The Cleaner (37 page)

A brief description of the man?

Sure. Why not? I give a brief description of Calhoun before hanging up on more questions. It’s nothing like the picture of “me” hanging in the conference room.

When I get home, I take about three steps before sensing something is different, but I can’t figure out what. It’s as if somebody has come through here and shifted everything a few degrees out of whack. I stand in one spot, turning a complete circle, but in the end I can’t come up with any tangible reason why I should feel something is out of place. It’s just a feeling. Maybe Melissa has been back here. Maybe she hasn’t.

I slip on a pair of latex gloves and put my hands under the mattress, searching for the parking ticket I kept as a memento months ago. Only I can’t find it. I bury my arms in until I’m up to my shoulders, swirling them around, searching, searching . . . but it’s gone.

Melissa?

Why would she even look here?

But I already know why. People hide things under their mattresses all the time. It was stupid of me to hide the ticket there.

But then I remember flipping the bed when trying to get hold of that stupid cat. I get down on my hands and knees and look under it, and sure enough, there’s the ticket. I put it in my briefcase, then take off my gloves.

After walking a few blocks, I use the usual mode of illegal transport to make my way to the house where I’m meeting Calhoun. Each of us is intending to kill the other, though, supposedly, neither of us knows that. By the time I get there it is five forty. I’m sure I’ve beaten Calhoun because he has a long day dealing with the dead.

I park several blocks away and walk. The night is as cold as the morning, and I fear winter may end up being just as long
as summer. When I reach the house, I suddenly have this fear that maybe the residents have moved back in and family life is under way again. I suck in a few deep breaths. No, if anybody was living here, I’d have heard about it by now.

I use my skills to unlock the front door and use my foot to close it behind me. I stand still in the hallway and listen for sounds of life. No one here. The bedroom seems the place to be, since it has the most history now, so I head there first. I open my briefcase and, regretting the lack of a firearm that could end this whole drama quickly, I pull out a hammer. Under the circumstances it’s the best I can do. But looking at it, the hammer seems the wrong way to go—too easy to end up putting a hole in his skull and killing him. I head to the kitchen to look for something better. I return to the bedroom, now the proud owner of a large frying pan. It’s nonstick.

I sit on the bed and watch the hands on my watch tick around, waiting for Detective Calhoun to arrive.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

She’s sick of not knowing. Sick of the questions. Sick of being sick.

At four fifteen, Sally leaves work. She doesn’t need to justify leaving early. Others here know her father is in bad shape and that she wants to spend time helping him. Not that anybody would notice—it’s been a very active day in the world of a homicide detective. She’s always hated days like this, and hates that they come around so often.

At four twenty, when she reaches the parking building, Henry isn’t here. She isn’t sure whether she ought to be disappointed or flattered that he must only show up at four thirty for her. She doesn’t know whether to feel used or wanted.

She drives past the police station, does a U-turn, and finds a parking spot on the opposite side of the road. Four thirty arrives, but Joe fails to. She can never remember him not leaving exactly at four thirty. Has he left already?

She waits another five minutes. Still no Joe.

Just what are you doing? Planning on following him around? Still trying to help him?

Exactly. She wants to see if he’s meeting anybody. Perhaps the woman he spoke to earlier in the week, the witness from the police station. Five minutes later, she starts the car and, disappointed, pulls away. She wasn’t comfortable about waiting anyway.

She’s at a red light when she sees Joe in the rearview mirror on the sidewalk. The lights turn green. She doesn’t know what to do. A car behind her starts tooting. By the time she turns around, Joe’s already disappeared. He’s probably already on the bus.

She starts driving to the graveyard, but a few minutes later she finds she’s not actually going in that direction, but back toward Joe’s apartment. She needs to talk to him away from the station. She hopes talking doesn’t turn into confronting. She parks down the street and decides to wait twenty minutes at the most. He arrives in half that time.

She waits in the car imagining the outcome of their talk and trying to figure out whether she should go and knock on his door, or just drive away. Plus sits waiting to see if anybody else is coming to see him, and all that waiting takes the decision to talk to him out of her hands because Joe is only in his apartment for a few minutes before coming back out. He starts walking away from her. She begins to follow him. By the time she rounds the corner, he’s turning left down another street. She slows down a little. She has never followed anybody before, and she suddenly realizes she isn’t very good at it. She inches her car closer to the corner, and is about to go around it when Joe appears from the left, driving through the intersection.

In a different car from the one she saw him in last time.

She keeps pace with him, trying to keep a car between them, until he slows down in an upper-class area and pulls over to the curb. Sally keeps on driving, watching him in the
rearview mirror. He climbs out and walks to the end of the block, his briefcase swinging slightly back and forth with his momentum.

She follows him to a two-story house, where he heads up the path and disappears from sight within the alcove of the front door. Something about the house is familiar, but she can’t figure out what. And if it were something as innocent as meeting a friend, why would Joe park a short distance away? Why not just up the driveway? People who park a few blocks away are normally people who are having affairs, she thinks. Parking a few blocks away is definitely an affair kind of thing to do, but Joe isn’t an affair kind of guy. He’s not a . . . a what? Well, he’s not a sexual kind of guy. He’s Joe. He’s like her brother. Only Joe can drive and sneak around and can steal and lie.

She drums her fingers against the steering wheel. She wishes she had the confidence to go and knock on the door and ask Joe what is happening, but if he is in danger, she may only cause him more grief.

Ten minutes pass. Twenty. After a while, Sally starts to realize she’s whispering a prayer. She wants Joe to reappear and carry on; she wants him to be okay. Maybe something bad is happening to him, and all she’s doing is sitting out here and waiting, letting the bad things happen to Joe the same way she let the bad things happen to Martin five years ago.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she mutters, hitting the palm of her hand against her forehead.

Then, a few minutes later, a car pulls into the driveway and a man climbs out. She’s slightly too far away to recognize him, but, like the house, something about the man is familiar. He moves quickly to the front door and steps inside.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Calhoun starts to turn as I make my way from behind the bedroom door. He raises his arm to protect himself from the swinging frying pan. He’s able to get his elbow in the way; the pan cracks into it, then deflects into his chest. He staggers backward, and I stumble forward, crashing into him. We both drop to the ground, and then he’s reaching into his jacket for his gun. My mind’s racing so fast that I have time to comprehend that I’m failing, time to ask why he never had his gun in his hand in the first place, time to speculate that he wanted me to trust him first so that he could learn what I knew. I make my way to my knees as he leans upward, and I can see the surprise in his face because he knows who I am, but that knowledge doesn’t make him any less desperate to kill me.

I crash my head forward, connecting with his forehead and hurting myself as much as him, but at least his hand falls away from the gun. Lights flare behind my eyes—a hundred, no, a thousand of them—all at once and all in the same shade of
white, but then the reds start to filter through, but compared to the pain I’ve known lately, this is nothing, and I’m quickly able to recover. I wobble back and the room spins only a little. I know Calhoun must be feeling the same way, just as I know I can’t give him a second chance. I’m still holding the frying pan, and I quickly decide to use it.

When I look at him, there are two Detective Calhouns, two bedroom doors, two of everything. I shake my head and the room keeps spinning, but the images begin to form into one. I roll my body, raise my heavy arms, and swing the pan against the side of his head. It connects with his cheekbone and jaw, possibly breaking the former and maybe dislocating the latter. He falls back to the ground and doesn’t move. Exhausted, I let the pan fall to the floor.

I roll him onto his front and bind his hands behind him, then tie his legs. When I try to open his mouth, I discover I’ve dislocated his jaw. Since I need to make conversation with him later, I grip hold of his mouth and try to move it back. Nothing happens. I tap it with the hammer—softly at first, then harder—and after a few blows it clicks back into place. I open his mouth and place the egg inside, then change my mind. I won’t risk the egg slipping to the back of his throat while he’s unconscious and killing him. I use a pair of the husband’s underwear to gag him instead.

By the time Calhoun wakes up I have him sitting in a chair I’ve brought up from the dining room. I’ve used rope to secure him to it and, because the chair has metal legs, even if he can somehow tip it over it won’t break. I wrap duct tape around his legs and reinforce them to the chair, and run more tape around his arms. Unless he’s Harry Houdini, he won’t be going anywhere.

I crouch in front of him. He’s staring at me, as if the face he saw before being knocked out couldn’t possibly be the one he’s seeing now. How is it possible that Joe—Joe the cleaner, Joe the fucked-up retard—is doing this to him? Can it be that
the man they’ve been looking for has been working for them all this time?

I nod, confirming that yes, it is not only possible, but better than possible.

He grunts, either to confirm his surprise, or to ask me why, or perhaps to test the gag in his mouth. Whatever the reason, he can’t sustain much of a noise. The pain in his jaw must be killing him. Blood hangs off his bottom lip. I want to tell him it’s nothing compared to having a testicle torn off, but I don’t want anybody else knowing about that.

“You killed her, didn’t you?”

“Uh-uh.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t ki’ any’ody.”

“Yes, you did.”

This time, shaking his head, he repeats himself. Almost. “No. No, I didn’t, you cwasy fasdid.”

I think he has just called me a crazy bastard. Perhaps I am. Perhaps that’s my problem. I test his theory by standing up and punching him in the stomach.

Will you look at that? He was right. Only I’m a bastard who needs to make a deal.

“I’m going to take off your gag,” I say, leaning forward once more. “You know the drill. If you don’t, then assume it. Any sound,” I say, raising the knife to his mouth, “has an unpleasant ending for you. Nod if you understand.”

I’m still being a bastard, because I’m holding the tip of the blade directly beneath his chin, so as he nods, he keeps pricking himself. I ensure this by raising the knife higher every time his head rises. In the end, he nods with his eyes. I use the knife to cut his gag. It falls away and hangs around his neck like a collar.

“Better?”

He nods. In fact, his whole body is nearly nodding.

“You can talk, you know. That’s the point of removing the gag.”

“Listen, Joe, do you know who I am?”

It’s a stupid question, but I answer it anyway. “Of course I do.”

“Now, do you understand that it’s bad to do this? It’s bad to tie people up. Especially policemen.”

“I’m not a moron.”

“No. No of course you’re not. I understand life is difficult for . . . for, well, for special people like yourself. I understand . . .”

I hold my hand up. “Listen, Bob, let me stop you right there. Just because I’m a cleaner doesn’t mean I’m a Goddamn moron, okay? You need to start realizing I’m not the same idiot you’ve seen every day since you’ve been in this city.”

He tilts his head slightly as he takes this information in, and slowly he starts to do the realizing he needs to do. He comes to the conclusion that I’m not Slow Joe, but Angry Joe. I’m Superintelligent Joe.

“Look, Joe, I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that, well, it was one hell of an act. You can’t blame me for being fooled,” he says, which sounds like an attempt at flattery.

“No, I can’t blame you, but you can stop sucking up, Bob.”

“You haven’t crossed the line here yet. If you let me go, I can forget this ever happened. We can both carry on with our normal lives. Once you do something, though, once you hurt me, there’s nothing I can do to help you out. You understand that, right? If I’m dead, I’m useless, right? Okay? You’re obviously an intelligent guy, I’m sure you understand. And I’m sure you know a useless dead cop means trouble for you, Joe, and neither of us wants any trouble, right?” he says, which is his way of assuming that neither of us wants a dead cop. “We both know that. It’s just too much hassle. So how about you untie me, huh? Untie me and we can discuss any concerns you have. We can talk about what you want.”

“Don’t you want to know what we’re going to be talking about?”

“Sure I do, Joe, sure I do, but you’ve got to untie me first,
okay? Untie me and give me back my gun, and we’ll go downstairs, or wherever you want to go because it’s up to you, I promise. This is your ball game and you’re calling all the shots here, so we’ll go where you want to go and we can discuss whatever it is you have in mind, no matter how long it takes.”

“No guesses as to who I am? Other than Joe the Janitor?”

“You’re just the cleaner. Joe the cleaner. Nobody else. I don’t care if you’re anybody else, and if you are, then it’s none of my business. You can be anybody for all I care. But to me you’re just the cleaner. Just Joe. Joe who hasn’t committed any crimes other than making us all think you were slow. How about it, Joe? How about you untie me?”