Clean Slate

Chapter 38

Startled – and feeling foolish, too; you'd think we'd have cleared up these subjects yesterday, he thought – Mac sat up. "You're married?"

"Oh, not any more," she said, as if his question was ridiculous.

"Just checking," he said uncomfortably. "I mean, not that I'm free of the toils or anything --"

"Technically you aren't. But it matters not."

"I was just wondering."

"It's okay," she said lightly, looking away from him. "No problem."

In the silence Mac realized he could hear the TV playing out in the living room. He did not recall her turning it on. She lay atop the sheets beside him, miles of gorgeous and absolutely naked woman, appetite sated, apparently in no hurry to leave the bed. Eyeing her flat belly, excellent hips, and truly gorgeous legs, Mac idly wondered if she'd ever had children. There were no physical signs, not that this was definitive. He thought about asking, then decided against it. It could have led into his own parenthood history, and the whole topic was just too painful to discuss under these circumstances. Besides, he reasoned, he was certain she'd never been a mom. From a mile away he could spot whether a person had ever been a parent or not. To him the signs – attitudinal, behavioral, spiritual – were that obvious.

Abruptly she sat up, slipped past him and off the bed. "Dinner's in a bag out on my front seat," she told him. "Famous Fried Chicken. Hope you don't mind."

"Sounds great," he said, watching her head for the door. "Going for a smoke?"

She paused at the door. "No. To use the bathroom, if you must know. For some reason I'm feeling like I have to go every two minutes lately." She smiled. "What makes you think I smoke?"

"I could smell it in your place here."

"Oh," she waved, "I've had guests here who smoke, that's all. Not for me. Could you bring the food in?"

"Sure." He threw his pants and teeshirt back on and padded barefoot through the living room and out the front door. Back inside, he waited till she came in, barefoot in blue sleeveless shirt and sand colored shorts, blazing red hair still bed-tumbled. "Bad news," he told her.

"What?"

"Your cat got our dinner."

"My cat? I don't have a cat."

"Well, some cat," Mac amended. "Your car top is down, and the cat got into the chicken and. . .well, let's just say he was looking pretty comfortably happy by the time I went out there."

"Oh, shit."

"No problem, I called a pizza order in."

"I don't mean that, what about my upholstery?"

"It's okay, I took care of it." Mac went to her, folded her in his arms, kissed her. "Care for a drink?"

"I'll buy you a beer."

"Sounds good to me."

---

The pizza came, and they ate and drank with good appetite, watching the ads on CNN, interrupted every so often by sniglets of breathlessly orated well-masticated news. Libby told him about her Sheffield trip and the press conference, and they talked about state political figures at length. Wiping her mouth, Libby collected paper plates and pizza crusts and stowed them away in the carton, then sat down beside Mac on the couch. "What about our little caper?" she asked. "Did you get anywhere with that today?"

Briefly he told her about the unfindable Kim Cheppy, and from the reluctant Diana Privette. "So what we've got on Bucaro," he concluded, "is not a whole lot. Cheppy's nugatory, Privette's not even admitting she knew him, and Miller is squirrel city, all over the map."

"I'll go see Privette tomorrow," Libby said. "And Jessica, too. Maybe I can talk them into --"

"I think that's a bad idea."

"Why? They're women, I'm a woman --"

"We should let it simmer. Do some more digging."

"In what direction?"

"Beats hell out of me." He endured her defiant stare. "Pushing them could force them even further into denial. You want someone to turn around, you don't hammer them. You nudge them."

"I know how to nudge."

"Let's just bide our time --"

"What are you saying? That I'm a bad nudger?"

"With all respect – and I mean this in the kindest possible way --"

"Oh, fuck you."

"I rest my case."

Despite herself, she smiled. Here it comes, he thought. Wheedle time. "This is my job, Mac. To get the story. To get it and print it."

"I know. But there's no corroboration at this point. And if you're going to bring Bucaro down, we'll need corroboration up the ying-yang."

Libby sat cross-legged beside him, rocking in thought, looking vexed. "If I didn't know better," she commented, "I'd suspect you're privately taking up for Bucaro. Kind of old-boy-network thing."

"Now," Mac said mildly, "that's uncalled for."

Abruptly she smiled. "Okay. You're right. I take it back."

A Suzanne saying. Though Mac had not felt her in the bed this time, he was conscious of her space in his head – where loomed also thoughts of their upcoming lunch date. "I'll stop in on Privette again tomorrow or next day," he said. "When she's simmered down and thought it over. And you'll need to come along for that."

"Okay," she said. "And what about the CD? The one Jessica gave us?"

"We're working on it."

"And?"

Another moment of truth. And Mac, without fully thinking about it, rolled out the fog. "Nothing much to go on yet."

"Really?"

"Time will tell. I've got a co-worker tearing into it."

"Okay," she said casually.

They watched CNN. Mac felt disspirited at the sleazy little crypto-truths with which he'd fobbed Libby off. But, in his own defense, he felt guarded about how much she should know. They were supposedly a team, partners, something like that. But their roles were ill-defined, and their motivations were very different. All she wanted was to roll a big story out there, and damn the consequences. Mac, on the other hand, had a specific set of consequences to work toward, and he would not let her get in the way.

---

First thing Wednesday morning, Probation Section Supervisor Clare Epple convened the first-ever meeting of "Cluster A." The shortness of the meeting, for which Mac was grateful, was due mostly to the fact that several cluster members were otherwise engaged, including Abigail Heartwell, who was in the field for the morning doing employer visits.

As Mac, back at his desk, hacked at his paperwork backlog, he thought about Earl Bucaro and the tentative, frail strands of adverse evidence pointed his way. There was the Eddie Fant death, with which Bucaro, if you interlocked suppositions in a specific way, seemed to be linked. Bucaro in turn was closely linked to Judge Wildern. Is it possible, Mac wondered, that the Judge himself is dirty somehow? No way, he concluded. No how.

Then there were the rapes of female parolees, with which Bucaro had been tagged by Jessica Miller. Mac was certain that terrible crimes had been committed, and he felt in his heart of hearts that Bucaro was behind it all. But the tanned man seemed secure behind his wall of power and position, and protected, moreover, by the aura of fear he seemed to engender in the Jessica Millers of the world. Bottom line was that Mac, sitting here on this Wednesday morning, had nothing to go on. On the Eddie death there was nothing by way of eyewitnesses or physical evidence. And on the rapes all Mac had was Miller's uncorroborated say-so.

The key, Mac thought, could be Diana Privette. Turn her, and perhaps she'd domino Miller over too. But how to turn her?

Or maybe, he reflected, I should just go straight at him. See what happens –

His mobile phone rang. 313. Ah, the Detroit detective checking in. "Hi, Ben," Mac answered.

"Back atcha," came Perkins's Southern-tinged drawl. "Update for Kemo Sabe."

"Including a name?"

"Not quite yet. I'm drilling into the conference thing your wife attended? On sick sigma, whatever that is?"

"Right."

"Cobo Hall, where the conference was at, they had an electronic admission system. People who were advance-registered were issued little plastic cards. When they entered the conference, they'd swipe them in this computer kiosk. To trap their names and other information, I guess so they could be bombarded later with junk mail and shit."

"And?"

"Well, each morning of the conference, Suzanne is on record as having swiped her card going in."

"So she did attend the conference."

"Hold the phone. All the card-swipe proves is she entered the building. Which leads to the next logical question --"

"Did she stay in the building."

"That's the fun part. You swipe to go in, you don't swipe when you leave. They only give a shit that you showed up, not whether or not you stayed."

"So she could have swiped in and then walked right back out."

"Right. Think that she'd be that, uh, sneaky?"

"Suzanne. Huh. Sure wish I could say no."

"That's what I thought."

"So what do you do now?"

"I've reached out to the Cobo floor boss for that conference. He's due back from out of town in a day or two. I'm going to talk to him. See if I can get hold of security guards, other conference management people who might have seen her. The other thing is, those same cards, attendees can swipe those at the exhibit booths. To request literature and shit. If her card was recorded during the day at those, that would tend to suggest that she stayed at Cobo all day and didn't sneak out to meet someone."

"True. Well, Ben, thanks for the report. And for the hard work."

"It's a livin'. How're things down your way?"

"Ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"When you're investigating something, and your leads run dry, what's the right thing to do? Wait, or push?"

"The answer to that is simple and clear cut, and so obvious I'm astounded it hasn't occurred to you."

"Humor me."

"What you do. . .is what seems right at the time."

"Oh, that's a big help."

"Happy to oblige."

"Ask you something else?"

"Sure go ahead, it's early in the month, I'm still on my free minutes."

"When you know who the culprit is, but you don't have enough to put him down, do you circle around and nibble and wait, or go straight at him?"

"The way to handle that. . .all depends."

"Damn you're slippery."

"Just because I've done this work for 20 years doesn't mean I've got a system or anything."

"Terrific."

"Sometimes," Perkins observed, "you just stir things up, and sit back and watch."

"Uh-huh."

"And sometimes all you can do is wait." Mac heard Perkins light up. "What's the caper?"

"Working a run of the mill garden variety really, really bad, bad guy."

"How charming. Want me to run back down there and reason with him? Motivate him? Reverse his knees for ya?"

"So your message is when finesse doesn't work, go straight to muscle?"

"Works for me."

"Well, not just yet. I need you up there finding Suzanne's stud muffin."

"If he exists."

"Oh," Mac said, "he exists, all right."

---

Pocketing his change, Mac brought their lunch over to the wrought iron park bench, in a shady spot not far from the big marble fountain where chess players hovered over their tables, darting pieces from square to square. Libby Lewis sat at the bench's end, looking fetching in a coral bra-top dress that went just to mid-thigh, leaving exposed her long gorgeous arms and legs. Sitting beside her, Mac distributed hot dogs and fries and diet Cokes and they ate for a bit as around them churned the noontime vehicle and pedestrian traffic of Judiciary Square.

"Fabulous day," Mac commented, thinking: nothing compared to Wild Rose.

"Wish it would get hotter," Libby said. "Just haven't had the real heat yet this summer."

"Depends on what kind of heat you're talking about."

She bumped his thigh with her knee. "That kind of heat I've had a-plenty, thanks ever so much."

"You're welcome." Mac thought: This is Wednesday. Tomorrow I see Suzanne. Disclosure time. 'Fess up about this, um. . .affair? Romance? Which was it? Whatever it was, he'd considered breaking it off with Libby and not bothering to tell Suzanne it had ever happened. But he had let that notion go because, A, the ethics of it sucked, and B, he had not in fact broken it off. And was not likely to, in the next twenty-four hours; with no small amount of unease Mac realized that this romance, affair, whatever it was, would most likely go on for some time yet. Mac witnessed in himself what he'd noted in many others: one's ability to rationalize increases exponentially in situations involving nooky. This thing with Libby – romance, affair, whatever you called it as long as the word "love" was not included – was simply the fulfillment of wishes others had had for him. Mac was having his fling, in keeping with Perkins's suggestion. And the flingee, Libby, was integral to the mission Mac had embarked on, as wished for by Scott, by way of the book of Isaiah. Emotional quandaries aside, when looking at the bigger picture, Mac was forced to admit that his life was pretty good right now. He had everything he wanted -- except of course the one thing he would never have but would continue, for the rest of his life, to want most.

"Well," Libby said, sipping her soda, "I pitched it this morning, but got slapped down."

"Pitched what?"

"The story."

"What story?" Mac asked, heart sinking.

"Jessica Miller, you know, the Bucaro rape story."

Mac's mouthful of hot dog felt suddenly like a lump of tar. Drily he chewed and swallowed. "You pitched it to who?"

"My editor. Dwight. He likes the angle, of course. But we need more than just Miller."

"Oh, man. I wish you hadn't done that."

"Done what?"

"Told someone else."

"Dwight's not someone else, he's my boss. I have to --"

"We're getting way too far ahead of ourselves. For one thing, we don't need this leaking out --"

"Oh, Dwight won't say anything," Libby said, taking a hissing slurp from her soda. "He's your basic urban A.D.H.D. idiot."

"– And for another thing, he's right, we don't have enough facts --"

"Which is why the next step is to go see Bucaro," Libby said. "Confront him with the allegations. He'll deny them, and then we have the story."

"What story?"

"His denial."

"His denial is a story?"

"One hell of a story."

Mac wrapped up the remains of his lunch. "But doing that doesn't get justice for the victims. And it doesn't prevent him from victimizing others."

She waved a hand. "Oh, once he knows we're on to him, he'll have to clean up his act."

"And it doesn't close the book for Eddie. Which is what this whole thing is really about."

"You can't have everything."

"I know. And what you're suggesting, it's a nice quick fix. It gets you what you want, which is a hot story. But for me it's not enough, Libby."

She eyed him. "So what do you want, then?"

"I want enough evidence to take to a prosecutor. So much so that Bucaro gets clapped in irons and perp-walked into the Central Jail. And I want it before any hint of this leaks out to anybody."

"So you're muzzling me."

"I can't muzzle you. You're free to do what you want, if you don't mind pissing me off."

"Oooh! My God no! I'd better not piss off the big man!"

Mac just eyed her. This is how it's going to be with her, he thought. Constantly having to rein in her professional ambition, her diseased need for the big quick score.

Her eyes softened, she smiled, put a hand on his. "Okay, all right. I hear you. We're a team. I want us to be a team. We'll try it your way. Our way. All the way."

"Fair enough." His tone was absent, his thoughts thrown back to something she'd said a minute ago: Go see Bucaro. . .confront him. . . .

Why the hell not?

What was there to lose?