No One's Home for Saint Fastidious

2004
Carl Ponicetti turned his tan Lincoln onto the wide, L-shaped driveway. The car pulled up to the only house door adjacent to the 7-car garage. An elderly man got out and poked an electronic keypad next to the 9,000 square-foot home's door. A green light flashed, and Ponicetti entered the home. Every move had been watched.


1980
Dutch Lieber and his father crawled out from under a bungalow’s crawl space after working on a particularly nasty plumbing repair. It was a back-up with feces, urine, toilet paper and globs of Kleenex, tissues that didn’t dissolve like toilet paper and had caused the problem. The snake hadn’t cleared it and removing the pipe splashed the fetid goop on the man and boy.


Dutch emerged heaving and dry-heaving from the combined effects of the obnoxious fumes under the house, the heat and relentless humidity. His old man, Fritz, couldn’t help but laugh at his only son, now with hints of green in his normally pinkish coloring. Gasping for breath, it was all the boy could do to even look up and, in an unthinking moment, he raised his middle finger at his father.


The vise grip of his father’s hand grabbed him by a shoulder and his shirt, and the youngster was hauled over to the step-bumper of the plumber’s truck. He had never felt his father’s had hit or slap in anger, but he feared his gesture would bring pain unlike he’d known at his father’s hand. Instead, Fritz pushed Dutch’s rear-end down onto the bumper, and Dutch received the lecture of his life. He never forgot the last part.


“Other kids are get a $100,000 loan debt for a degree in something they’ll never use, you’re a ‘turd-herder’ out here earning a hundred grand, drivin‘ a ‘Vette before you‘re 30. There’s no high society parties but you’ll get everything meaningful you want in life, including a good woman and kids!” It got every ounce of Dutch’s attention, especially the ’Vette part. There was never another apprentice’s complaint.


Plumbing delivered on his dad’s promise. It all came his way: the nice girl seeking security in a working man’s home, and that beautiful home. Nice cars. Great vacations. Life seemed good for too-short a time.

Two months after marrying his only high school girlfriend, Dutch’s father passed away, leaving him parentless, mourning in a bottle. He found the cure and resolve in AA meetings.


Dutch’s mom was a flu victims you only hear about on TV, succumbing with every imaginable tube protruding from her body. Dutch was only a toddler, and later grateful his mom’s funeral wasn’t burned into his memory.

 Childhood friends’ moms took Dutch under their wings and apron strings, and teachers knew a latch-key kid with a plumber father may not be reachable or engaged. Dutch was a quiet kid whose only sibling OD’ed on her prom night.


2004
Dutch sat in his van using a toy telescope to watch Ponicetti. He’d faithfully been there eight mornings, and he finally got it. 7-3-2-8-8-4-3, the keypad dialer’s entry code to the back door.


Daily for weeks, Dutch scoured newspaper obituaries, circling select entries and making red X’s and horizontal lines on the calendar next to the morning paper. Tuesday. Ponicetti’s was clear and the show was on!


The better part of two evenings found Dutch in his garage. His van was backed into the garage with enough space to let the rear doors swing completely wide. Using an intricate design of bungee cords, a thirty-inch section of 2-inch galvanized pipe, and some wooden shims, Dutch’s knees were sore from kneeling on the garage’s concrete to test the device time and again, perfecting the angle and down force. When a particular scaffold board moved from the right side of the van’s floor, it triggered the shim’s release of the pipe near the van’s headliner, a release delivering a vicious, downward swing powered by leverage and tension from the bungee cords.


The plumber’s van pulled to the curb under streetlights unlike others in the city, dank illumination that seemed reserved for the projects. Ironically, the worst light was shed on the most violent streets.


With a predator’s eye, Dutch surveyed the scene through the van’s windows and spotted what he was looking for, the who that would become a what before dawn.


Mid-block, a singular young black man fidgeted nervously, sometimes interspersing what appeared to be dance moves, probably to the beat of whatever the ear pods were delivering from a pocketed music player. An occasional pedestrian would briefly engage the man in conversation, the two would seem to shake hands, and the walker would about-face to head off somewhere to enjoy the dope he’d just scored.


Just past 2am, the loner dope dealer called it a night and made toward the corner. Dutch pulled the headlights on as he fired the van’s engine. Approaching the dealer, the van slowed to match the man’s pace. Dutch pulled just ahead and rolled down the window. “Hey, mah-man, can you help?” he shouted to the approaching man who stopped short of the window.


‘Sup? Whatchu wantin’ or be needin’?


“I gotta forty that says you’ll help me a minute, pullin’s some stuff out for an emergency I got in that building right there. C’mon, 2 minutes help for forty bucks?”


Wary, the dealer shrugged off any suspicion and forty bones was forty bones.


Dutch hopped out, directing the man to the right rear door of the van and unlocked the door. He opened the doors, shielding all but the rear from anyone’s view.


“Just help me slide the scaffold boards out… right there….”


Grabbing the top board was the druggie‘s his last conscious act. The pipe’s crack against the man’s skull wasn’t just a fracturing blow. By design, it propelled half the body into the van. Dutch shoved dangling legs into the van, pulling a tarp over the man‘s form. The doors were locked and slammed quickly shut, and Dutch used cruise control to keep adrenaline from speeding in his exit from a neighborhood that had to have cops in it this time of night.


His destination was a good 20 minutes away, so Dutch made his way toward and onto the expressway, making for the suburbs and Ponicetti’s.


The back of the van was against Ponicetti’s driveway door. Dutch tapped 7328843 and gained access. Tightening the tarp, Dutch fireman-carried the doper in through a carpeted hall. He stopped at a reception desk to remove a key the top drawer. The “Staff Only” door was keyed open, and he hit the switch and the 24x36 embalming room of “Ponicetti Mortuary Services, Est. 1982” was awash in simulated natural daylight.


Dutch dumped the tarped body head-first onto rollers of metal conveyor track. He exited the room and the back door and trotted around the back corner of the building. With only a penlight, screwdriver, pliers and wooden toothpick, Dutch temporarily disabled the gas meter.


He opened the van’s side door and hauled out the wet-dry shop-vac. Reentering the building, carrying the awkward vac to prevent roller marks, he retraced his steps through the darkened hallway toward the tiny strand of light escaping the thick plush under the embalming room’s door.


Dutch almost pissed himself as the head of the body first hit the flames bringing a muffled scream from the tarp, surprising Dutch that the shit-bag dealer wasn’t yet dead, a fate coming true 4 seconds later as the super-burners ignited. In under 45 minutes, ‘Done dealer,’ he thought, stifling a laugh.


When his father and he had installed the stainless crematory oven, his dad had trained Ponicetti in its operation, again and again incinerating casket-sized, cardboard-woven trays designed for cradling fire-bound bodies.


As Dutch used the shop vac to suck-up the remains, he thought of the dealer responsible for his daughter’s overdose. The embalming room looked and smelled fresher that when Dutch entered, as he rolled the shop vac across the rubberized tile to the door and flipped off the light. He wrestled the key in to the door’s lock around the vac’s cylinder, then leaned the cylinder against the desk’s edge to replace the key.


It was pitch black outside. Not even paperboys were out with the morning edition.


Dutch reloaded the heavier shop vac and reached to his back pocket to retrieve the handful of tools as he reassembled the gas meter, ensuring it worked.


2010
White, black, taggers, pushers and bullies…. To date, I seen more than 18 scuzzes erased from the streets, people are still dyin’ to get into Ponicetti’s, Lieber & Son Plumbers have held the maintenance contract since the parlor’s ‘82 opening.


I like this guy. So why wreck a good thing by telling you what city. I supplement my social security, get cash on the barrel-head for cleaning Ponicetti’s, late-nights, cuz I don‘t spook so easy. This plumber ain't ever seen me and I always have the key right there.