Clean Slate

Chapter 21

Earl Bucaro was often hungry after sex. This was especially true of sex with Clarisa Navacarrada. Tonight, as he drove his blaze-red 'Vette up Central Avenue, Earl idly wondered why. Maybe it was because her apartment always smelled like food. Good food, too; for just a kid, she was probably a hell of a cook. Could be it was just the timing: their dates were usually in the early evening, after her boyfriend had gone to work and her toddlers had been put to bed. Earl did not eat lunch most days – his work schedule was far too busy for that – so by the time he'd gotten naked with Clarisa, his hunger had more than one dimension.

God, he thought, she was one hot little bitch tonight. Scratch marks stung on his shoulder blades from where she had hooked onto him, hanging on beneath him, her slight dark increasingly perspiring body riding him as he romped her, her sweet breath gasping in his ear. Coming alone nicely. The first time, she'd cried. Second or third, she'd actually gone off on him in a torrent of Spanish. Then there was a period of tolerant acceptance, then grudging participation. Now it looked like she was one of the rare ones that was actually getting fully into it. Well, it made sense, Earl thought. If you like sex, and you've got no choice, you might as well enjoy. Clarisa clearly loved sex. And she just as clearly had no choice.

The big-block Corvette engine hummed with quiet, coiled authority. On the radio, Gordon Liddy said something unkind about Clinton. Traffic slipped by silently on the commercial four-lane. The sun, a yellowish-red ball, headed for the horizon. Earl knew there was no food at his condo. He seldom ate at home, and he could not wait that long, anyway. Scanning the strip malls and standalones, he randomly picked out a Chick Inn outlet, parallel-parked by a hydrant next door, flipped down the visor to discourage overly ambitious coppers, and went inside.

The restaurant was typical of the breed, as if stamped out of a machine. Giant chickens made up like dancing clowns adorned the walls. Ad cards hung by strings from the ceiling, promoting various permutations of dead bird. Muzak crooned country classics from invisible speakers. Diners could eat on the small patio in front, or at one of the twenty tables inside. This was after you got your food at the walk-up counter at the back. There, waiting patrons were organized into a line by chrome rails laid out in a maze that switched back several times. As Earl, Mister Invisible, approached in his smooth gait, he saw that the line numbered a half dozen. Husband and wife and three kids. Pair of teens, boy and, at least in theory, girl, bristling with face metal and wearing baggy penitentiary pants. And up front, waiting his turn, a tall skinny guy with curly gray and black hair and bony arms folded across his hollow chest. Earl walked around to the left, ducked under the chrome rail, and took his place at the head of the line, murmuring to the skinny guy: "County official."

Behind the counter, the sole order taker was patiently watching a customer who was, with all his might, studying the menu sign up above. Earl hooked his hands together behind his back, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet as he waited, debating with himself over eating in or carrying out. He was really hungry, so eating in made sense. But he also needed a shower. That argued for carrying dinner home. So –

"Hey, you there," came a voice from behind. Earl turned. The tall skinny guy was staring down at him. "You can't take cuts. Get in the back of the line."

"County official," Earl said again, and faced front.

"County official?" the man squawked. "What the hell difference does that make? You can't just break in the front of the line!"

Earl turned again, his whole body this time. The man wore thick black glasses and a beard. He had on a green athletic teeshirt and khaki shorts and sandals at the bottom of his skinny hairy legs. He was glaring at Earl, in righteous outrage. Earl said softly: "You don't want to make an issue, jerk-off."

"How dare you! How dare you call me that!"

"Back off," Earl said calmly.

"You see?" the man ranted, flinging skinny arms, casting his buggy four-eyed stare around at the other patrons, looking for support. "You see how these government people act?" The two kids smirked, but the adults stared elsewhere with indifference so practiced, they were probably New Yorkers. Earl gave the guy a narrow glance, and with that it all fell into place. This idiot was some kind of college-idiot book-reader, a professor or something like that. He had the look and he had the attitude. That nose-up, superior, in-the-know bookish look, part of the old coffee-house crowd with their code phrases and their protest songs and their flaky, vaguely Communist causes, dead from the neck up, totally unaware that their day was done. "What's your name?" the guy blared. "I demand to know your name."

Just then the prior customer stepped away. Earl went to the counter, placed his order, paid, received his food in go bags. The man in shorts continued to fling about the occasional caustic comment, to no effect. Earl strolled with his bags to a table by the window, sat, took out his cell phone, pressed buttons. He was hungry, and wanted to get home and eat, but this was important, and would take only a moment. The tall man got his food, also in go bags, and, clearly still hot, stalked storklike to the door, gaze fixed poisonously on Earl as he went. Through the window Earl watched him approach his car, angle-parked in the side lot – a Volvo, what else, with a bumper sticker that said THINK GLOBALLY, DRINK LOCALLY – and, with a final comment into his phone, got up to leave.

As he hit the sidewalk, a black-and-white Department of Sheriff squad car whistled in, bouncing on its shocks, light bar flashing, and stopped behind the Volvo. Two young deputies in black, caps pulled down smartly over their foreheads, got out. One waited behind the open squad car door, watching, hand on the butt of his holstered nine. The other eased over toward the Volvo as the skinny guy sprang out. From his vantage point fifty feet away, by the restaurant's front patio, Earl could not, over the traffic sounds, make out the words they exchanged, but the jerk-off's screeching gave him the general gist. The deputy braced him on the hood, frisked him, cuffed him, and marched him to the squad car, where, struck dumb now, the jerk-off was placed in the back seat. Earl eased over that way as the door shut, making sure the skinny guy could see him. "Check the ash tray residue," he called to the deputy. "He's got the look."

Then, supper under his arm, he boarded the Corvette for home.

---

The County of St. Marys James W. Kester Wheeled Vehicle Maintenance Facility, known around town as the "car shop," sprawled in its vast arching red-brick majesty on Henderson Highway a ways north of downtown, next to the Armory Canal. Built early in the prior century as a repair depot for the old inter-urban railroad – which, Mac's grandfather had told him, once ran six times a day between St. Marys and Sheffield – the car shop still had its big arched entryways through which steel tracks conveyed rail cars for repair. The rails had long since been scrapped out, and the grades paved over, and the passenger cars themselves sold for a pittance to Mexico City. But the car shop was as busy as ever, teeming with orange county maintenance trucks, yellow construction equipment, black and white squad cars, ambulances, and the like, all being ministered to by what appeared to be a regiment of tool fools in jump suits and goggles and steel toed boots.

Mac strolled through one of the high wide archways into the building. Despite the open doors, it was at least ten degrees cooler inside, due to the structure's sturdy brick-and-block construction. From the high ceiling beamed big spotlights. Each long wall was divided into large stalls, most with vehicles on lifts or safety stands, being attended to by mechanics. What looked like an office was in a corner to the right, but there were no dump trucks down that way, so Mac headed left, ambling along, keeping an eye out. He loved places like this: the racks of gleaming tools and power equipment, the patient thoughtful toil of people wielding tools, the clanking of metal and whirring of machines, the rich scents of fuel and grease. All that was missing, from days gone by, was titty posters. Times had changed.

Most people gave him nothing but a glance as he walked. But one guy, big and shave-headed, saw him and strode his way. There was nothing inimical in his appearance or gait; in his blue twill jump suit he looked like another mechanic, but he was older than most – fifty at least – and had a bearing of command. "Help you?" he asked Mac as he approached.

"Morning," Mac said. "I'm from the Homeland Security Desk, and we want to know why the hell you guys don't have metal detectors and attack dogs and strip searching at your facility here."

The man beamed. He wore small glasses and had large white very even teeth and was deeply tanned, from boating or lawn work or a whole lot of golf. "What," he rumbled, "you got a tip Osama's after us?"

"Security requires sacrifice," Mac said, and stuck out a hand. "Mac McGladrey. I actually work over at Recorder's Court."

The big guy shook Mac's hand hard. "Key Murphy," he said. "Straw boss of all you see here. Sup, as my daughter would say."

"Looking for a dump truck."

He looked around. "Got several on hand. Why?"

"This one ran down a hill last week," Mac said, "and squashed an abandoned cab."

"Oh. That one. Right down here." Murphy led Mac down the row of stalls toward the orange truck near the end. "What's your interest?"

"There was a man inside the cab," Mac said. "Probationer."

"Oh. You work DPP then."

"Yep."

They reached the dump truck. It was a monster, Mac saw. Black body, silver dump, chrome bumper and grille, St. Marys County logos on both doors. Mac stopped in front of it. It dwarfed him. The chrome bumper wrapped around the front, with a vertical frame that reached up and crossed the shiny grille just below the huge engraved letters MACK. Unwillingly, Mac's brain played a tape of Eddie's last moments, the sight of this behemoth rushing down the hill at him: the chrome grille growing larger and larger. Had Eddie seen it coming? Did he freeze in terror? Or did he lunge to the cab's passenger side, scrabbling in panic at the door handle with his shattered hand? And then –

Mac turned away abruptly, and then back, banishing the vision. He saw that the bumper and grille were banged up pretty badly. But not, Mac thought, nearly as badly as the crushed cab. "Chunk of truck," he noted.

"Oh yeah, it's a beast," Murphy said. "Biggest in the fleet. Class 8. It was brimful of pea gravel when our boys got there. Our biggest tow wouldn't budge it. We had to dump the load just to hook her up." He eyed Mac. "You all right? You look a little pale."

"I'm all right," Mac said shortly. "So what happened? What made it cut loose like that?"

"Not sure," Murphy said. "Sy!" he called to the back of the stall. "You back there?"

A skinnier, younger guy in jump suit -- identical to Murphy's, except his was dirty – strolled out to them, wiping greasy knuckly fingers with a dirty red shop rag. His thick hair was pony-tailed back and he had a low-key musical beat to his stride. "Yessir, what's up, sir?" he sang.

"Figured it out yet?" Murphy asked, gesturing at the truck.

"Oh yeah. Pretty simple. Brake cable gave out," Sy said.

"Gave out?" Mac echoed.

"Yeah, just, like, let go," Sy confirmed.

Murphy looked at Mac. "There you are."

Mac squinted, eyeing the truck. "How old is this thing?"

"Oh, she's brand new," Sy piped up. "A two thousand and oh-three CV713. Top of the line."

"Can't have much wear and tear yet, then," Mac observed.

"Shit happens," Murphy remarked.

"I know. But a brake cable just letting go? On a brand new truck?"

Sy, having gotten his cue from his boss, said brightly, "Shit happens, you know."

Mac looked at Murphy. "Is that what the cops think?"

"Cops?" Murphy echoed. "I haven't talked to any cops. You talked to any cops, Sy?"

"No cops," Sy rushed, "nossir."

"Why would the cops be asking questions?" Murphy wondered.

"Because a man was killed," Mac said, with more acerbity than he intended, "when this truck picked a certain moment to let go and run down a hill."

"Well," Murphy said, scratching his shaved head, "it's too bad and all. Very tragic. But I think everybody's wrote this off as an accident."

"A accident," Sy said soberly.

"A terrible accident," Murphy added.

---

By the time Mac reached Fannie Annie, the morning commute was over, so the lobby security people had plenty of time to fuss over the carton of books Mac carried in. He stood by patiently as two of them riffled through the pages and probed the binding. "What are these for?" one of them asked.

"Reference," Mac said shortly. Carrying the carton up the stairs, he thought with a grin that his answer had been less than truthful. Sure, he had at various times in his life needed to refer to these books. But what they were really for was decoration. He'd appropriated a bookcase for his office, and once stocked with these books, he would start to feel like the otherwise cold room, with its stark overhead light and inscrutable wall safe and second-hand furniture, was becoming his professional home.

Abigail was next door, interviewing an offender. Mac stocked his shelves briskly. Last came the Erasmus plaque, which Mac placed on the top shelf.

When I have a little money, I buy books.

If any is left over, I buy clothes and food.

Just then his cell phone rang: Unknown Caller. Could be Perkins, Mac thought. This was Tuesday; surely Perkins had some kind of answer by now. Flipping the phone open, he sprawled in his desk chair. "McGladrey."

"Halsig," came the policeman's wheezy voice. "Bryant Substation. Returning your call."

"Yes, thank you," Mac said, disappointed, but not too. "I checked into the gravel truck, you know, the one that hit the cab?"

"Yes."

"Seems like the brake cable gave out, is what I'm told."

"That seems logical."

"Truck's brand new," Mac pressed. "How likely is that, that the cable would just up and go?"

"Shit happens."

Mac was getting a little tired of this easy refrain. To him it was a bumper-sticker cliche, an all purpose justification for avoiding responsibility, and excusing lack of initiative. "Well, what if the truck was tampered with?"

"What if it was?"

"That would make it murder, wouldn't it?"

"Whoa, boy. Down, Columbo. Pretty big leap there. What's your evidence?"

"Nothing at this point."

"Well. There you are."

"But there's not going to be evidence," Mac pressed, "if nobody goes looking for it."

"We need some kind of grounds for an inquiry," Halsig told him. "Now, if you bring us a brake cable that's clearly been tampered with, then we're good to go."

Mac sighed. "Who's your station commander?"

"Senior Deputy Iocovangello."

"May I speak with him, please."

"He's out right now. I'll have him call you."

"Thanks."

"Not at all."

Perkins never called that day. Nor did Iocovangello. Key Murphy did return Mac's call. The defective brake cable had already been scrapped out, he said, and could not be retrieved.