Clean Slate

Chapter 32

The Metrotrain – officially called the St. Marys Area Rapid Transit System, and aggressively promoted in radio, TV, and print as "SMARTS," a nickname that the public, despite nearly thirty solid years of pounding, resolutely refused to adopt – had its central terminal a block east of Judiciary Square. The underground complex, for which nine city blocks had been demolished during the 1970s, was officially named the George E. Purple Mobile Transfer Facility, but most people called it "the Hub." It housed train transfer points for both the Red (north-south) and Blue (east-west) lines, plus a gaping dark cordoned-off cavern that might someday house the prospective Green Line transfer point. It also included a bus station, taxicab center, and the terminal for an above-ground light rail spur out to the airport. Down in the sprawling slate-paved halls and tunnels of the Hub you could find more than just packs of bustling commuters. You also saw street people, musicians, sidewalk commandos, panhandlers, merchants of various products and services, and the inevitable homeless, huddled in fetal position in dirty sleeping bags against walls and in corners, grabbing what few Zs they could till deputy patrols swatted them on the heels with billy clubs. Plus there was a gaggle of retail shops, most medium- to low-end, which, thanks to extortionate rents and indifferent patronage, tended to go dark fairly quickly.

Except of course for the sole liquor store. Kay's Beverages opened the day President Gerald Ford cut the ribbon inaugurating the Metrotrain, and it had been open 24/7/365 ever since. In fact, when Matt Perritt bought the place two years ago, there was no store key to turn over to him, because the place had never been locked.

Earl Bucaro knew this, because Earl Bucaro knew Matt Perritt. Knew him quite well, in fact. Knew that Matt was a compulsive starter of businesses. And that Matt had, during his twenty year career, guessed right more often than wrong. Most important, Earl knew that Matt Perritt should never have been granted a liquor license. Because Matt, Earl knew, had a rather significant blemish on his record from an encounter with the law a decade before. With his usual deftness, Earl had made that blemish go away. Which earned Matt his liquor license, and Earl Matt's enduring gratitude.

On which Earl collected once a week. Monday noon, like clockwork.

This Monday, the last day of June, Earl descended the crowded escalator from the 18th Street side, passed the banks of machines that sold Metrotrain passes, and headed for the bright-neon entrance to Kay's Beverages just up the hall. He wore his usual casual attire of dark slacks and light short-sleeve banlon shirt. As he strode, people veered aside, as if pushed by the strength of his flat-eyed, seemingly unblinking stare. To Earl's right was the westbound platform of the Blue Line, with a cluster of people waiting in a straggly formation. From the distance came the rolling metallic thundering sound of an approaching Red Line train. These sounds, along with those of voices and the footfalls of thousands of tramping feet, echoed and ricocheted in the high concrete ceilings of the Hub, terminally muffling the voice on an intercom announcing who-knew-what.

Easing in his gliding stride through the entrance to Kay's, Earl saw Matt Perritt just finishing up with a customer down at the end of the narrow store. Overpriced sundries filled shelves to his right; a small cooler at the end offered chilled 40s of malt liquor plus various flavors of Mad Dog. Behind the counter, shelves rose high lined thick and deep with a bewildering variety of whiskies, bourbons, liqueurs, gins, vodkas. The skinny, wizened, pony-tailed Matt saw Earl enter and, without any form of greeting, turned to the shelf to retrieve a fifth of Stoli. By the time Earl reached him, Matt had stuck the bottle in a brown sack, added a strip of ten instant lottery tickets, and twisted the top of the sack shut. Earl picked up the sack, turned to go, and froze.

In that instant -- like a snapshot -- he'd seen her walk by the store door.

Clarisa. He was sure of it.

From a dead stop, Earl bolted for the door. Second step into it the sack slipped from his grip and crashed with a muffled wet crunch on the concrete floor behind him. Earl didn't care. Hurtling out the store door and left around the corner, he saw her walking briskly toward the platform, merging with a stream of others headed for the long silver-aluminum cars of a waiting Blue Line train. Her shiny jet-black hair was tied up into a casual knot, and she wore some kind of snug denim jumper on her slight body. Her arms were bare, so were her legs – and those were Clarisa's legs, all right; Earl knew that, having tangled his with them enough times – and she wore flip-flops on her slender tawny feet. The train doors were open, but the automated voice was issuing warnings as people darted in. Earl moved faster, dodging others, gaining on Clarisa who closed in on the train as the doors hissed shut. A man beside her thrust his umbrella between the doors, causing them to rebound open. Clarisa plunged through after him, as the doors hissed shut again.

Earl skidded to a halt ten feet shy of the train as it revved up and eased forward. Through the brightly lighted train windows he could see Clarisa moving down the car his way, seeking a seat. She looked out at him, and made eye contact with him; smiled politely, and turned and sat facing away as the train gained speed, thundering into the black tunnel at the far end of the hall.

Earl felt breathless. He'd come so close. Had that been Clarisa? Now he was not so sure. His heart pounded so hard it almost hurt. This is nuts, he thought. She has to have blown town long ago. Her lover's dead, she's got kids to protect. The coppers haven't found her – they had, in fact, made little if any progress on Medardo's death, as far as Earl could discern. It was time for him to move on. Forget about her. She was gone.

Back in Kay's, Matt had left a fresh bagged bottle on the counter. Earl took it wordlessly and left. On the long escalator ride up to 18th Street, he thought about Clarisa and Medardo, and Libby Lewis and Mac McGladrey, and Eddie Fant and the Judge and Ruth Wildern. And he told himself: Everything is under control. Everything is under control. Everything is under control.

---

Libby Lewis arrived promptly at 5:25.

Mac had already been there ten minutes, parked in his Suburban across the street. Jessica Miller's home address had led him to this three-story boxy building on Decatur Place, east of downtown and a fair hike from the scrap yard where she worked. The building had once no doubt been the residence of a single family, one with some means. It was flat-topped, built of brick, faced with gray granite. Three rows of three windows each ran across the front. The veranda dominated the ground floor, and was built of granite blocks, with arches at the front and sides, and a stone top with pillars at the corners that seemed to mimic a four-poster bed. From the address – 2A – Mac assumed that Jessica occupied the front flat on the second floor.

Libby zipped her silver Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder into the space ahead of Mac's big boxy Suburban. The top of the hot little two-seater was down, to show off Libby in her red-haired glory. And quite the sight she was, too. Once Mac got past the long legs and red hair, what he noticed was that she'd changed clothes just since lunch. Now she wore a long lipstick-red jacket with zipper-pockets and snaps, that flapped down to her knees, and was longer than the matching skirt. Under the jacket he caught glimpses of a snug white top. Seemed like warm outfit for almost-July, but Mac's reaction was indeed appreciative. In fact, sitting there behind the wheel as she climbed in the passenger side, he felt the edgy-tangy feeling of anticipation, first time in forever, a sensation he'd thought long gone for him. He'd been out of the game for an awful long time, but he could still do the math.

"This your clunker?" Libby asked cheerfully, pulling her door shut.

"It's mine," Mac acknowledged.

Glancing around the Suburban, Libby nodded. "It suits you. Large, practical, and handsome."

"And that," Mac replied, indicating the Spyder, "suits you. Vivid, extravagant, and hot." He did not add the additional adjective that just then popped to mind: trouble.

"You think I'm hot?"

"Oh, you know you're hot."

"I do," she agreed. "Just yesterday, at a McDonald's drive-through, the guy who took my money busted his ass to get around to the food window, so he could check me out again as he passed my sack to me."

"Knocked down kids and cripples on the way, did he?"

"Hey, a man does what he has to do," she said airily. "You know that."

Mac did know that. And he was wondering right then, as he lay, figuratively speaking, on the slippery slope, with his grip, never strong to begin with, weakening by the minute, just how involved he really needed to get with this one. The women with whom he'd gotten on well -- and this even included Suzanne, at least in the early years -- tended to be from the brainy and calm and demure zones of the personality spectrum. Libby, on the other hand, was rockets-red-glare in every dimension. Mac's only other experience in that zone had been Paulina Sagrera, which – his love for her, deep and abiding and with him to this day, even – had ended in quite the train wreck.

Libby checked her watch, a small silver thing on her freckled wrist. "Hope she gets here soon."

"Due to."

Libby crossed her legs, got her Palm Pilot out of her purse. "So I got your voice mail," she said. "What you didn't mention was why you think this Jessica person will be more willing to talk about Eddie Fant now."

"Well, I found out she's spent time in the system."

"Probation?"

"Parole, after a jolt on a drug beef. Six, seven years ago."

"Would that explain how she met Eddie?"

"Probably."

"And this information gives us an edge how, again?"

Before Mac could answer, an old greenish Ford Taurus pulled up to the building. Out the passenger side stepped Jessica Miller, in jeans and work boots and a short sleeve chambray shirt, bright orange ear plugs still dangling around her neck. As she walked to the stairs, Mac popped his door and dropped out, hearing Libby follow as he trotted across the street. "Hey! Jessica!"

Halfway up the stairs, she turned, scanned Mac, and noticeably winced. "You again."

"Me again," he said easily, approaching at an amble: good old harmless me.

Jessica caught sight of Libby, several paces behind Mac, and asked, "Who's that?"

"Friend of mine," Mac said. "Reporter from the Blade."

"Libby Lewis," she chimed in as she drew up beside Mac.

After a moment's thought Jessica turned and eased back down the stone steps. "We can talk here," she grumped. Pulling herself up on the wide flat granite stair rail, she shook out a smoke and flamed it. "What do you want?"

Mac leaned against the opposite rail, close but not too close. Lewis stood by the hedge in front of the house and offered, easily, "I like your tatt, Jessica."

Miller fingered the rose on her neck, and in that instant her eyes looked tawny. "Thanks, You got one somewhere?"

"Several," she answered, with a look for Mac.

Her smile, all too brief, made Jessica look years younger. "I got another one on my butt," she said.

"Cool," Libby replied, with a sly smile.

"If we could," Mac intruded.

"What about you, Mister Parole Officer?" Libby asked. "Do you have tattoos secreted someplace special?"

She was smiling wide-open at him. Even Jessica's expression was several ticks warmer than a scowl, for once. Mac had brought Libby along in the hope that the presence of a female would relax Jessica down some, but this was more than he'd bargained for. Aware that he sounded like an insufferable stiff, and unable to do squat about it, he answered, "Nothing but scars from old war wounds."

"Yeah yeah yeah," Libby said, laughing. "You be a manly man, fighting our country's foes on land and sea. I suppose you were in a Jeep that hit a land mine."

"Something like that." Catching his tone, Libby narrowed her eyes, merriment at an end. Jessica's lined face went serious and, again, much older. Mac reminded himself of his discovery, from the court records, that Jessica was in fact not even thirty yet. Worn as she was, defeated and tired, you'd never have known. "When we talked the other time, Jessica, you, uh. . .you made me an offer of sorts."

She glanced quickly at him but said nothing. Libby just watched, with such sudden intensity Mac could feel it. A noisy cluster of middle schoolers sailed by on the sidewalk, giving them hardly a glance. "Now," Mac said, "one reason Libby is with me today is partly to reassure you that I don't play that way."

"What kind of offer?" Libby asked.

Mac raised a cautioning hand, keeping his eyes on Jessica, whose glance was averted, mouth a hard protective line. "I don't play that way," he repeated softly. "But you implied that other people at the Court House do. I learned that you have been in the system, you've dealt with people in my department and maybe some others. And if there's been wrongdoing – if people at the Court House have taken advantage of their positions to hurt you – I want to do something about it."

Here came the tears, bright beads in Jessica's brown eyes, trailing shiny down her lined cheeks as her chin quivered. "You can't do nothin."

"With the facts – with the truth – we might could." His voice was very soft now. He was looking intently at Jessica, aware that Libby was watching them, wisely silent. "Tell me what happened. It's just between us. It goes no further." He looked at Libby. "Right?"

"Absolutely."

Tapping her cigarette hard, Jessica sniffed, wiped her cheek with the back of a rough hand. "I thought you wanted to know about Eddie."

"I do," Mac said. "And we'll get to that. But he's not hurting today. You are. And we need to fix that."

Mac had expected the tears to go max with that. Instead they dried up, as if once again dammed up behind Jessica Miller's wall built of denial and cold cynicism: this is the way the world is. Taking a toke, she exhaled smoke as she talked, looking at neither Mac nor Libby. "There's guys in the system make you put out," she said.

"Meaning," Mac said gently, "they force you to have sex with them." She nodded. "What guys, Jessica?"

Her tawny eyes found him briefly. Clearly she was torn between trusting him and not. To do so was a plunge, which she took after a deep breath. "Bucaro, that son of a bitch."