my story "Andy's Boatshop" (the visually clean version)
Andy's Boatshop was just another name and door in the Springfield Industrial Park. It was up the block from Robert Lin Chau's Chinese butcher shop, Bob's Transmissions, Radiators and Drive Trains, Daryl LeeMore & Sons Caterers, the Caterpillar Diesel repair shop and other worthies. It was just another shop and seldom could anyone remember cars other than Andy's parked out front. Yet, ol' Andy did a fair piece of business...
______Andy's shop was a controlled mass of confusion, that Tuesday. It was early summer and already Dayton, Ohio, was becoming warm. His shop was thirty feet across the front and sixty feet deep. Andy kept his desk in a little partially walled cubicle across the room from the front door. The industrial grade shredder was along the back wall and was partially masked from view by the racks of lumber, stacks of good grade plywood and bins of fittings. The majority of the floor space was taken up with a Johnboat that Andy was making. Andy had carefully roped off his working area to prevent his rare visitors from messing things up.
______Andy moved his lanky form about the ribs of his boat and moved his greasy hair away from his eyes. He smiled, dreaming of how nice the boat would look when finished. His customer, an IRS inspector who had traded the "favour of blindness" for this boat would truly love his boat. Andy was betting his business on this little bit of graft.
______It was getting to be a hot day and Andy walked over to adjust his air conditioner when four visitors walked in.
______"Afternoon, gentlemen, what kind of boat can I build for you?"
______"We'd like to get us a day sailor. A mutual friend of ours, Roberto Lanton, recommended you to us.
______Andy immediately knew that more than a boat was desired.
______"So what kind of day sailor are you interested in?"
______"Something about fifteen feet long. Say, something we can pick up in about three months, perhaps?"
______"Anything else, gentlemen? Surely you must have more specifications than that?"
______"We do have some trash in the car to dispose of. Just one bundle. Perhaps, you can help with that?"
______Andy knew now just what type of boat was desired but enjoyed the bargaining.
______"Certainly, we've a good shredder here and some dumpsters we can use. That'll be no problem. I take it you'll leave the boat design up to me, gentlemen?"
______"Certainly, certainly, we trust your taste!"
______"The boat will be $500 per foot or $7500. Agreed?"
______The speaker for the four handed Andy an envelope which contained one hundred and fifty hundred dollar bills. Andy nodded and put the envelope in his pocket.
______They shook hands.
______"Come back in three months for the boat."
______"No hurry, no hurry."
______Clearly the speaker was in no hurry to obtain his boat. Andy wrote on his calendar "fifteen foot day sailor"; the boat was scheduled to be finished in exactly three months. It would be also.
______Before leaving, three of the guests lugged a package out of the trunk of their limo and put in down carefully on the floor. When they had left, Andy rolled the package onto a dolly and moved it over to the shredder. Then, he muscled it up to the bin of the shredder.
______He opened the package. It was, as he already knew, a corpse. He didn't recognize the "dear deceased". He shoved the body into the shredder, carefully closed the lid, put on a set of hearing protection goggles and started the shredder. A few minutes later, the remnants of the body had fallen into the dumpster. Andy used the water hose to wash the shredded meat into the sewer line used by Robert Lin Chau's butcher shop. Then, he rinsed the shredder and dumpster out and he secured (closed) the entrance to the sewer pipe. He ran some scrap lumber through the shredder and called his wife to tell her about the day sailor sale.
______It was ready access to that sewer line which had closed the sale when Andy had bought his shop; it had taken him about a week to obtain illicit access to the sewer.
______Life was good for Ol' Andy; he'd meet a lot of interesting people. Why, he'd shown Jimmy Hoffa his shredder (in a manner of speaking) a few years before...
Andy's Boatshop was just another name and door in the Springfield Industrial Park. It was up the block from Robert Lin Chau's Chinese butcher shop, Bob's Transmissions, Radiators and Drive Trains, Daryl LeeMore & Sons Caterers, the Caterpillar Diesel repair shop and other worthies. It was just another shop and seldom could anyone remember cars other than Andy's parked out front. Yet, ol' Andy did a fair piece of business...
I have wondered for some time just what could go on at those lonely little backroom offices in business buildings that no one seems to go into or better yet, what could be going on in industrial parks? There are no families around, the fire Marshall probably doesn't appear very often and the cops might check outside padlocks occasionally. They (especially industrial parks with lots of noise and non-descript smells) seemed like the ideal place for a little quiet illegality to be occurring...