Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too, Joe.”

Look at that. Just like a married couple.

“Listen, you’ve got my gun,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t be too concerned with where we meet.”

“I don’t trust you, Joe.”

“It’s a house where I killed somebody.”

“They still there?” Her voice picks up an octave. I shake my head, even though I’m on the phone.

“Previous victim. The place smells like death, though. I can even give you a guided tour.”

“Is this the place you took the whore to the other night?”

“That’s the one,” I say, knowing she followed me there and killed the hooker I had in the trunk of the car while I was inside.

She seems to like this idea. “I’ll meet you there at six o’clock, Joe. Don’t make me wait.”

She hangs up. Damn it, that doesn’t give me long. I catch the bus. Don’t want to steal a car. Of all the times to be caught, today would be it. I can sense it. The day is warming up, as if summer is making one last stand and it’s doing it this evening. Christchurch weather. Schizophrenic heat and all that.

I reach the house and enter my final evening as the Christchurch Carver.

I decide to pass the house and keep walking. It’s five forty-five. I walk to the end of the block, then come back. I don’t spot any odd-looking vehicles. No signs of a stakeout. No Melissa. It’s suburbia at the height of normalcy.

Walking the front path to the doorstep feels like coming home. I’ve been here so many times over the last few weeks it’s becoming a regular part of my life. The husband of the dead woman will probably start charging me rent. At least this will be my final time here. I take the sights in without any feelings of nostalgia. No tears to be shed.

The house is still warm. Seems it will stay that way until winter kills off every green thing in sight. If the police have been here today, now will be the time they burst in to apprehend me. Not that they will, of course. They’re not here. I’m sure of it. However. .

I close my eyes. Wait. Count off a slow minute in which I listen to every sound in the house and in the street. A lawn mower, some woman shouting to her son to hurry up, a car moving by. Inside all I can hear is my own breathing. If the cops are here, I’ll tell them that I thought it was part of my job to clean this place. That I thought it was an extension of police headquarters since dozens of detectives have been here a few times now. I’ll mispronounce extension and pause for a few seconds looking for a replacement.

I open my eyes. Nothing. I’m still alone.

When I reach the bedroom I move straight through to the bathroom and smile at the man bound to the chair inside. At some point during the night, or perhaps today, he has pissed himself. The room stinks and he’s a mess, the whole scene is somewhat sad and pathetic.

I meet his eyes and see the hatred I saw last night. They’re red and puffy as though he has been rubbing them, but I know he hasn’t. He looks like he hasn’t slept since I saw him yesterday. His shirt is hanging out, and the collar is stained with blood. His arms are red from trying to break the tape and rope. Even his short hair looks ruffled. Flecks of blood have dried on the surface of the duct tape. The right side of his jaw has turned a dark gray. A large bump has risen on the front of his forehead. He must know they’re there, since he can get a good view of himself in the mirror.

“No, no, don’t get up,” I say, putting out my hand. He doesn’t laugh, or for that matter, even attempt to make conversation.

“Okay, Detective Inspector, here’s the deal. Twenty grand buys your ears and your mind, okay? Just don’t forget I have the gun, and I also have a tape of last night’s conversation.” I show him the tape recorder that’s been living inside a potted plant for months. “You try anything, or anything happens to me, that tape goes to your colleagues. Nod if you understand.”

He understands.

“Here’s the thing. In another,” I glance at my watch, “five minutes, we’re going to have a visitor. She’s going to be coming up here, and she’s going to be blackmailing me. However, like you, she’s also a murderer. I imagine you’ll recognize her. It’s your job to remain quiet here in the bathroom. Once she’s confessed, I’ll open up the door, she’ll see you, and she’ll be just as incriminated as you and I are. What we’ll have then is a three-way stalemate. Agreed?”

He grunts.

“I’ll take that as a yes. ”

Another grunt. He shakes his head, perhaps seeing a problem with the plan, but it doesn’t matter. I close the door, then wait on the edge of the bed with my briefcase and without the eighty thousand dollars.

Ten minutes later I hear the front door downstairs open. I stay where I am. She’ll find me without too much difficulty.

This is it. This is where my phases and plans have led me.

I hear Melissa walk into the kitchen. The fridge door opens. Then it closes. Are we really that alike? I hope not.

A minute later she comes up the stairs.

“Damn hot up here, Joe.”

I shrug. “No air-conditioning.”

“I’m surprised there’s still any power to this place. That the money?” she asks, nodding toward the briefcase.

“Uh huh.”

I keep staring at her. She’s more beautiful than the night we met. More beautiful than the day she blackmailed me. Her black miniskirt is showing long, tanned legs. She’s wearing a dark purple jacket, which matches her purple shoes. Her blouse is silky black. She is going for some type of power dressing look, and succeeding. She steals a look at her expensive-looking watch. Once again I wonder what she actually does, and how she gets her money. Maybe she really is an architect.

“Got a date?” I ask.

She laughs. “You can always make me smile, Joe.”

“I try.”

“Actually I was just seeing how long it was going to take you to cut the crap and give me my money.”

I lean back on the bed. “I still have some concerns.”

“Oh, is that so. Well, poor little Joe, tell Melissa all about it.”

“Once I give you the money, what’s stopping you from going to the police anyway?”

“I’m a lovely person, Joe. I’d never lie.”

Yeah. Damn lovely. “You lied to me.”

“You’re lie-worthy.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Come now, Joe. What you’re buying here is trust. What kind of world is this if we can’t all trust one another? Once I have the money, everything I have on you, Joe, goes in a safe place so if something should happen to me,” she waves her hand around in the air, “oh I don’t know-maybe something along the lines of having my throat cut-then what I have on you goes to the cops. And only then.”

“And how do I know you won’t keep coming back for more?”

She shrugs. “I guess you don’t.” She lets her words hang in the air. She’s thinking she’ll be back for more money at some point.

“So how does it feel to be up here,” I ask, “in the presence of death?”

“There’s nothing dead up here.”

“There was.”

“Where did you kill them?”

I stand up and walk to the opposite corner, so now I’m standing along the same wall as the bathroom door, but at the other end. “I killed each of them on the bed,” I say, taking the credit for Daniela Walker’s death.

“This bed?”

It’s unmade, the blankets and sheets wrinkled from use. You can still see dried drops of blood. “That’s the one.”

She makes her way toward it. I can clearly see the Glock in her hand. My Glock. Even as she studies the bed she keeps the weapon pointed at me. Steadily.