“Look,” Buzz said, “I’d go myself, but I’m just too big.”
Spider hunched again, tried to see inside the incinerator and came upright, just as confused.
“I’m not going in there,” he said.
Buzz sighed.
“It’s like this,” he said. “Somehow, a bird got in there. Made a nest, you know. Up in the stack.”
“A bird?” Spider said. “Who the fuck cares?”
“That’s the thing,” Buzz said, upbeat, as if his deputy were about to see the light. “It’s Nadia. She says she can’t sleep at night. The bird’s making all these noises. Keeping her awake.”
“I ain’t heard no bird. What the fuck kind of bird is it?”
“How do I know what kind of bird it is? What difference does that make? Nadia wants it gone.”
“I’m telling you,” said Spider, “I ain’t heard no bird.”
“And I’m telling you,” Buzz said, “Nadia says it’s there. And she wants it gone.”
“I’m a light sleeper,” Spider said. “I’d have heard a bird.”
Buzz waited a second, scratched his belly, drummed on his leg with the flashlight.
“You calling Nadia a liar?”
“’Course not,” Spider snapped. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.” He tried to think and then said, “Maybe it’s a bat. Maybe that’s what she’s hearing.”
“She said bird.”
“How’d a bird get in the stack?” Spider asked.
“How the hell you think?” Buzz said. “It came down from the top.”
“So you’re saying I have to go in there?”
“It’s a piece of cake,” Buzz said. “There’s a ladder mounted on the inside of the stack—”
“You’re shittin’ me,” Spider said. “A ladder?”
“A ladder,” Buzz insisted. “For maintenance. You got to clean these out, you know. They’re just like chimneys. Only worse. They get buildup.”
“This is fuckin’ nuts,” Spider said. “Couldn’t Nadia just sleep someplace else in the building?”
“You want to tell her to move?”
“I could get burnt up in there.”
“This thing,” Buzz said, kicking the incinerator, “hasn’t fired in ten years. There’s no power.”
“So I go in?” said Spider.
Buzz nodded.
“And I find the ladder?”
Another nod.
“And I climb up till I find a bird’s nest?”
“That’s it,” said Buzz. “It’ll be up near the top.”
“Up near the top? I can’t fit up there.”
“You’d be surprised,” Buzz said. “There’s more than enough room.”
“And when I find the fuckin’ nest? What do I do?”
“Well, if the bird’s there, you kill it.”
“Kill it?”
“Yeah, grab it and kill it. Just twist the neck.”
“I never killed no bird.”
“That,” said Buzz, “I find hard to believe.”
“What if it ain’t there?” asked Spider.
“Just knock down the nest. It comes back, sees you been up in there, it’ll fly off.”
“This is fuckin’ stupid.”
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing,” Buzz said. “Five, ten minutes, we’re done. Then we’ll kick back, have a few drinks, and wait for Nadia. We show her the bird is dead, you know she’ll be grateful.”
“You’re sayin’ I missed a run with the boys for this?”
“You’re my deputy, Spider,” Buzz said. “It’s not all privilege. There’s some responsibilities, too. Now get the fuck in there.”
The tone said that Buzz’s patience was gone, so Spider pushed his head through the incinerator door, hesitated a second, then hauled the rest of his body inside. Buzz kneeled down outside and thrust his head and the hand that held the flashlight into the furnace.
“I’ll be right here,” he said to the Spider. “I’ll light it up so you can see.”
“Christ,” said Spider, “I can barely breathe in here.”
“Go up, kill the bird, and come down,” said Buzz. “A moron could do this.”
And with that comment, Spider began climbing up the walls of the stack. In seconds, he was covered in soot and ash. Each time he passed through a flue, the stack grew a little narrower and Spider muttered to himself. Down below, Buzz ignored the curses and tried to make light.
“Stop whining,” he said. “You can have Nadia first.”
The words echoed and crumbs of rusted iron rained down from the rungs beneath Spider’s hands and feet and settled on Buzz’s head and arm.
“For this,” Spider yelled down, “I should get her first and second.”
“Fine with me, son,” Buzz said, “but I don’t think you’d live to tell that story.”
“Maybe,” said Spider. “But I’d die a happy man.”
He climbed more quickly, trying to think of Nadia and the night ahead. But the stack contracted dramatically now and the rungs of the ladder began to shrink.
Finally, Spider stopped his ascent and said, “There’s something blocking the stack.”
“Is it the nest?” Buzz asked.
“I dunno,” Spider yelled and Buzz could hear the strain in his voice. “Whatever it is, I can’t reach it. And I can’t go up any higher. It’s too tight.”
“Take another step,” Buzz said, pulling his trunk farther into the mouth of the furnace. “You can do it.”
“I can’t,” Spider said. “It’s too narrow.”
“Christ,” Buzz said, “you’re almost there. Just stretch up and grab. You can do it.”
“I’m stretching,” said Spider, angry now. “I’m telling you, I can’t reach it.”
“All you have to do,” said Buzz, “is knock it down.”
Spider cursed and struggled. The bricks were rubbing against his shoulders and his lungs were starting to convulse on him.
“I gotta come down,” he screamed in a voice too loud and high to plausibly deny panic.
Buzz stretched out his arm and shined his light up the cylinder. “You’ve almost got it. Just reach up. I know you can do this.”
“This is bullshit, you son of a bitch,” Spider yelled, enraged.
“Push yourself up,” Buzz yelled, in the voice of the father, a sound so weighted with threat that he saved it for the rarest of emergencies. “Force yourself up there.”
Spider gritted his teeth and jammed his body forward with everything he had. He felt the bricks squeezing in on his shoulders and his ass but he managed to raise his knee until his foot found the next rung and he hoisted himself that much farther. He was wrapped in brick now, corseted in mortar and creosote, but the nest was just above his head.
He stopped in place, took in some sooty air, got control, and said, “I get back down, Buzz, you and I are gonna have some words.”
“Just get the fucking bird,” Buzz said.
Slowly Spider found a way to inch his arm up over his head. He poked at the bottom of the nest and found it so dry and brittle that it began to break up with his touch. He fingered away at this dry bowl of twigs, leaves, wire, and plastic. And when he reached inside the bowl, he found no bird, only a fat wad of paper, which he grabbed and pulled down before his face.
“Did you get it?” Buzz asked from below, his voice now soft and emotionless.
Spider didn’t answer. Between the beam of Buzz’s light shooting up and the slice of moonlight that drifted down into the stack, he was able to see the object in his hands — a filthy envelope full of cash.
And just as Spider made out the logo of the Peck Clinic beneath a stain of ash, Buzz snapped off the flashlight.
Spider startled and dropped the envelope and money floated down over Buzz and into the belly of the furnace.
“What the fuck,” Spider yelled. “Turn on the light, asshole.”
He tried to take a step down to a lower rung only to find that the bricks refused to let go of his shoulders. The Spider screamed and tried to thrash his way free but his jerking and bucking made his situation only worse.