I felt like writing about a new, very unique character that operates in a world we PI fans all know and love but is very different from my guys like Vance Custer, Noah Milano or guys like Spenser, Scudder or even girls like Milhone and Warshawski. Here's Brody Chen...
I had my feet on the table of my new desk when Carl Rogers told me he was going to quit my dad’s process serving firm as well. Technically, after my dad died it’s my firm. Carl, a fifty-something burly guy in a suit told me, “Sorry, Brody. It’s nothing personal. You know I love you, but I can’t afford to stay working for you.”
I had my feet on the table of my new desk when Carl Rogers told me he was going to quit my dad’s process serving firm as well. Technically, after my dad died it’s my firm. Carl, a fifty-something burly guy in a suit told me, “Sorry, Brody. It’s nothing personal. You know I love you, but I can’t afford to stay working for you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Why should you be
different than the other guys, right?” I said.
“I’m really sorry. If you need
something, just give me a call.”
“I need you to stay on,” I told
him.
He studied his shoes. “Sorry, Brody.”
“Sure, sure.”
Carl left my office. That was the
last one to go. Three weeks ago my father died, leaving me his company and a
whole lot of debts. It turned out my dad hadn’t done too good a job handling
his finances and owed a lot of people a lot of money. The only thing I could do
to pay of his debtors was sell the house. I kept the office. After all, without
my dad I had no other choice than to try and continue his work. I dropped out
of high school years ago, earning some money doing freelance journalism jobs
for metal zines in print and online. It nowhere earned me enough dough to make
a living though. So I sold the house where I used to live with my dad and
started living in the office.
The employees of my dad
apparently had little trust in my ability to lead a company. And who could
blame them? I was just an eighteen year old high-school dropout with a weak
spot for leather, tattoos and heavy music. Not exactly CEO material,
admittedly.
I leaned back in my chair and
chucked the empty can of Monster Energy in the waste basket. Now what was I to
do? Run this company all alone or just give up. Shit, I’d been thinking about
just giving it all up and just hang myself or something a lot since my mom
died. But now, five years later it seemed stupid to quit. I mean, I didn’t go
through the hell of coming to grips with mom’s suicide to just end it now,
right?
I turned on the stereo, Carnifex blasting their deathcore
through the speakers. This kind of music always fueled me with the energy to go
ahead and tackle my problems instead of submitting to them. I used to tag along
with my dad on some of his jobs when I was still a kid and he couldn’t get a
babysit. I’d picked up some stuff. Maybe I could do this job. Maybe I didn’t
need Carl or the others.
I switched on the laptop. There
was a picture of me in my younger and happier days as a wallpaper. I was going
to replace that with a picture of Bring
Me The Horizon or something. I couldn’t bear to see the old me, still
innocent, still happy. Still fucking weak and stupid.
I went through dad’s e-mail, his
password still my name and date of birth. Not very careful for a guy in his
kind of business. As I went through the e-mails I found, among the many e-mails
from people he owed money to, a message from a lady wanting to make use of
dad’s services. It looked like a fairly easy job, so a great one to start with.
The writer of the e-mail, Cheryl Hill, wanted dad to deliver her husband the
divorce papers. She added he’d refused to accept them from her, so she now was
looking at affordable process servers to deliver the papers for her. Her
husband, one Tom Hill owned an auto wrecking business in Brooklyn and she
suggested to deliver the papers to him there.
I wrote her back, attaching the
standard contract that was on dad’s laptop. Now to wait until I got a signed
copy back. I passed gathering as much information I could about the business
details of the job. Luckily dad had left an amazing number of documents
describing those things. That was probably the work of the office worker he’d
hired a few years ago. She’d already left the firm a few months before his
death though, going back to college. I never really had the attention span for
education. It took me a huge effort to go through the documentation without
letting my mind wander off to the concerts I wanted to see, the confusing
feelings I had about dad’s death and the sheer panic at the thought of having
to make a living all by myself, the office couch for a bed.
Three hours later I got a scanned
and signed copy of the contract in the e-mail. Time to see if I actually had
what it takes to do this job.
