Carousel Court by Joe McGinniss Page B

in the distance. A transformer.
    â€œFires,” Nick says, a half-thought about wildfires and this wind.
    â€œShould burn this place down,” Greg says.
    â€œWhole block.”
    â€œDon’t stop there,” Arik says, looking up from his iPhone.
    Nick approaches the house. A police helicopter thunders past, too low. The wind gusts. Why is the garage door open? He looks back at Greg. “Did you open that?” Greg shakes his head, his cell at his ear, watching. Nick takes a few cautious steps. That’s when it hits him: the stench from inside.
    Most jobs they move right in. Boss will be there with the keys, get them inside, set the Dumpster in the middle of the driveway. Music will be on in the house. Someone always brings music. Lately it’s been Jay Z, White Stripes, the Offspring. Anything loud, fast, hard. Boss doesn’t care. Whatever moves the houses. Boss stumbled into it when a friend needed his help in a pinch. He got his contracting crew together, hauled out everything in under three hours. Now he’s got major clients: Banks need their houses back from those who came up short. Clean ’em and green ’em, Boss says. Boss recently bought a new boat so he and his wife can take their kids fishing up at Lake Arrowhead. He drives a new Lexus and a fully restored metallic-blue Firebird convertible. He’s got laminated maps, red and green circles marking new targets. He’s on to something. He’s just getting started. That much, he and Nick have in common.
    Boss needs and trusts Nick because, unlike the Hondurans, he’s college-educated and can speak fluent English, and unlike Arik and Sean, he’s mature. Greg has Boss’s trust, but Greg is leaving because Greg has somewhere to go. That’s why Nick has the keys to the Rialto house tonight. EverythingMustGo! needed more sane white guys, Boss said. Nick didn’t ask for clarification. There was an advantage to play, so he played it. Trashing out foreclosed houses gets him twenty-­two dollars an hour plus anything of value they claim.
    Nick and Arik set up the generator in the garage for the spotlights that will be trained on the exterior of the house. The more light, the less likely it is that anyone will bother to call the police, which slows them down. They set up two spotlights inside the house as well,making the house glow. A green Honda slows to a stop with the windows down. Jorge and Jaime are brothers from Honduras, work jobs like this, landscaping, painting, mostly in silence. They speak to each other in Spanish or respond to Boss when he addresses them in his broken Spanish. The brothers stay in their Honda, like they always do until Boss shows up or comes out of the house.
    A red Kawasaki Ninja explodes onto the hushed street. It’s Sean. He rides without a helmet, stops abruptly next to the Hondurans. ­Sean’s always late because he says he’s “putting some fear into my boy.” (His fifteen-year-old son beat an Iranian kid unconscious at school and now has court dates and legal fees.) Aside from the trash-outs, Sean sells and rents Jet Skis at a surf shop in Huntington Beach, but with his son’s issues and the attorney’s fees and business down, he made a call and joined their crew. He has narrow bloodshot eyes and long brown hair; he squints and likes to deliver quick, hard jabs to Arik’s chest or shoulders when they’re on the job. He punches Arik as though they’re brothers or cousins, but Arik isn’t in on the joke, is not all that comfortable with the punches. Yet Arik tolerates it because, he tells Nick, the guy’s a lunatic.
    Everyone except the Hondurans is passing around the joint Arik rolled. They’re all gathered around Nick’s Subaru. The only time Sean isn’t punching or manhandling Arik is when he’s sharing his weed. There’s an expression on Sean’s face that registers with Nick. After Nick takes a hit