Clean Slate

Chapter 36

The Judge's hand went up. Mac could see the Masons symbol on the stone of his large gold ring. The Judge stared straight ahead through the windshield. "You got proof?" he asked. "Or just say-so?"

"Say-so is all."

"Then don't tell me," the Judge said, staring out the windshield.

"It's just between us. It's off the record."

"I understand that. But in my position, I can't traffic in innuendo."

"Just so you know there's something headed down the hill."

"Oh, in my forty years here," the Judge mused, "lots of stuff has headed down lots of hills. Most of it just sort of puckers out."

"This won't."

"Must not pre-suppose, Mac."

"It's important to me that you're prepared."

"I'm always prepared, Mac."

"That's good, your Honor."

All this time the Judge had not looked at Mac. He was acting more like he was overhearing a conversation rather than participating in one. Deniability, Mac thought. They crested the final ridge and began the descent toward the Sabbath River, the suburbs of St. Marys reaching out to engulf them, downtown skyscrapers emerging in the haze, as the four lanes of freeway traffic heavied up around them.

"It might be linked to those hooker papers," Mac said, just floating it out there.

The Judge was studying the Seven Sisters smoke stacks of the SMPA Power Authority complex. "Got burned," he said.

"Maybe not all," Mac answered. "Could be some got filched."

"Could be?"

"I got no confirmation," Mac admitted. "Yet."

"Then it's not a problem."

"But," Mac pressed, "if some of them are still floating around, anybody whose name might be mentioned in 'em, they have fresh cause for concern."

"Too bad for them," the Judge said dismissively.

Mac passed a line of trucks and dived the Suburban down the steep hill into the North Town Tunnel. Well, he thought, I asked the question, sort of, and he answered it. Sort of.

In the unnatural darkness of the tunnel, Judge Wildern's face flashed rapidly in the strobelike lights of the side beams. "Earl's a good man," he remarked. "Runs a tight ship. Loyal and tough. And dependable." He grinned. "Which makes him a lot like you. One thing about you, Mac, you always do what you say you'll do. Could make for an interesting match-up."

What does he think this is, Mac wondered: a game? "I just don't want you caught in the middle, mangled up in some way, Judge. You've done so much for me down through the years."

Judge Wildern clapped Mac's shoulder. "Don't worry," he said airily. "If Earl tripped on his dick, he'll just have to take the hit. But cornering him -- putting paid to him – in those details lives the devil, my friend. You want to take him on, you be plenty careful. He plays for keeps."

Mac just shrugged, a slight uplift of his white shirt. His feelings were mixed. On the one hand, he felt good that he'd done his duty by the Judge. On the other hand, he felt uneasy and a bit annoyed, conscious of being fobbed off. Can't traffic in innuendo? What the hell was that noise? For politicians like Judge Wildern – and for all his good traits he was a politician first and a jurist second – innuendo was an arrow in the quiver.

Rather than deal with the Brookwood Station interchange, Mac exited the tunnel at Lee Highway and took its angled four-lane the straight shot toward the heart of downtown. In silence the men rode, the Judge enjoying his cigar, basking in the sun that bathed his side of the vehicle. Presently Mac asked, "How's Ruth?"

"Oh, just brilliant," the Judge answered idly. "She's one of those rare women, Mac, I believe aging suits her. To me she's more vibrant, more sexy than ever. I'm going to tell you something, and you keep this under your hat. Our fortieth anniversary is coming up, and on that day I'm surprising her with a trip to the airport where we're getting on a plane to Los Angeles, and connecting to Honolulu, ending up on Moorea in the South Seas."

"That's fabulous. Good for you."

"Twenty-one days," Wildern said dreamily.

"Congratulations, your Honor. She's a great lady. You're very lucky."

"I know it," Wildern grunted. "Who'd have thought it. A Shacktown kid like me, going through life with a classy girl like her on my arm. Who'd have thought it."

---

Mac reached his office just in time to start a series of three back-to-back offender interviews, two of them – at least for Mac – newbies. As he worked the interviews, listening to the stories and the alibis and the excuses, and administering various degrees of carrot and stick, Mac found it hard not to switch over to automatic pilot. He was conscious of Abigail in the adjoining office, also interviewing, and wondered how far she'd gotten locating Kim Cheppy. He was aware of Libby Lewis out in Sheffield, covering the press conference, chasing down facts, writing up her story, and, as indicated by her attitude that morning, blithely confident that they'd be together again tonight. He envisioned Diana Privette finishing her day at the hospice house, resolutely burying deep in her mental lock box whatever feelings she had about her talk with Mac. He thought about Suzanne, roaming the plant floor at RackMasters handling her gage control duties, and perhaps thinking about their lunch date day after tomorrow. He pictured Scott touching base with Flip and Howdie, disclosing the details of Mac's sudden skedaddle from celibacy – among these four nothing was sacred or secret, a tradition that far antedated Scott's ordination.

And he thought about Judge Wayne Wildern. With him, or about him, something was not right. Mac had long seen each person he knew as a map, of sorts, that included traits, preferences, abilities, description, potentiality, and history. Each person's map started out blank, its areas being colored in as Mac got to know him or her; for example, Libby's map was mostly empty, the known spots colored various shades of red and labeled reporter and Scot/Irish and freckles and – the largest part, border etched jagged as if by an out-of-control child – Lord have mercy. No map, not even those of his parents, was ever complete; some spots were blurry, others blank. Though Mac had felt that the Judge's map had very few such spots, today he was not so sure. Today Mac had seen something different. Mac was far from being able to define it. By virtue of their long friendship, and the Judge's fond patronage, Mac had never thought that the older man might play him. But today Mac felt he was being played. And it worried him.

It was pushing 4:00 by the time Abigail came through the archway to see him. She looked tired around the eyes, and some hair and come loose from the scrunchy. With a sigh she slid into his guest chair. "I give up," she said.

"On what?"

"Cheppy."

"No luck anywhere?"

"None. Nothing in County records. Nothing on line. It's like she never existed."

"Hm. You know, it was a while back, and Miller's sizzled some brain cells along the way -- probably she got the name all wrong."

"Could be." She raised a hand, displayed the CD in its yellow jacket. "Now this, on the other hand."

"Yeah?"

Abigail bit her lip, thinking, then held up a finger, rose, went to the door and closed it. Dragging the guest chair to the side of Mac's desk, she seated herself again very close to him. "What we have on here," she said quietly, "are emails and spreadsheets."

"Okay."

"The emails are from an old obsolete email program called Gorgon. I had to download the thing from two cows --"

"Whatever," Mac said, waving briefly. "Could you decipher them?"

"Of course," she said patiently. "There's tons of stuff there. All I had time for was a quick scan."

"What'd you find out?"

"Number one, the person the archive belongs to is listed as Mistress Deborah B."

"Debby Brody," Mac said. "The madam or whatever." His pulse had quickened. "So this was part of the hooker papers. That means Eddie did swipe some stuff."

"Well," Abigail amended, "it's pretty clear he swiped this. What else he took, where it might have ended up, who knows."

Mac thought about Bucaro, the C-note, Eddie's comment that he had a line on an "income opportunity." Could Eddie have been dumb enough to try to peddle the stolen documents? Could it be he had sold some, and all that was left was the CD he'd given to Miller?

"Anyway, the emails," Abigail was saying, "what I could see of them – this Mistress Deborah has a web site, sells sex toys and porno. She also hosts sex parties -- I gather for a fee, but I don't know the details. She has an email list and sends out invites every so often. That's what these emails were mostly about, far as I can tell."

"That's real pleasant," Mac grunted. "What about the spreadsheets?"

Abigail lowered her voice even further. "That's where it gets really interesting. They seem to be customer accounts. She had regular customers, tracked who they were, what services they bought, how much they spent."

"How Harvard MBA," Mac said. And then, belatedly, he observed the grim light in Abigail's cornflower blue eyes. "What?"

"She included their names," Abigail whispered. "In the spreadsheets."

Mac leaned back in his chair. "I take it," he murmured, "we're not talking everyday Tom Dick and Harrys here."

"Well, there are plenty of names I don't recognize," Abigail conceded. "But – would you believe –" She leaned toward Mac, to within inches of him, so close he could detect her background fruity scent, and see up close what really fine eyes she had. "Wanatah. Fishtahler. Blankenbicker."

Mac stared, resisted the urge to whistle. "Them for sure? First and last names?" She nodded. "What could Brody have been thinking, recording their actual names like that."

"Maybe self protection, or leverage. Or maybe just indifference," she said. "Maybe to her the fact that she was, uh, servicing a Division Two judge, County Commission vice-chair, and the United Way executive director was no big deal."

"But I have to believe," Mac said, "that this is the kind of thing people would go to great lengths to keep covered up."

"That's what I was thinking."

"And possession of them by Eddie could be deemed a threat."

"Fits."

Mac propped his running shoe on the lip of his desk, rolled his chair back to the wall right next to the black smooth face of the enormous built-in safe. "I gotta think about this," he murmured. "You, uh. . .you got that disk and data secured somehow?"

"Kept it on my own laptop," Abigail answered. "And I'm taking it home with me." She got to her feet, and spoke indirectly: "Did I do okay?"

"Oh, you did great. Thanks." He pressed his lips, unable to resist asking the question burning a hole in his mood. "Need to ask you about one name in particular."

"What is it?"

Mac almost spoke, then thought better of it. Tearing a sheet off his pad, he wrote two words, then turned it toward her. She scanned it, shook her head. "Nope."

Whew, Mac thought. "Wouldn't have thought so."

"At least not yet," she added. "I've only just started." She edged away, eyeing him. "Do I keep on reading?"

"Please do. And thanks again," Mac said. "You are such a good. . .help with this. I don't know what I'd do."

She smiled, and Mac expected a throwaway line, but what she said, and quite lightly too, was this: "It's plain as day to me that working on this Eddie thing is helping you. And whatever I can do to pull you out of the ditch – I'm happy to do. G'night, Mac."

"Take it easy."

Quickly Mac completed recording his interview information, saved it all to the network, and shut down his terminal. By the time he rose to leave for the day, Abigail's office was dark. Before leaving, Mac took the sheet of yellow pad paper and shredded it, leaving it in his wastebasket in pieces too tiny and irregular for anyone ever to be able to figure out that the words he had written on it were Wayne Wildern.

---

Most times Earl liked chauffeuring the Judge morning and night. For one thing, wheeling the big Cadillac felt good – so smooth, silent, and powerful. He enjoyed basking in the reflected deference extended to the Chief Judge. He took pleasure in the sight of Ruth Wildern at the house, morning and night, always in her most proper wifely mode – damn, the lady could act! To witness her greeting Earl, exchanging banalities, effortlessly aiding the Judge in his going-to-work or home-for-the-day rituals – you'd never in a million years believe her capable of giving Earl the mother of all blow jobs, licking his cum off her breasts, or suggesting anal intercourse – which, Earl was surprised to learn, she'd not till the previous Sunday ever tried. And, on these daily drives down Mount Madison and back, particularly when the Judge was in what Earl thought of as animated motor-mouth mode, the Superintendent always gleaned key bits of Court House gossip that, in the never-ending shifting of the innumerable puzzle pieces that comprised St. Marys politics, often endowed Earl with an invaluable edge.

Tonight was different, though. Oh, the Judge was certainly in motormouth mode, blaring nonstop from his capacious back seat, as he flipped pages of the Blade and threw out pithy asides about key St. Marys County political and business figures he'd encountered at the Castle luncheon. And the Caddy ran as smoothly as ever, truly a pleasure: five hundred horsepower Earl's to command. Plus the Superintendent was sure he'd see Ruth tonight, and she would smile her proper smile and greet him by title, all the while fluttering over her husband with her most excellent help-meet act, while Earl watched with a half bemused smile, thinking about her grunting and thrashing sweatily beneath him as he pronged her with furious thrusts, at the same time squeezing the breath out of her.

Yes, tonight was different, and it was different because of the way today had gone.

For one thing, he'd given some thought to the event -- a party, of sorts -- Ruth had asked him to arrange for them. His conclusion? It was crazy, even nuttier than the boar-hunting episode. But how to evade it?

For another thing, he'd seen Clarisa again. This time she was driving a rattletrap Dodge Omni along the Serpentine Wall. Passing her the other way, Earl had seen her clearly; seen her two kids in their back seat booster chairs too. But by the time he found a way to turn around, even the powerful Corvette could not catch him up with her.

And then this afternoon Earl had learned via back channel means that the official status of the Medardo case was still listed as active. This made no sense. All things considered, by this time the status should have been downgraded to inactive and allowed to molder peacefully in the records.

Why still active?

What leads were they pursuing?

How could Earl find out, and then --

"Are you listening, Earl," the Judge repeated.

Startled, Earl realized he was about to overshoot the exit onto Pine Parkway. Expertly he drew the Caddy down and into the turn, replying as he did so: "Sorry, Judge, what was it again?"

"I had a talk today with a parole officer, young man I befriended years ago," the Judge said easily. "Name of McGladrey. Know him?"

Earl pursed his lips. "Oh, we've crossed paths."

"Know anything about him?"

"Not really."

"Well, he seems to know a thing or two about you."

"That so?"

"Seems to think," the Judge said with studied casualness, "that you've been doing some big-time misbehaving." A snap came, and some breathy sounds, and the aroma of cigar smoke. "So, Mister Earl Bucaro, just between you and me and the fencepost: What have you been up to?"