I thought that this week was going to suck because Pablo, who’s our “floater” on nights is on light duty, so instead of running my usual crop of machines (which are relatively well-maintianed), I got stuck with doing his job, and have been running all the really shitty machines. (Not to mention that one of the guys who runs some of them on days is a royal prick.) Then, we got word that Charlie had been found dead.
He’d been out sick for a month, which wasn’t all that unusual for him. Charlie was pushing 60, diabetic, drank a little too much, smoked a little too much, and liked the whores a little too much. In the past, Charlie would call in sick, get a cab to take him to the hospital, and then some weeks later reappear at work. This time, the pattern was pretty much the same, he called in sick, and we didn’t hear any more from him.
One of our coworkers got worried on Monday and went by Charlie’s house (not the one he was found at). Charlie’s car was there, so Danny checked the house. The doors were unlocked, which is unusual for Charlie. He always locked his doors (Charlie may have looked like a decrepit old man, but Charlie had some money). Danny checked with one of Charlie’s girlfriends, who lived next door, she said that she hadn’t seen Charlie in about a month. Danny called the hospitals, but none of them had Charlie listed as a patient.
Tonight, the supervisor got a call from his wife saying that she’d seen a story on the news about someone being found dead in one of Charlie’s rental houses. After what Danny had told us today, it set everybody’s alarm bells ringing. When we pulled up the TV station’s website, they had a different story about Charlie than the one linked above, and while the story didn’t say it, it was obvious from the details that he’d been murdered. I was worried that the local yokel POlice might not be able to grasp that, but seeing as how the story’s been chopped down to almost nothing, it looks to me like they are treating the death as a homicide.
Charlie had been with the company for over 30 years, and was rather proud of the fact that he was a dirty old man. (I often told Charlie that when I grew up, I wanted to be just like him.) He wasn’t the best machinist I’d ever met, but he was damned good at what he did. He’d also try and talk the panties off of anything that was female. Charlie was famous for walking up to you with a shit eating grin on his face, and not saying a word, just waiting for you to get a whiff of the silent, but deadly one he’d ripped. I got to the point where when I saw Charlie coming with a smile on his face, I grabbed the nearest air line and pointed it in his direction.
I don’t know if one of Charlie’s crackwhores killed him, or if one of his tenants that he’d been having problems with did it, but whomever the fucker was, I hope the cops catch you, and you get what’s coming. What kind of sick fucker kills a 57 year old man? This weekend, I think I’ll drink a little too much, smoke a little too much, and maybe even like the whores a little too much. It’s what Charlie would want.
