A half minute later the front door of the Bendell house creaked open, then slammed. Claude stood waiting by the ladder until Marcus Bendell showed—a skinny kid in his late twenties with sneaky eyes and a ponytail down his back.
On Marcus’s throat was some kind of hostile tattoo. Prison art. An arrow with its sharpened tip buried in the kid’s Adam’s apple, five or six drops of blood trailing from the inked-on wound. Claude hadn’t seen one of those before. He didn’t keep up with all the hip-hop and gang bullshit, or whatever the tattoo was connected to. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the complaints of turd balls like Bendell.
Bendell saw Claude standing beside the aluminum ladder and halted. A wooden club was in his right hand, like a miniature bowling pin, the kind of homemade weapon people who couldn’t afford guns kept near their beds. The guy was a half foot taller than Claude, but had a spindly look, a pale cast to his skin, and teeth the dull gray of fish scales. He was wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. Far as Claude was concerned, the long hair, that tattoo, the way the kid was sneering, made what he was about to do totally guilt-free.
“What the fuck, man?”
“I might ask you the same.”
“Six in the morning, trespassing in my yard, you got a warrant?”
“Phone company doesn’t need warrants. We own these materials. This is our right of way.”
“My landline’s working fine.”
“Your neighbor’s isn’t.”
“Which neighbor?”
“Tell me something, Marcus. How much that hookup cost you? Two hundred bucks? One-fifty?”
“What hookup?”
“Oh, come on, kid. You’re a bright boy. You know damn well you’re diverting current back here. I’m curious how much it cost you.”
“What do you care?”
“Well, whatever you paid, you got screwed. There’s something you got to look at, how this thing is rigged. I’d hate to see someone get fried from this half-assed workmanship. Even an obvious asshole like yourself.”
“Man, what the fuck is pushing your crazy button?” Marcus’s eyes hardened and he took a better grip on the club.
“It’s not my specialty, but I hear electricity thieves like you cost your fellow citizens around two billion dollars a year.”
“Power company is the thief.”
“Florida statutes call it larceny with relation to utility fixtures. You’re found guilty in a civil action, you’re liable to an amount equal to three times the cost of services unlawfully obtained. Jail time, years of probation. The state’s on their side, not yours.”
“They usually are.”
“But a guy like you, long hair and the pissed-off tattoo, you’re not stealing power to save a buck. It’s politics with you, right? Overthrow the lords and masters.”
Marcus stared at the ladder. “If you’re from the phone company, let me see some ID.”
“Look, son, bottom line, I’m not crazy about what you’re doing, but I’m not legally required to report this. So this can just stay between you and me. Man-to-man.”
Bendell looked out toward the street, then up into the branches. He shifted the club to his other hand.
Claude said, “Fact is, I don’t give two squirts of piss if you’re stealing power from the man or any of that happy-hippie horseshit. But here I am out in the field doing my job, and I’d say fuck it and walk off, except in your case, after I had a look-see, I found that you, Mr. Bendell, got yourself a serious issue with this connection. Whoever did this for you, they didn’t know shit about electricity. There’s some criminal negligence at work. If I were you, I wouldn’t lie down in bed again till you consider the fire hazard lurking outside your bedroom.”
“You want money, is that it? A bribe not to turn me in.”
“You’re not hearing me, pal. I got higher interests than cash. I’m a fully functioning human with morals and empathy and the whole deal. I don’t like seeing my fellow man turning into charcoal from somebody’s poor tradecraft. Go on, Bendell, take a peek at the mess up there in the mango branches.” Claude stepped out of the way.
“I don’t know what your game is.”
“At this point, I’m trying to save a life.” Claude swept his hand to the aluminum stepladder.
Marcus hesitated a moment, suspicious, but wavering.
“What? You think I’m going to tip the ladder over, I’m going to pull some silly prank on you?”
Marcus came over, touched the edge of the ladder with an experimental fingertip, looking back at Claude and working up some badass in his eyes, dropping the club as he started up, going two rungs, then three, his head coming close to the lower branches of the mango tree.