Wastelanders

By Steven S. Schneiderman

Someone gone missing

Someone gone dead

Some eerie interpretive

Cards are read

Dog, cats and autos

Might not be there

But Louie'll find 'em

Fifty per plus 'L' fare

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781449011895

Steven S. Schneiderman

Steven is an associate professor at the Institute of Engineering at Murray State University. He specializes in environmental engineering and regulatory affairs. Steven has nearly forty years of professional engineering experience. His literary endeavors were limited to compositions for friends, including songs, newsletters, greeting cards, and children’s stories. Apostlyptic is the fifth Louie Leppedimay mystery.

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AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2010 Steven S. Schneiderman. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/16/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4490-1189-5 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-1191-8 (sc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009907590

Contents

Prologue

1 - Overburden

2 - Needing an Alloy

3 - Incognito Cognizance

4 - Property Lining

5 - Overburden

6 - Alabama Rendering

7 - Rescue Ranger

8 - Running on Empty

9 - Homecoming In

10 - Overburden

11 - Waylaid Waste

12 - Flats in the Fire

13 - Southern Exposure

14 - Middling Management

15 - Eighty is Baity

16 - Way Up North

17 - Eyes Fried Open

18 - In the Light of Day

19 - Other Soiled Shorts

20 - Righteousness in

(slow) Motion

21 - Miscreantal Missives

22 - Principal Purge

23 - Southern Exposure

24 - Overburden

25 - Breakfast at Rudy’s

26 - Corporate Candy-dancing

27 - Winging It

28 - Wasteland Ruses

29 - Deserting Dust

30 - No Chicken Little

31 - Breakfast of Champions

32 - Dumping the Count

33 - Overburden

34 - The Usual Suspects

35 - Looking Into It

36 - Video Games

37 - Dugout of Harm’s Way

38 - Overburden

39 - Mosaic Tile #1

40 - Mosaic Tile #2

41 - Musclebound

42 - Overburden

43 - Who’s Whose

44 - Lunch at Yorgi’s

45 - Haystack and Needle

46 - Mosaic Tile #2+

47 - Overburden

48 - Tumbling Toast

49 - Dancing with Dead Guy

50 - Ethnic Coddling

51 - Treasure Hunting

52 - Overburden

53 - Tuesday’s Paper

54 - Overburden

55 - Hello Stranger

56 - Tall Tales Told

Epilogue

for quiet desperados

Prologue

There is an unmistakable jingle of urban Yuletide cheer. Musical whims and elevated spirits pervade neighborhoods and bastions of commerce. Even hobos and the constabulary make nice. So, naturally, as the tide of good will welled up from store fronts and corner Santa bells, Pat Ticulatay keeled over, dead. His office door opened. The intruder strode across the room; gloved fingers flung open the sash.

Damn.

Rummaging through the coat closet yielded an electric blanket. The former Pat Ticulatay was wrapped; the blanket plugged in and set on ‘high’. The veiled countenance slipped away through the portal. Snowflakes drifted in, propelled on the strains of street choir fellowship.

One floor below Universal Crud Control, Inc. executives and minions reveled at the annual Xavier Eckleston MaHoHo: a holiday gala renowned in the industry. This years theme ‘Pernicious Crud’ll get you 3 to 5’ stemmed from that evil horde of CFR40 violators investigated, exposed, indicted, convicted, and presently cooling their collective dirty heels in the poky due to the diligence of UCrud’s investigation division and the 25% royalty from all negotiated settlements. UCrud also did well as general management at nationwide NPL sites. Clearly, a good time was being had by almost all.

This year’s MaHoHo included a splendid repast catered by Yorgi’s Urbanese Delicatessen, atmospheric balance from the golden throat of Warbling Wynona and her Nashville Taberuncles, cousins, aunts, nieces & Ol’ Blu, and in a pique of seasonal warmth Xavier Eckleston had even invited executives, un-indicted co-conspirators and those still out on bail, from some of the national industries UCrud had run to earth for running down the earth.

Near the bar Leroy Lackee, Pat Ticulatay’s faithful executive gopher, was trying to put the moves on lead investigation sleuth, Kim Thompson. As the waiter arrived with fresh champagne:

C’mon Kim, there must be mistletoe somewhere in this hemisphere.

Plenty of ERs too, Bozo.

Ooh, that’s right. You’re the kung fuchi expert.

Slice you up like a bagel.

Okay, Kim. Hey, you have any good looking but un-athletic cousins?

Sure, Leroy. There’s Judy Thompson. She’s the current Miss Caterpillar D-10 and middle weight champ.

Thank you, no. Er, Kim, have you seen Mr. Ticulatay? He didn’t seem in the holiday mood thirty minutes ago. Toodled two toddies and fled.

I saw him flee toward the elevators. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes ago. He had that We’ve got ‘em look. Probably lining up January’s rooter out roll of castigatable crudifiers."

Kim, how many did you say you had? You ought to stick with finding fiendish fly-ashers.

Leroy, I’ve got another cousin; she shoots straight and quick; put me right out of your misery.

I had better go up and check. I’ll meet you in the kitchen in ten minutes.

The Cubs’ll win the pennant first.

Kim, you need to embrace the compliments of the season...and me with it.

Lackster, you’re making the eggnog curdle... Oh, hi. Leroy Lackee I want you to meet my steady, Hugely Jurassic. You’ve seen my little Hugepie on TV. He pulled that 747 to takeoff speed with his teeth.

"Little?!..Er, ah, I’d better check on the boss. He can’t function without my timely input. See you later, Kim.

Leroy Lackee walked to emergency stairway by the kitchen.

Thanks for rescuing me TK.

Kim, I’m hugely what? And anyway, why are you gabbing with one of ‘them’?

Oh, I just made that up to send Lackee packing. Funny, though, that line he laid on me must constitute the longest he’s talked with anyone in the whole, what’s it been; year and a half he’s been around.

Hasn’t he been down to the Dugout?

Couple of times but he never says much.

Leroy Lackee went into the stairwell and walked up to the 27th floor. He was about to insert his key-card but the door pushed open. There was a small slip of cardboard fronting the latching mechanism.

Leroy Lackee walked down the hall to the gilded door emblazoned TICULATAY. His knocking was rewarded with silence.

Leroy tried the door handle and entered as it gave way. Air in cavernous sanctuary chilled his nose. Street carols crept in through the open window; Silver bells, barely audible above tooting, shouting and internal combustion groaning. The silhouette of shrouded Pat Ticulatay heaped atop oaken desk acreage. Pixie dust snowflakes drifted above the corpse; neon glitter twirling the dead man waltz.

Leroy Lackee sniffed then navigated around strewn knickknacks toward the inert hulk. Paper crunched under foot.

The remains of Pat Ticulatay bore a gnarled countenance. A small cut on his forehead had congealed in the chill. His fists were clenched, his jaw, a terse snarl.

Seen a ghost, have we?

Leroy walked over to the coat closet and retrieved a broom. The upheaval reversed Leroy grabbed the warmed remains by the collar. He hefted the inert tonnage onto his shoulder and staggered to the window overlooking the alley.

You’re fired.

Leroy Lackee allowed Pat Ticulatay’s right hand to throw the window latch and tried to raise the sash. Decades of building groaning and shifting; huge summer-winter temperature differences had rendered it reluctant. He removed Pat Ticulatay’s hand and used both of his before it would give, Once opened, Lerory wiped and then curled Ticulatay’s hands around the handles.

Leroy Lackee defenestrated the corpse; watched it tumble, striking the side of the building and splatting to pudding in the ice and snow: the landing shielded from the street by dumpster bins. No immediate sound of alarm was raised. One shoe of his former boss had fallen on the window seat. Leroy grabbed the Buster Brown and was about to pitch it into the gloom but hesitated.

How about a pickled herring?

Leroy carefully wiped the shoe using his shirttail then artfully deposited it on top of the window seat. Being the left shoe, he aimed it toward the window with slightly right leaning juxtaposition. Leroy retraced his journey from the alley window to Ticulatay’s desk walking backwards; trying to mimic his previous indentations in the carpet. He straightened up desk top papers and mementos. Then he returned the blanket and broom to the coat closet using the broom to fluff up the carpet until his immediate trail disappeared. The heating blanket was carefully folded and squashed until it looked unused then replaced behind the stretcher, fire extinguisher and medical emergency kit. Leroy slid along the wall treading on the masonry tiles that outlined Pat Ticulatay’s office. He depressed the door lock with his elbow and meandered to the stairs, back to the festivities. Fourteen minutes had elapsed since Leroy left Kim Thompson.

1 - Overburden

Veteran workers, those overlooking the precipice of retirement, might wonder if their journey was meaningful. Gold watch and chain swing hypnotically, enticing one step into anachronism. Step into uselessness or step aside; divert into secondary fulfillment. Or for relief they might swill in the vicarious sty of events they cannot command; spend six bits on the morning news.

Louie Leppedimay perused the local rag at Rudy’s: 5 AM biscuits & gravy. It’s near his office. Same suspects daily; like clockwork; Preacher, Fanny, BJ, Laaaary, Junior, Bob, Nez; accommodated by Deena or her daughter Amy. Amy’s maybe 18 or 19. She’s always chided that someday ‘this’ll all be yours.’ If looks could kill….

Great news of the day escapes Louie. He missed his chance to establish peace in the Middle East. An original thought about reducing national mayhem by minimizing the number of illegal guns available over 20 to 30 years was panned by breakfast red-neckery. Nor has the group embraced his physics unification theory and none are willing to forgo driving massive V-8 pick-ups one day a week to save gas and promote clean air.

City Hall, across the street, opens at 8 A. Louie gossiped at Rudy’s until he was going to the bathroom every six minutes; until the coffee tasted acrid; until Deena asked if he thought a couple of bucks was sufficient daily rent for the seat. Reminding her he’d ‘been trown outta bettah’ Louie crossed the boulevard; ambled to the county clerk to renew his private investigator license; 2 years for $160. Four clerks, two law abiding tax and fee payers populated the office. To be ornery he asked the cutie who took money why some of the streets are streets, some are avenues, some are boulevards. Naturally, clueless.

First mystery of the month.

Louie breached the barrier separating county officialdom from hoi polloi. He slithered into that paneled sanctuary of chiefdom; rudely interrupted the Big Cheese as he was crucially conferring with two doughnuts and a large fast food coffee.

Er, ah, DeeWayne, sir. Does Deena know you’re getting the morning jolt at Burger Biggie? I can’t shut up; keep a secret. Maybe you could shave twenty or so off the super sleuther fee.

Louie Leppedimay, you old probate. I was sure they carted you off to geriatric incarceration. You escape? Has the high sheriff surrounded the Hall?

Hi-larious DeeWayne. If anyone else ever wanted to run for ‘clark’, I’d be their campaign manager. I’m here to pay your usual graft.

Thank you, there. Without jokers like you who waste thousands on ridiculous licenses, Myrtle and I’d never get to Gatlinburg.

Mid July?

You bet.

Did Rowannah tell you my latest investigation?

You mean the streets thing.

Yeah.

Well, Louie, streets are streets. Avenues are fancy streets. You’d need to further your inquiry at the county garage but I’m thinking neighborhood associations plant prettier flowers and clean up more often on avenues. Boulevards, now they’re for the hoity-toity; no trucks allowed on boulevards… unless ... they pay the boulevard trucking fee.

Gatlinburg?

Louie if we had more boulevards, Myrtle and I could go to Disneyland; twice a year. Every one of those developers wants that big ‘B’ in front of their spec houses.

No trucks? What about pickem-ups?

Nay.

Nay? What happens if BJ drives his F250 right down Nevin Boulevard?

If the cops see him, and it’s not his nephew, officer Bubba Franks, he gets tagged; sixty-five bucks plus court costs.

You’re scum, DeeWayne.

Hey, it’s not me, Louie. City Council makes the rules. BJ’s brother, David’s on it. And his niece, Rachael is chief cop. I’m sure every officer has been told to pass the F250 with TBKO ROAD plates. Now flee from here, Louie. Rowannah will give you your reeee-newed license to snoop. I have crucial county business on my plate today.

Deena’s coffee cake once you’ve destroyed that pitiful evidence? Dee-Wayne I don’t think my tax dollars are over-working here.

Write a letter to the county clerk with your specific complaints, sir. I’ll personally file it where it belongs.

Louie Leppedimay fled the seat of county power; wandered across the square to that magnificent edifice, the Newton Building. Within its walls from floors eight through twelve the investment and reality company Leppedimay, Oakes & Bouquet robbed the unsuspecting. Its fearless leader and founder is Lawrence Leppedimay. He set Louie up in a corner office on nine: LL Investigations. Every month Lawrence sends down a temporary secretary. No one knows whether they volunteer or are doing penance. Louie is supposed to kick back 20% of the gross to L.O.B. for the space.

Sometimes 20% seems pricey; mostly it isn’t. Louie earned 50k last year chasing straying spouses, runaway kids and bums who stiff the former little lady on child support. Lawrence doesn’t critically audit LLI books. Sometimes 20 can masquerade like 10. Sometimes Louie believes he has societal meaning; one time the local werks had a little problem. When these situations arise, LLI always tries to get them to pay in cash.

2 - Needing an Alloy

Material Metals alloys lead, sometimes copper, and draws the molten soup into wire or solder. Last summer their audit showed the usual consumption of silver but a shortage of silver solder. They called Lawrence about a prospective lower profit margin. He had them inquire at LL Investigations; had to send someone from his office to the local golf course. Nearly dragged Louie’s raggedy heinie off the 15th green, but as he was only two over, trouncing Richard and Ober; looking greedily toward winning the two bucks; the evaporating precious metal mystery had to wait.

LLI embraced the task and the $500 retainer; put one of their top men on top of the situation. That was Louie Leppedimay, natch, since he’s the entire LLI. Went undercover, he did; more like under coveralls. They proposed placing Louie at maintenance engineering; sort of a pro from central corporate control. However, Louie’s not particularly technically competent; had to settle in as a broom pusher. Like Wal-mart: give old geezers something productive to do in society. That was their tale and they were sticking to it.

One universal thievery truth: hustlers think they’re smart and everyone else is dumb. But with cognizance, patience and the agility to side step Rufus Parnelli Fork-lifter, patterns exposing the latest crime of the century emerge.

Silver alloying of lead to produce appropriate eutectics so anyone can solder two pieces of metal together is complex. The person in charge of the silver extracts a bar of approximately the right weight, sidles up to a kettle of molten lead, 60 to 90 tons, and pitches it in. Under full production six or eight kettles contain metal in various stages of alloy-ity.

Depending upon the capacity to draw the metal through dies onto rollers (it’s called extruding), metal kettles are cycled. It takes some time for, maybe 10 pounds of silver to evenly mix in 60 tons of lead. Material Metals standard operating procedure called for casting the molten lead or alloyed copper (known as brass) also into one ton hogs, ingots (200 pounds), or other denominations after chemical analyses indicate homogeneity. Ingots and the like, after cooling, are transferred to extrusion kettles. Hogs waddle out the door to other industrial users. An interesting application occurs at the lead shot tower. Alloyed lead bars are melted on top of a 100 foot tower. Molten lead is poured through sieves of various diameters. Resultant droplets fall 80 feet into a water tank; perfectly formed spheres: buckshot for Ramar of the jungle; sinkers for captain Ahab.

Ooh, bad luck, there. Evidence that lead exposure causes brain damage imbued the Feds to ban it as hunting ammunition. Here in the good ‘ol, that is. Elsewhere, as in any foreign jurisdiction, you may blast away with whatever you can load. So Material Metals subsidiary near St Louis made lead shot. The downside of gaining this knowledge was that operators couldn’t squirrel away a chunk the silver. If the chemistry wasn’t right, the whole 60 tons would be bad-ordered. That would precipitate an investigation by way bigger sharks than LLI.

Silver bars, gold ones, too are kept in a vault in the production management office. Louie pushed his broom nearby, sweeping what seemed to be decadal dust from under an extrusion cell. Laboring, too. Everyone on a metals plant production floor wears a respirator, hard hat, coveralls and shoes that weigh 12 pounds per. Louie’s getup included a face protection mask; his glasses kept slipping down his nose; tumbling into a gloved hand until one of the operators came up with a piece of string.

Pops, when they give you your official safety glasses, they’ll have what we all call ear gouging frames, it’ll hurt like hell. Maybe, naw, you’re too old for that laser eye correction. Just don’t move too fast; sweat won’t cloud your vision. We had some joker, back ten years, got blurry eyed; walked into an extrusion line. Damn thing melted into his leg. Why the hell did they think about cleanliness now, anyway?

I don’t know…is it Smoot? Mr. Smoot..

Fred’s okay, is it Louie? Louie if you’re going to work in hell you might as well know the devils you’re dancing with.

Cool, Fred. I think I’m a community relations project in the works.

Man, you should have signed up for crossing guard at the grade school.

What and get run down by some cell phone gabbing soccer queen driving the Mac Truck SUV? New York minute, Fred. They’ll run you over in a New York minute. ‘Sorry officer but I didn’t see the sorry son-of-a-bitch. I was looking for three parking spaces and talking top my sister about her tit job.’

Maybe this hell has its upside.

Yeah, maybe; I’m not sure yet. It’s only my second day. Anyway if mega-mommy crushes me, everyone in town will know."

How’s that, Louie?

Hell, there’ll be a blonde lady and a life insurance agent dancing in the street.

Ah, the missus.

Right, Fred. She’ll miss me as much as she’d miss a wart on her ass.

Well, hell. Welcome to hell, Louie. You’re going to fit right in.

3 - Incognito Cognizance

From the forest of extruders Louie Leppedimay could eyeball the production office; watched as operators signed out precious metal bars. He counted the times they bent over to retrieve the lucre. He counted the bars on the pallet as the fork lift drove toward the kettles. Then he’d sweep his way over by them; see that all the bars found liquefied metallic homes.

Louie was an anonymous lump behind the respirator and the face mask. He could sweep on first or second shifts; no one paid any heed. And at fifty bucks an hour; at least four times the inmate wage, he was definitely thinking ‘fat city’. So he swept up and watched; watched and swept up. Three weeks: nada.

Finally, Louie recommended to the plant manager that they install a metal detector in the walls at the entrances to the locker rooms. It could be set up to silently signal in the manager’s office and be tied to a closed circuit TV system. Whoever tripped the system would have a briefly starring role. At that time a bar of silver was worth $550 and the auditor had determined forty-ish thousand dollars worth had evaporated.

Deeeeenied. In the immortal word of Horatio Hiatus, plant manager; Louie, if we had all that high-tech stuff, everyone would know. Mr. or Ms Pilfer would shut down. We wouldn’t need you at fifty per. You’re the detective. Detect something, already.

So he swept. He perused production records. They noted when alloying occurred; mostly on the first shift but occasionally on the second. In November alloying also happened on an odd third shift; surely driven by the pre-holiday rush of wives buying their hubbies a hobby. A ruse, he thought; wives seeking to cash in on long odds. Hot metal and electricity incorrectly and adjacently applied; might just let them collect that life insurance money a year or two earlier than in the original plan.

So Louie swept. There were three regular bar collectors; had to be one of them. If a sub did the deed, the scrutiny was intensified; everyone careful to follow pro forma. But the regulars danced individually as would any normal human when called upon to perform endless repetitive actions. Separates us from the trained apes; we always seek, ultimately determine and follow the path of least resistance.

Louie focused on a portly foreman, Ernie Agrajerian. Of course, by now his vantage point behind a copper wire cell was so clean, so smooth that any minute professional golfers preparing to play at Augusta National would use the area for practice putting. Alas, no help for Louie’s game appeared but he was getting some inferences about Ernie’s.

Ernie’s precious metal tango included a deep knee dip as he retrieved a bar from the vault; followed by stiff back leg-locked straightening, oy vey, that had to hurt, as he trundled maybe eight feet to the office door where the fork lift was parked; and finally, a bodacious bow, do that in front of the Queen and it’d be Sir Ernie, as each bar was piled on the suspended pallet. Ernie danced from vault to pallet seven times; one through five and seven identically. But No. 6 on the card didn’t look like the same polka. It was subtle; just an extra second or two. Louie perused the pile of bars on the pallet. Sure enough seven bars on their way to glory. He looked at the sign-out sheet in the office; seven bars gone from inventory. He looked at the production manager who had supervised the entire process.

You count the bars?

Yep.

How many?

Seven.

Sure?

We’ve been doing this for years. Didn’t look any different to me than any other day. Who the hell are you anyway?

Louis Leppedimay; I’m the senior outreach citizen for this month.

Well, don’t hurt yourself, Louie. And don’t nose into what ain’t your concern."

How many bars left in the vault?

Didn’t I just tell you to mind your own…

Just check for me, is it O’Keefe?

Yeah, Dennis O’Keefe.

Been here long, Dennis?

Louie, you just sweep the floors. Stay out of trouble and leave my business to me. And yeah, I’ve been here 23 years; first shift production manager for the last eight. But….just to keep you happy, I’ll check the inventory. Seven gone; that’d leave thirty-one silver and eleven gold.

What’s in there now?

They counted once, twice, three time’s a charm; eleven gold, thirty silver.

Son of a bitch! That scum, that crud. Let’s call the cops.

Hold ‘er up there, Newt. We don’t know if the count was right when Ernie was removing bars. You didn’t see him hoist an extra bar. I didn’t either. It could have been short before he started.

Well, let’s go ask him.

Bad joo joo, Bunky; if you’re wrong, you’re setting the company up to be sued. I’m going by the GM’s office. Don’t do nuthin’ ‘til you hear from me.

Louie. Are you here only to sweep or something else?

Louie Leppedimay turned in his broom; went to Horatio Hiatus; said he might have found the culprit but not his thieving way.

I can’t finger a felon unless I’m sure. Not many lives at risk here. Let me work it out. I mean you wanted some detection. Let me give you some inspection, inflection and chicanery rejection.

At the end of the shift Louie was wet mopping the men’s’ locker room. Employees have to change out of day garb, shower away residual poisons and flee to temporary freedom. Each year the plant submits a report to the Feds (under SARA) which includes a mass balance on lead. The drill is to summarize tonnage in, tonnage out as product, tonnage out in waste, tonnage lost due to spurious dust and evaporation (even lead evaporates; like water but more slowly) and tonnage lost due to unknown causes. It’s a complicated process that requires daily cognizance including air and water discharge monitoring. If too much is unaccounted for, the plant can get fined. Also, each employee’s blood is checked for lead concentration monthly. Too highly concentrated and a mandatory furlough and treatment ensues.

Meandering was, among at fifty-odd naked, out