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GORDIE CULLIGAN VS. DR. LONGBEACH & THE HVAC OF DOOM by J. Steven York
I tell you, when I answered that ad in the back of Popular Mechanics long ago, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Sure, I expected steady work, good pay, excellent benefits, and the respect and admiration of my friends and family. That goes without saying.
But I never expected the intrigue, the danger, the adventure!
My name is Gordie Culligan, and I’m the man from HVAC. That’s Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning to you. God, I love the smell of a fried starter-capacitor in morning!
It was a day like any other day in the Los Angeles basin, but I felt something in the air. Possibly it was the unusual number of ominous, glowing, saucer-shaped clouds moving against the wind, or the swarms of atomic robot bats flapping their way east over Burbank, or the unusual number of electric dirigibles, blue arcs of lighting crackling between their protruding electrodes, that circled over the San Diego freeway. Maybe it was just the greenish tinge to the smog. But I knew something was up.
Now sure, I know if you don’t live in L.A., you’d consider any one of those things cause for alarm, but that’s why you live where you live, and I live in the greatest city in the world.
Sure, it was a little startling at first, but this is L.A., baby! You live here for a while, you see things like this every day, and nothing ever, ever comes of it, you just start to take it for granted. Sure, there are giant robots in Tarzana and giant beetles in Griffith Park, but when you’ve had Conan for a governor, nothing is that strange anymore.
By now, you’re probably saying, “Gordie, this is all very interesting and all, but what about the air-conditioning?” See it all ties in, and until recently, I didn’t know that. You see all those crazy things, and you take it for granted that nothing ever happens. By you know why nothing ever happens?
Because of guys like me, that’s why. HVAC saves the world, baby! That’s what this town is about!
So anyway, it was a routine call, a 318: “unexplained noise from blower.” I checked out the van and picked up Rudy, the apprentice the union had sent over. He was standing on the curb outside the break-room door, two coffee cups in his hands and a bagel bag under his arm.
He hopped in and put the cups in the holders, then pulled out a bagel for me. I looked at it skeptically through the plastic wrap.
Rudy stared at me, eyes wide, a look of concern on his squarish, freckled, face. “Sprouts and cream cheese, like you asked.”
I held it back toward him. “What are those seeds on the bagel, Rudy?”
“They’re seeds,” he said. “All seeds look alike to me, dude.”
“Your seed-blindness is probably why they kicked you out of Fresno, Rudy. Those are sesame seeds. I specifically asked for poppy.”
He kind of cringed back toward the door of the van and looked like a whipped puppy. I immediately felt bad. They hadn’t kicked Rudy out of Fresno, but that was where he was from. I think maybe he literally fell off a turnip truck. But somebody at the union must have felt sorry for him, or more likely, he had a uncle with seniority and a small wad of cash. In any case, he’d been taken in as an HVAC apprentice (service/install) junior grade with the Brotherhood of Subsystem Service Employees, and ended up with me.
Unlike a lot of guys, I don’t mind an apprentice. An extra set of hands comes in useful sometimes, you can send them into those dirty ducts and crawl-spaces, and they give the customer someone to yell at while you sneak off and get the job done uninterrupted. Based on our two weeks together, I’d decided that Rudy wasn’t a bad kid, if a little green. That didn’t keep me from riding his butt though.
I peeled back the plastic, took a bite of the bagel, turned up a Barenaked Ladies CD, and put the van into drive. Rudy seemed to relax, and I had to admit that, despite my black sense of foreboding, I was in a generally good mood too. The dispatch was to Long Beach, and that meant at least forty minutes on the freeway, which, since I was paid from the moment I left the shop, was free money.
The traffic was bad (hey, it’s L.A.!) and it took closer to an hour. Fine by me. I consulted the GPS screen and we threaded our way into an industrial section. As I drove, Rudy’s attention was drawn to something off in the distance. As we got nearer to the blinking red dot on the computer map, Rudy’s head tilted farther and farther back. I was too busy driving to figure out what he was looking at.
Finally, he asked, “Has there always been a volcano down here?”
I blinked in surprise and looked up from the SUV in front of me long enough to see the huge, smoking crater rising above the warehouses to our right, then glanced down at the map. “Nah,” I said, “can’t be.” But it sure looked like our air-conditioning service call was to an active volcano. “This is your lucky day,” I said. “I have the feeling this is going to be some heavy-BTU machinery we’re working on today.”
We zigged and zagged past small factories, warehouses, refineries, and auto-wrecking yards, and the cone just kept getting bigger and bigger.
“Did you ever see that movie,” said Rudy, “with Tommy Lee Jones?”
I nodded. “Volcano, costarring A
We drove up to the base of the volcano, which on closer inspection seemed to be made out of painted concrete sprayed over chicken wire. A big gas meter inside a chain-link enclosure suggested the source of the pyrotechnics at the top. I spotted a sign marked SERVICE ENTRANCE, with an arrow, and followed it around the base of the volcano to a kind of cave.
We drove inside to find a fairly standard looking loading dock with two roll-up delivery doors and a small man door to the right. I noticed a Lotus Elise, going 120 sitting still, parked incongruously in front of the loading dock. I shook my head. “Doesn’t that fool know this is Long Beach? It’s a wonder that thing isn’t stripped down to the frame already.” I shrugged again and parked the truck.
I sent Rudy up to the man-door on recon, and unloaded our gear from the back of the truck.
Rudy came back a minute later with a pink Post-it note in his hand. It read:
Dear AC People,
Gone to Radio Shack for some diodes. Gave minions the day off. Back in an hour. Please let yourself in through the crater (outside, trail to left).
Dr. Longbeach
I glanced at the work order. Sure enough, Dr. M. D. Longbeach was the customer name.
It looked like a long hike from the truck, so we went loaded for bear: toolbox, filter masks, a tank of R134a refrigerant (ozone friendly, if used as directed), a roll of trim-to-fit filter material, and two rolls of duct tape.
We quickly found the path, which was really more of a series of switchback ramps, disguised from view below by Styrofoam rocks and plastic plants. I work out three times a week, but I was still out of breath by the time we lugged all our gear to the top.
When we reached the lip of the crater we dropped our stuff and took a breather. There was a breeze off the harbor to the west. It had a taint of refinery stink, but it was at least cool. I took the time to size up what was waiting for us below, while Rudy admired the view.
“You can see the Queen Mary from here,” he said. Then he squinted and frowned. “Dude! Is that a giant octopus climbing the smokestacks?”