MAKE $ 2,500-$ 3000 PER CALL

The grossest part of his job is going into a house to clean up simple blood and body matter and finding the home to be a war zone of trash, whiskey bottles, molding dishes or cat poop.

Crime-scene cleanup,

Larry Azuar opens the door to a home in a quaint and quiet neighborhood or maybe an apartment in a bad part of town. He looks hygienically dapper in a white disposable safety jumpsuit, a face mask, booties and latex gloves. He crosses the threshold, already privy to basic background information. Could be a suicide or homicide or the natural death of a man who has been decomposing for five weeks, his fragrance permeating everything porous--clothes, walls, carpet, photographs, tiles, guns--in his house.

Azuar undoubtedly has the worst of the so-called undesirable jobs and yet seems the easiest with what he does. He has the soothing voice of a counselor and a sincere and rich laugh, like the purr of a lion or the hearty hum of the engine on the golden-tan and sparkling chrome Harley Davidson motorcycle in his garage. He runs his own business with his girlfriend, Cathy Bradley. 

Azuar surveys the scene's landscape. A mangled and incomplete set of pearly whites sometimes smiles down from the ceiling. Sometimes an eyeball stares up from the floor, or an ear lies in wait behind a couch. Azuar works his way in and sprays all possible bodily fluids with a natural disinfectant; it kills 99.9 percent of blood pathogens.

"You have to have very good eyes," Azuar says. "I only have a couple people who work for me now and then, and we go back and forth sometimes and say, 'You missed one.' Sometimes we make a game out of it, too: 'Oh, there's some sushi over here.' Sushi is brain matter. You don't say, 'There's brain over here' because there are often people who can hear you."

About 40 percent of the time, family members are present while Azuar is on the scene, although he highly discourages it. He has to take away everything that has been contaminated by blood. It is too time-consuming, and thus money-consuming, to clean the smaller and often more personal items, such as photographs and trinkets.

"You have to put up somewhat of a barrier in this job," Azuar says. "You have to go in with the idea that you're in there to make it look like nothing ever happened. ... With just that on your mind, you kind of block out everything else."

It's not just the risk that bumps the price. When Azuar has to scrape teeth off of an asbestos-containing popcorn ceiling that's 16 feet above the living room floor--granted, that doesn't happen every day--the cost can leap through the roof. Dollars, though, aren't the only motivation.

"You know the pain people are going through, and at least you can make it easier for them. I've kind of always cared for people. Even though I'm not the warmest person in the world, I don't like to see people suffer. Families shouldn't have to clean up family."

When it comes to blood and guts, there is little that truly repulses Azuar. The most disgusting and disturbing things are often a person's living conditions.

"The worst job ever was a teargas situation, which was a four-day job with four people. It was so miserable even being in the house. At all times, you had to keep one eye completely closed and the other eye three-quarters closed."

Azuar's bloody business comes in spurts. Sometimes he gets five calls in a month, and sometimes he goes three months without a call.

As with all the worst jobs, humor comes in handy when dealing with subjects and situations that are anything but cheery.

"You have to use humor," says Azuar. "That's another reason I close the door when I go into a scene and the family's there, because we'll be joking, 'This dude's over here, man.' 'No, he's over here.' 'Well that guy's just all over the place.' I mean, you have to do things like that because if you sit there and think, 'Wow this is a person, or was a person,' it would drive you nuts. So you just kind of keep a friendly conversation going. Lighthearted is what you have to be."

Azuar smiles enticingly, laughs full-heartedly and, sounding almost serious, asks, "Wanna job?"