Sweeping Up After Heroes

The Old-School Method Involves a Crowbar and Possibly a Felony

Grandpa wakes me up at five in the morning by standing in my doorway and saying, "Wear boots you don't like," which is somehow both the most Grandpa Tomás sentence ever spoken and also not an explanation of anything.

"I don't like any of my boots," I say into my pillow. "That's why I own them."

"Good. Then it doesn't matter which ones."

Twenty minutes later I'm in the van, and it's not our van, it's Grandpa Tomás's van, the one Dad calls "the retirement project" in a tone that means he has opinions about it he's not saying out loud. It smells like WD-40 and coffee that's been reheated at least twice. There's a crowbar on the dashboard. Not in a toolbox. On the dashboard, riding shotgun, like it's a person Tomás trusts more than me.

"Where are we going," I say, "that requires a crowbar and boots I hate."

"Warehouse district. Silverlake Ave." He says it like that's supposed to mean something. It doesn't, not yet, but I file it, because filing things is basically my whole personality now.

"Does Dad know we're doing this?"

Grandpa takes a sip of his terrible coffee and does not answer, which is an answer.

The warehouse turns out to be the kind of building that's been condemned so long the condemned sign has its own condemned sign. Windows boarded, chain-link sagging, weeds doing better business than the actual property. There was a fight here, apparently, last night, one that didn't make the news, which is its own kind of interesting, because usually if a building this size gets hit, at least one guy with a phone livestreams it for the views.

"Nobody called this in," I say.

"Nobody was supposed to notice." Grandpa Tomás grabs the crowbar off the dashboard like he's been waiting all morning for an excuse to hold it. "That's the job today. We notice."

Inside, it's mostly what you'd expect. Concrete floor cracked like a spiderweb. A support column folded in half, actually folded, the way you'd fold a taco, not the way steel is supposed to behave. There's scorch marks in a pattern that doesn't match any hero I recognize, and I recognize a lot of them, professionally, the way some kids know batting averages.

"This isn't Meridian," I say. "Meridian's thing is that clean surgical pulling-apart move. This is somebody who hits things until they stop existing."

"Correct." Grandpa sounds almost proud, which he hides immediately by clearing his throat. "That's Colt. Wrecking-ball type. Strong, not smart, easy to predict, which is why nobody worries about him."

"You know an unreasonable amount about hero fighting styles for a guy who retired to garden."

"I don't garden."

"You have a garden."

"The garden happened to me. I didn't choose it." He crouches by the folded column, running a hand along the crease like he's checking a scar to see if it healed right. "Get the crowbar."

"You're holding the crowbar."

"I need both hands for this part." He hands it to me. It's heavier than it looks, which feels like it should be a metaphor for something, and probably is, and I decide not to think about that too hard. "There's a floor safe under this column. Company that owned this building went under two years ago, but the safe's still rated for hero-grade impact, which means somebody built it to survive exactly this."

"You want me to break into a safe."

"I want you to help me open a safe that technically belongs to nobody, in a building that's owned by a shell company that stopped paying taxes eighteen months ago, using a method your great-grandfather taught your grandfather, who is teaching it to you, right now, whether your father would approve or not."

"That's four different crimes, Grandpa."

"It's zero crimes. It's salvage." He says salvage the way other people say sacred. "When a building's abandoned and structurally unsound, and cleanup finds something inside that could hurt somebody later, cleanup deals with it. That's the job. That's always been the job. Your dad just does the parts that go on the invoice."

And there it is. The thing I've been circling since the laundromat, since the room that wasn't supposed to exist, since Grandpa Tomás pocketed that reinforced metal like a guy palming a card he's done a thousand times. There's a version of this business that doesn't go on the invoice.

We get the safe open. It takes longer than it should, mostly because Grandpa insists on doing it "the right way," which involves a specific angle, a specific amount of pressure, and a running commentary on how kids today would just cut it open with a torch and ruin the contents, and where's the respect in that. Inside, it's not cash, not jewelry, nothing a normal safe protects. It's a folder. Physical paper, which is its own red flag in a world where everyone photographs everything. Inside the folder: shipping manifests. Building addresses. A list of names I don't recognize, next to dates going back further than I'd have guessed, further than GrandpaTomás's twenty years, further than this building's been standing.

"Grandpa." My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to. "How long have you been doing this? The finding-rooms thing. The safes."

He doesn't answer right away, and for a second I think he's going to do the dad thing, the deflect-with-a-task thing, hand me a tool and tell me to hold the light steady. Instead he sits back on his heels, right there on the cracked concrete, looking older than I've ever seen him look, older than he looked at Grandma's funeral, even.

"Since before your father was born," he says. "Since my father handed me a crowbar in a building a lot like this one and told me some jobs, you finish quiet."

"Why?"

"Because somebody has to know where the bodies are buried, metaphorically, so far, and it's safer if that somebody isn't the person cutting the ribbon at the press conference." He looks at the folder like it weighs more than it does. "I always thought I'd stop finding these before I had to explain them to anyone. I was wrong."

That's the moment the sarcasm just. Doesn't come. I open my mouth for the joke, the reflex, the thing I do instead of feeling something in front of another person, and nothing shows up. Just my grandfather, sitting on a cracked floor in a dead building, looking like a man who's been carrying something so long he forgot other people could help carry it, and me, sixteen, holding a crowbar I didn't know I was strong enough to lift an hour ago.

"Does Dad know?" I ask again, quieter.

"Your father knows there are things I don't tell him. He's decided not to ask, because asking means deciding what to do with the answer, and he's got a business to run and a daughter to raise and not enough hours for both already." Grandpa Tomás closes the folder. "I wasn't planning on you being the one who finds out different. I was hoping it'd skip a generation. Lucky you."

"Lucky me," I echo, and there's the joke, finally, small and worn out, more reflex than laugh.

He doesn't smile at it. He just hands me the folder.

"Why are you giving this to me?"

"Because you already found the room under the laundromat. Priya told me, in case you're wondering how bad you are at keeping secrets from structural engineers." A ghost of a smile, there and gone. "You were going to find the rest anyway. Might as well find it with someone who knows which parts will actually get you hurt."

Outside, the sun's fully up now, and Dad's going to want to know why we took the van, why I smell like a condemned warehouse, why there's a folder in my backpack that I am absolutely not mentioning at breakfast. Grandpa starts the engine. The crowbar goes back on the dashboard, riding shotgun, waiting for the next building nobody was supposed to notice.

"Tomás."

"Mm."

"The names in that folder. One of them's a company. Meridian Holdings." I don't look at him when I say it, because I already know, somehow, that his face is about to do something he doesn't want me to see. "That's not a coincidence, is it."

The van's quiet long enough that

I hear the turn signal click twice before he answers.

"No," he says. "It's really not."