Page 17 of Black Curtain

In fact, Arnie looked like he was biting halfway through his tongue to stay silent.

Dan admired the effort. But he doubted any of the men or women in the crewdidn’tknow what Arnie was thinking.

“I get it,” Dan said drily. “I get it. I really do.” He aimed his stare at Arnie as he lowered the light. “I know this fucker changed the plans on us like twenty times. And he changed the deadline at least four times on top of that. I know the place is a dump. And I know clean-up duty isn’t usually what you folks get paid for––”

“Damn straight,” Joey Duchlass muttered.

Dan gave them all a wan smile.

“…I get it. I’m on your side. But the bonus isbig,guys. It’sreally reallybig. Like, Pacific Ocean size big.”

Dan’s voice grew more meaningful, and more warning.

“It’s definitely swallow your pride big. It’s also suck it up and keep your mouth shut until you cash the check big. And anyway, whatisalways part of this job is dealing with the pissy, rich, entitled, douchebag pricks who happen to be our highest-paying clients. And so far, this oneispaying, at least. He’s paying well. So suck it up. Make it so he can see his face in the shitty, obsolete, probably-doesn’t-even-work-anymore refrigerator, okay? Let him smell flowers when he opens the lid to his scratched-up, probably-broken, rusted-pipe shitter. At the end of the day, we do the job. We get it done. We get italldone. Then we get out of here, check in hand. We move on to the next group of pricks. Got it?”

They all muttered and mumbled, exchanging looks.

Dan heard overall agreement in those mutters of annoyance, though.

He even saw agreement on Arnie.

They were all back on the same page.

“Just how clean does it have to be, boss?” One of the carpenters, McKinnon, joked. McKinnon stood behind Arnie, but his height stretched maybe a foot taller. “Do we really have to spit and polish a warped wood floor for this rich cocksucker? Just because Joey here took a super big shit in one or two of the toilets?”

Everyone laughed.

McKinnon patted a young kid from the Bronx on the back, and the kid grinned.

Dan smiled with them. “I think you just answered your own question, Bucky-boy.” Pausing when the others laughed louder, Dan returned the penlight to his pocket, and folded his arms. “Well?” He motioned around at the cluttered floors. “Get it done. If you want the check today, job’s got to be finished.”

Groans accompanied the announcement.

But they all started to move.

Dan stood there, watching, while they started picking up tools and stray pieces of cardboard, wood, metal, cloth. He watched them return tools to chests, rags to buckets, even as two of them began pulling apart the table saw in the foyer so they could pack it all back in its case before stuffing it the case in one of the vans.

Two more walked outside, presumably to find the shop-vac and other cleaning supplies.

Dan raised his voice, still standing by the entrance to the foyer.

“Get it done fast and there’s a nice bonus in it for all of us, like I said. I’ll hit him with expedited fees for each change he made, but I don’t want to give him any wiggle roomat allto argue or kick up a fuss when he gets the bill. It’ll be a lot more convincing if we don’t make him go away and come back while we finish cleaning up the joint.”

Dan raised his voice slightly to make sure everyone could hear him.

“He needs the place ready to go at nine p.m. tonight. I want it done by eight-thirty.”

Everyone groaned again.

The groan was almost ritual that time.

Despite the groans, Dan saw a few of them perk up a little at the reminder of their coming bonuses. As long as this dick client coughed up, they should be going home with a nice little payday tonight for all of them. Dan saw them moving noticeably faster after he said that, including Joey, who carried the bucket with the toilet cleaner and the scrub brushes upstairs.

Clearly the others felt he’d earned latrine duty.

Seeing that, Dan snorted a little behind his hand, but only stepped out of Joey’s way.

He understood why his guys weren’t thrilled with scrubbing toilets and mopping floors. Normally, he would have told the client to hire a cleaning service. He would have told them he wasn’t paying carpenters that much money per hour to scrub kitchen sinks and floors.

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