Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

“I’m not on anything.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“Do you know who this is, Detective?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“I’m the person you’re looking for.”

“Look, if this is a joke, I’m not laughing.”

I’m nodding down the phone line, like people do even though nobody can see them. At least I’m not waving my hands around. “You know I’m not joking.”

“How did you get this number?”

“We’re getting off track, Detective. Now, let’s get to the point,” I say, scratching at my testicle. The itch is getting worse.

“What point is that?”

I walk over to the window. Look out at the city. “Tonight’s point, or moral, is that I know you have a sexual dysfunction that you attempt to put right by using prostitutes, and that that dysfunction has led to murder.”

Rather than denying anything, or abusing or threatening me, he says nothing. We both stay that way for almost half a minute. I know he’s still there: the sound of the open phone line hums loudly.

“This is bullshit,” he eventually says, but doesn’t hang up.

“That’s not what Charlene Murphy thought when you took her to the Everblue. And I’m sure Daniela Walker would say differently too. Well, if you hadn’t killed her.”

He’s silent for a few more seconds while he absorbs the fact that I know exactly what he’s done. “What is it you want?” he finally manages to ask.

“Money.”

“How much?”

“Ten grand.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“Where?”

“Cashel Mall.”

“I can’t risk being seen paying somebody off. How about somewhere more secluded?”

“Like where?” I ask, knowing he would ask this.

I can imagine exactly what he’s thinking. His speedy answers are proof of that. He’s suddenly inside that game he told me he didn’t have time for. Like chess, he’s setting me up, but again like chess, I can see it coming. I’m half a dozen steps ahead of the guy. Nobody’s going to have ten thousand dollars on them, ready to make a payoff in thirty minutes, and nobody is going to want to make that payoff a few hundred meters from the police station in which they work. But he’s seeing an ideal opportunity to eliminate me as a risk. Because I’ve sprung this on him pretty quickly, he hasn’t had long enough to think it through properly. He thinks he’s doing a pretty good job. Being clever. Being smarter than me. But I’ve been thinking through this all day. He’s going to ask for somewhere way less public and much more secluded.

“You know where the Styx Bridge is?” he asks.

“Out Redwood way, right?” I ask. I went over it the other night to reach the highway when I took Walt for a drive.

“Meet me at ten o’clock underneath it. Don’t try anything funny.”

I’m no comedian. “I won’t.”

“How do I know ten grand buys your silence?”

Good question. I’m surprised he’s asked this, considering he can’t afford to fuel me with any suspicion that he’s preparing to kill me. Again, I’ve been thinking about this all day knowing he had no choice but to ask it.

“For ten grand, I’ll give you both the photographs and negatives of you at the Everblue. I’ll give you the negatives and photographs of you leaving Daniela Walker’s house on the night she died. And on top of that, if I wanted more money, I’d be asking for more. I just want enough to get out of the city before the cops close in on me.”

“Ten o’clock then.” He hangs up without waiting for a response. He’s realized I’m cleverer than he first thought, I’m clever enough to have photos of him from the crime scene, and he’ll wonder how this is even possible. It’ll take him a while, but in the end he’ll conclude that I’m lying. I look at my watch. I have more than three-quarters of an hour not to show up. Plenty of time not to do several things.

Plenty of time not to kill.

I reach down and scratch at my testicle through the padding, realizing it isn’t my remaining testicle that has me in discomfort, but the missing one. The itch is where the skin is mending. Melissa left me some disinfectant and some talcum powder. I grab them from my briefcase and sit down on the edge of the bed. I remove the padding-it pulls at the hairs and I have to stifle a scream-then clean the area and sprinkle on the talcum powder. By the time I’m done, my testicle looks as though it’s been dusted for fingerprints. I replace the padding and lie down on the bed and focus on not falling asleep. The problem is the bed is so comfortable I’m wondering if I can somehow steal it.

The graveyard is mostly deserted. It’s late to be out here, but Sally wanted somewhere quiet to think. She parks next to a car that has a guy inside it slowly drinking from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. He looks at her and she can see pain in his eyes and for a moment she wants to help him, to tell him that things will get better, but she isn’t so sure it’s true, not for this guy. She’s seen him out here before, and she’s seen him around the police station a few times too, talking mostly to Detective Schroder. She thinks he used to work there. She doesn’t know his story, and doesn’t want to ask.

She makes her way to her brother’s grave. Long blades of grass, those close to the gravestones missed by the lawn mower, are bending under the weight of the dew. Other than going to church, she feels like the cemetery is the closest place to God.

Last night, rather than having some of her questions answered, Sally was only led further down the path of her confusion. No, further into the world of Joe’s fiction. Just how much is he lying about? Did he attack himself?

She thinks about the blood on the stairs at his apartment building. If Joe attacked himself, he must have done it outside. It doesn’t seem likely. As unlikely as Joe driving? She knows she needs to confront him. She was going to today at work, but she’d become scared. She didn’t want to lose Joe. Though, really, that has probably already happened. Maybe his mother hasn’t told him yet of her visit, but she soon will.

She wipes the back of her hand across her face, streaking the tears across her cheeks. Her breath is forming a mist in front of her face. She doesn’t want to let Joe down.

The same way you let down your brother?

The tears start to come more freely. Nobody blames her for what happened to Martin, at least that’s what they say, but she knows they do. She certainly does. Her parents must do. As for Martin and God, well, one day she’ll find out. She pulls out a tissue from her pocket and dries her face. Across the graveyard, mist looks as though it’s seeping out of the ground. Fog is hanging around the gravestones but doesn’t have the strength to climb any higher. By the time she gets back to her car her legs feel damp.

She turns the heater on to full as she drives to Joe’s apartment. The hot air dries her legs and her face. Sometimes on the way home from seeing her dead brother, she can’t stop the tears.

She parks in the same spot she parked in the first time she came here. She grabs the first-aid kit from the backseat. She will help Joe by removing the stitches before she will help him by confronting him.

Nobody appears as she makes her way up to the top floor. The small splotches of blood are still on the stairs. Some of them have been smeared to the size of a watch face. She knocks, but nobody answers. A cat appears at the end of the hallway and walks down to her. It has a slight limp. She squats down next to it and starts petting it.

“Hey, little one, aren’t you just the cutest?”

The cat meows as if to agree, then starts purring. She knocks on the door again, still hunched down next to the cat. Joe doesn’t answer. Is it possible he has passed out again? Or been attacked? She knocks louder. Most likely he isn’t home, but what if he is? What if he is lying on his bed, bleeding, the other testicle removed?