Clean Slate

Chapter 10

"So, Howdie," Flip said, studying his hand. "How's things with Gail?" He played a card. "Four."

Scoot dropped another four. "Eight for two." He moved his team's peg.

"Gail?" Howdie snorted. "History, man. Went back to her husband." He dropped the four of diamonds. "Twelve, for six! Ha!" He moved his team's peg six holes.

Mac, at the head of the table, gazed at his friends. This was the part of the game he most loved, the anticipation of playing a really huge card -- one that his team badly needed. "This another internet babe?" he asked Howdie. Then, holding up the card, he allowed it to drop onto the pile: the last four. "Sixteen, for twelve! Peg us up, Scoot."

Flip and Howdie expressed great consternation as Scoot advanced his team's peg twelve holes. In the real world, "Flip" was known as Phillip, of course; Howdie as Howard, Scoot as Scott. But when alone, the Fearsome Four still, without a bit of self-consciousness, went by their playground names.

"We're roaring back," Scoot told Mac.

"You wish," Flip said darkly. He played a nine. "Twenty-five."

"Thirty-one for two," Scoot said, playing a five. "Peg her, Smack."

Mac did so. His farmhouse kitchen was growing dim as the summer sun retreated beyond the wooded hills far in the distance. The four men sat around the big oblong country table, armed with sodas. From the living room, Mac's new CD player moved some rich raw R. L. Burnside through large floor speakers. They'd eaten pizza and shot the breeze; were playing cribbage and getting caught up; would finish the game and chat a bit. The three visitors would leave in time to be home up in the city by ten or so. Mac hoped Scoot would stick around. He needed a word.

"At least you got variety," Flip said to Howdie, dealing another hand. "I'm finishing my twenty with Glad this year, and sometimes -- I gotta be honest with you -- it gets old."

"Nothing quite as tasty as a dose of strange," Howdie said happily.

"‘Finishing my twenty'?" Mac echoed. "Make it sound like a prison sentence."

"Just another lifer in stripes," Flip grumped.

"Better than the two death row stretches I went through," Howdie observed.

"Not a problem for me," Scoot said comfortably. "Chieko and I, it's like we're still in college." He studied his cards, then played: "Seven."

"Maybe that's why I went back to college," Howdie said, laughing as he played an eight. "Fifteen two."

"You ever gonna finish up?" Mac asked. He played a nine. "Twenty-four, three. How many degrees does one guy need?"

Flip said darkly, "Howdie still doesn't know what he wants to do with his life." He played a six. "Thirty for four; puts us in the stink hole. Get ready to meet your maker, boyos."

"Help us out, partner," Mac implored.

Scoot, studying his cards, sighed. "Go."

"Shit," Mac muttered, watching Howdie.

"Ass is too good at the U ever to leave," Howdie said comfortably, and with a flourish played an ace. "Thirty-one for two. That's all she wrote, suckers."

Flip and Howdie, the winning partners, high-fived. The men eased back from the table, smiling, in that comfortable zone of guys who had been friends practically as far back as living memory. Howdie – hefty, balding, small blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses, always smiling, a most unbelievable sort of lady-killer -- swung his gaze on Mac. "So for a year gone you're still awfully quiet, Smackie. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"About what?" Mac asked genially.

Flip, the polar opposite of Howdie – slight, dark, ascetic, oozing CPA from every pore – said, "You're down here, and Suzanne's up there. What's up with that."

"We're still not right," Mac answered.

"I'm sure," Scoot said quietly.

"I can just bet," Howdie chimed in, as soberly as he ever got. Scraping chair legs, he lumbered to his feet. "Suzanne's a great gal, and there've been bigger fuckups in the world than you, Smack. In the fullness of time, you'll work it all out."

The others rose too, Mac as well. Flip, checking his watch, said, "Better high-tail it, boys. It's better'n 60 miles for me." Handshakes and hugs later, Howdie and Flip were gone. Scoot, as Mac expected, stayed behind, and Mac joined him on wicker chairs on the dark porch.

---

Right about then, as the sun finished its retreat behind the western hills of greater St. Marys, Earl Bucaro expertly backed the county-owned black Ford F-350 Super Duty pickup up just shy of the lip of the loading dock, killed the engine, and got out. "Come on, turds," he ordered, and the back door swung open to disgorge the two jerk-offs who'd come along to, as Earl thought of it, "help out." His selection process had been anything but scientific. All he'd done was tap the first two jerk-offs he'd spotted that night on work program duty at the county garage. Carleton, a thirty-ish beefcake chronic wife-beater, whom Earl knew well; and then this other guy, a dark, skinny multiple-repeater with LOSER / USER / CHRONIC ABUSER stamped all over him, whom Earl had seen around plenty, but did not know. Fant, his name was, something like that. Edward.

Earl mounted the steel stair to the top of the concrete loading dock, the jerk-offs trailing him. He wore a dark green short-sleeve golf shirt that showed off the bulk of his shoulders and arms, over soft black trousers and gleaming ankle-length boots. He wore no neck tag or sidearm. People knew who he was; at least they had better. And he was confident that his aura of calm, assertive mastery was all the protection he needed.

The beefcake jiggled up beside him, a little icky in his tee and baggy shorts and floppy sandals. "So what's the drill, Supe?" he asked.

Earl turned slowly, stepped close, fixed Carleton with a stare. "‘Supe'?" he snapped. "That what I look like to you? Chicken noodle, or bean with bacon?"

"No!" Carleton whined. "That's not what --"

"Try ‘Mr. Bucaro.' Or, better yet, ‘Sir.'"

Carleton's creased face flushed. "Sorry."

"Let's go," Earl ordered. At the outer steel door waited a tall deputy, in the uniform to which the Department was just now transitioning: black shirt and pants, knee length shiny boots, black belt hung heavy with side-arm, baton, pepper spray, handcuffs, and radio with its mike clipped to the shoulder belt, American flag on both shoulders, indicators of rank twinkling on the collar. The County had gone to this scheme at the recommendation of the Homeland Security Desk, believing that the more intimidating look would engender greater respect for law officers on the street. "Need to see this?" Earl asked him, waving the single page court order.

"No," the deputy grinned. "Do I need to search you?"

"No," Earl laughed. "But these guys, I don't know, maybe."

"How about it?" the deputy barked at the offenders. "You got anything on you might ruin my whole night?"

"No sir," Carleton said.

"No," Fant echoed, hanging his head. "Not at all."

"Thanks," Earl said, clapping the deputy on the shoulder, and led the men inside.

This was one of the rear entrances to the Department of Sheriff headquarters on Judiciary Square. Inside, the hallway bustled with uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, civilian employees, and the occasional outsider -- scowling lawyer, fearful / defiant offender, bewildered victim. Earl's companions, Bucaro was amused to note, seemed to swagger just a little less the further in they got. The many hours each had spent in this building had been anything but pleasant, and Earl knew they were harking back to those times even though, tonight, they were there strictly to do lift-and-carry. As they tromped down several flights of stairs, Earl wondered how much help Fant would actually be. The skinny little guy, who wore a blue tank top over jeans and decrepit looking loafers, didn't look strong enough to lift his arms over his head. And his left hand looked misshapen, as if it had been mangled and reassembled, and not wholly successfully. Oh well, Earl thought. This shit tonight, it's all paperwork, and Fant ought to be able to handle his share of that.

Up the hall at the sub-basement level, where the floors were green and the fluorescent lights dim, they came to a cage door labeled EVIDENCE ROOM. The chain link wall stretched floor to ceiling and fifty feet or more down the hall into indeterminate dimness. Surveillance cameras pored over the area with their single glass eyes, and the air hung thick with dust and silence. Another deputy stood there, keys in one hand, clipboard in another. "Right on time, Earl," he said. "I've got the inventory sheet right here."

"Just give it to me," Earl said.

"Don'tcha want to inventory the stuff first?"

"No point," Earl said, taking the clipboard.

"Thought there was rules about chain of custody and --"

"Chain of custody?" Earl jibed, scrawling his signature at the bottom. "This shit's going up the chimney in about fifteen minutes." Handing over the clipboard, Earl proffered the court order. "Care to audit this?"

"You're kidding, right?"

Earl laughed, stuffed the court order into his pants pocket, and indicated Carleton and Fant. "This is the help," he told the deputy. "Lead the way."

"Okay, sir." The deputy unlocked the cage door and led them inside. The area was divided into narrow aisles stretching away into infinity. Each aisle was flanked by multiple levels of cages of various sizes. Each cage had a placard with an identification number on it, as well as its own combination lock. Earl knew, from his many years with the Department of Sheriff, that each combination lock was used only once and then scrapped. He knew that much attention went in to making the evidence room seem utterly controlled and secure: weekly physical inventories were taken, forms were filled out, reports were filed. He also knew, as did just about anyone who'd been around the system for any length of time, that most of the system was for show.

Just like this errand, he reflected.

Referring to his clipboard, the deputy led them down a central aisle about half way. Pointing at the bottom cage, he said, "There it be." The cage was a cubical yard in size, and stacked nearly full of items including three-ring notebooks, a couple of ledgers, thick file folders of loose-leaf, and several boxes of computer compact disks. Earl said, "Get us some boxes, so we can pack this stuff up."

"Don't have any," the deputy said.

"Come on!" Earl said impatiently.

The deputy raised his hands. "What do I look like, Bekins Moving and Storage?"

"I've got a pickup truck out there," Earl said. "Unboxed, this shit will blow out everywhere."

The deputy shrugged. "It goes out the way it come in." Bending, he spun the combination, snapped open the lock, removed it, and swung the cage door open, the hinges making a whonnnng sound. "Dig in!"

Studying the piles, Earl considered. "Okay," he said to the jerk-offs, "we'll need several trips. Each of you take a armload up to the truck. You," he indicated Fant, "stay up there in the truck bed, with the stuff. You will not touch it, you will not move away from it, you will not let anyone else near it. You got it?"

"Yessir," Fant said, bobbing his head. He was, Earl saw, like a whipped dog, dark hollow eyes seeking always to please.

"And you," Earl said to Carleton, "you're my duty pack mule. You come back and keep getting loads till it's all out."

"Okay, boss," Carleton said. Stooping, he dragged some books out of the cage and handed them up to Fant. Retrieving an armload for himself, he rose, and the two men trooped away toward the evidence room entrance. Earl leaned against the cage and looked at the deputy. "If you got better things to do," he said, "I can take it from here."

"You sure?"

"Oh, absolutely. Bad enough I have to be here. Missing American Idol."

The deputy laughed. "Thanks." He headed out, leaving Earl alone. The superintendent waited till the footsteps were entirely gone, then waited five minutes more. Utter silence, and no observers, no electronic ones even: here, the surveillance cameras were well out of range.

Bending to the open cage, Earl fished out a thin digest sized loose leaf notebook. A quick flip through the pages showed him mostly numbers. Nothing hot. Replacing it, he retrieved another. This one was more interesting. He heard footsteps, heavy ones, most likely Carleton. Quickly, Earl put the notebook back. He'd do some skimming between loads. Man has to find entertainment wherever he can.