Clean Slate

Chapter 15

"Ben Perkins," the man answered. In his voice Mac could discern a twinge of Southern accent. "What can I do you for?"

"Well. . .okay." Mac gathered his thoughts. He'd shared none of this with a total stranger. He felt reluctant to do so now. Baring his soul. Hanging out the dirty linen. Blameless though he was, in an odd way he felt a sense of guilt by association. And the specifics about Nicholas – oh no – no way could he blab about that to a bodyless voice on the phone. "This is a potential. . .adultery situation."

"Okay," Perkins said briskly. "Down there, or up here?"

"Well, my wife's down here," Mac said. "But the incident I need looked into, it happened in Detroit."

"Good town for it," Perkins said drily.

"She was at a conference up there," Mac said. "Year ago March. And I . . .well, I just have this feeling that --"

"Hold the phone. Fifteen months ago?"

"That's right."

"Whew." Road noise, a distant honk. "And you're just now getting around to checking up on it."

"I've been busy."

"Reckon so."

Mac sighed. "So can you help me with this?"

Another pause. Mac heard sounds that he presently realized meant Perkins had lighted up. "Carole tell you my freight?"

"You mean the cost?"

"Five hundred a day, plus expenses."

"Whoo. Hope you're good."

"All I am is the best there is."

"This should be piece of cake for you then."

"If I take it on."

"If?"

"You're down there, I'm up here. You sound like a nice enough fella. But I don't know you from beans."

"We both know Carole."

"Maybe you know Carole. I don't claim to."

"Hm. From what she said, it sounded like you know her well."

"She's a woman," Perkins explained. "Thinking you know a woman, that goeth before a fall, as we say."

Mac grinned. "Well, what do you need from me?" he asked. "References?"

"More like a deposit, cash in hand."

"I can mail you a check."

"Aw, it's not the money, so much," Perkins said, sounding distracted. The road noise diminished. Red light, Mac thought. "It's just that – I'm not a big fan of long distance deals. Only other client I ever had like that, guy hired me over the phone to find his ex. Turned out he was in Guam, they were both crooks on the lam."

"I'm nowhere near that exciting," Mac said lightly. "I'm a probation officer."

"I know. Carole told me," Perkins said. "Tell you what. We need to meet up. Chat eyeball to eyeball, figure out if this makes sense."

Mac felt the deal slipping away. "I can't really get away right now. And I need this moved on. A lot's happening." Plus, he thought, no way am I ever going to Detroit.

"That's all right, I'll come down there."

"You will?"

"Sure, why not?" And Perkins explained. "Just did a rebuild. Good hard run like this'll reseat the gaskets and heads."

"It's got to be seven hundred miles."

"So it's a two day hop. Get there in the afternoon, we talk, I stay over, come home next morning."

"Well, what if, after you go to all this trouble, I don't hire you?"

"Still okay. I've wasted more time on less fun things. How about Saturday?"

"Works for me."

"Peachy. Let's talk logistical horse crap. There any kind of wide open space out by you?"

"Well, I live on a farm. Hundred sixty acres."

"Rocks and crags? Swamps and bogs? Thick with trees? Or what?"

"Got some hills, sure. But it's mostly flat. Lots of lawn."

"That'll work. Give me the address." Mac did so. "Wild Rose?" Perkins said. "Didn't I used to get drunk on that stuff?"

"I don't know. Did you?"

"You're a PO," Perkins laughed, and gunned his engine. "You really don't expect me to tell you the truth, do you?"

"Yeah, why should you be the first," Mac said. And realized, for this fleeting moment, in this talk with Ben Perkins – an interesting mix of cynicism and thoughtfulness, Mac thought – he'd been living in his old self again, pre-Nicholas. Bittersweet. It must mean, he thought, that this Perkins guy was the right man for the job. That he'd get the answers Mac needed. Only now that he'd started things into motion, Mac found himself second-guessing how badly he really wanted those answers.

---

The area known as Dogtown was a cluster of mostly abandoned industrial buildings, wide cracked-concrete roads, weed choked culverts, and railroad switches located a half mile north of the Sabbath River in the southeast corner of St. Marys. Its distinguishing feature was a triangle of roads formed by the confluence of McNarney Pike, a former U. S. highway and popular truck route, with the Wister Bypass and James Jones Boulevard, a heavily traveled east-west commuter route that became, closer in to town, Fourth Street. The Axle plant, the last vestige of thriving industrial activity, shot its stacks and towers into the eastern sky, and during its two daily shifts filled the air with the scent of molten metal and an urgent low-grade almost subliminal thrum of heavy machinery. Beyond that, and aside from commuter rush hours, there was not much evidence of commercial or even human activity in Dogtown. It was a place people passed through, or frequented when their livelihoods demanded it – or, lived in, in extreme cases, when they were about as down and out as a person could get.

Earl Bucaro remembered walking a beat here back when he was a newly minted deputy. There'd been stores here then, and even some homes. Not a terrible place to live, especially if you worked at Axle and hadn't made union seniority yet. Even then it was called Dogtown, and for the life of him Earl could not remember why. Probably nobody did.

This evening – for it was close onto dark now, past eight o'clock – Earl passed into the environs of Dogtown unnoticed. Even if there had been people about, he would have passed unseen. For tonight Earl was not driving his bright red 'Vette. He was wheeling an old beater, a Dodge Intrepid, dirty, dented, and gunmetal gray, with a blinking oil light and an annoying pull to the right. The car did not belong to him, of course. Earl had no idea who owned it. Probably a john picked up in one of the Department of Sheriff hooker sweeps. Last year the Commission had passed an ordinance empowering the sheriffs to summarily impound cars of suspects apprehended in the act of committing certain morals-related offenses. Even if never charged or convicted, such suspects had to pay a "reclaim fee" of $900 to have their cars returned. This Intrepid had been cooling off in the impound yard for a month now, used from time to time by undercover deputies, Homeland Security Desk operatives, and Bureau of the Bailiff employees who every so often went out on surveillance of parolees thought to be up to no good.

Earl eased the beater up James Jones Boulevard, keeping an eye out. The probation file information had not been terribly specific, but Dogtown wasn't that big a place, and Earl was sure that, if patient, he could find the spot. Off to the left, the distant Axle plant blotted out a lot of the southern sky. To the right he passed mostly disused factory buildings, brick and concrete, glinting darkly with chain link and iron bars, saw-tooth skylights pointed at the sky like worn-down teeth. Up ahead was a broad cluster of railroad tracks. These, Earl knew, led into a MCCO switching yard to the north, and from there fanned out to destinations across the country. There had to have been twenty separate sets of tracks running parallel, all of them crossing James Jones Boulevard at street level, causing, down through the years, traffic jams that had become legendary around St. Marys.

Only now, the county, in its wisdom, was correcting the problem. In a public works project of truly major proportions, County workers were laboriously creating an underpass beneath the tracks, permitting vehicle and rail traffic to flow unimpeded. The project looked to be about half done. The Boulevard had been temporarily diverted around the construction area. A massive pit was driven into the reddish soil. Concrete abutments, wood pilings and other bridge work had been completed for perhaps half the underpass. The area was littered with stacks of steel beams, piles of rebar, and mountains of gravel and sand and virgin earth. Yellow vehicles and machines, including earth movers, bulldozers, loaders, and cranes, stood around in no discernible pattern. To the north, the ground sloped upward, part of the grade that actually ran hundreds of miles, from the mountains at the center of the state all the way south to the banks of the Sabbath River. There on the hill north of the Boulevard were parked an inventory of smaller vehicles – dump trucks, pickups, and smaller dozers.

All silent. Inert. It was night, and the workers had gone home. There'd been talk, Earl recalled as he slowly wheeled along, of doing this project during night hours. But that would have been too considerate of the commuter traffic. . . .

Where the hell was that cab.

Earl rumbled the Intrepid over the disjointed series of train tracks to the other side, passed Wister Boulevard, and wheeled a U-turn through an abandoned gas station. Dogtown proper, if there was such a thing, was the triangle of roads. Evidently Earl had missed his mark. He went back the way he had come, recrossed the series of railroad tracks, to the screeching protests of the Intrepid's tired suspension. And now, just as he cleared the tracks, he spotted it.

The cab was parked south of the Boulevard, about thirty feet from the road, on the concrete pavement of what used to be a Sunoco gas station. This had burned sometime in the dim past, leaving just a whitish hulk of concrete block, windowless, roof caved in. The cab was a big boxy black-and-white Checker model, sitting parallel to the road. It looked deserted. Earl could see a number of potential approaches. Clearly, a man could approach the cab from behind the fallen-through gas station and do the job through the side window. But an easier and safer method would be from a vehicle. Pull up next to the cab with window rolled down – pop-pop – and pull away before anybody was the wiser.

That seemed like a plan. But to be sure, Earl decided to loop around and come back one more time. As he did so, he saw something move behind the dim windshield. A head, an arm – brief movement, like somebody adjusting himself in the seat -- and then nothing.

He was there.

Hm.

Earl had the tools. In more ways than one. Here was the opportunity. But was it really safe? Earl was a background guy. Wet work, when warranted, he preferred to contract out. But that would take time: to set up, to execute. This problem needed putting down, sooner rather than later.

Earl was a background guy. But he was also a lifelong believer in seizing the moment. He always went straight to the max, no holds barred, no half measures. And this was one he kind of wanted to handle himself. Little bastard.

He wheeled the car west, U-turned again, came back. The cab was wide open to the road. The construction zone sprawled on the other side. Something had piqued Earl's interest. Something about the slope of scraped red earth, rising to the north, and those vehicles parked up there –

Earl slowed. Glanced over at the cab, and then left up the hill, at the big chrome Mack grilles facing him. And he thought: Now there's an idea.

He had the tools.

---

Mac nearly ran up the stairs to the second floor of Fannie Annie, and down the gleaming corridor to the PPO department entrance. It was ten minutes after nine, Friday morning, and he was late. Late because he'd decided on an impromptu visit to an offender's place of employment, just to be sure the clown was really on the job. Which he was, surprisingly enough. Mac's lateness was aggravated by the lobby security people, who randomly selected him to submit to today's full body search.

The waiting room was crowded with customers. Glancing around, Mac did not see the face he expected. Janie was just hanging up her phone. "Messages for me?" he asked her.

"I don't think so. Check your screen."

Mac looked back at the faces: a catalog of boredom, annoyance, impatience. Nope. Definitely not there. Activating the door, he went back to his office. Through the open archway he saw Abigail at her desk, keyboarding something. "Morning," he called to her, sitting behind his desk.

"Hi there." Abigail strolled in. Mac fired up his computer. There were three messages. One from the bank, about the closing on the farm. Another from his insurance agent. And a third from an offender, returning his call. Nothing from Eddie. "Why the thundercloud face?" Abigail asked.

"Ah, one of my clowns, he's supposed to've been here at nine this morning. No sign of him. No messages either."

"Well. . .maybe he got stuck in traffic."

Not likely, given Eddie's mode of transport. But she was right; there could be a very legitimate, even reasonable, excuse. But if so, why did Mac feel so apprehensive? "I don't know," he said shortly. "We'll just. . .await developments." He looked up at Abigail. "Back on the job for your second day, I see," he said. "That's always an encouraging sign."

"I have this thing," she said, "about eating regularly."

"Oh yeah. I'm pretty hooked on that myself." She looked good today, he thought, in an ivory colored suit that had a faintly military look to it, with pleated pockets and button flaps. The jacket and skirt were both snug on her long, lean form, and a bit more daring than the conservative attire she'd worn the day before. As if to offset this, her brown hair, which yesterday had flowed loose and free to her shoulders, was knotted to the back of her head in a bun so tight the hair looked painted to her head. Her makeup was precise, muted, and all business; aside from tiny stick earrings she wore no jewelry. "Sit in with me today?" Mac asked her.

"That's a plan," she answered. Pensively, she briefly touched her nose with her fingers, then said, "I owe you an explanation for yesterday."

Mac pointed both palms at her. "Nah. I'm the one who came on too strong with him."

She was shaking her head swiftly. "No. No. Garry was out of line. He had no business storming in here like that, throwing his weight around." Wheeling herself down into the visitor chair, she hung an arm over its back and, looking past Mac's shoulder, said, "He's not my fiancé. We broke up last spring. That is," she rushed on, before Mac could reply, "I've been trying to break up with him. He just doesn't seem to get the message."

"Really. So he's stalking you?"

"I wouldn't call it that," she said, sounding uncertain.

"Well, what would you call it?"

She gave a shrug, a shake of her head. "He's persistent."

"That's what stalkers are. Persistent."

"But stalkers are also scary," she said. "Garry doesn't scare me. He's just annoying."

"I noticed that."

"No law against being annoying," she said, smiling weakly.

"Man, if there were, we'd have to triple our staff here."

Still smiling, her eyes sparkled briefly. "And I must admit, I'm just diseased enough to enjoy being pursued by a persistent man."

"Even him, huh."

Her smile went. "I'm so stupid," she said matter-of-factly. "So like I said, I'm sorry for the ruckus. God willing he'll stay away." She got to her feet, surprising Mac again with her height. "When's your first?"

"Ten."

"I'll be back." She drifted over by the safe built into the wall behind Mac's desk, and trailed long slender fingers along its smooth black iron face. "Ah yes," she said, voice faint. "Mr. Rosen's very, very choicest inventory."

"What?" Mac asked.

She froze, then looked at him over her shoulder, eyes large but expression otherwise blank. "Nothing. I just – I get thoughts sometimes, about things. I'm so stupid." She smiled. "See you at ten!" she said, suddenly cheery, and walked briskly into her office.

Mac stared after her for a minute, then forced his eyes away. There's a lot to this one, he reflected, and I'm not sure I want to know. He checked his screen. No red box. Clicking on an icon, he brought up an offender file: his ten o'clock appointment. She was another handoff, halfway through her second tour. This one had greeted the officer who pulled her over by asking, "What the fuck do you want, asshole." Talk about probable cause. Mac shook his head. His computer screen sneered at him: Still no red box. His desk phone, his cell phone stared silently in sullen defiance.

Nine thirty now.

Where are you, Eddie?