The receipt bore the name of “Fortress Roofing,” which brought a bitter cackle from Gar Whitmark. At least the scammers had a sense of irony! Gar Whitmark dialed the number and got an answering machine. He hung up and called the director of the county building-and-zoning department, who owed his job to seven of the county commissioners, who owed their jobs to Gar Whitmark’s generous campaign contributions. As Gar Whitmark anticipated, the building director expressed shock and alarm that a fraud was perpetrated on Gar Whitmark’s wife, and promised a thorough criminal investigation.
No, he hadn’t ever heard of Fortress Roofing-but he’d damn sure find out who was behind it.
Sooner the better, said Gar Whitmark, toweling the
rainwater from his stinging scalp, which bristled with fifty pink-stemmed, freshly implanted hair plugs.
Fifteen minutes later, the building director phoned back to report, mournfully, that Fortress Roofing had never obtained a valid Dade County contractor’s license and was therefore an unknown outlaw entity.
In a fury, Gar Whitmark began contacting roofers he knew-some honest, some not. The name Fortress struck a note with one or two, who said they’d recently lost crew to the new company. The sonofabitch owner, they said, was an ex-inspector named Avila. Dirty as they come, the roofers warned.
Gar Whitmark knew Avila quite well, having successfully bribed him for many years. All those times Gar Whitmark’s subcontractors had slipped booty to the greedy bastard! Cash, booze, porn-Avila had a taste for the hard stuff; girl-on-girl, if Gar Whitmark remembered correctly.
He called his secretary, whose fingers swiftly punched up a highly confidential computer file of corrupt and/or corruptible officials in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Lee and Monroe Counties. It was a lengthy roster, alphabetized for convenience. Avila’s name and unlisted home phone number winked fatefully at the bottom of the first screen.
Gar Whitmark waited until three in the morning before phoning.
“This is your old friend Gar Whitmark,” he said. “Your crew of gypsy fakers hit my wife for seven grand. My wife is not well, Avila. If I don’t see my money by tomorrow morning, you’ll be in the county jail by tomorrow night. And I will arrange for you to share a cell with Paul Pick-Percy.”
The threat brutally jarred Avila wide awake. Paul Pick-Percy was a notorious cannibal. Currently he awaited trial on charges of killing and eating his landlord, who had neglected to repair a leaky ball cock in Paul Pick-Percy’s toilet tank. Recently Paul Pick-Percy had also been found guilty of killing and eating a tardy cable-TV repairman and a rude tollbooth attendant.
Avila said: “Seven thousand? Mister Whitmark, I swear to God I don’t know nothing about this.”
“Suit yourself-”
“Wait, now hold on….” Avila sat upright in bed. “Tell me supposedly what happened, OK?”
“There is no fucking ‘supposedly.'” Gar Whitmark related his wife’s pitiable tale.
“And the truck was ours, you’re sure?”
“I’m holding the receipt, dipshit. ‘Fortress Roofing’ is what it says.”
Avila grimaced. “Who signed it?”
Gar Whitmark said the signature was illegible. “My wife said the guy had a fucked-up jaw made him look like a moray eel. Plus he wore a bad suit.”
“Shit,” Avila said. Exactly what he’d feared.
“Is this ringing a bell?” Gar Whitmark’s sarcasm was heavy and ominous.
Avila sagged against the headboard of his bed. “Sir, you’ll get your money back first thing.”
“Damn straight. And a new roof as well.” , •
“What?” ~ “‘ ‘
“You heard me, noodle dick. The seven grand your people stole, plus you’re picking up the bill when my new roof gets done. By real roofers.”
Avila’s stomach pitched. Gar Whitmark probably lived in a goddamn ranch house way down south, with
all the other millionaires. Avila figured he’d be looking at twenty thousand, easy, for a new roof job. He said, “That ain’t really fair.”
“You’d rather do dinner with Chef Pick-Percy?”
“Aw, Christ, Mister Whitmark.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Avila got out of bed and went to the backyard to round up two roosters, which he took to the garage for beheading. He hoped the sacrifice would be favorably received. After a short scuffle, the deed was done. Avila dripped the warm blood into a plastic pail filled with pennies, bleached cat bones and turtle shells. The pail was placed at the feet of a ceramic statue of Change, the saint of lightning and fire. The child-sized statue wore a robe, colored beads and a gold-plated crown. Kneeling in beseechment, Avila raised his blood-flecked arms toward the heavens and asked Change to please strike Snapper dead as a fucking doornail for screwing up the roofer scam.