Expediency
A dark story not suitable for children. Tom has to solve a problem and dispose of a body. 4500 words.
Tom had figured that she'd be the type who'd cry. Most women tended to be that way. He turned the policy manual to let her see the printed text and set the record of her punch-ins next to it. "Company policy is very clear on this, and you have exceeded the number of allowed tardies."
He glanced over her shoulder through the glass wall of his office to the open cubicles outside. He had been office manager at Johnson Industrial Supplies for two years now, having worked his way through college and kissed enough asses to rise from sorting mail and faxes to running the front office. Tom had paid his dues, and now he was making better money than he had ever seen before. His father had called him stupid for sticking it out here, working indoors like a sissy, when he could be making good money in construction and following the family tradition. He was wasting his time doing errand boy work in an office while taking classes at the university. Now that Tom had his business degree and was managing the office, he was making more money at twenty-eight than anything his old man saw at fifty, even with overtime figured in.
Marisol's lower lip began quivering, and Tom plunked a box of Kleenex on the desk. He gestured at her to help herself. He had learned a long time ago to keep plenty of tissues handy with all the women working here. Marisol was approximately his age, but that was the only possible thing they had in common. The woman was a cow, dumb and fat, her lower jaw well-rounded with a double chin as well as her torso carrying excess weight. She wore loose fitting pant suits and clothing that hung like drapes, as if that could camouflage the fat. Tom still worked out daily at the gym. He had to give up boxing when he started classes, no time, but he still did his circuit training. Too many of the people in the office had let their bodies turn round and soft.
"These are the rules. I have to fire you." He used a pencil to point at Marisol's record of punch-ins and the numbers in the policy manual. She was losing her job because she broke the rules.
Tears welled up in her eyes. "I'll do better." She clenched her hands into fists on his desk top.
"That's what you told me last month, when I had to give you the warning notice." Tom kept his voice deadpan. Deep down, he was glad to terminate her. Women in their twenties and thirties gave him the biggest headaches with running the office, because they got pregnant, which led to having kids. Productivity went down the toilet with all the bullshit prenatal doctor appointments, and afterward, they never thought about their jobs. Instead they obsessed over their kids. Giving Marisol the old heave-ho felt like a relief. He had grown tired of her sob stories about her sick kid and how she'd share these tales with co-workers. Instead of an office, a business where people booked orders from customers, she'd made the workplace look more like something from Oprah.
"My husband got laid off, and he can't find work. This is the only income we have." She wiped her eyes with a tissue. "I can't lose this job. How can I keep it?"
Three weeks earlier, Tom had heard the same kind of question from Gail, an otherwise good worker whose recent weekend drinking binges put her in a similar bind. With Gail it was different. She was divorced and unencumbered, and a hell of a lot better looking. For the price of a discreet blowjob, Tom arranged to erase her Monday morning tardies. That kind of solution was out of the question concerning Marisol. The only reason the company hired her must have been to have enough spics in the shop to keep the EEOC off of management's back and to work with customers who wouldn't speak English. Personnel had sent her to Tom.
He extended his hand across the desk. "I need your employee badge."
She fumbled with her purse, eventually finding the laminated card inside with her photo and the barcode that operated the timeclock and opened the doors. "You can't give me another chance?" The tears came again.
"It's not fair to the others, when they're here every day and doing your work, because you're not here." He reached out and pulled the employee badge from her fingers to drop it in his shirt pocket.
"My baby." She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.
Tom rose and stepped around the desk. "Do you have all of your personal things?"
Marisol continued to cry.
Tom touched her shoulder and snatched his fingers away. The flesh felt soft and yielding, like pressing fingers into Jell-O. The sensation had felt revolting, like stepping barefoot on dogshit. This sorry excuse for a human made a knot form in his stomach. How hard is it to just show up every day for work on time? The trained apes in Dad's crew could do it, and they often did it hung over or just plain sick. Yeah, it was different in the world of laying pipeline and pouring concrete versus running an office of order takers and clerks, but that's why Tom made the big bucks, dealing with bullshit like this.
"You have to go. Now." He fought down the temptation to simply yank the chair out from underneath her.
Pressing the tissue to her eyes, Marisol rose and turned away from the desk. Tom grabbed the envelope from the desk and pushed it into her hands.
"Your last paycheck." He reached out to open the door. Now that he got her moving, he didn't want her stopping until her fat ass was out on the street.
Tom maintained his poker face as he walked Marisol through the cubicles and to the lobby. Her sobbing had stopped, and he wasn't sure when it had quit. He was just glad that the theatrics were done. Her brown eyes showed numb shock. He held the front door open and extended a hand outdoors to the sidewalk.
Marisol stepped out into the morning light and off of company property. Tom let the door shut and stepped across the lobby to the employee entrance to the office. It was 9:15, and he had to summarize this month's sales numbers for his boss.
#
After lunch, Tom had an impromptu department meeting with the girls to explain that Marisol was no longer with the company. The rumors had already begun oozing around the cubicles, and Tom wanted to stomp out any bullshit before it had a chance to start.
Tom had already interviewed her replacement last week, a bottle blonde in her late forties. Her kids were already grown and out of the house. Another big selling point was her being an amateur marathon runner. She kept herself lean and well-maintained.
#
The work day wrapped up with a management meeting to go over sales goals for the quarter, and that lasted until six. Tom took the numbers and notes from that meeting to his desk and began breaking it down to weekly goals that his people would have to meet. By the time he was done, it was already past 7:30 and getting dark outside.
Tom packed his numbers and spreadsheet into his briefcase and exited the building by the employee entrance to the back parking lot. Only three cars sat parked out there, one of them belonging to the rent-a-cop who watched the place overnight, his car, and a third one he'd never seen before. The floodlights had already winked on with the evening gloom. The sky had changed from smoke gray to a dark charcoal shade. Tom walked up to his piece-of-shit Toyota Camry. Next year, he'd trade it for something nice, maybe a Volvo or a Buick, now that he was making enough to afford something a whole lot better.
A large form moved out from behind the trash dumpster to stand in his way. "You." The Spanish accent asserted itself in just one syllable, and the man extended his arm to point an accusing finger at Tom.
Tom stopped and looked. He had never seen this man before.
The stranger stepped toward Tom, shaking his finger. "You fired my wife today."
Tom examined the silhouetted man. He was pudgy, round and overweight, a lot like the cow he had to fire this morning. Must be something in the genes. His belly hung round to extend over his belt buckle.
"You took away our only income, our baby's health insurance." The man's finger continued pointing at Tom. He felt tempted to reach out and break it. All he wanted to do was go to the gym for a workout before going home to bed.
"Not my problem." Tom stepped to the side, looking for a way to get to his car without having to deal with the tubby husband of the cow he had to fire this morning.
The man lunged to grasp Tom's shoulder. "You took it away."
Tom dropped his briefcase and bent his elbows in a boxer's crouched stance, a reflex. He didn't want to have to deal with any fallout from this morning's termination. He had a business to run, not a charity.
"You fired my wife." The man waved his finger in Tom's face. He stood easily a head taller than Tom, maybe fifty pounds heavier, but most of that was fat.
The first punch landed in the man's face as if directed by autopilot. Tom jabbed twice more with his right fist, the impact making wet, slapping sounds as his knuckles impacted against the man's nose. The old routine from his teenage days, boxing in the Golden Gloves. He knew exactly what to do, and it felt good to watch the fat spic's head recoil from the impact of his fists. Blood ran from the man's nostrils and he staggered backward.
Tom stepped forward and swung a left uppercut to connect with the man's jaw. He felt a satisfying sensation as the outline of the man's jawbone pressed against his fist. This pudgy piece of shit had confronted him, but Tom commanded the situation. He knew what to do, and how to make this asshole go away.
The man staggered backward, then bent over and charged Tom. His arms encircled Tom's shoulders in a classic clinch, and he pressed forward, trying to topple Tom.
Tom pushed his feet out behind him, resisting the pressure of the other man's weight. If he fell to the ground, the larger man would have the advantage. He levered his elbows up to break the clinch, but the bigger man's grip held.
Tom couldn't break the other man's grip around his shoulders. The spic might be fat, but he was also plenty strong. Tom struggled to stay upright and maintain command of the situation, and he hadn't reckoned on the possibility of having to face down her husband.
As Tom's legs began to lose strength against the weight of the other man, he remembered Dad's advice from years ago: Take any advantage you can.
He flexed his right leg and brought his knee up into the other man's groin. The pressure around his shoulders loosened, and he brought his knee up again two more times.
The man crumpled and fell on his back, knees drawn up and hands between his legs, as if to protect himself.
Tom pressed his counterattack by swinging his foot into the fat spic's ribs. He gave it his all, as if knocking a football straight through the uprights and felt the yielding crunch as he broke bone with the toes of his shoes. His cheeks creased in a smile, pleased that he was doing real damage.
Tom continued to kick the downed man in the darkened parking lot, swinging his foot until the crunching noises changed to squishing. Not satisfied, he jumped and brought his feet down on the man's face and chest. He swung his foot to connect with the jaw and felt something give as his weight settled on the neck. Nobody questioned his decisions. Even the general manager had begun giving Tom confident nods in meetings, and this fat slob had no right to confront him.
The outhouse smell of shit and piss rose from the man, and Tom stopped to catch his breath. His knuckles throbbed and his shirt carried spots of blood as well as being soaked through with sweat. His necktie hung loose from his unbuttoned collar and also carried specks of blood.
Tom knelt down to take a closer look at his adversary. The fat spic was dead, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, both brown eyes open and looking at something that wasn't there. Tom glanced over his shoulder, up and down the parking lot. Nothing out there to see and nothing moving as evening darkness settled in. The noise of traffic came from the street on the other side of the building, trucks stopping for the light at the corner, air brakes hissing.
He stood and ran a hand through his hair. What to do next? He gathered up his briefcase as he thought. The ass-kicking was supposed to just make the asshole go away, not leave him dead. Tom had to do something and couldn't leave the body here, not on company property. Tom's eyes paused on the trash dumpster. No, sticking it in there would be a cliche. The fat bastard had confronted him, and Tom had handled it the best way he knew how. Sending the fat fucker off to limp home in the night was all Tom had wanted, but that wasn't the case now. He was dead, and Tom had to do something about it. The time to let the police take care of the problem came and went when the pudgy fucker made the mistake of laying a hand on Tom. Bringing in the police now meant a homicide investigation, and getting dragged into that kind of bullshit would leave Tom's management career just as dead as this fat spic on the pavement, laying in a puddle of his own piss with a broken neck. No, Dad had taught him to take care of his own problems himself, and Tom had been doing that since grade school, when a couple of assholes decided to pick on the skinny kid. Tom had to improvise by throwing dirt in their eyes, then he grabbed a rock and went to work on the larger one. Winning required the right combination of strength and smarts. When he entered junior high, he signed up for Golden Gloves and learned the finer details of how to make up for not being the biggest kid on the playground.
Tom gathered the man's feet and dragged the corpse over to his car. He opened the trunk and shoved a set of jumper cables to the side. The courtesy light in the trunk lid illuminated the cables, spare tire and junk. Tom had to squat and get under the man's shoulders to maneuver the corpse into the trunk. The limp weight of the dead man felt like trying to move a half-filled sack of concrete mix. He closed the lid, wanting to slam it shut on this piece of shit, but the noise might attract attention.
He opened the driver side door and tossed his briefcase inside the car. Tom looked at his arms and shirt in the green glow of the floodlights over the parking lot. Speckles of blood, grime, and the dead man's shit covered his shirt. Going to the gym on the way home was out of the question. He had gotten a pretty good workout right here in the parking lot anyway.
Tom slumped into the seat and pulled the door shut. He had solved one problem and acquired a new one: what to do with the corpse? He had to get it off of company property and gone in a way that would send the police looking in another direction, if they looked at all.
He drove home, the windows rolled down to ventilate the sweaty-stuffy smell from his clothes. Rain began falling, fat drops plopping onto the windshield and drumming on the Toyota's roof. The wipers first streaked the rain, then began to properly clear water from the windshield. He rolled the windows up, then lowered them an inch as they began fogging up.
The good parking spots near his apartment building were already taken, and Tom left his car in a slot ten yards from the open stairwell. He elbowed the Toyota's door shut and jogged to the stairs with his briefcase in hand. His apartment lay on the second floor, and he took the steps two at a time, as he always had.
He began running a mental inventory of the bridges over the river. Dumping the body there would take it far away from home, him, and company property. With luck, the body would travel a good long distance before anybody found it. He had a career to nurture, and managing the front office had become his first major success story since graduating and taking on the new responsibility. No fat spic, dead or alive, was going to mess with that, not if Tom had any say in the matter.
As he boiled water and prepared a cup of Raman noodles, Tom caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window over the sink. He looked more than just disheveled and took off his necktie, the fabric still wet from the rain and wrinkled. The tie had three smears of blood, and one of the seams had started coming apart. Tom lifted his upper lip, disgusted, and tossed the necktie in the trash. He unbuttoned his shirt, discovering one button missing, and inspected the garment. Dark sweat stains had bloomed under the arms, it had four more good-sized smudges of blood, and it stank of sweat and the dead man's shit. The shirt followed the tie into the trash.
Tom swallowed the last of his noodle supper and hit the shower.
His knuckles ached and he found bruises and two scrapes as he inspected his hands under the bathroom light. He flexed his fingers, no real damage done. If he had known the man was waiting for him, he would have taken the time to tape his knuckles. At least he didn't hit the spic in the teeth. Half the time, that left cuts.
He pulled on a set of sweat pants, turned on the TV, and opened a beer. Nothing good was on the network shows, and Tom tuned into ESPN for basketball highlights. After his second beer, he dozed. By the time he woke, it was after one.
He pulled on a pair of sneakers and a sweatshirt. Now looked as good as any time. Nobody but drunks and hookers out at this hour. The rain had quit, but the sky still stood overcast, glowing a faint orange from reflected streetlights.
Tom climbed in his car, rolled the windows down, and headed south toward 44th Street. About eight miles to the south, the 44th Street bridge crossed the river in an industrial part of town. Just two lanes, and most of the time, the streetlights were broken, a good place to dump the body. The stink of sweat was almost gone from the upholstery.
At the traffic light on the corner of 40th Street, a police cruiser pulled up in the adjacent lane to the right as Tom waited for the red light to change. He smiled and nodded at the cop. Keep cool, nothing to hide here.
The cop raised his fingers from the wheel in acknowledgment and nodded back. After another ten seconds the light changed, and both cars rolled across the intersection. At the next corner, the cop turned right down a side street and disappeared.
Tom counted the blocks and turned left onto 44th Street. The bridge lay a quarter mile ahead, bathed in an orange glow. The city had replaced all of the streetlights, and the two lane concrete bridge stood shining as if under daylight. Tom drove across the bridge, taking his time and looking for shadows. The river was close to a hundred yards wide here, and there had to be a place to dump the body. He sure as hell wasn't going to put the fat spic over the guardrail under floodlights.
He took his foot off the throttle and let the car coast to a crawl. Tom looked to the left and right. Maybe there was a dark area near the end of the bridge, but he wasn't keen on the idea of dragging the body through the weeds to get it into the river.
A silhouette on the river caught his eye, a railroad trestle, a red signal light glowing next to the tracks on the near bank. Tom turned left at the next corner to work his way over to the tracks. He drove three blocks to the grade crossing, then pulled off the road to drive parallel to the tracks. The lone streetlight at the corner stood a good twenty yards away as he cut off his headlights and coasted to a stop near the riverbank. A smile creased Tom's cheeks. This was plenty dark and alone enough. Nothing out here but warehouses, half of them vacant.
The courtesy light in the trunk came on as he opened the lid, and Tom reached inside to snatch the bulb from its socket. The hot glass scorched his fingers, and he flung the lightbulb aside. "Fuck." He waved his hand, fingers flapping to cool them.
The fat man's body had stiffened since Tom stuffed it in the trunk several hours earlier. The nasty smell of shit and urine rose from the corpse in an acrid cloud. Tom turned his head for a breath of fresh air before reaching in to pull the body out. He pulled at a leg and a shoulder to lever the dead man over the edge and out. Moving the body was easier, now that the dead spic wasn't so floppy. Tom pulled and heaved, and on the second tug, the body rolled over the bumper to fall to the ground, sounding like a wet sandbag when it hit the gravel.
He closed the trunk and grabbed the body's feet, tucking the ankles under his arms and dragging the dead man onto the tracks. Tom braced his feet against the railroad ties and leaned his weight into dragging the body down the tracks and onto the trestle. The fat fucker weighed a ton, and it was slow going. Tom looked up and down the river, glad that he had found a nice, dark spot to get rid of this thing.
Sweat broke out on Tom's forehead as he dragged the body to the middle of the trestle. The river flowed, slow and inky under the supports. He wanted to push the body over the side where the water was flowing the fastest. The further away it carried the corpse, the better. Might be weeks before anybody found the dead spic. After enough time in the water, there'd be no way of telling where the body came from.
A familiar wail reached Tom's ears from the east, a train horn. He stopped to look up and down the tracks, then pulled harder to drag the body along. The horn sounded again, and he began to feel vibrations in the ties beneath his feet. Tom looked to the side at the moving water. Eddies and ripples curled across the surface of the river. The rumbling of steel wheels on track reached Tom's ears, and he decided that here would have to be good enough.
The horn sounded again as Tom dropped the dead man's legs and began rolling the body over the side. The head and shoulders dropped, then stopped. The corpse's foot caught and wedged itself between two ties.
Tom squatted and pushed at the foot. Leaving the dead man to dangle over the river wasn't disposal. It was display. He glanced up to see the locomotive's headlight flickering in the distance as the horn sounded again. The train was coming from the side where he had left the car. Did he park it far enough away to not get hit?
He grabbed at the dead man's shoe and twisted. The fat fucker's weight had it good and wedged. Tom dropped to a sit on the track and kicked at the corpse's foot with the heel of his shoe. After four kicks, the foot had turned enough to slip through the gap, and the corpse hit the river with a splash.
The train's headlight shined on Tom's face, and he ran down the trestle. He found a rhythm that put his feet square on the ties and not between them, like running on a ladder, and he pushed off hard with each step. The horn grew louder, and he needed to get away. Tom didn't want to be seen, and he sure as hell didn't want to get run over.
The headlight shined on the tracks as he reached the far bank of the river. Tom jumped and landed in a bush, branches and deadwood scratching his arms and legs as he came in for a landing.
The train ran thirty yards behind him, and he lay still as he watched it pass, a freight train, long with boxcars and hopper cars. The rumble of it's steel wheels against the rails drowned out all other sounds as it rolled by, clickty-clack, clickety-clack.
Tom waited until all of the train had passed, and this was a long one. He fought his way out of the bush and back to the trestle. As the freight train receded into the distance, silence fell onto the area again. The only sound was the gurgling of the river against the trestle's pilings.
Tom jogged back across the trestle, looking down at the water. He saw no sign of the body. Good, it's gone. The fat fucker was a lot of trouble, first in the company parking lot, and now here, dumping it into the river.
He found his car parked parallel to the tracks, where he had left it, far enough to not get bashed into scrap iron by the passing train. Tom opened the driver's door and collapsed into the seat. Five breaths later, he put the key in the ignition and drove home to his apartment. Rain began to sprinkle again, and the wipers smeared it against the windshield for a minute before they began clearing the rainwater from the glass.