Wipe The Code

Raul sat cross legged in his hard hat, smoking a cigarette and observing office workers going into the strip mall to eat lunch. To Theo, who was sitting next to him, they looked inconsequential: they were pale and walked stiff in undersized office shirts, their doughy guts bulging over belted plain-coloured trousers. Yet, Theo’s boss Raul looked at them intensely from the lowered tailgate of his pickup truck, and who knows what he thought about them. Raul was an ignorant man who had never worked in an office.

After the break they drove the truck around the mall and got back to installing air conditioners for the mall. They had began putting up asphalt-coloured aluminium siding in early spring, then upgrading the HVAC system. They had even repainted the big white letters on the roof that spelled the mall’s name: “Horseshoe Plaza”. The air conditioner units were the final piece of work. They were placed in the deserted back of the mall, across from a McDonald’s dumpster with a peculiar fast-food stench. Theo hated the stench, not so much because it was foul, but more because it reminded him of that job. They had been hauling and fixing aluminium sheets and airway ducts up on the outer walls and the roof for weeks.

The oppressive heat and hard labour made the whole crew edgy. Raul talked incessantly about the construction industry and about current affairs. He was an opinionated, angry man. His anger had the practical side-effect of spurring his crew to work, for which, admittedly, it was impossible to find any positive inspiration. Raul’s world was filled with puppet masters who pulled all the strings. Their identity shifted every day, but it was generally rich people that Raul had heard of or even worked for, but never anyone he actually knew.

Theo was a thoughtful young man and tried to consider Raul’s words. He wasn’t sure if Raul admired the puppet masters or resented them. Probably both. Theo didn’t agree with him, but he felt sorry for his ignorance and didn’t get confrontational.

Darius was another crew worker. He had a pale face and shaded blue eyes. He was of a slim build and medium height, but his butt chin and wiry limbs gave him a mildly threatening look. He was only a few weeks on the job and talked little. When he did talk with Theo, it was mostly to mock some other worker. It turned out he knew some of Theo’s friends, but from way back. He had a lingering Satanic smile. However, his demonic powers were not very impressive, because Raul routinely abused Darius, often calling him names: a bum, a good-for-nothing. Darius would smile incredulously in response, but he wouldn’t talk back. It was as though he was accustomed to such judgements of his character. It must also be admitted that Raul complemented his abusive verbiage with a rather imposing physique, consisting among other things of a skinny but ridiculously tall frame, and a bushy moustache. Raul wasn’t nice to any of his subordinates, but he reserved the bulk of his scorn for Darius.

On the day in question, the owner of the strip mall, Larry, came to check out the crew’s work. He was a slum lord and a crime boss, and he looked the part. He wore a ponytail and a Hawaiian shirt, and on his fat wrist he had an abnormally large baguette bracelet in solid gold. His chauffeur and bodyguard was a tall and slender thug who looked like a kickboxer and never wiped a frown off his face. He was barely in his twenties. From the few words he said it was clear that he was exceedingly dumb, and even more aggressive. The kickboxer served as Larry’s human pit bull, and he also had his own pit bull, an actual dog, on a leash.

Raul’s attitude transformed in presence of Larry. He turned from a resentful bully to an obsequious servant. Darius’ demonic smile tempered somewhat, and Theo looked not to get noticed. The rest of the crew was taken off the project, which was in its final stage.

Larry parked his black Range Rover in front of a truck dock. He took out a box of doughnuts and coffees for the crew and the three labourers sat down for an afternoon break. They perched on a guard rail looking onto the truck dock, around the corner from their work and away from the stench of the dumpsters.

“Now that’s an amazing car,” said Raul, “I had a chance to drive one of those a couple of years back. My cousin had one. It’s a hell of a machine. Top styling.”

“Everything about that big boss is top styling,” said Theo, “haircut, jewelry, clothing; they guy looks like he walked out of a gangster flick.”

“You better watch what you say about gangsters, boy,” said Raul.

Larry and his human and animal pit bulls went around to have a look at the work done. End of that week was the deadline and due date for paying the second half of the invoice, so they came to check that the work is wrapping up to satisfaction.

When Larry returned from the inspection, he complained to Raul: “This job’s no good. Our tenants are complaining about the heat. That thing’s not generating enough power to cool the mall. And you’re two months over the original deadline.”

Raul cursed in his native tongue, then answered in English: “Boss, you approved of the model! I told you what it can do, and you picked it. You picked the cheapest one. Don’t be like that now.”

Larry was not pacified. “You people drive me nuts, man. You first wanted me to pay a quarter-mill for an AC unit. That’s bull. You think I’m an idiot here?”

“Yeah, old man,” the human pit bull added, “Who you think you are to insult my boss like that?” His animal pit bull tugged at the leash.

Looking at them out of the hearing range, Theo and Darius saw that Raul fussed, and Larry shook his head often. Raul returned to them and lit a cigarette. He looked despondently into the distance.

“To hell with this life,” he said. He explained what was the problem.

Theo was angry and he had an idea. “Boss, I can type in a code and the whole electronic control system will wipe out. It’ll take them a week just to calibrate everything again. It would take another crew another week just to figure out everything we have done. They don’t pay, we wipe the controller clean.”

After the cigarette Raul went back to the SUV with Larry and his pit bulls. They had been unloading some stuff into the truck dock. There was a muffled argument, and it ended with Raul yelling: “If you don’t pay, we wipe the electronics. That’s it.”

He then walked off. Larry waved him off and the two men and the dog packed into the car and drove off.

After a few minutes Raul went into the mall to sit indoors and call some friends for advice. Theo and Darius walked back around the corner to the air conditioner. They were surprised to see the kickboxer meddling with the control box. His dog’s leash was tied to a steel post. He was trying to pry open the box and take out the controller.

“Hey, leave that alone!” shouted Theo.

The kickboxer turned around and cussed him off. The man looked wild and threatening, and Darius and Theo turned back and around the corner. They stopped just out of sight and talked. They made a plan of attack. Theo ran up and jumped on the kickboxer’s back before the latter could turn around away from the control box. Theo had him in a flimsy chokehold. The kickboxer stood up and began trying to fling Theo off his back. This lasted a short few moments, for Darius walked up to the scuffle and hit the kickboxer in the gut with a hammer. The blow felled him immediately. While he was on the ground, Darius and Theo kicked him with their steel-toed boots. The kickboxer began to bleed from mouth and skull.

The canine pit bull was growling and barking furiously throughout the scrap. Darius threw the hammer at the dog and hit him, and the dog yelped and limped, injured. He then took a steel beam from Raul’s truck and laid the dog out with a blow to the head. Theo walked over and looked at the dog. The animal was dead, its erstwhile growling chest now still, and its head disfigured, with one eye popped out of socket and hanging on a string of nerve. Half of the facial bones were crushed in.

There was no one in the back of the mall. Only the stench of the dumpster. Theo opened the control box with a key and removed the controller and put it in his pocket.

The kickboxer soon got up cursing and staggered back to his car, the Range Rover. He made no eye contact with his attackers. Theo and Darius monitored his movements. Just before he got into the car and drove off, Raul arrived on the scene and caught sight of the blood on the man’s skull and face. He then saw the dog dead.

“Get in the truck,” he calmly told his two employees.

Darius disobeyed. He took out his backpack from the truck’s cabin and walked away from the property. Theo stayed. He felt ready for war.

Some forty-five minutes later Larry drove up in his SUV. He walked up to the window of the truck. “All right you animals. Can we all agree that nothing happened here?”

“What happened?” said Raul.

Larry tossed in a white slip into the car. It was the check for the second half of the payment. He then walked over and picked up the dead dog. It took some effort, but he managed to lift him into his trunk. He then drove off.

Raul turned to Theo: “You are fired. Who do you think you punks are? And do you have any idea who you just made into an enemy?”

“You are going to let that puppet master string you like that, eh?”

“I got to feed my family, you snotty brat. And you are now between them and their bread.”