Black Ops In Hell: Tales of a Slumlord's Maintenance Man

By Joshua S. Friedman

I remember the first time I was sent to look for a dead body. Not the first time I saw one, but rather the first time I was sent to look for one. Hold on, let’s back up a minute. My name is Joshua S. Friedman. I am a multi-published author, and for the better part of a decade, I have been working as a maintenance man for a slumlord.

It’s not Taylor’s fault he’s what could be considered a less than reputable landlord, but I’ll get to that.

I usually specialize in crafting fantastical tales and poetry. Although, what you are about to read is no fairytale. It is a non-fictional account about my battles with regulatory commissions such the Office of Code Compliance, being subpoenaed to federal court by the Environmental Protection Agency, and even confronting a mayor with alleged mafia ties before a televised audience.

This is a firsthand account of surviving roach-infested tenements and being at ground-zero for the start of the great bedbug epidemic.

This whole thing started from me telling friends and family about crazy stories from my job working at the complex. There are those who encouraged me to write a book about it. There are others who urged me not to.

And what started as a mere memoir became more of a testament to how this country is swaying from the bosom of capitalism to a society of socialism.

This is not based on actual events. This is not inspired by someone else’s true story.

This stuff actually happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua S. Friedman
• Release date: Apr 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005345914

Joshua S. Friedman

Greetings friends,I love reading and writing. There is no better (at least in my opinion, but what the Hell do I know), escape from the banality of reality than just expressing that is within you.If you feel it, love it. If you love it, embrace it. And if you embrace it, and take everything entirely for what it is, then though art truly a master of thyself.To thine known self be true, and truly unto they self. Then take that knowledge and understanding and give unto others.Is that too esoteric?Be yourself. Enjoy one another (especially in these times).If not, then what the Hell are you doing?I also enjoy reading and reviewing works from other Smashwords authors; especially those offering their books for free hoping someone will read them. Well, someone is. Slowly but surely. I encourage my fellow Smashwords constituents to read and write honest and insightful reviews of ALL works they download.Hey...You read it. Someone wrote it...Provide feedback.Good DayGood NightHave a Restful SleepAnd Good AppetiteJ.S.F.

Book preview

BLACK OPS IN HELL:

TALES OF A SLUMLORD’S MAINTENANCE MAN

By

Joshua S. Friedman

FIRST EDITION

****

PUBLISHED BY:

Joshua S. Friedman on Smashwords.com

Black Ops in Hell:

Tales of a Slumlord’s Maintenance Man

Copyright © 2021 by Joshua S. Friedman

This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and my not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed for any commercial or non-commercial use without permission from the author

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

Adult Reading Material

****

For David W. Taylor,

Thank you for teaching me to always view the world with a child’s sense of wonder.

Regardless of how old we get.

****

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWARD

AN INTRODUCTION TO MADNESS

TAYLOR

THE PROPERTY

THE CREW

THE APARTMENT

SHOP TALK

ODD JOBS

BUGS

DHS

FIRE

OCC

PWA

BLACK OPS IN HELL

EMINENT DOMAIN

EVICTIONS

TORRENCE’S ROOF

MR. PARTY

PETS AND THE GREAT PARVO SCARE

EPA! EPA!

INTERMISSION

WAR JOURNAL

AFTERMATH

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

Greetings friends,

The following is a book I started writing over a decade ago, but kept in the manuscript folder of my files for various reasons which shall soon be known. What you are about to read is a non-fictional account of my days as a slumlord’s maintenance man on the South side of Lansing, MI.

I don’t know why I did it for as long as I did, and perhaps I never will. We often do things in our twenties that we can’t explain to others or even come to terms with.

Unlike previous releases, this is not some fantastical epic or collection of short stories and poetry. What you are about to engulf upon is a factional account of what I did before I got my life together and took my writing and professional career in a more fastidious turn.

It all started from me telling friends and family about crazy stories from my job there. Many told me I should write a book about it. I kept a day-to-day journal on the desktop of my computer entitled: War Journal. However, I have decided to edit most of those rather episodic installments into chapters based on topics. And although I’ve told many of these stories over the years to anyone who would care to listen, this is the first time I’ve ever publicly written about it.

There are those who encouraged me to publish this. There are those who urged me not to. This is not a work of fiction. This is not loosely based on actual events. This shit really happened.

J.S.F

December, 2020

"In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow."

- Ecclesiastes 1:18

"This place is a breeding ground for sickness and madness."

- David Bond

AN INTRODUCTION TO MADNESS

I still remember the first time I was sent to go look for a dead body. Every once in a great while a tenant would get depressed about something or other and no one would see them around. Those closest to said individual(s) naturally grew in concern and ask that someone merely check in on them. Sometimes the lights would be on for days (or even weeks), at a time in a unit. Of course, the fact that the electricity in an apartment left running for an extended period of time didn’t necessitate that some poor soul had kicked the proverbial bucket. Although, sometimes it did, and I’d be sent to make sure some old guy didn’t keel over in the bathtub.

The first time Dave and I went in search of a corpse I technically wasn’t even an employee for Taylor yet. Sure, I’d done some side-work for him here and there but I wasn’t part of the crew yet.

Between my freshman and sophomore year of college I worked at Michigan International Speedway as part of the maintenance staff. That entailed groundskeeping on weeks that races weren’t run and of course, building a wall of tires that lined the interior of the track for the IROC race at the end of the season. During race weeks, we mainly cleaned and stocked the bathrooms. There is no more humbling occupation than sanitizing restrooms at an international racetrack, and I’m sure the same axiom holds true for any major amusement park. But the job paid ten bucks an hour and on weeks that races were held, you could easily pull down a hundred hours. At the time, that was good money.

For those of you who don’t know, IROC stood for International Race of Champions, which was a North American auto racing competition created by Les Richter, Roger Penske and Mike Phelps (no, not the Olympic swimmer), and primarily associated with oval-track racing.

Drivers raced identically prepared stock cars set up by a single team of mechanics in an effort to make the race purely a test of a driver’s skill and run with a small field of twelve invited drivers. It was created and developed in 1972 by David Lockton, and launched in 1973 with Mark Donohue being the first driver to win the championship in 1974 (Donohue later died in a Formula-1 crash in a practice run at the Austrian Grand Prix in 1975).

In 2007, IROC could not find a sponsor and postponed the first two races at Daytona and Texas; which invariably led to a hiatus in the hopes that the race would resume in 2008 with sponsorship, which of course, didn’t happen. And in March of 2008, IROC auctioned off its tools, equipment, cars, memorabilia, and quietly went out of business. The last drivers’ champion being Tony Stewart.

But I digress, the IROC race was the season’s final hurrah and during down time, we toiled away at drilling holes in tires and bolting them together to line the interior of the track. To this day, I don’t believe there exists a more painful sting than that of burning rubber and cobalt steel.

People would flock from all over the country to get an eyeful of diesel and high-octane excitement as their favorite drivers exercised nerves of steel precariously navigating the oval track.

They’d come by plane, car, and of course, cross-country busses.

Two races prior to the IROC race, we got a call on the radio to warden off and restrict access to a bus. Me and my partner (currently cleaning the shit-soiled facilities), were the closest to the incident, so we were the ones hailed to answer the charge.

Not a big deal. The bus was driven to the back of the maintenance building and inside the fence. All we had to do was keep the looky-loos out. After about fifteen minutes, paramedics on the scene brought out a figure in a body bag and strapped to a gurney. Turns out, the man suffered a ruptured aneurysm and collapsed against the bi-fold door in the bathroom of the bus. The authorities had to cut the door off just to extract the guy, who purportedly, died instantly.

Wait. Let’s back up. I suppose I should start from the very beginning.

My name is Joshua S. Friedman, and for the better part of the past decade I’ve been a maintenance man for a slumlord. It wasn’t Taylor’s fault he was a slumlord. But I’ll get to that.

Back in 2006 I and my best friend Dave were working at a flooring store in Lansing, Michigan. The so-called-powers-that-be decided to close that particular store and we were laid-off. At the time, we shared a two-bedroom apartment with his girlfriend. I started picking up side-work from the landlord, Mr. Dave Taylor. Dave is a fairly common name, and over the past nine-years or so we encountered many Dave’s, so in order to avoid confusion, from here-on-out, my buddy will be referred to as Dave and our boss shall be referenced as Taylor. All other subsequent Dave’s will be properly titled. Anyway, I started out mowing lawns and doing carpet jobs (as I learned my trade from professional flooring installers), and picking up trash. Dave went full-time as a maintenance guy but I sought employment elsewhere, but like I said, I still did side-jobs. Eventually Dave and Taylor convinced me to join the crew for ten dollars an hour at twenty-five hours a week; getting paid weekly as adverse to bi-weekly. In the beginning I only did carpeting, trash hauling and removal, and evictions, but I later learned a lot about plumbing, electrical work, dry-wall, siding, roofing, and a plethora of other skills. Interesting factoid; a friend of mine from the flooring store used to say that carpeting was a talent, not a skill. One time I asked him what that meant.

He said, A skill can be learned, but talent you’re born with.

He’s dead now. Fortunately, I never had to go searching for his body.

One night, he and his brother, who doubled as his carpeting partner, were at a bar in the middle of the county with a few friends. A girlfriend of one of his friends suffered a seizure. And in a mad dash to get her to the hospital, he lost control of his truck, swerved off road, and slammed head-on into a tree. The girlfriend survived. But he snapped his neck and died instantly.

During my tenure as a slumlord’s maintenance man, no one knew I was a writer; not even Taylor. This book started out simply by me telling people all the crazy shit that transpired at the apartment complex and quite often people told me I should write a book about it. Little did I know this book was more about how our country is slowly spiraling into socialism like the Coriolis Effect than it was about amusing work-related anecdotes. Still, I’ve got some good stories from my time there; some are humorous, but most are egregiously deplorable.

****

TAYLOR

David W. Taylor was in his early sixties when I first met him; an ex-marine/Vietnam veteran and one hell of a good guy despite what anybody says about him.

He was a tall, lanky drink of water that stood over six-foot, yet he constantly hunched. His short white-grayish hair perpetually slightly tussled as if he’d just gotten out of bed. He sported thick spectacles that broke at least once a month which he’d cobble back together with tape and staples. He always donned the same shit-brown shoes and torn jeans and flannel shirts.

He was often asked why he didn’t buy new clothes.

He’d just chuckle, and say, Oh, well, I like these clothes.

There used to be a rumor circulating around about him that he was a heroin addict just because one of the maintenance guys at the time saw some rusty spoons in the office and we occasionally found Taylor conked out on the office couch. But Taylor was just an old man who’d been working his ass off since he was nineteen years-old and sometimes he’d get tired and just take a nap on the sofa in the middle of the day. No biggie. But rumors are like roaches, once they start flitting around, they never go away. I don’t think Taylor was even aware of the things people said about him. More to the point, I’m not sure he’d even care if he did know, save for one. People often referred to him as being a rich landlord (which he wasn’t), and sometimes proclaimed him as a closet millionaire. I think that’s the thing that disturbed Taylor the most. He wasn’t rich, and far from being a millionaire. Especially with all the breaks he’d allot his tenants.

He didn’t act like an ex-marine. He was always a happy-go-lucky guy; smart as a whip. He used to ice-skate on a regular basis and even do summersaults in the office just to prove how spry he was. He doesn’t do that anymore. The years have been unkind to him and it shows. But I’ll get to that. He’s got a thing for the young ladies and was quite often a little flirtatious even for my tastes. But like I said, he’s a stand-up guy and I’ve got nothing but love for him. Over the past few years, he’s been working on building a machine that assembles pre-fabricated walls for houses. Once I tried to tell him that such a machine had already been invented. But he always said, Not like the one I’m building. That’s the thing about Taylor; he’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met in my entire life; possibly too nice. Countless times he’s let people take advantage of him and he just laughs his ass off. He maintained a propensity for subconsciously clicking his pen when he spoke, and his teeth had a slightly blue tinge to them from all the years of gum chewing ever since he quit his two-packs-a-day habit. I never even had the heart to tell him that most sugarless gum contains aspartame. I don’t think he even knows what aspartame is. He’s also one of the most stubborn, bull-headed men I’ve ever met. Sometimes there was just no reasoning with him. He loves talking politics and physics. When I first got hired, some mornings Dave and I would just be sitting in the office shooting the shit with him for at least an hour. Sometimes longer. He didn’t care; he said he’d pay us for our time just to listen to his rants. And we did. I recorded a few of his rants and transcribed them in my journal. Those transcriptions will appear later on in this book. The important thing to take away is this: There are two kinds of slumlords, those who don’t care about their property/tenants and the ones who do but are bulldozed by the city. David W. Taylor was the latter.

He’d always tell us horror stories from Vietnam; about how he was dropped into Agent Orange, how he saved his entire platoon (because while the rest of the men were firing off rounds at nothing, he saved his ammo until it counted), or about how he got kicked in the head by his drill sergeant in boot camp, or how a big-ass python dropped out of the trees while he was trying to catch some shut-eye. God, I must have heard those stories a hundred times. Now that it’s all over, I miss his banter.

Taylor was the kind of guy who’d not only give you the shirt off his back, he’d also give tenants rides (literally and metaphorically), take them out to eat, buy them groceries, and even let people slide on rent. He didn’t care. He just loved people, and he loved helping them. I pray I’m that affable when I reach his age. If I reach his age. But he was paranoid beyond belief. He used to say his wife had people following him around town. I don’t know if that’s true. But one time we went to pick up carpet together and he pulled off the highway and just sat there for a few minutes.

I asked him what we were doing, and he said, Did you see that white truck back there?

Uh, no.

Well, I did. It’s been following us since we left the complex.

O…kay.

But I showed them. They didn’t expect me to just pull off the highway like that. Yes sir, I showed them good.

Maybe it was just a coincidence. You know, some people do go the same direction down the highway.

Nope, they were following me. People are always following me.

Why do you think people are following you, I asked.

Because my wife hired them. But I showed them. They’re probably driving down the road wondering, ‘Oh no, he was on to us. What do we do now?’ he said while laughing his butt off.

That’s another thing about Taylor, he loved to laugh, and he loved making people laugh. He stayed so positive, so optimistic. Were I in his shoes, I think I would’ve cracked like a hardboiled egg. But we’ll get to that.

At the time, I wondered why Taylor believed his wife would contract individuals (if it true), to follow him around town. Some years later, I discovered the reason was because his interest with pretty, young women wasn’t just some intangible desire. He’d cheated on his wife. Of course, that was years before I even met him.

Another thing to note, is that anytime a domestic disturbance broke out, tenants were more inclined to call Taylor instead of the police. Why? Perhaps, I’ll never really know. Any time anyone had a problem with anything, they’d call him first. As time went on, Taylor grew more and more ambivalent to the point where it seemed he just didn’t care anymore. It even got to the point where tenants stopped calling him and started complaining to DHS, OCC, and CPS.

One time, a resident riddled with bedbugs (but refused to let us come in and spray), threatened to go to the police just because Taylor filed a thirty-day notice on them for being behind on rent.

Taylor chuckled, What are the cops going to do? Arrest the bedbugs that they brought in?

About eighteen-months before the shit hit the proverbial fan, Taylor’s wife died of cancer, and he was never the same since. Sometimes he’d cry. Sometimes he’d clutch at his chest as if suffering from a minute cardiac infarction. Sometimes he just seemed somber. Most people didn’t even notice. But I did. About six months before he went out of business, I told Taylor that I and he were cursed. We were forced to go on living while we watched the people we cared about drop like flies. Now I’m sick too. And I don’t know what it is ‘cause I don’t have health insurance. Yeah, Obama Care!

Skewing slightly off tangent here; there’s a big difference between health care and health insurance. Insurance is the money you pay to an organization in the event you get sick. It’s like gambling against yourself. Health care is the care you receive. Technically, Obama care is forced. If you don’t pay it, the government tries to hit you with a hefty fine. Then they renege on your treatment. Charging you for care you never receive is called taxation without representation. It’s illegal, unconstitutional, and flat-out immoral. But I digress.

Taylor owned a three-building complex and nine housing units surmounted by filth and depravation. But like I said, I’ll get to that.

****

THE PROPERTY

As just previously mentioned, Taylor owned a three-building complex and nine houses. Although, the complex was where his office located and remained the hub of his business. Each building on the complex stood two-stores high (unless you counted the basement), and maintained twenty rental units (so, sixty, in all). Most of the apartments were advertised as being 1-bedroom, but to the tenants that lived there, that meant, cram as many people and animals into the cramped quarters as possible.

2-bedroom units were also available, but only on the corners of the building.

The rental property was (purportedly), established in 1972 but went through heavy renovations in the late eighties (supposedly that’s when it was a real Hell hole). Just north of building one lay the grounds’ dog park but most people elected to walk their canines along the sidewalk and only bothered picking up after them when someone witnessed the act firsthand, and sometimes, still not even then. A large Willow tree stood proudly toward the rear center of the dog park until it fell due to a heavy storm around the summer of 2007. Then, it just laid there for almost a year before anyone got around to doing anything more than hacking away at it with chainsaws and leaving it there.

The tree that fell from two different angles.

Dave cutting up the tree that had fallen.

Between each building, a cracked and cragged driveway led to the back of the complex where residents parked their vehicles wherever they chose, as there no lines painted on the pavement indicative of designated spots. A dumpster stood toward the rear of the parking lot, one for each building, and later on, a clothing donation box had been put in the south eastern corner of the parking lot by the city. Although, if you asked, it just another, smaller dumpster. Behind the dumpsters and trees lining the back of the parking lot, stood a three-foot-tall concrete wall and chain-link fence and wooden slats designed to keep the residents of the complex away from the civilized neighbors that lived just beyond the barricade.

The three buildings painted in a soft, inviting canary-yellow hue. But the three-tier shingles comprising the roof remained a patchwork of browns, blacks, and grays.

Off on the side of the grass on the north end of building two, and alongside the driveway between the first and second building, stood a yellow traffic sign about two-feet off the ground; advising motorists to proceed with caution, as children frolicked about. Some years later, some graffitist spray-painted an addendum to the sign, adding the words: With Guns. So, that the sign read: Slow Children With Guns. What I’m about to say next will repeat ad-nauseum throughout this book: I’m not making that up. In fact, the last time I rested my gaze upon the complex before leaving for good, that sign still stood in all its glory.

Taylor also owned nine houses across town that, over the course of the years, had been gutted into rental properties that boasted three – four units each. Each house had originally been built around the turn of the nineteenth century and most of which were renovated back into single family housings over the past few years, some are even still on the market to this day. In fact, the complex still stands. But if you search it on the web (even with the appropriate address), you won’t find a single (up-to-date), site boasting neither current pictures or reviews of the complex.

If memory serves, I believe the first house Taylor owned was on Barnes located in the part of Lansing that could neither be considered the southside or downtown. And when I say it the first house he owned, I mean, he originally owned it and raised his daughter in that house. (For obvious reasons, I’ll refrain from using the actual address of each property or any detail aside from that which is prevalent to my story. Firstly, most of those houses no longer look the way they did when I worked for Taylor. And secondly, so people don’t go try and find them, thusly bothering those who now live there).

I never met Taylor’s wife (although Dave did). But I did unfortunately meet his daughter. Not unfortunate in that she a bad person or that we didn’t get along, but in that the events in which we met under are those I would not wish upon an enemy.

About a year or so before Taylor went out of business, his daughter came up from Georgia to aid in our battle against the city. But ad-nauseum, I’ll get to that.

Taylor also owned a house on Lathrop St., which was but a stone’s throw away from East Lansing, and a home on Lapeer on the north end of town, a few blocks from the capitol building.

Aside from the buildings on Pennsylvania Ave and Torrence Ct. (which I will discuss later, as much of what transpired in the later years directly involved those two houses), the bulk of Taylor’s property resided not far from Eastern High School in downtown Lansing: Vine St., Linden Grove, Prospect, and Eighth St.

****

THE CREW

Taylor’s had a slew of employees over the years. Some were maintenance guys. Some merely vacuumed hallways and picked up around the complex. Others worked in the office in secretarial positions. He had so many people working for him (but not all at the same time), that there’s probably a few I’m forgetting. I’ll mention them briefly and the reasons they no longer worked for him in the end. Bear in mind, I’m not trying to slam anyone’s good name. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried (and I have a wild imagination). I’ll try to describe each individual in the order they arrived in, but I may get a few of the facts fudged; like I said, there’ve been a lot of people over the years.

The first two were Marty and Ray. Marty (or, Bacardi Marty, as we called him), was up in his late fifties but appeared much older due to the fact he was a raging alcoholic. They both were point in fact. Marty stood about five-six (when he did stand erect); with ashy hair and goatee with a thick Brooklyn accent. Over the course of years, I asked him about his accent, but he always said he a Michigander. Whatever he was hiding from, I hope he found peace there. Marty lived in building three and his career ended when he suffered a fairly nasty stroke while trying to move a fridge into one of the houses Taylor owned. I wasn’t there. But Dave was.

Ray lived in building one with his wife and kids; a straight-up-family-man, though he exuded slight homosexual overtones. Ray resembled a slightly younger and more rotund version of Marty without the accent but adorning horn-rimmed glasses. He left the complex when he was hired at a different complex.

Much like Taylor, Ray was also an inventor (of sorts), and proclaimed he’d designed a fingerless glove that improved a disc golfer’s throwing skills. A lot of us were big into disc-golf during those years. And for those of you who don’t know, disc-golf is much like regular golf but played with specialized frisbees instead of balls, and the holes are chained metal baskets. If you’ve ever been to a park and saw one of these chained baskets, then you haplessly stumbled onto a disc-golf course.

Ray often wore his glove on the course, but as far as I could tell, it didn’t improve his game any. Yet, that didn’t inhibit his constant boasting that his business nearly on the verge of fruition. Last I knew, his invention never got off the ground.

Every once in a while, I see him out at the disc-golf course, but I haven’t run into him in a few years now. I hope he is doing okay. But that’s the funny thing about hope. You can hope and wish for fortune all you want. The reality is too abrasive to contend with.

Next, we have Dan (Don), and Jan. Two mildly retarded people who were married. At least, I think they were married, but they often lived in different locations. According to them, it was cheaper that way. I never really understood the logic behind that, but…whatever. They both floated back and forth between the complex, a house Taylor owned, and an entirely different rental property. Apparently, they could never hold down a domicile, either that, or they both suffered from a serious case of wanderlust.

Dan stood hunched and in his late fifties; missing the better part of his front teeth. He always donned sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, and a beat-up Yankees ball cap no matter the weather. When I first met him, people called him Dan. I later found out his name was actually Don. One time I asked him why he let people call him Dan. He said he didn’t really care. I asked why he didn’t care if people got his name wrong. He didn’t really have an answer for that.

Don would always come in the office with scratch-off tickets; thinking they were big winners. They weren’t. Every time, without fail, he’d misread the rules on the ticket and confuse a losing ticket with a winning one. Anytime I or anyone else pointed this out, he always bore this same gut-punched look on his face.

Don picked up trash and broke down thrown away furniture while Jan cleaned the hallways and vacant units. They were both with Taylor almost right up until the very end.

Jan was around the same age and waddled more than walked. Unlike Dan/Don, she still had all her teeth but they stuck out like a horses’. She wore Coke-Bottle glasses and always wore her sandy-blonde hair back in a ponytail. Jan seemed more reliable than Dan/Don. By that, I mean, I saw her working more than her counterpart.

Both would happily engage in any activity handed down to them, and quite often, Dave and I would pass off jobs to them that we didn’t want to do.

Even now, I can still hear Jan’s voice stating, Okay, I’m-a do dat.

Dan/Don and Jan could have been siblings. Of that I’m not entirely sure. I hope not. Yet, they were inseparable, even when they (supposedly), didn’t live together.

Every once and again, I still see them around town. They don’t see me and I pretend I don’t see them. I know that sounds shitty. But I cringe at the very notion of what to say to them.

Oh, hey guys. I know you think Taylor screwed you over. But he’s dead now. I’m doing fine. How are you?

Tanya was the office secretary when I first got hired in. She stood almost as tall as Taylor (although she didn’t hunch) and very skinny. She possessed a long, swan-like neck, and slender face which most might think pretty, but personally I could never get past the massive mole festooning the top of her lip.

She lived in the back of building three with a bunch of Haitians which eventually brought on the great bedbug epidemic that nearly leveled the commercial housing industry in Lansing; which later spread to the rest of Michigan and then further on out from there. I’ll talk more about that in greater detail later on in this book. Tanya was let go when Taylor said he could no longer afford to pay a fulltime receptionist. A few months later, he hired another secretary. Rumors began to circulate that Tanya was relinquished from her position for stealing from the office and fudging people’s charts (Taylor didn’t keep track of peoples’ rent with a computer, but with charts he kept in a filing cabinet in the office). Such slanderous allegations were never proven, but still, rumors are like cancer, once they start, they just keep growing and growing.

Then there were Jeff and Rob; a father and son duo and massive alcoholics. Jeff stopped working for Taylor due to health problems. The last I heard he moved down to Florida. Rob married Dave’s ex-girlfriend and moved on to bigger and better things.

Donnie D (which is what we actually called him), lived in Ray’s old apartment after he moved out. He had some legal troubles and went to jail for a while. Every once in a while, I still see him around town. The last I heard he’d been cutting tile for some company or other and reconciled with his ol’ lady.

Cassie worked in the office part-time and occasionally cleaned vacant units. I don’t really remember what happened to her.

Christina briefly rented apartment 209 and remained (as far as I knew), the first Cleaning Lady Taylor employed. She didn’t really clean empty apartments for future tenants (that job was left to the actual maintenance staff). She was hired to vacuum the halls and pick up the trash and dirty diapers people just threw on the floor. But, from what I could tell, she didn’t even do that. Taylor also, sometimes gave her money. Not loaned. But just gave it to her. I don’t know why. Taylor never divulged and I never bothered to ask.

After the holidays (this being the first or second year I worked for Taylor), Christina just kind of fizzled out and didn’t even attempt to feign doing her job. Shortly after that, she just up and abandoned her apartment; leaving it completely trashed and infested with roaches.

Then there was another Rob; a son of one of the tenants from building three and the brother of another’s. Rob was in his mid-forties; rotting teeth and a shuck of thinning blond hair that reminded me of a Kewpie doll. One time he and I stopped one of Taylor’s houses from burning down; which I’ll discuss later. Rob was the first guy Taylor ever fired (as far as I know). We were re-roofing one of Taylor’s houses during the middle of storm season (July/August). He neglected to secure the tarp over the roof, resulting in thousands of dollars’ worth of repair. Needless to say, Taylor never hired him again.

Sally May was a stout woman with a wrinkled face and long, raven-colored hair. She became a part-time secretary and did all of Taylor’s bookkeeping. Sometimes she’d make mistakes on peoples’ charts but I don’t think it was intentional; Taylor’s filing system was an absolute travesty. She was there pretty much until the end. Her son, Albert, also worked there for a time; answering phones and helping her keep the books. I only mention him because his voice was on the message machine. If you called the office and no one answered, Albert’s voice is the one you heard. Interesting factoid: Sally May was my original editor for the first Dog and Troll book. I even thanked her.

James was mildly retarded and suffered from severe emotional problems. He stood (barely), five-foot-tall, but always hunched his portly shoulders. His freckled, pumpkin-shaped head constantly bobbed and weaved as if caught in a perpetual whirlwind. We used to call him Billy-Bob. I don’t know why. He just struck me as someone who’d be called Billy-Bob. I’ll talk more about him later. The important thing to know about him is that his mother was a crackhead, and his entire family was eternally fucked up. That’s a vague description; I know. But how else can you summarize a family with as many problems as they had other than simply: They were fucked up. He was around the age of twenty, yet his voice always broke like he was thirteen and going through puberty. To this day, whenever I think of him, I remember standing outside of building two, he was painting an apartment and singing along to the radio; his voice squealing, She thinks my tractor’s sexy. When his mom died of cancer, he was taken into an assisted living home because he couldn’t live on his own. To my knowledge, he’s still there to this day.

Dominick was a skinny black guy barely in his twenties and not worth a lick of salt who got fired for a bad attitude (which meant he constantly got pissed off at Taylor and threw little tirades in the office; at the end of this book, you’ll probably know why so many people got pissed off at Taylor). He was later evicted for non-payment of rent. It takes ninety-days to legally evict a tenant; during that time, Dominick trashed the hell out of his apartment. He’d been gone almost a year before the complex closed; three months prior, we’d just gotten it renovated. To this day, I’m struggling to recall why Taylor hired him in the first place.

Mike also had a bad attitude. He was fired for gross incompetence, and for pouring mortar down a bathtub drain. That set Taylor back a few hundred bucks just for one job. I don’t really remember him; save for that one major screw-up. But seriously, who in their right mind dumps commercial sediment down industrial plumbing?

Chuck was a short but muscular fellow with cropped dirty-blond hair and a proud scar riding his chin. He also got evicted. He worked for Taylor a little while, but eventually pooped out. His brother Tom (who also worked for Taylor), got stabbed trying to break up a bar fight. I often confused the two brothers. Everyone did, point of fact. But after the stabbing incident we never saw either again, but every once in a while, Tom would call and ask if he could have his job back. Every time, Taylor responded with a resounding, No. Neither Chuck nor Tom were all that bright, and always dragged-ass on simple jobs.

Tim was a crackhead and accident prone as all get-out. He set himself on fire and was put