Clean Slate

Chapter 42

L'Auberge de la Bastille occupied the ground floor of a 1920s office building at McLaws Circle, a confusing mess of converging downtown streets surrounding an oasis of lush grass and rambling hedges presided over by a glowering soot-stained equestrian statue of the Confederate general. At ten past noon on Thursday, Mac, waiting at a mirrored wall by the maitre d' podium, saw Suzanne push her way through the revolving doors and bustle across the deep red carpet toward him, tiny silver cell phone pressed to her ear. Mac nodded to the maitre d' and followed the dark suited gent among the widely spaced, half-occupied restaurant tables toward the requested corner booth. Suzanne tagged along, continuing her phone conversation, which Mac studiously tried to ignore, and slid into the booth across from him, accepting a plush leather menu as she wound up her call: "Uh-huh. . .That's good. . .Okay. . .Bye." Clicking the phone shut, she dropped it into her handbag, and smiled at Mac. "Hello there."

"Good of you to join me," he said drily.

"Well, isn't it about time?" she retorted, missing his point. "Will a date with my husband always require three weeks of lead time?" Without waiting for an answer, she flipped her menu open. "What'll I have?" she asked in a dreamy tone. "What'll I have?"

Mac, who already knew, waited and watched her as a waiter sloshed ice water into their glass tumblers. Suzanne's thick blond hair was loose to her shoulders today. She had obviously crisped up her makeup just before coming in, her lips a darker shade than usual, precisely matching the dark shade of her well tended nails, clipped short in deference to her work with precision tools. She wore an overly snug bright fuchsia jacket with black cuffs over a shell striped in fuchsia, black, and white. Her neck was an array of thin gold chains of various lengths. From the looks of the hoops and studs visible beneath her flowing hair, it looked to Mac like she'd added at least a pair of piercings to each ear, though it was entirely possible he'd lost track somewhere along the way. In the dim light of the hushed restaurant Suzanne seemed to gleam, casting into shadow all others. Her air was brusque impatience.

Which did not bode well. All week Mac had been debating how and when to broach the subject of Libby Lewis. He could lead off with it, triggering an embarrassing tantrum and a dramatic stomp out of the restaurant, with invectives hurled over her shoulder. Or he could end with it, which could cause a public scene all the way to the McLaws Circle underground parking garage. No good options. All he knew was that he was bound to tell her, so he would tell her, today. Sitting here now, he decided to wait for the right time to present itself.

The elegant whispering waiter took their orders: dinner salad, French onion soup, and sweet tea for Mac, and, for Suzanne, cabernet beef jubilee with what ended up being three glasses of Mouton Cadet. As Suzanne raised the first of these to her lips, Mac noticed a slight tremor in her hands. Her breathing seemed elevated, and he kept catching her studying him closely whenever he was looking elsewhere. She's nervous, he realized. This surprised him, because, unlike him, she knew where, in the landscape of their relationship, the land mines were buried. Most of the time.

"Still wearing the same outfit to work every day?" Suzanne asked, with just the slightest eye-roll as she put her glass down.

"I stick with what works."

"And the icky yellow Dial soap, and the Mennen aftershave," she recited, "and the Old Spice cologne. I could close my eyes and not know if it was you I was with, or your father."

"You honor me."

"Yeah yeah, you and your father," she said darkly, "I know what a godlike figure he is to you." She took another swallow of wine. "Now there's something came up just this morning I need to tell you about," she said, leaning forward. "I had a visitor at the plant. Man named Bucaro. Do you know him?"

Despite himself Mac blinked. This caught him completely off-guard. Bucaro at the plant? Talking to Suzanne? What the hell?

"I know of him," he said. "Bailiff bureau superintendent."

"He handles internal personnel security matters, is what he told me," she said. "And he's investigating you, Mac."

"Me?"

"You."

"He say what for?"

"Why don't you just cut the crap, and tell me why."

"I have no idea, Suzanne. What exactly did he say?"

"Well, he wouldn't get into specifics. Said it was a security matter."

"Bush-wa," Mac muttered.

"You better get off your high horse. This man, he means business. He's got you in his sights."

Mac wanted to say: the shoe is on the other foot. But, given the stall in his investigation, that was far from true. And he was not about to share anything with Suzanne that he did not want blabbed at the family dinner table on Sunday. "Bucaro and I," he said to Suzanne, "we've got philosophical disagreements."

The soups came. Suzanne ate some, and said: "That doesn't explain why he made a special trip out to the plant to ask me a lot of questions about you. He's on to something. He's. . .I think he's dangerous, Mac." Lowering her voice, she pleaded, "I'm your wife. If you've done something wrong, I wish you'd tell me."

"Same here."

"What is that supposed to mean?" she asked, brows rushing together.

"You know very well what it means." Mac broke a hole in the baked-cheese lid of his soup. "Look," he said, stirring, and staring right into her green eyes: "In the interest of full disclosure, you need to know that I've. . .started up with someone."

For a long moment Suzanne continued to spoon minestrone into her mouth, staring ahead past him. Then she dropped the heavy spoon with a clatter into the bowl, and put a hand to her mouth. "What?" she asked hoarsely, blinking. "Who?"

"Her name is Libby."

"Oh no. Libby Einhorn?"

"Not that Libby. You don't know this one."

"How long?"

"Met her just since I've been back."

Her breathing became audible as her eyes went shiny. "You just couldn't wait, could you. Couldn't wait to nail some trashy 'ho' and then wave her skanky twat in my face."

Mac sat as composed as he could, his heart hammering. He thought of all the retorts he could make: you're the one who started seeing someone while I was gone. You're the one who would not put that on hold. And you're the one who went up to Detroit. . .and. . .

"This is how you pay me back," she hissed, tears trailing down both round cheeks. "I make one lousy mistake and you punish me by screwing every slut in sight."

"What mistake do you mean?" Mac asked quietly.

"I've been really happy these past few days," she said, embedding her face in her hands. "I was so looking forward to lunch with you. In my journal this morning – my life coach has me journaling now – all I wrote today was, ‘Today is the day! Today the rest of my life starts!' I thought we were on track to work our way through this. . .this disaster. . .and now you go ahead and ruin it."

Trying to turn that into an opening, Mac reached for her damp hand and pulled it down to the table and held it in both of his larger ones. "Look," he said with quiet urgency, "I'm more than willing to put this aside, right now, today. And focus just on us and see where that goes. I'm more than willing. But there's two things you have to do."

"What?" she asked shakily, daubing her cheeks with the heavy cloth napkin.

"You've got to put this – this man you're seeing, whoever he is – put him on hold as well." She nodded. "And you've got to get right with this business of the Detroit trip."

She tossed the napkin down, withdrew her hand from his, eyed him levelly. Tear trails still showed, but the eyes themselves showed no signs of weeping. Amazing, Mac thought. "And just what ‘business' are you referring to?"

With difficulty Mac remained calm. "Why do I have to repeat this? What do you think has changed? Which is your good ear, Suzanne?" She just stared. "One more time, wife of mine, and let's be clear. You need to come clean on why you really went to Detroit, what you did there, who you saw." He felt his control slipping. "Who you were screwing," he said, "while our little boy --"

"Stop it!" she snapped, jaw clenched. "How dare you!"

"Yeah, that's right. I almost forgot, you're done talking about dead little boys."

"What do you mean."

"You told me that, right before I left. I brought Nicholas up, and you slapped me down, said that dead little boys were from that point on off-limits."

"I would never say an ugly thing like that," she replied, looking away. "Never."

Mac sat fists clenched, locked in place, thoughts a blur except for the refrain, as much in pain as in fury: I'm sick of this, sick of this, sick of this.

Suzanne had her compact open and was checking her eyes. "You – are – obsessed," she said, with great deliberation. "I can't believe you're still harping on this tired old fairy tale of yours."

"Dance around it all you want," Mac answered. "But I know you've been lying to me."

She snorted. "This discussion is over." Snapping her compact shut, she picked up knife and fork and started in on her beef jubilee, which had been delivered so deftly that neither had noticed.

"Well, I guess we should just go then," Mac said.

"Fine. Go. I plan to enjoy my meal. With my reduced income, thanks to your extended overseas vacation, I don't get to eat out much."

And enjoy it she did, eating with her customary great relish, and in complete silence. Mac, unwilling to relinquish the field, started in on his dinner salad. But very quickly he got full, as if the salad had suddenly become big enough to feed the five thousand. The check came with Suzanne's third glass of wine, and as Mac paid, she broke the silence. "You're totally out of control. Totally. You're headed over a cliff and you don't even know it. Don't think I don't understand why the bailiff bureau is investigating you. You've never learned to mind your p's and q's. You don't seem to understand that most people are bigger than you, and if you piss them off, they're going to squash you."

"I can handle Bucaro."

"In your dreams. I covered for you this time, Mac. But if he pressures me more, I'll have to tell him everything I know about you."

---

"So what does she know about you?" Howdie asked. His voice was scratchy in Mac's ear.

"Nothing worth telling," Mac said categorically. He was driving his Suburban in stop-and-go traffic on the steep hill down Sixth Street. In the distance, in segments interrupted by office buildings, flowed the cobalt blue Sabbath River. "It's her usual all-over-the-place bombast. You learn after a decade to just let it slide on by."

"What about Bucaro? What do you think he could be up to, dropping in on Suzanne?"

"Well, he knows I'm pursuing Eddie's death. Must be I've hit a nerve, he thinks I'm on to something."

"And that would be?"

"Damned if I know."

"He in a position to rack you up?"

"I don't think he works that way. I think he's one of these professional mole men, working out of sight and in the dark. He wants me to get a-skeered because he showed up at my wife's work and said a lot of dark pregnant things about me."

"Speaking of pregnant, how is young Libby doing?"

"Don't even throw that idea out in the universe."

"Sorry. Couldn't resist. But having heard you two are flying bareback --"

"Scoot told you that? Is nothing sacred?"

"Not among us, not even with Scoot. You know that."

"Swell."

"What I infer," Howdie doubled back, "from what you told Suzanne, is that you and Libby are still. . .mm. . .on."

"At some level."

"Need I ask which level?"

"Let's put it this way. She spent last night out at the farm, and was less than impressed."

"How come?"

"It's too far away from anywhere, and too quiet. And the critters are icky, and it's too dark."

"And no a/c? And all the nasty insects?"

"You get the picture."

"It's not exactly a girly-girl place, where you live."

"My grandma was all girl, and she liked it just fine."

"Well, unlike your grandma, my guess is young Libby did not wake up this morning singing ‘Thank God I'm a Country Girl.'"

"She woke up this morning on my sofa, with CNN going full blast on the TV."

"She didn't even sleep with you?"

"Define sleep."

"Oh."

"Certain aspects of this are still, um. . .quite splendid."

"Details! Details!"

"You get the picture."

"Gonna see her again?"

"We'll see," Mac said, thinking: God, I hope so. He'd put in a call to her this morning but she had not called him back yet. Wheeling the Suburban into the stadium parking lot, Mac said, "You know what's ironic?"

"What's that?"

"On Bucaro? I don't have a shred of evidence on him, about Eddie or anything else."

"Could be," Howdie said, "what he's doing is a pre-emptive strike. Which could be because – well, you know why."

"He's guilty as Cain."

"Of something."

"Probably something pretty big."

"Which makes Suzanne correct."

"About what?"

"You could be headed over a cliff."