As she rides by

smoke and shitty-tasting gum and like that, his stuff’s all over that catalog I showed you. One of the things he makes is a canned stench spray, sells for four bucks or something like that in an aerosol can. God, is it nasty! So Wade and me drove over and talked him out of some concentrate while we were picking up the phosphorus; you can’t imagine what it’s like. I picked up two dozen disposable syringes at the drugstore, loaded them up in the garden, for obvious reasons, and off we went.”
    “We hit about nine seats each,” Wade said from where he was squatting on his heels against the wall, “with a trip to the john in between. The ones we were on, the ones on each side, and the ones in front. From the bottom, of course, and who’s gonna notice a pinprick in the bottom of a seat? They’re gonna go apeshit tryin’ to figure out where the pong is comin’ from, hell, they’ll probably have to tear out half the seats, easy.”
    “Brilliant, boys,” I said, “although I expected no less than brilliance from you. How did you get on, Benny?”
    “Smoothly,” he said from where he was sitting, on the corner of my desk opposite Sara’s corner. He took his fake I.D. out of his wallet and passed it around. “I got downtown just before the cashier was going to open up, presented my credentials, which, as you see, identified me as a pest and vermin controller, and off I went snooping for pests and vermin.”
    “Bet you found some,” the twerp said, “seeing as it was me that had the icky job of collecting them in the first place, thanks a lot, Vic.”
    “To each according to his strength, dear child,” I said.
    “As it happened, within mere minutes I had a boxful teeming with about a hundred Supella longipalpa, otherwise known as the brown-banded cockroach. To the cashier I went. With my little tweezers I showed him one. I told him its Latin name even. I consulted my notebook. I told him that as the incidence of roaches per square foot I had discovered on his premises exceeded by a considerable margin the legally permissible, his premises would therefore be immediately placed off-limits to the public and would remain so until a thorough fumigation by an accredited company had taken place. Meaning exactly what? the cashier wanted to know. Be right back, I said, and I will tell you. By the time I got back from my car with the chain, the padlock, and the large, official-looking sign Victor had printed up, which said, ‘Closed due to infestation until further notice, Los Angeles Department of Health,’ he’d telephoned his boss and asked me to please wait until his boss got there, it’d be about forty-five minutes, something I did not want to do and therefore didn’t. I gave him just time enough to shut off the electricity, then I chained and padlocked the front door. I informed him the fumigation process consisted of confining the entire structure within a heavy plastic envelopment, then the releasing of a highly poisonous gas within the envelopment, and then waiting for the gas to lose its potency, which normally took three days. I reminded him of my name, told him that if he or his employer had any further queries, I could be contacted at the department. We shook hands, and I drove sedately away, with the evidence, which I chucked out of the car window on my way back.”
    “And one more bites the dust,” I said, “leaving but the Westwood Classic, I believe, so may I now present for your delectation and enjoyment the one and only, thank goodness, Miss Sara Silvetti, poetess to the yearning messes.”
    “Up yours too,” Miss Silvetti said. “They should call you Concentration Camp Daniel; why do I always get all the lousy jobs? First I had to collect all those bugs, then guess what I had in my purse when we went to the movies today? Fuckin’ creepy mice, is what.”
    “Now, Sara,” I said, “I know you’re a poet and all, but must you be quite so sensitive? You’re talking about a snake’s favorite food here; I thought they were cute little things.”
    “Sure, sure,” she said. “You were more scared of them than I was even.” I smiled fondly at her. “Anyway, I let out a couple in the bathroom, then come out holding a dead one by its slimy tail, scream, and toss it onto the front row, while the great white hunter here lets out his lot where he’s sittin’, which wasn’t with me, from a leather tool kit thing he’s carrying, then he jumps up holding a live one and shouts