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This time I don't follow. I just put my hand up as if to wave at her. "Steven's Steaming!" I say.
"Yes, right," she says and almost bolts back inside her house.
I make my way back over to Charlie, who is standing there chuckling softly. "You've always had a way with people," he says.
"You just have to know what buttons to push and when."
"Not everyone knows how to do that."
I shrug. "It's not hard. You just have to be patient, watch, and listen."
Charlie nods.
"I think I'm going to go see what the guys do," I say to him.
He gives me a confused look.
"That's not really the sort of work the boss's kid should be doing."
I shrug. "As you said before, I'm just the boss's kid. That doesn't afford me any special treatment."
I make my way to the basement, pulling my leather gloves back on as I descend. By the time I'm downstairs, they've already got both bodies out of the cage and wrapped in plastic wrap.
"What's the wrap for?" I ask one guy. He's gruff looking, with a fair bit of stubble for a beard and hard, dark eyes. Even through the coveralls, I can tell he's got a good deal of muscle on him.
"Seals in gases, keeps out bugs," he replies.
I nod in understanding and then stand back and watch what the guys are doing. They're methodical in the way they clean up the scene. The cage gets disassembled so that it can easily be brought up to the van. The bodies are put into black bags and then rolled into utility tubes so it's not obvious when they're brought upstairs.
I'm pretty mesmerized by the way they go about the task. Each action has a purpose. Their movements are planned and careful, to ensure that nothing extra needs to be cleaned up.
Within an hour, the basement looks ready to film a Lysol commercial. It certainly didn't look like two people were left to die in the corner. The bodies and the deconstructed cage are packed away in the van, and the house is ready to close up.
Charlie pats the van after closing the back door, and it rolls out of the driveway.
"Where are they going now?" I ask.
"To get rid of things," he says.
"How?"
He gives me the side eye, as if trying to decide whether it's really worth his time to explain things to me.
"Let's talk in the car."
We climb in, and I pull out of the neighborhood. My cassette player turns on automatically, and "Waterfalls" by TLC starts to play.
"Okay, so?" I ask. "What do the guys do with the bodies now?"
"One of the things your father did right when he got into this business was to diversify," Charlie starts to explain. "While a good deal of businesses are purely for laundering money, a few of them are a tad more valuable.
"One such business is a funeral home, which has a crematory. It's a pretty convenient thing when you're in the business of painting houses."
"Painting houses?" I ask.
Charlie rolls his eyes. "When you shoot someone, what happens to the blood?"
I shrug. "I dunno. I guess it sprays out sometimes."
