Challenge Submission The Three Evictions

[Double Plus Ungood]

The Three Evictions (The Three Little Pigs as Noir/Crime genre)

It was a few years after "The War". It was the end of the first month of "June Gloom" in the City of Saint Francis, San Francisco. I'd signed my lease for office space in the Hallidaie Building last September, appreciating the view from the outer hallways which were bordered by safety glass all sides of the six floor building. For the last month and likely for the next two months the visibility out of these windows would be zero, just thick dark gray fog. My small little office was on the third floor. If you're in the market to have something found, or found out, the name on my office reads "Gus Valdez. Private Investigator."

Since I work as an "independent contractor", my hours are very flexible. This morning, if you could tell it was morning through all of the damp gray, I was walking into my office just before eleven o'clock. I smiled at my secretary, all five feet and ninety-seven pounds of her. Auburn haired, trim, fair skinned, clear complexioned, today sporting her favorite red beret and a kelly green skirt suit, Belle Cavalière was both great at her job and extremely easy on the eyes. At those times when we stood next to each other, at six-foot-six and two hundred forty pounds, I towered over her. My own hair was black, peppered with some gray, even under my clothes as I was a bit on the hirsute, plus I needed a haircut for the stuff on top. I was sporting three days of beard since my last shave, too. Today I was sporting mostly gray: fedora, duster coat, suit and tie. What wasn't gray were the white shirt, the black leather belt, black socks and black wingtip shoes.

Anyway, Belle nodded her little red topped head to the private portion of the office and informed me that Mr. Rey had arrived a few minutes ago. She'd served him coffee and told me that from the look of his face that he wasn't in the best of moods.

I walked into my office and closed the door behind me. Mr. Rey set down his coffee and saucer on my desk and arose. I shook my client's hand. It was powerful handshake, attempting to test me, but I regularly have heavy workouts and my grip strength is nothing to laugh at. There was I time that I wanted to be a professional wrestler, a luchador, "El Gran Lobo Malo" ("The Big Bad Wolf"). Mr. Rey was a mover and a shaker in the city. He carried himself regally, clad in understated finery, a real class act. Rumor was that, after a very successful and lucrative real estate development career that he had eyes on becoming the Mayor. I invited him to take a seat in one of the two somewhat comfortable guest chairs in my office while I walked around my desk and sat in my reinforced swivel chair. After we'd both sat, I asked Mr. Rey what I could do for him.

What Mr. Rey wanted was for me to troubleshoot was a trio of squatters, the Cerdito (Pig) brothers.

The three brothers were the sons of a celebrity couple and maybe their environment growing up in a spotlight had mostly soured them for being around each other, but it was documented in the underbelly of the city that picking a fight with one of them meant picking a fight with all three of them. The youngest brother reveled in pretending to be poor and living in a tenement as weak and as flammable as straw. His life was such that he wished for his story to be that of someone fighting their way up from poverty to be a success. He wanted to be some kind of artist. The middle brother wasn't much different from the youngest, except he didn't punish himself to the point that he wanted to be filthy all of the time yet he lived in another run down building, which was also something of a fire-trap like sticks used for kindling. The middle brother wanted to be a writer. Only the eldest brother seemed sane, compared to the other two, as the place he was living in was built like a bunker of bricks. They were also rumored to have connections with organized crime in San Francisco's Chinatown.

They say that every man has his price. Mr. Rey had arrived with mine. Two attaché cases with total of fifty pounds of gold in them. With that kind of dough I could disappear and make a new life and identity for myself, possibly in Brazil. Myself and Belle, maybe? She's a good girl for the most part, does her best to stay on the right path. But I was going to have to consider that idea very carefully before going ahead with it. Anyway, I figured that I'd done worse things in the war for a lot less money. I accepted the job and told Rey that it would be done within the week.

If you're going to blow things up then the night of the fourth of July is a good time to do it. I'd used the preceding days to case the buildings. There was really no way in hell I could be stopped at the places of the first two brothers'. The third was going to be a little tricky.

On the night of the Fourth, arriving at the straw tenement, I called out to the first brother, "Cerdito! Hey, Cerdito! I'm evicting you! Let me come in!"
The first brother's voice shouted back to me through the door, "No fuckin' way! I'll call Mr. Chin!"
"Have it your way", I replied and blew the door in.
The Cerdito brothers might have had connections in Chinatown, but I had a well-connected Sicilian friend who sold me a grenade launcher. I love the Fourth of July.
The guy must have been standing right behind his door and the explosion did all of the work for me. All I had to do was roll up what was left in a lightweight tarp and put it in the back of a a pick-up truck I'd borrowed.

I arrived at the building of sticks, I called out to the second brother, "Cerdito! Hey, Cerdito! I'm evicting you! Let me come in!"
The second brother's voice shouted back to me through the door, "No fuckin' way! I'll call Mr. Chin!"
"Have it your way", I replied and blew the door in.
This guy, too, had been standing near the door when it exploded. Two down easy. Now for the hard part.

Now it was time to go after the one in the bunker of bricks.
When I arrived, there were a couple of things to do before I knocked on the door.
When I was done with the preparations, I went to the third brother's door and called out to him, "Cerdito! Hey, Cerdito! I'm evicting you! Let me come in!"
The third brother's voice shouted back to me through the door, "No fuckin' way! I'll call Mr. Chin!"
"Good Luck with that, I've cut your phone lines," I shouted back. "Got some walkie-talkies?" But my plan hit a snag when I tried to blow the door in.
It was armored.
I tried a second grenade, but it was just as ineffective as the first. Okey-dokey, time for 'plan-b'.
I put a ladder to the side of the bunker and climbed up on the roof with one of the tarps I had left. Once there, I went to the chimney where there was smoke rising from the inside. Now I had two options. I could try to drop a grenade shell but that might get stuck in the flue.... So I opted to cover the top of the chimney with the tarp. The wetness of the San Francisco night would stop it from catching fire from the heat generated below it.
I then climbed back down as Cerdito's bunker began to fill with smoke.
Eventually, the last brother stumbled out of his brick bunker, choking because of the smoke that he'd inhaled. I put him down with a several applications of a lead pipe to the noggin.

All three Cerditos had a 'burial at sea', tossed off the Golden Gate Bridge with rope and cinder blocks.

My Sicilian friend helped me fake my death, just in case.

Even in Rio, Belle still liked her red beret and other red caps. My learning to speak Portuguese wasn't all that hard, either.