Clean Slate

Chapter 39

Libby's coy tone yanked him back: "And speaking of ‘all the way,' how about tonight?"

Mac had not even thought that far ahead. So this is an every-night deal? Despite all misgivings, his spirits rose; damn I've got it bad. "Uh-huh?"

"Your place this time?"

"Umm. . .sure, why not."

"I want to be on your turf. Where is it again? Clydesburg?"

"Wild Rose."

"Which is where?"

He told her. Not once, but twice. The second time so she could record the directions in her Palm Pilot.

---

When Earl, gliding up the carpeted hall toward his department, saw Mac McGladrey hanging around the bulletin board just inside the bailiff bureau office entrance, he was careful not to show any reaction. But inwardly the tan man had to admit he was just a little bit impressed. The young man was not so much a cut-and-run type, after all.

Well then. McGladrey wants to play – so, we'll play.

The superintendent stepped inside and Mac watched him go to the curly-haired scheduler and retrieve pink message slips. Not for Bucaro, Mac realized, electronic voice mail; he insisted on paper. Quite the throw-back. "Superintendent," he said.

Earl turned and glanced at Mac with uninterested eyes. "How can I help you?" he murmured, giving the pink slips a lot more attention than they were worth.

"Need a word, sir."

With a glance and a half smile for his scheduler, Earl gestured with the slips. "In here."

Mac followed the shorter, bull-like man into his private office, and passed by him as Bucaro shut the glass door. To Mac the place had the feel of dead rebreathed air, a musty scent, no doubt from the unfurled flags and the uncracked books and the lack of cross-ventilation and the fact that, years ago, a regular smoker had worked in here. He was nerved up, but not terribly so. This errand had the flavor of going through the motions. There was a 90% chance he'd come up empty, but that other tantalizing 10% made worthwhile the both the inconvenience and the potential for an ugly confrontation.

Earl never considered going behind his desk. That was a form of hiding, which to him connoted fear, and he showed fear to no one, most especially nosy punk-ass book-readers. Instead he leaned back against the lip of the desk top, facing the PPO, brown hands gripping the edge. "What's up?" he asked drily.

Mac looked down at him. He felt loose and easy. Scanning the tan man with the smooth hair and the flat stare, he wondered if he'd ever see the spark in this one, or even if there was a spark to be seen. Knowing it was naive, Mac persisted in believing that in every human being, even the worst, there was still a spark of humanity, decency, kindness, trying to get out. What got in the way was the world and its appetites. Keeping his tone low and steady, Mac asked, "Did you kill Eddie Fant?"

Earl arched a brow. The temptation, which he quelled, was to let all his amusement show. "What makes you think that?"

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"It's a request for more information."

"Eddie helped you with the hooker papers," Mac said. "In the process, he stole some of them. The papers name names of important people, some of whom might have found it advantageous to silence Eddie before he could distribute them."

"What an intriguing, twisty-turny tale you're spinning there."

The playful tone was belied by Earl's flat-eyed watchfulness. Mac took care not to be provoked. "Do you routinely carry hundred dollar bills?"

"Of course."

"In Eddie's effects I found a hundred dollar bill. Not something a man like him comes by on a routine basis."

"Why would I give that jerk-off a hundred dollars? For a five-spot he'd fuck his mother."

The low, blithe, toneless voice made it tough for Mac to stay calm. "Did you kill Eddie Fant, sir," he breathed.

Earl looked away, considered, looked back. "Suppose I did."

"Did what?"

"Let's say I did," Earl pressed. "What then?"

"You're admitting it?" Mac asked, incredulous despite himself.

"What happens?" Earl repeated.

Mac snorted. "Well, what do you think? I take you down."

"Oh really. You, take me. With those little fragments of chicken-shit." Earl pushed himself erect, looked up into Mac's eyes, just six inches away from him now. "Do you have any idea who I know in this town?"

Mac did not budge. "I know you know Judge Wildern. I know you know lots of people --"

"No no no no," Earl said softly. "That's not who I'm talking about." He studied Mac candidly. "Suzanne? At Rackmasters? I know her. Your brother Paul, the one hip-deep in hock to shylocks? Him I know too. How well do you know your brother? And then there's Nick and Marie, those names ring a bell? I know they live. And Julie, too. Nice little day care she runs."

Despite himself Mac's heart was going. But his stare never wavered. "Shall I take all this as a threat?"

"You can take it, and yourself," Earl retorted, "wherever you want, as long as it's out of my office."

Mac had no choice; this was the man's private turf. He stepped back a pace. "You know, if you own up," he told Earl, "and get right, there is such a thing as a clean slate."

"Get out."

"I can help you."

"Get," Earl said, "the fuck, out."

Mac looked him over once more, then nodded. "All right, then." He left.

---

The DPP waiting room was empty when Mac returned. Everybody was back having interviews, Mac thought as he walked in, and the next round of clowns wasn't due in yet. The encounter with Bucaro had Mac fuming. There's a way, he thought, to fix the son of a bitch --

I just don't know what it is yet.

Janie, at the reception desk, waved him over. "Just thought you should know," she said, voice low. "That awful boyfriend of Abigail's?"

"What about him?" Mac asked, instantly on guard.

"He's back in her office with her."

"No kidding."

Janie shook her head, eyes fierce. "He's such an asshole. I told him it was off limits, but he just laughed and sailed right on by. What's wrong with Abigail? Around him, it's like she's in a trance."

"Why didn't you call security?"

"I love Abigail. I don't want to get her in trouble."

Mac considered. "Okay. Thanks for the alert."

"Sure. What are you going to do?"

"What makes you think I'm going to do anything?"

"Because you're – oh." She gave him a quick furtive smile. "Okay."

Mac started away, turned back. "Do you know CPR?"

"No."

"Good. Back in a minute."

Mac went out into the cool wide green-slate second-floor corridor. All was calm and quiet at the moment. Just one customer, and he was headed for the drain department at the other end. Mac walked toward the mouth of the wide stairway at the far end of the hall. He felt himself going into a dark zone, where throbbed his frustration over Eddie Fant, and anger toward Earl Bucaro, and at the center of which, at this particular moment, was the smirking face of Garry Overbye.

To the left, perhaps fifty feet from the stairs, was a very short hallway. Mac stepped into it. It dead-ended almost at once in near-darkness at a rippled-glass door with the word JANITOR printed on it. Facing the corridor, Mac waited and listened. Presently he heard the thumpa-thumpa of the DPP waiting room doors opening and closing, and then, coming his way, footsteps.

It was Overbye, alone, bopping along on his little stick legs, wearing a white short sleeve polo shirt and sand colored pants. Mac stepped out of the alcove and fell into step beside him. Overbye's reaction was merely a dismissive squint. "What do you want?"

"You can't claim I never warned you," Mac said jauntily.

"Fuck you. Get lost."

Mac gave the long corridor a glance. No one else. Very well. Wordlessly he grabbed the smaller man: back of the shirt collar in his left hand, back of the waistband in his right. And with the shorter man well in hand he started to run, dragging Overbye along. "Hey!" Overbye yelled, thrashing his arms at Mac, trying to break loose. The stairs grew closer. Mac had Overbye mostly off the ground now, struggling, and he eyed the floor and the lip of the stair and then hoisted Overbye a half-foot up and hauled back and flung him, with a two-armed underhanded toss, airborne toward the stairs.

Overbye belly-smacked on the green slate floor with a shout, spun and slid with all four limbs extended, and screed to a halt just shy of the first step. Mac, who had skidded to a stop a dozen feet back, felt breathless, dizzy – and then he heard footsteps behind him. Turning, he saw a woman he did not know walking toward them from the DPP doors. She stopped, froze, stared with her red mouth making an O, then did a smart 180 and clip-clopped briskly the other way: I see nothing. . .I hear nothing. Meanwhile, from downstairs Mac could hear urgent male voices and the hard drum of leather soles coming up the wide curved stairway.

Overbye was on his hands and knees, shaking his head, and looked back at Mac, face stricken. "I could have fell down the stairs, you son of a bitch!"

Mac paced to him and hunkered down as into view from down below hove a trio of Homeland Security Desk men. Mac took a hank of Overbye's hair and tugged it. "I can drop a a disc on the ten-spot, clean, from fifty-two feet away," he hissed into the man's ear. "If I wanted you down those stairs, you'd be at the bottom right now, counting your teeth."

"Halt!" shouted one of the security men. "Stay where you are! Homeland Security!"

Mac released Overbye, who, dazed and shaking, eased over into a seated position on the floor. Mac leaned even closer. "Abigail wants you gone," he whispered fiercely. "So you get gone, and you stay gone. You read me, asshole?"

Overbye said nothing as the Homeland Security Desk men reached them. "What's the situation?" barked the lead man, a squat blond burr-cut whom Mac recognized from the security checkpoint below.

Here it comes, Mac thought, saying nothing: consequences time.

Overbye slowly got to his feet, examined his arms and legs. "I tripped," he said. "Tripped and fell."

The three security guys gaped at him. One said, "Really. What was the shouting about then."

"Aren't you McGladrey?" one of the others asked Mac suspiciously.

"I tripped," Overbye repeated, dusting off his pants. "What? You think this son of a bitch can take me?" Deliberately he threw his skinny shoulders back, walked through the trio and down the stairs, head high.

Mac looked at the three security men, who were looking in different directions, as if waiting for instructions from somewhere. "Am I free to go?" he asked drily.

"For now," the lead man answered, and the security men turned as one and trooped back down to the check point.

---

Earl Bucaro always ate lunch at Tastee Town, a throwback-to-the-1950s diner in an alley off Court Street, a half dozen blocks from Judiciary Square. They knew him there: broke his $100 bills, brought him the afternoon paper (no charge), kept his coffee cup full – so he was comfortable. He always sat in the corner booth at the end, right across from the stainless steel display cabinets loaded with pies to go, a safe distance from one of the city's last surviving smoking sections. He always ate a steak sandwich with home fries and coffee. He always glanced over the afternoon newspaper – much more politically palatable than the execrable morning Blade – while he ate, and enjoyed a second cup of coffee and a toothpick with the sports headlines. And he always ate alone and undisturbed.

Until today.

"Superintendent?" Earl looked up, and ran his flat-eyed scan over two men in light summer-weight blazers and dark trousers. The senior man was pale and a bit damp, as if he'd just walked a long way, and on the portly side with thick wavy dark hair and glasses. The other was a string-bean, dark complected, with the casual coiled-power balance of an athlete, all wrists and elbows and Adam's apple, and a brush cut so short at the sides he almost looked bald. They were coppers, of course. That was obvious in the eyes. Earl did not recognize them. But he was unconcerned. Though he didn't know them, he was certain he knew people they knew. "Good day, gentlemen. I have not had the honor."

"Erkfitz," said the portly one, "and this is Love. Word with you?"

"I do have an office," Earl said drily.

"We know that," Erkfitz said, eyes steady behind the glasses. "We figured you'd prefer not to be seen with us there."

"Tongues wag," supplied Love, in a deep bass voice.

"Why would I mind being seen with you?" Earl asked calmly. "You seem like nice enough boys."

"We're looking out for you, sir," Erkfitz said.

Earl gave it some thought. To be accosted in this manner was well out of his realm of experience. An instinct murmured low warnings, but he waved those away. In what for him passed as an easygoing tone, he said, "Oh, well. I'm here, you're here, what the hell. Have a seat. Coffee?"

"No thank you, sir," Love said for both of them as they slid into the opposite side of the booth. Seated they were the same height, though otherwise they were about as contrasting as two grown men could be. "We're working a homicide," the younger man went on, "and we're pursuing what seems to be a link to you, sir."