Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

I stay feeling pretty bad for killing Little Miss Cripple as I’m leaving her house. She loved fish, and I loved fish. We lived alone with them. They were our friends. We were their gods. Before she was just a person I didn’t know, but now she’s somebody I can relate to. In another life, maybe we could have been friends. Or even more. I leave the front door open, figuring her body will be found quicker that way by a concerned neighbor or late-night burglar. The best I can do for her now is to hope she has a nice funeral. Before walking to my car, I check if I’ve got any blood on me. A few dark spots have flicked onto me, but they’re close to impossible to see on my dark overalls.

I drive directly to the hotel, make sure no policemen are around, then go to my room. Safely inside, I clean down the actual murder weapon, soak it in some bleach for ten minutes that I took from work, then roll it back into the plastic bag. Ideally I’d like to put it back where I got it, but this isn’t an ideal world. I’ll dump it elsewhere.

I remove the pad from my testicle, knowing that I’ll have to replace it soon. I sit on the edge of the bed first and examine my genitals in the mirror. I’m expecting to see this black, infected thing that will probably see me either in the hospital or in a morgue. What I see is wrinkled skin covered in dry blood and talcum powder, and as I dab it away with a damp corner of the towel, I see that Melissa’s work has been effective. The area is inflamed from all the scratching, and on closer examination, I see why it has been so itchy. The stitches are overdue for removal.

I don’t want Melissa making another visit to help me out, so I head into the bathroom and grab the small sewing kit that’s wrapped up in a matchbook-size box next to the soaps. With a towel beneath me on the bed, ever so slowly I use the needle to tug at the stitches, loosening them enough to then use one of my smaller knives to cut them. My whole groin, the base of my stomach, and the tops of my thighs start to hurt, but the pain is tolerable-the hardest part is knowing what will happen if I slip. But I don’t slip, and each thread vibrates through my body as I draw it through and away from the skin. I wonder if this wouldn’t be a better procedure if I were drunk, but decide that it probably wouldn’t be-not at the prices I’d have to pay to access the minibar. My sac begins to bleed, but only lightly.

I clean up and take a long shower. The nozzle is directional and I can control the pressure of the spray. It’s wonderful. My groin feels better, and I wonder why I didn’t become a surgeon instead of a cleaner. After half an hour, I climb out and towel myself down. All the blood is gone-both the cripple’s and mine. The throbbing has gone too and, better still, so has the itching. I’m recovering. I will never be the same, but I’m recovering nonetheless. I collapse between the cool sheets and close my eyes.

The next day is work as usual. The old guy giving the forecast earns his pay by getting things right. I guess he’s looking out the window at the frost rather than reading off the report in his hand. My biggest concern is running into Detective Calhoun. I use the stairs rather than the elevator, scratching at my crotch the entire way down. In the foyer a bunch of tourists is being given directions by the doorman in English, which they are having trouble understanding. A few taxi drivers carrying luggage to and from taxis. People checking in. People checking out. No Calhoun. I look outside. The storm clouds last night weren’t bluffing. Every surface I can see is wet.

I check out of the hotel. I keep looking around so often that the hotel clerk must think I’m paranoid. There aren’t any extra charges. The clerk asks me if I’ve had a pleasant stay, and I tell him I have. He asks me where I’m from, and I realize I can’t say Christchurch, because then I’d look like an idiot. Who the hell spends a few nights in a five-star hotel in their own city? I tell him I’m from up north. He asks me exactly where, and I suddenly understand why he is asking all these questions-he is hitting on me. I tell him Auckland, and he tells me he is from Auckland too. He tells me it’s a small world. I tell him it’s not small enough, and he has to think about this for a few seconds until he realizes that in my small world he wouldn’t even exist. I can actually see his thought process as his smile slowly disappears.

I walk to work. It’s one of those nothing kind of days, where it could end up being sunny or could end up raining but you just don’t know and don’t really care. I’m feeling good about a whole lot of different things, among them that my testicle isn’t itching this morning. Sally is on my floor when I get to work. She looks me up and down. She seems distracted.

“Do anything exciting last night?” she asks.

Here we go again, back to people’s fascinations about what other people do with their time. “Not much. Just stayed at home and watched TV.”

“Sounds nice,” she says, then walks off.

I begin my day with cleaning the toilets on the first floor. The body of the crippled woman is found. Tragic, apparently. Inhumane too, people are saying. A disgraceful country we must be living in, according to the news. Where will it end? people keep asking, but nobody asks me. In my office, I use a felt marker to darken the spots of blood on my overalls and make them look like ink stains.

While the stressed-out detectives look for the killer, I sit in my office and make a call with the cell phone. I sit with my chair against the door just in case Sally comes along and tries to come in.

Detective Calhoun answers. I apologize for not meeting him two nights ago. He tells me exactly what he thinks of me. We exchange a few more pleasantries before agreeing to meet once again, this time at six o’clock tonight, at the Walker house. Reluctantly, he agrees. Without thanking me, he hangs up.

After lunch, I listen closely to find out if the detectives are plotting to stake out the Walker place. Nobody makes any reference to it. Calhoun has kept the information to himself. That means he’s sticking with his game plan of killing me. Then suddenly everything around the station gets even busier. I don’t get the details, but enough to know another body has been found this morning-this one nothing to do with me. Some guy has gotten himself killed in a pretty nasty way at a church somewhere here in town. So the workload is doubled because now they have the dead woman in the wheelchair, and the dead guy at the church, and what they really need is twice as many cops.

Every half hour or so I run into Sally, but she doesn’t seem in the mood for talking. She’ll look at me from the end of a corridor or stairway, and she’ll stare at me with this look on her face that suggests she is lost, but not once does she come up to me and make the sort of inane conversation that makes me want to scream. I must admit I miss the lunches she makes, and I make a mental note to suggest my hunger to her so it may inspire her to start making them again.

Four thirty rolls along, and with it, the chance to enjoy my day. Back in my office I make another cell phone call, this one also to the police station. I ask to speak to somebody in homicide. When I say I may have some information, I’m transferred directly to Carl Schroder’s phone.

I skip the part where I’m supposed to give him my name, telling him I know how these things work, and although I’m willing to help, I’m not prepared to testify in court for reasons I don’t want to discuss, but which mostly involve my own safety. He disagrees with my fears, but doesn’t push it, probably because ninety-five percent of calls he gets are from crackpots. Regardless, he sounds desperate to know what I know. I tell him it isn’t what I know, but what I’ve found. I give him directions to the trash dumpster three blocks away from last night’s crime scene. When asked how I found it there, I answer by telling him I saw a man dropping it off, and once I learned of the murder today, I decided to call them.