it! This isn't about Simon.
This was about Jarrod and his best chance of starting over, his best chance of finding that special someplace else. And that chance rested in Ludwig's greedy mitts.

It wouldn't have to be a lot. It didn't have to be a fifty-fifty split. Just
something
. Even a grand would do. Then he could buy a bus ticket someplace—any world he was welcome to—and have enough left over to get settled. He'd pack up his portfolio and head to a place where the cost of living wasn't so damn high. He'd find a job where the worst injury awaiting him was carpal tunnel syndrome. And when he called his parents, his voice would ring with dignity instead of desperation.

Jarrod craned his neck, hoping to spot Ludwig, but he was alone in the dark. Alone with the machines.
Might as well find the plug
, he told himself as he pulled the nearest cabinet away from the wall.
Then Ludwig can “fire up these puppies” and start counting his fucking ducats.
He dropped onto all fours and shined his flashlight behind it. Some graffiti caught his eye. It was almost lost in the gloom, faded black paint against a gray wall. He squinted, mumbling the words to himself.

die demon die

the end draws nigh

the puppet screamed

all is lies

a curse behind hollow eyes

is lifted now

die demon die

“What's that there?” Ludwig asked, suddenly crouched beside Jarrod like a blue-collar gargoyle.

Jarrod tried not to jump and failed. He scrambled back, brushing the cold from his arms as Ludwig cackled at his cowardice. “Some kind of . . . some kind of creepy poetry. Take a look.”

Ludwig did, his lips moving as he read silently.

“What do you think it means?”

“It means don't do drugs.” Ludwig pulled a Newport from the pack and started tapping it against the box.
Tappity-tappity-tap-tap.

Jarrod gritted his teeth. There it was, the fucking tapping again. Not asking for a smoke was bad enough. Refusing
Ludwig's repeated offers was bad enough. But the tapping—the goddamn tapping was pure water torture. He turned his attention away from the pack and fixed it on the graffiti. The tapping followed him, rapping on the side of his skull like a door knocker.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Your old friend Smokey here. Why don't you let me inside, and we'll catch up?

“Go away.”

“What's that?”

“Nothing.” Jarrod shook his head and focused on the wall, for the first time noticing a few holes in the cinder block. Beside the holes were big black splotches that looked like . . .

That looked like bloodstains.

Jarrod's heart frosted over.
Get a grip
, he told himself.
Just get a grip. That is probably nothing but mold.
But his eyes kept Ping-Ponging between the holes and the stains. “Ludwig? Come over here.”

Ludwig did.

“What do you think those are?”

His boss bent in for closer inspection, unlit cigarette dangling limply from his mouth. “Well, Jarrod, those—” His voice slipped like a bike chain from its sprocket. “Those,
ahem
, those look like bullet holes. Thirty-eights, I'd bet, if I were a betting man.” He fired up his smoke and took a long drag. Then he took another. The ash column broke and tumbled down his shirt. “Jeez, Louise. Sure you don't want a cigarette?”

Jarrod
did
want one, but he kept his mouth shut.

“There's something about this that's—I just can't put my finger on it.” Ludwig peered closer at the graffiti. “
Die demon die
. . .
Why does that sound so familiar?” He balled one fist and hammered his thigh. “No way. That was here? That was
here
!”

“What?”

Ludwig shook his head. “Can't believe it.” He turned to face Jarrod. A rare solemnity had staked his features. “Was a long time ago. I was maybe eight or nine. Some teen went mental and shot up the place.
This
place. Killed something like nine people, then stuck the gun in his mouth.
Boom
.”

Jarrod's gut turned to cement.
Boom . . . boom . . . just like
—

“All hopped up on PCP, I heard,” Ludwig said, cutting off Jarrod's thought before it could take hold. He ground his smoldering butt out on the floor. “Can't believe that was
here
.”

So those
were
bullet holes in the wall. Those
were
bloodstains, no matter how faded. “When was this?”

“Early eighties. Like I said, I must have been about eight or nine. I remember some congressman, or maybe it was the mayor, blaming it on the video games. I mean, you know, forget about the PCP. Or whatever problems the kid had at home that made him want to get dusted in the first place. Just had to be
Zaxxon
that did it. Just had to be
Ms. Pac-Man
's
fault. Video games corrupting the youth or some such line. I mean, you heard it a million times before. Heavy metal, comic books, energy drinks, always something to blame.”

“People need to point the finger someplace.” Jarrod tried not to remember all of the places his father had pointed his own accusing finger after what happened with Simon. He tried especially hard not to remember the time his father had downed half a bottle of Scotch and turned that finger toward him. Poked him right where it hurt most. “They need a scapegoat.”