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Antonio shook his head. Believe me, all the ones I know are
already making special calls and charging through the nose, too.
He rubbed his chin. Now there s one possibility, maybe . . .
Talk to me. Come on, Antonio. Help me out here.
Well one of my bus boys, Antonio said, the one doing that
table by the door, see? He s got this grandfather, supposed to be
good at getting rid of roaches and rats and the like.
Marvin saw a short, chunky, very dark kid in a white apron.
Coarse, badly cut black hair. Huge cheekbones, heavy eyebrows,
big nose. What s he, Marvin said, Mexican? Thinking, no way.
Antonio laughed. Actually, he s an Indian.
From India? No way in hell. Doesn t look it.
No, no. American Indian. Some small tribe I can t even pro-
nounce, got a reservation upstate.
Huh. Marvin stared, amazed. As far as he knew he had
never seen an Indian in these parts before. That was one thing
you had to say for Indians, compared to other kinds of colored
people: they kept to themselves, lived out in the sticks on reser-
vations, didn t come pushing themselves in where they weren t
wanted.
I don t really know much about it, Antonio admitted. Some
people I know in Amityville, the old man did a job for them and
they were very pleased. But they didn t tell me a lot of details.
Huh, Marvin said again. A redskin exterminator. Now I ve
heard everything.
He s not an exterminator, strictly speaking. Antonio gave
Marvin an odd grin. This is the part your wife s going to like. He
doesn t kill anything. He just makes the pests go away.
Marvin turned his stare onto Antonio. This is a gag, right?
You re going to tell me he blows a horn or something and they
follow him away, like the Pied fucking Piper? Hey, Antonio, do I
look like I m in the mood for comedy?
No, this is for real. Antonio s face was serious. I m not sure
how he does it what I heard, he sort of smokes them out. Indian
secret, I guess.
THE SCUTTLING 117
I ll be damned. For a moment Marvin considered the idea.
Indians did know a lot of tricks, everybody knew that. Nah.
Thanks, but I ll wait till Monday and hit the yellow pages. Hell,
I can stand anything for a few more days.
But later that night, about to go to bed in the guest bedroom, sure
enough he felt a sudden thirst, and went down to the kitchen to get
himself a beer; and when he turned on the light, there they were.
Pamela hadn t been exaggerating. The cockroaches were every-
where. They swarmed over the sink and the counter and the dish-
washer, the refrigerator and the walls and the Xoor: little Xat brown
oblongs that began running, all at once, when the light came on, so
that the whole room appeared to squirm sickeningly for a moment.
In almost no time most of the roaches had vanished, but a few
remained, high on the walls or in other inaccessible places. Through
the glass doors of the china cupboard Marvin could see a couple of
them perched on top of a stack of antique bone-china dishes.
Then he glanced up and saw that there was a large roach on the
ceiling directly above his head. Its long feelers waved gently as if
in greeting. It seemed to be looking at him, considering a drop.
Jesus Christ! Marvin shouted, and ran from the kitchen with-
out stopping to turn oT the light.
His hands were shaking as he picked up the phone. The restau-
rant was closed for the night, and when he dialed Antonio s home
phone he had to listen to a lot of rings before Antonio picked it
up.
Listen, Marvin said over Antonio s sleepy protest, you
know that old Indian you were telling me about? How fast do you
think you could get hold of him?
Next morning when Marvin went nervously into the kitchen for
his coTee, there were no roaches to be seen. He knew they were
still there, hiding during the daylight hours; still, it wasn t so bad
as long as he couldn t see them.
He poured himself a cup of black coTee and went out
through the sliding glass doors to the sun deck. The sun was
well up above the eastern horizon and the light hurt his eyes; he
wished he d brought a pair of shades. He sat down at the little
118 WITPUNK
table at the north end of the sun deck, keeping his back to the
sun.
The Bradshaws house was built at the edge of a rocky bluT,
sixty or seventy feet above the ocean. If Marvin cared to look
straight down, through the cracks between the planks of the sun
deck, he could see the white sand of what Pamela liked to call
our beach. It wasn t much of a beach, just a narrow strip of sand
that sloped steeply to the water. At high tide it was almost entirely
submerged.
He tested his coTee cautiously. As he had expected, it was hor-
rible. Have to start interviewing replacement help; Pamela s
eTorts in the kitchen were going to be almost as hard to live with
as the cockroaches.
Cockroaches. He made a disgusted face, not just at the bitter
coTee. He had really lost it last night. Now, sitting in the bright
morning sunlight with the cool clean wind coming oT the sea, he
couldn t believe he d gone into such a panic over a few bugs.
Calling Antonio up in the middle of the night, for God s sake,
begging him to bring in some crazy old Indian. Going to be
embarrassing as hell, eating at Antonio s, after this.
Marvin raised the cup again and took a mouthful of coTee.
God, it tasted bad. Even more gruesome than Pamela s usual
coTee-making eTorts, which was saying something. There even
seemed to be something solid
He jerked suddenly back from the table, dropping the cup,
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