Clean Slate

Chapter 26

"He's where?" Abigail asked.

"The lock-up," Mac replied, "at Central Receiving Hospital." Easing into his office chair, Mac gave his computer monitor a quick glance. It was checker-boarded with red and blue instant message boxes. Several items on the calendar window were blinking, and the news scroll cranked along with its sniglets of mayhem and pillage. Yep, two hours late this morning, so Mac was surely up against it. "Mr. Brian Delk, a/k/a ‘Brain,' was helpful," Mac told Abigail. "Really helpful."

"Why's he in the pokey?" she asked. She wore a brown jacket that outlined her thin form down to the knees, over snug black side-zip pants. To Mac she seemed thinner today, the bones more prominent in her pretty face, eyes hollowed out as if she had not slept. Once again she'd tied her dark hair back tight to the back of her head and, for good measure, bunned it into a knot. Mac wondered about the source of her struggles: Job? Family? That boyfriend who refused to go ex?

"Well," he answered her, "Monday he was cutting lawn at some big shot's. Who happened to be away. Went inside, allegedly to use the bathroom. Somehow ended up in the master bedroom. At which time he heard a car engine outside and came running downstairs just as the owner came in."

"And?"

"Well, this owner person jumped to the conclusion that there was something fishy about Brian wandering around her place. She went up to her bedroom and checked her jewelry box. And found two loose diamonds were missing. Two carats each."

"Oh no."

"Called the coppers," Mac continued. "They conferred with Brain. He confessed on the spot. They told him to hand over the stones. But he couldn't right then." Mac shook his head. "He'd swallowed them."

"I was afraid of this," Abigail said, voice muted.

"So he's in the hospital lockup," Mac told her. "They're feeding him laxatives. He's got a toilet that won't flush --"

"That's quite enough," Abigail said, face averted, palm out.

"And the nurses are, uh, watching him ‘do his thing,'" Mac finished.

Abigail's face was screwed into a mask of disgust. "His thing?"

"His thing, yeah, that's what they called it. His thing."

"Which is about all I care to hear on that topic." Half smiling, she shook her head, clearly baffled, as even the far more experienced Mac could be at times, at the depths to which some folks would go. "But he was helpful on Eddie, eh?"

"Young Brian's trying to get surgery now," Mac explained. "Since the, uh, ‘thing' hasn't worked yet, and he's scared his intestines are about to get perforated. He needs all the friends he can get. So he spilled his guts to me."

"Mac! Please!"

"Figuratively speaking, of course." Grinning, Mac held up a slip of paper. "Eddie Fant's girlfriend was Jessica Miller. She works out at that same scrap metal place where Eddie used to be."

"Weren't you just there?"

"Yeah, and back I'm going, right after work." On impulse he added, "Care to come along?"

She frowned. "Can't. I've got plans."

"Just thought having a woman along might make this Jessica open up about Eddie a little more."

She was shaking her head. "I'm seeing Garry. Gonna tell him once and for all that we're done. And to leave me alone."

"Good luck with that."

"Thanks." She drifted toward the archway, glanced back. "He told me about you banning him from the building."

Mac, busily opening files, replied, "Uh-huh."

"I can handle him, you know," she said mildly.

"Sure. But this isn't just about you," Mac explained. "He's not authorized to go beyond the waiting area. Screw whatever political pull he thinks he has."

Abigail was standing straighter and staring at Mac. "Okay. I'll remind him."

"As will I. If he ever comes in here again."

---

On Mac's way to the scrap yard, cell phone rang. Suzanne.

"Hi there," he said pleasantly, inching his Suburban through the heavy traffic of Grand Army Boulevard, almost to Conant.

"I've been waiting for you to call," she said.

"Um, for some particular reason?"

"I'm your wife. You need to touch base."

"Oh. Well," Mac said, managing to stay civil, "it's a two-way street."

"So I have to call you," she grumped. "Anyway, I just wanted to go ahead and apologize."

"For what?"

"The Paxil thing. I don't know what got into me. Your mom!"

"Yeah," Mac said amiably. "Telling Mom something – even utter fabrications – is like telling the whole world."

Suzanne let that slide. "Anyway, I wanted to know about Saturday."

"What about it?"

"Well, we talked about it."

"I don't think so."

"As usual, you weren't paying attention," she said. "I go to Grace-Wood every Saturday. Just to house-keep and, you know, meditate."

"Okay."

"Thought you'd like to meet me there."

"I don't think so. It's not a good idea. You know he's not there, really, anyway."

"I know," she said bitterly, "that was our compromise. I got the gravesite and marker, you got to scatter the ashes by --"

"Bayonet Point," Mac finished. "Nicholas's very favorite place, as you know."

She sighed. "So you won't come out. Even to spend time with me."

"Not there, no. Sorry. Any other ideas, I'll be glad to --"

"Oh, forget it," she said, and hung up.

---

By phone with Mel Hooyberg, Mac had learned that Jessica Miller worked an afternoon shift in a department called "the metals room." He met the scrap yard owner at the Conant Avenue gate of I & M Iron & Metal, and rode with him in a golf cart on wide rutted earthen paths among mountains of scrap metal, rows of decrepit autos, and towering silent cranes and machinery to a squat cinderblock building on the far side of the yard. Hooyberg, ever the salesman, treated Mac like a potential customer, talking up his company's machines and productivity and commitment to environmental excellence. Mac mainly listened, struck silent by the mounds of metal stampings, flattened autos, locomotive wheels, black engine blocks, battered white-and-brown appliances, and a tangled pile of concrete-filled iron pipes with trees growing up among them. So this is where it all ends up.

The metals room was in fact an old factory building. Windowless, it was brightly lighted, and organized in sections and rows. There were smaller machines in there for cutting up and baling various kinds of scrap metal – nonferrous, Hooyberg called it – but the main job seemed to be hand-sorting of the different metal grades. Hooyberg led Mac to a steel table that was about the length and width of a large hay wagon. It was piled high with chunks of metal and nonmetallic debris in an almost unimaginable variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Around the table worked a half dozen women, most black or Latina, all in blue smocks, dark pants, and work boots, with blue rubber gloves stretching up to their elbows. Using rakes, they spread metal pieces out and then rapidly sorted them into bins arrayed on the floor behind them. As the men paused to watch, Mac noticed the workers' dull eyes and flaccid expressions. Just human robots, he thought. Paid a pittance for the sweat of their brows and just the tiniest bit of intellect it took to accomplish this menial task. The drudgery, Mac thought, and the filth they have to work with – and for what?

Hooyberg was bouncing on the soles of his gleaming leather shoes, beaming. "I got the best work force in the world," he crowed loudly enough for the women to hear. "Hell of a team!" No expression changed. If anything, their movements became more industrious, which make Mac suspicious. What did they do when the owner wasn't around? "Jessie!" Hooyberg called. "Over here a minute."

A woman from the far side dropped her rake and trudged around the table toward them. Her brown hair was shiny-rich and moussed in large ringlets all around her head down to her shoulders. She also had a small rose tattoo on her neck. These were her only visible claims to youth, or femininity. She was a gray-complexioned forty-plus, her face a network of deep frown and worry lines, dark eyes set deep in her head. Everything about her seemed to be about hiding: her hair crowded protectively around her forehead and face, her dark smock rendered her body shapeless, to the point where she seemed to have no breasts, no hips. She kept her arms folded before her, each hand clutching the opposite elbow. "Sup, Mel?" she asked, voice low and throaty. Cigarettes, Mac figured, and whiskey, and talking loud over blaring country bands.

"This gentleman is from downtown," Hooyberg told her. "He's got some questions. You can stay on the clock. But don't be too long." He glanced up at Mac. "I'm gonna check some things out at the shredder. Meet me at the cart when you're done. You might want to talk out back. I'm sure Jessie'd like to smoke."

Mac was sure, too; he could smell it on her. "Out this way?" he asked, gesturing toward a door.

"Whatever," she answered. They exited via a red steel fire door, Miller staying beyond reach and a step back, in silence. The back of the building was in shadow, the sandy ground littered with rusted hulks of what looked like old industrial machines. A makeshift picnic table sat on a slab just outside the door, with a blue Maxwell House coffee can for cigarette butts. Miller had hers lighted with a snap-click of an orange Bic the instant she exited. She scanned Mac up and down. "Sup?" she asked again, if anything a notch warmer, perhaps because Hooyberg was gone.

"Name's McGladrey," he told her. "I work at the Court House. I'm checking up on a man I believe you know pretty well. Eddie Fant."

Her jailhouse-sullen expression changed only by a flicker in her dark eyes, conditioned as she was to reveal as little as possible. "Sure, I know Eddie," she said. Hanging the cigarette in her lips, she peeled off the rubber gloves and tossed them on the picnic table. "You're his PO, right?"

"Yup. And you're his girlfriend."

She squinted and almost smiled. "Well. Kinda sorta. Close as he's got, I guess."

"What does that mean?"

Shrug. "He's way older than me. I don't date guys his age. We hung out, is all."

"I understood that he lived with you."

"Well, yeah. In between." Another almost-smile. "And we, uh. . .you know."

"Okay."

"Just a comfort-fuck here and there."

She was watching his reaction. Mac just nodded. "Kinda figured."

She took a big hit off her smoke, exhaled a brief funnel and talked puffs. "You been awful good to him. He talks about you all the time."

"Eddie's a decent man," Mac answered. "Which is why it's a shame, what happened to him."

She was tapping ash as he said that, and went all still. "Whaddya mean ‘what happened to him.'"

"Well, he was killed last week."

For a long instant she froze. Then she swung her back to him, walked to the picnic table. Bracing herself with her hands on the wood top, she bent slightly. Mac saw her shoulders quiver, her head shake. He stepped around quietly to the side of the table, and saw large glistening tears roll down her lined face, her sobbing utterly silent except for short pained sound that slipped through. After a moment she abruptly straightened, and threw her cigarette against the building wall in a shower of sparks, and said mournfully, "Fuck. Oh fuck."

"It's a sad thing, Jessica," Mac said quietly.

Miller's eyes were open wide now, and shiny with tears, and Mac was surprised to see that they weren't dark at all, but actually a tawny brown. "I always knew he'd someday zig when he shoulda zagged."

"What does that mean?"

She gave him a quick glance, sniffled loudly, took several deep breaths. "It's just too damn bad," she said. "Eddie was. . .he was all right."

She was closing the door. It had opened a peek, and was now closing. Mac's choices were to lean on her, or appeal to her. She was obviously a hard nut, tough to crack. But she'd just caved in emotionally, so Mac thought an appeal might work here. He sat on the bench seat and looked up into her face. "I think he was murdered," he said softly. "I think he got in the way of the wrong person or people, and they came back around at him and killed him. I mean to find out all of it. What, why, and most important who. I mean to do justice for Eddie. And," he added, going even softer, "I think you know something that might help. So how about it?"

Slowly, wearily, Jessica Miller sat on the picnic table bench, and threw one leg over the other. Lighting another cigarette, she smoked it with hard urgent puffs, her arms clasped about her again. Wagons circled tight, Mac thought. "I don't know anything," she said finally. "We saw each other every so often. We bunked together a night or two. But --"

"Eddie made it sound," Mac cut in, "like you threw him out of your place."

"Oh, not really." Drawing on her cigarette, Miller's eyes squinted with the memory. "He wanted me to – to not drink with him around. He was trying to put together some clean time. I told him it was my house, I had to do my thing, he had to deal with it or leave. So he left." She sighed, examined the glowing end of her weed. "But we were still friends. He still stopped by."

"When did you last see him?"

"Not sure. Last week. Friday maybe."

"He was dead by then."

"Then maybe it was earlier!" she flared. "How should I know. Nothing about my life is important enough to keep track of."

Which meant, thought Mac, that Jessica had at least some awareness of her own despair. Many people lived so deep in despondency that they no longer recognized it for what it was. Certainly Mac himself had been there, until, during his last few months in Cambodia, he began to emerge from it, and started to think about coming home. Watching her, Mac considered what he was seeing and hearing. She had her jailhouse walls up. This could mean she knew something she was not telling. But it could also result, quite simply, from her experience in life, from which she had learned that it was best always to say nothing. "What did you talk about, when you saw him?"

"Nothing much." Her eyes found Mac. "He told me about you. Said you were back. He was glad."

Lot of good it did him, Mac thought. "What enemies did Eddie have?"

"Can't think of any."

"What was he into, that might have gotten him on the wrong side of somebody?"

"Nothing."

"No?"

"Nope," she affirmed, eyes flickering to Mac's and then away again.

"Well," he said lightly, after a pause, "frankly, Jessica, I don't believe you."

"Frankly, Mac," she said, "I don't give a shit. I got no obligation to you."

"But you do to Eddie. He was your friend."

"But he's also dead. He's gone on," she said, expression somehow contemptuous and envious at the same time. "Meanwhile," she waved her cigarette hand, "there's people back here with asses to protect."

"From what, Jessica?" She said nothing. "You know Eddie trusted me," Mac said. "So you can trust me with. . .whatever it is you know."

She looked at him, half smiling, then shook her head. Taking a last hot drag off the short butt, she flung the weed against the block wall with another shower of sparks. "Mister," she said, rising, "‘trust' is the last word to use on me. It's gotten me double-crossed, locked up, bankrupt, fucked, pregnant, fired. And someday it'll probably get me killed."

"What I meant was --"

"Forget it." Pulling her rubber gloves out of her smock pocket, she began tugging them on. "What I want, Mr. McGladrey, is to stay out of trouble. I do whatever it takes to stay out of trouble." She glared at him. "Whatever it takes," she said, tone quiet, meaningful. "I know I'm no eye-candy any more, but I still got what you guys call two humps and a hole."

"What?"

"Bring it on." She took a step toward him, chin up, eyes defiant. "I know how you Court House guys are. We all do. What's your pleasure? Blow job? Suck-and-fuck? I done it plenty. I know the score."

"Oh, no," Mac said, bewildered, and indignant, too. "That's not at all what --"

"Your call, mister," she said, and turned for the building. "Otherwise, back off me."