Clean Slate

Chapter 31

"So you do have a first name, or what?" Mac asked as they set their trays down on the table.

"Didn't I mention that?" she asked, seating herself. "Libby."

"Short for Elizabeth," he ventured, sitting across the small table from her.

"Yes." She flipped open her red cloth napkin. "Actually, no. Truth be told, on my driver's license it's Elspeth. Do you believe it."

For lunch, they'd settled on Mindy's, a bustling, landmark corned beef sandwich joint on Taylor, two blocks from Judiciary Square. Nothing fancy, Mindy's served sandwiches, soup, stew, salad, and soft drinks cafeteria style to many hundreds of downtown denizens a day – folks who, during peak times, stood in long lines out the door and down the block, gladly. Besides its food – for which Mindy's had been a legend since before the war – it was also known as a hotbed of Democratic Party politics, which meant, by definition, that neither the president nor the governor had ever darkened its doors.

Mac got his usual Reuben on rye and diet Coke. Libby selected a salad with oil and vinegar on the side, and a half pint of skim milk. The table they located was in the heart of the place, a two-topper that had just been cleaned by one of the corps of aproned helpers who scurried about the place. The clamor of customers, cookware, cutlery, and kitchen help was continuous, as potent a presence as the sharp scents of moist meat that hung in the humid air. Mac noticed that Libby was noticed by many in the place, and not just because of her looks. She got a wave from a County Commission member as well as a man Mac recognized as a judge from the state court of appeals. Used to being – or at least feeling – anonymous, Mac felt a bit spotlighted here in the company of this dazzling looking, and somewhat famous, if not infamous, member of the media.

Mac started to eat, already realizing this was way more food than he could handle at lunch. "Elspeth. Sounds like some Scottish influence there."

"Oh yes," she said, dipping a fork of salad in her dressing, "it's a family name. Elspeths have been spawning broods of redheads for many generations now." She ate a bite and eyed him. "With a name like McGladrey, you must have some Scots in you too."

"Yeah, by way of Ireland."

"Really? Same here."

"Whereabouts?" Mac asked. "Do you know?"

"Some place called Knocknagoshel. Isn't that a riot?"

Mac stared past her. "County Kerry, right. Northern part. Not far from, uh, Castleisland, just this side of Limerick."

She straightened. "How on earth would you know that?"

He shrugged. "My ancestors were in County Kerry for a couple generations. Place even smaller than yours, if that's possible. Glashnacree. Doesn't appear on maps."

"Hmm. Could be we're related."

"Probably not. Knocknagoshel's at the way opposite end of Kerry from where we were."

She thought for a time. "Interesting. You're the first person I've met who ever even heard of Knocknagoshel. Fact is, only reason I remember the name is because of how odd it is."

"My mom's big on genealogy," Mac said. "I did some research for her there for a while."

"Hm. A man who helps his mother. Mama's boy?" she inquired.

Mac looked at her, and understood. Libby was an all-forward woman, all the time. Notions spawned inside her, fermented, bubbled up briskly and came tumbling out of her mouth. She could not help it. Besides, she was a reporter. Good reporters, Mac had found, were relentlessly blunt, provocative, and curious. "Nah," he answered.

They ate for a time. Mac caught furtive glimpses of her. He felt somehow tingly, and off his stride. This wasn't a date, but he found himself wanting it to be one, and fearful that, if it was, he'd do or say something stupid. Jeez Louise, he thought. You're two years shy of 40. Act like it.

"So," she said, after a sip of skim milk, "let's get even. What's your first name?"

"Like I said. Mac."

"Come on. Seriously."

"It's true."

Head cocked, she did a single eye-roll. "Please. Don't give me that. No mother names her son ‘Mac' McGladrey."

"You don't know my mom."

"It's obviously a nickname."

He shrugged, ate some more, said nothing.

Still staring at him, she said: "Let's see your driver's license."

"Why?"

"I want to check it out."

"That's really pretty personal."

"Spare me the vapors. It's your driver's license I want to see, not your circumcision."

"Still and all."

"Come on," she said, beckoning with long fingers, the thumb ring glinting. "Hand it over, buster."

"What do I get in return?"

"If the first name on your driver's license really says ‘Mac,' I'll pay for lunch."

"Oh, I think I'd be entitled to something a lot more rewarding than that."

She scowled, but her eyes shined. "You've known me an hour, and already you're hitting on me?"

"Getting even."

She snorted. "I haven't hit on you. Get over yourself."

"You're saying that circumcision crack wasn't some sort of hit?"

"It absolutely was not. But what you said – that was a pass, a big-time one."

"Okay. A thousand pardons." He grinned. "I've been out of the game for a while."

"You're running with the big dogs now, buddy." Again with the fingers-gesture. "Fork over."

Shaking his head, Mac went into his pants pocket, took out his wallet, opened it, extracted the plastic blue-on-white license, and flipped it on the table in front of her. Putting his wallet away, he returned to work on his sandwich.

Presently she said, "You son of a bitch."

"Hey! Whatever happened to good sportsmanship?"

She flicked the license back toward him, stabbed her salad with her fork, in full pout. "I'm astonished they let you pull that."

"What ‘pull'? Are you implying fraud?"

"This wouldn't have anything to do with your being a county employee, would it?"

"Completely irrelevant."

"Yeah. Well." She ate some salad, drank some milk, gave him a direct gray-eyed look of absolute intensity. "I make it my personal mission to find out what your birth-baptismal-Christian real first name is."

"You just do that." Smiling, Mac pushed his plate away, sandwich half uneaten. "In the meantime, think we can talk over the, uh, situation that brings us together today?"

She blinked, and from her half smile Mac could tell she was tempted to assay a further flirtatious remark. Instead she delicately wiped her mouth with her napkin and said, "Eddie Fant. Yes."

"What makes you think," Mac asked, "that he's connected with the hooker papers?"

"Well," she said, "the night the papers were incinerated, he was one of the guys who hauled them away from Department of Sheriff."

"Really? You were there?"

"I was there." She looked sour. "We were trying to ram through an FOI order and an injunction to prevent the incineration. Didn't make it."

"And you saw Eddie there."

"Yes, like I said, he was helping with the hauling. There was another man doing the lift and carry. And they were being directed by --"

"Bucaro."

"The superintendent. Right."

"Which makes sense," Mac reflected. "The work program comes under Bucaro. They use work program people for all kinds of errands." Mac sensed that Libby was not one to volunteer things. She was baiting hooks, hoping to lure him in and reverse the information flow. That was her job. He decided to keep it going his way as long as he could. "So why," he asked, "the continued play on the hooker papers case? They're burned up, she's left town – ain't it all over?"

She'd been fiddling with her salad. Now she dropped the fork on the remaining leaves. "I take it you didn't see today's paper."

"Not yet, no."

"Doesn't anybody in this fuckin town read the paper?" she grumbled, sighed, and told Mac about Brody's call. "The story is very much not over," Libby went on. "Brody's got tales to tell. But she's scared. I have to orchestrate things so she tells what she knows and stays safe."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know. And even if I knew, I probably wouldn't say." Her gaze was level. "But the truth is, I really don't know."

While listening, Mac had been thinking about timing. "When was it you saw Eddie with Bucaro?"

Briskly she got a small wallet of her purse and flipped it open. Mac recognized the contents as a Palm Pilot, a chunk of technology he had not yet acquired for himself. "Week ago Tuesday," she said. "In the evening."

"He was killed on the Thursday, the cops seem to think."

She leaned toward Mac and lowered her voice, a rather unnecessary gesture in that crowded clamorous restaurant. "He offered me samples from the papers."

"Who?" Mac asked, startled. "Eddie?"

"He was on the truck, at the loading dock, when I talked to him," Libby said. "There were boxes of the stuff there. Binders and folders and disks. He offered to slip me some of the papers and stuff, in return for a, uh, finder's fee."

Mac was at once intrigued and saddened. Eddie, Eddie, you dumb little shit. "So what did you do?"

"Well, nothing --"

"Good for you."

"– Because I had no money," Libby charged on. "Do you believe this. I had, like, twelve cents in my purse at the time. He wouldn't trust me for it, so --"

"So," Mac observed, "it's ethical for somebody in your line of work to purchase information?"

The palms of her long shapely hands faced him, going back and forth. "What I do," she said distinctly, "is get the story. By whatever means. To get those papers I'd have given Eddie cash, a check, even a blow job if that's what it'd have taken." She shook her head. "But all he wanted was cash, and I didn't have any. So that was that."

Mac, thinking over the information, decided to decide that her throw-out about the blow job was a crude joke. He'd learned that some professional women, plying their trades in male dominated arenas, tended to overdo the coarseness, believing that's what it took to fit in. On another planet it might have bothered him, in a remote sort of way, but here, during his first hour on Planet Libby – the sharp gray eyes, long slim body, plunging neckline and – above all – the incandescent reddish-flame hair – nothing she did or said had much chance of bothering him. "Eddie," he said at last, "was really playing with fire, wasn't he."

She closed up her Palm Pilot case, put it back in her purse, leaned back in the chair. "Well?"

"Well what?"

She smiled, knowing what he was thinking. "What do you think happened to Eddie?"

Dragging his brain back, Mac said, fully comfortable with the informational quid pro quo: "I think he was murdered, is what I think."

Libby Lewis seemed not in the least surprised. She was a veteran of St. Marys streets, where things routinely got rough. "Your basis?"

Realizing who he was talking to, Mac said: "This is on background, right?"

"No-no-no. Anything you say I can print."

"No," he countered.

They stared at each other.

"Okay," she said.

Mac told her about Eddie's cab at Dogtown, the gravel hauler, the brake cable that had picked just that moment to give out, as well as the dodge 'em and run-around he'd gotten at the car shop and the sheriff substation. "I've pretty much exhausted the official channels," he said. "Eddie's marginal small-fry, with no one to speak up for him."

"No one but you."

He could not tell, from her tone, what her judgment of this was. He took her statement as a prompt. "Eddie was a shifter and a grifter. Not so much a con man really as someone with appetites that he could not fully quench except by illicit means. He knew right from wrong, and usually did right, but like most of us was capable of doing wrong if, a), the stakes were high enough, and b), he thought he would not get caught."

"‘Most of us'?" Libby retorted. "Speak for yourself, buster."

"Most of us," Mac said, smiling. "Thing is, there was hope for him. I always thought so. And at heart he was a decent man. And a war hero." He took a deep breath. "What happened to him, if he really was murdered, was unjust."

"So let's go fix it," she said lightly, "you and me."

"Me and you?"

She shrugged. "I'm pretty smart. I know people."

"I sure that's all true, but --"

"I want the story."

"Now we're down to it."

She shrugged again. "It's what I do, Mac. And you do what you do. So let's both do what we do. . .together." Her wide smile gave an open invitation, punctuated by a wink. "Deal?"

Grinning back, Mac picked up both checks. "I tracked down Eddie's girlfriend. She wasn't all that helpful. But since then I've learned some stuff might get her to be more forthcoming, so I'm making a return visit. Care to tag along?"

She stood. "I have a meeting. How about later?"

"I was figuring after work hours."

"Okay," Libby said. "And maybe after we can have dinner."

"Indeed."

They headed for the door, looking away from each other, both smiling.