Even the most enlightened of rulers occasionally needs dirty deeds done to keep things going smoothly.
Mr. Tepes, Salem, Oregon's uncrowned king of RADs, knew this quite well.
It's how things work.
Easily denied if caught, Brian and Tim, were two such purveyors of dirty deeds. If something unsavory had to be dealt with, they did it.
Discreetly.
If they didn't follow orders, they were easily denied, easily replaced.
Best of all, Brian and Tim worked dirt cheap.
Creeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaakkkkk!
Brian glanced up at the ceiling from the smelly, rump-sprung easy chair he'd rescued from some random curb. The water-stained ceiling overhead, already buckled, buckled some more in a sifting of plaster dust before... …CRASSSSSSSSHHHHH!
"Mumble-fuck-mumble-mumble YO – motherfucker, Brian!"
"DUDE! Get offa me, turd!" Coughing, Brian shoved Tim, his roommate and most of the ceiling off his lap.
Laughing hysterically, Tim landed with a thud on the roach and butt strewn mildewed carpet.
Coughing, Brian rose, shaking ceiling and a handful of cold stunned hornets out of his hair and unkempt black beard. Ignoring their slo-mo stings, he thoughtfully mashed the hornets one at a time on the walls of the HUD-built apartment Tepes let them infest for free whenever he didn't need their highly specialized skillsets.
Only, lately, short shit with fangs hadn't skated much work their way since they sent their truck, loaded with shingles, into some rich asshole's yard, running over his pretentious front yard fountain before t-boning his formerly cherry, fully restored vintage convertible toy and sending it flying sideways into the neighbor's swimming pool.
Whatever.
Judging by Tim's bored antics, the emptiness of their 'fridge, and the distinct lack of good weed, it was time to find themselves something freelance.
Or at least something that got them through the front doors of the respectable without triggering any inconvenient alarms… Brian accessed Craigslist after buffing the screen of a stolen iPad on the seat of his worn-out boxers. Scrolling down to "Labor Gigs", he grinned at what he found, exclaiming, "Oooooh, lookit the goodies!"
Lotta stupid, rich people 'round this time of year.
Lotta stupid, rich people easily bored with their pretentious homes.
Lotta stupid, rich people who invited Brian and Tim into those pretentious homes to say, remodel the bathroom that Brian and Tim remodeled not two months before while pilfering any pills they found lying around in between raiding the liquor cabinet and the fridge because Brian and Tim worked CHEAP.
Chuckling, Brian stepped barefoot around Tim, who was carefully tweezing flakes of last night's shitty ditchweed bakeoff out of the filthy carpet, depositing his find piece by piece on a scrap of paper torn from a damp, shoplifted copy of Beaver Hunt before rolling it into a ragged blunt.
Cool. Some McMansion dwellers wanted some work done, as in "basic demolition shit".
Noooooooooo problem, DUUUUUUDE!
Heh-heh-heh.
With an uncomfortably sharp-toothed grin, Brian consulted his battered iPhone– he was right, it was the same number all right, heh-heh-heh!
Pair of rich marks who owned a lotta expensive shit and took a lotta interesting pills –the fatass lawyer wife who looked and sounded like Hillary Clinton all the way down to her baggy eyes and even baggier ankles, would be too busy tellin' everybody what to do to notice what Brian and Tim really did: a whole lotta nothing.
Cool.
Time to steal the truck back from Salem's impoundment yard and "borrow" some power tools.
"Hee-hee-hee!" Eyes swollen and face lumpy with unfelt hornet stings, Tim lay giggling on the filthy floor, lint and ashes adorning his scruffy, pubic-looking goatee. He held up the skunky, smoldering blunt.
Brian took it.
Inhaling deeply, he released a long, slow stream of lopsided rings, eyes slitted with contentment: ripped off by their unlicensed dealer or not, pot was pot.
Work could wait.