Note: Please read House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Part I before proceeding with this chapter. You'll enjoy the story a lot more that way. Thanks for visiting!
When last you left the intrepid incompetents (that's me and Michael, by the way), we had just stumbled upon some interesting old bottles and one very interesting pretty little blue one. What we did not know at the time was this: the contents of the little blue bottle marked "Picric Acid" was actually what some would call a "trigger." If that trigger had been pulled I would not be telling you this story.
What scares me even today to think about is how close we came to accidentally "pulling that trigger." In the previous post a quotation briefly described that the stuff was "shock sensitive" and that dropping something into it would produce a blast more forceful than TNT. This means, my dear readers, that dropping IT -- that pretty blue bottle -- would produce that same blast.
This explosive, it would seem, was meant as the trigger to ignite or combust all of the other chemicals we found in the house. Here's a brief listing of some of the others: Ammonium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrate, Potassium Hydroxide. . . Sorry, I've got to stop. I'm getting a little woozy.
Crazy, silly, stupid, ignorant, me decided (at first) that all of these things were really little more than a nuisance. They were in our way and would prevent us from getting work underway immediately. Therefore, I made the executive decision that all of the various bottles throughout the house should be brought together in the garage and placed in the nifty little wooden box sitting there with six or eight others inside it. Great idea, right?
Wrong, Brad! Bad Brad. Bad. Very, very bad. Ignorant me had just assembled all of the bomb-making materials into one nifty little package -- one convenient location as they say.
I was still in the land of the innocent and naive thinking that this was nothing. I was still thinking about all those people who had seen these same things and done nothing. I was still unaware that God, or fate, or some higher power had decided that Michael and I were to take care of this. Finally, I was still unaware that sometimes someone has to give a shit and that someone was Michael and me.
In the legal world there is a legal term of art known as the "Dead Hand," or, sometimes, the "Mortmain." Translated, it is the hand reaching from the grave to control various property interests in the present and future. There are Dead Hand Statutes and long old lines of court cases against control by the Dead Hand. But did they stop this Dead Hand? Not for an instant.
Because the moment I touched the little blue bottle and gathered all of its exciting, strange-named friends together in the garage, I was under the control of a dead hand. The person who had brought these things to this house was long dead. To be sure, he could never again assemble them as I had just done. But when an ignorant house flipper trying to tidy up came along -- yes, that's me -- the dead hand reached from the grave and a bomb was one step closer to being born.
Evil was afoot. All that dead hand had to do now was to get someone to pull the trigger. Was that going to be me?
Here's the spooky part: the Dead Hand tried its best that day. After picking up the blue bottle once and setting it back into the box, I gathered all of the other bottles together and went about my business. Several times after that -- I mean at least three, if not four times after that -- I went back to that box trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with it. Each time I went back I picked up that little blue bottle and tried to process what it meant. "Explosive When Dry. . . Do Not Touch to Metal" What did this mean. What was I supposed to do with this?
Luckily, I'm not completely ignorant. And, luckily, I care about the environment. You see, if I had thought that these were nothing more than household chemicals or something inert or harmless, I would have gleefully tossed the entire wooden box, bottles and all, into the large blue-green trash can provided by the City of Albuquerque for regular pickup on Wednesday mornings. If it didn't blow up the instant I tossed it into that container, it almost certainly would have gone "Boom" when it was compacted in the back of the City's trash truck. If not then, it would have done so at the landfill where the 20-ton compactor on wheels got to work.
I also believe that all the aforementioned people -- dozens of them -- who had been in that house before us had known that these bottles were dangerous and had simply told themselves it wasn't their job or their responsibility. They knew that they couldn't throw these things in the trash either or they would have done so. They were lazy, or irresponsible, or incompetent, or afraid. They did nothing because they hoped that eventually someone else would. They obviously had no thought or care for the consequences of a simple accident involving these bottles. It's a shame, really. And it's a damned good thing that I'm able to tell you this story today.
So, I found a phone book. I looked up listings in the Yellow Pages for "Hazardous Waste Disposal" and "Environmental Waste." I found a few companies and started calling them on my cell phone. Turns out that none of them are actually based here in Albuquerque. They all have answering services who will only contact someone immediately if it's an emergency. I said it was, and after about a half dozen calls and about an hour of waiting, someone finally called me back.
"Bill" wasn't his name, but it'll work for now. He was on his cell phone, standing at the Albuquerque Sunport waiting for a plane to Denver where his office actually is. "I understand you have an emergency of some sort. Tell me what you've got," he said calmly.
"I don't know for sure what I've got, Bill. All I know is that I probably shouldn't throw this stuff in the trash. I mean, one of them has a funny sounding name -- Picric Acid, I think. . . "
An audible gasp comes through the airwaves. "What? Where are you?"
"I'm at a house. . ."
"A HOUSE?" he practically screams. "What house? Here in Albuquerque?"
"Yes, we're getting ready to start renovations and today's our first day here. We found a little bottle marked Picric Acid and some others like Ammonium Nitrate and stuff I can't remember off the top of my head. Is this something you guys can properly dispose of?"
His words are rushed now. "Well, yeah, but I'm trying to figure out what it's doing in a house. I mean, that's some pretty nasty stuff there, Brad. Have you handled it? I mean, have you touched it? Did you open it? Is there something in that bottle?"
"I don't know if there's anything in it. I can't see through the blue glass. . . "
"Glass, good! Does it have a metal lid?"
"Don't know."
"Look. . ." There was a long pause. "I'm at the airport getting ready to fly home. Why don't you put together a list of all the stuff you got there and fax it to me. Here's my number. . . OK, when I get to Denver, I'll go to my office tonight and look at the list. Can I reach you at this number later tonight?"
"Yes."
"Okay. Fax me that list and I'll call you later."
"I was wondering, is this something your company usually handles? I mean, should I call someone else, and if so, who?"
"No, no. You don't need to call anyone else. We can do this. You haven't called the fire department or the city or anyone like that have you?"
"No, you're the first person I've talked to."
"Good. Don't call the City. You'll have a major mess on your hands if you do."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, Bill. You're the expert. I'll fax you that list right away. Talk to you later."
We hung up. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Whew," I told Michael. "Looks like this guy can take care of this stuff. Although he did ask some funny questions. I wonder why he was worried about whether we had handled it? He also said don't call the City."
So, I went BACK into the garage and picked up each bottle AGAIN and read off the names and spellings of each chemical as Michael wrote them down on a sheet of paper. I set each one back down AGAIN. As I look back now, I realize that The Dead Hand was working furiously now. It was trying it's damnedest to trigger that bomb.
But it didn't happen. Thank God! Not then, at least. Not in my presence.
Unfortunately, "Bill" never called me back that night. Nor did he call me the next day. Three days later, in fact, I finally heard from Bill, but by then it was too late. God, Fate, the Higher Power, intervened. You see, we didn't wait for Bill. When he didn't call back as promised, we didn't sit on our hands. I called his number, got the answering service and got no return call.
I remembered that audible gasp of his. I remembered his strange questions and his "instructions" not to call the fire department. I knew that something BIG was wrong and I knew we couldn't wait. We weren't going to wait. That's not who we are.
Tune in next time for the conclusion.
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