Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

I forgo the massage parlors where the women are monitored by violent men with dirty money and bad reputations. The men who frequent them, if not regulars, are caught on surveillance or, at the very least, remembered. This isn’t the kind of place a policeman visits unless he’s swapping sex for leniency. The other factor I have to consider is the availability of women prepared to be paid to live out the perverted fantasy of the killer. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in parlors without a lot of people knowing about it. A policeman doesn’t want a lot of people knowing about it. He doesn’t want repercussions such as blackmail and extortion.

The first hooker I talk to has a deep voice that’s almost scary. I don’t get a name from her and don’t want one. Even after I’ve identified myself as a policeman, she still asks me if I want to fuck her. I say no. She shows me some nipple, and I still say no. Even if my testicles were intact I wouldn’t put them near her. She doesn’t recognize any of the photos.

The second hooker doesn’t either. At this point I’m deciding not to say I’m a policeman, but a concerned citizen, and she asks me anyway if I’m a cop. She wears a red wig large enough to conceal a small handbag.

I go from slut to whore, hooker to skank, showing them the pictures and getting no helpful response from any of them. My ball starts throbbing as I walk from corner to corner. Of the prostitutes I talk to, none definitely recognizes any of the four men. Some of them find it hard to remember. I give them money, and it doesn’t help. I’m having a bad run. The handgun. The knife. Now I’m paying for information that I’m not even getting, and getting wet in the process.

Monday night is less than an hour from Tuesday when my luck starts to change.

I encounter two prostitutes who I believe actually do recognize one of the four photographs, silencing the small voice in the back of my mind telling me this was a waste of time. It speaks again, though, when each of the two women recognizes a different picture.

The first woman, Candy (that’s right-sixty hookers, maybe seven names), points to the photo of Detective Inspector Schroder. Carl. I can’t be sure she isn’t just recognizing him from being interviewed last week for the same reasons. For only four hundred dollars, Candy will show me what she let Schroder do to her.

The second woman, Becky, points to one of the out-of-town cops. Detective Calhoun. From Auckland. Robert. I ask what he’d wanted. She says for two grand, I can find out. Two thousand dollars compared with four hundred. I figure for a street hooker to claim two grand for a performance it has to be one hell of a repertoire.

Two grand. Sure. Why not. I have the money.

I walk Becky to my car and drive her to the Walker residence. I was here earlier in the evening, just after I stole the car. I removed the police tape from inside and hid away any evidence markers. I checked at work today to see if the house was still under surveillance. The answer was no. I open the door and the smell hits me again. The place needs some fresh air.

Becky doesn’t mention the smell. Perhaps she doesn’t notice.

We walk into the kitchen and make small conversation as I offer her a drink, then I remember I’ve taken all the beer already. I open the fridge and it’s been cleaned out, all the expired food has gone, just empty shelves now.

“Just water,” Becky says, and I feel relief.

Becky looks like she’s in her early twenties, but I imagine her life has given her the maturity of somebody twice her age. She has black hair that is completely straight and hangs over her shoulders. Her eyes are slightly bloodshot, but in them flicker the signs of a sad intelligence. They’re pale green and look like they’d make a nice set of marbles. She’s wearing a tight, black, short leather miniskirt. Knee-high leather boots. No bra, and a dark red camisole does little to hide her firm breasts. She wears a thin, black leather jacket that rides up her back and has about a million tassels hanging from it. I like the touch of irony in the small silver crucifix hanging around her neck. The selection of cheap jewelry across her fingers looks plastic. Her diamond studs are cubic zirconia or possibly even glass. She has a small handbag that’s probably full of condoms, money, and tissues.

My legs are sore from walking around and, more importantly, my crotch is killing me. I sit down at the kitchen table opposite her and slowly start drinking from a glass of water. As requested earlier, I open my wallet and produce two thousand dollars in cash. I’d withdrawn three grand from the bank. Right now, I hand two-thirds of it over to Becky.

I figure I’ll be getting it back.

She sits opposite me and, while drinking her water, she counts through the money twice, as if she thinks she’s being ripped off. I watch her face as she studies each of the notes. Her lips are moving as she counts. A smile flickers across her mouth. I’ve already paid her, and she hasn’t done a thing yet. I can see her thinking she’ll shorten her version of the erotica she possibly shared with Detective Robert Calhoun. I can also see her already spending it. She’s thinking about taking the week off, or buying a trip to Fiji.

“Shall we?” I ask.

She takes her jacket off. “You want to do it here?”

“Upstairs.”

I pick up my briefcase and walk upstairs. At the top I head for the master bedroom then stop, turn back, and head for the kids’ bedroom instead.

“Hot up here,” she says.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

I walk into the children’s bedroom.

“In here?” she asks, tossing her handbag onto the first of two single beds.

“You need more room?”

She shakes her head. “Kind of kinky.”

“Kind of,” I agree.

Here will be good for two reasons. First, I want some variety with this house. Life is a routine and all that stuff. Second, the smell of death isn’t embedded in the sheets.

We sit down on opposite beds. She begins by leaning back so I can see up her skirt. She’s wearing no underwear for quick access.

“What can you tell me about him?” I ask.

“Who?”

“The man in the photograph.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

She shrugs. Looks disappointed, though I don’t know why. Wouldn’t she rather be paid for talking than acting?

“Well, he paid me two thousand dollars to let him do pretty much what he wanted.”

“Two grand buys that?”

“Two grand will buy a lot, honey.”

I guess it does. “How often have you seen him?”

“Just the once.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think.”

“Could have been a month ago. Maybe two.”

For a woman like this, time doesn’t have too big a meaning. She probably has a baby back at home, being looked after by some drug-infested friend who has got off the game but is too damn lazy to make the effort to get her friend off too. Becky will be spending her money on cigarettes and weed, and she’ll be sitting back in one of her tie-dyed dresses, smoking in front of the baby. She’ll be girlfriended to three or four guys-each with criminal convictions for burglary, drug possession, and assault. There’ll be bruises on her thighs that will never heal, but the pain is masked by the drugs. She’ll have no long-term goals other than to stay alive and stay inside a drug-afflicted world. To wake from the nightmare she lives in would be to wake to a reality that as a little girl she never believed could exist. Life wasn’t supposed to be like this.

She was her daddy’s little princess.

I know these people. They’re of no use to the community other than to take up space. They spit out babies, not because they can’t afford contraception when their welfare checks go toward getting high, but because with every baby that comes along they receive another one of those government subsidies that’s never enough to raise a kid properly. This is Becky’s world. Some just can’t escape, or don’t know what to escape to. I wonder if she even knows she’s trapped there.