Clean

by Tom Lytes

  Peggy listened to a message from Joey Mackey and it sounded like he was doing a good job keeping Finley’s car in the woods with airless tires. There would be some exaggeration for affect, and to make sure Peggy knew what a good job he was doing, but it was past eleven and Finley’s car was still adjusting to its existence on Lot Three. She called back and left him an encouraging message to keep up the good work.

  The phone kept ringing and she let the messages collect in voicemail. With a new cup of coffee and a fresh page on the legal pad, she started thinking about what might have brought so much bloodshed to town. It felt like the messages she received through Snapchat connected somehow with the comments from Ms. Bourgeaux. The wire transfer to pay Mr. Bourgeaux for killing Floyd was a dead end, according to Finley, but might be useful down the road if she could put it into context somehow.

  She kept circling around the situation and realized Mr. Bourgeaux could be the key to understanding the whole situation. Somebody paid him to make the trip from the bayous of Louisiana to upstate New York to kill Floyd. It wasn’t clear what he was doing in the electrical enclosure where he himself died, unless he was chasing Floyd and they ended up in there together. It seemed from the blood on the fence and the abrasions on Floyd that it happened that way, only to have Floyd escape and get shot at his house shortly afterward by somebody else.

  The catalyst to the murders was Mr. Bourgeaux, and Peggy didn’t have an obvious way to find out much about him. There wasn’t information about him in her crime database. The FBI might have more on him by now, but she wasn’t ready to call Finley yet. There was another information consolidator that might be able to help her, and she picked up her phone.

  When the call connected, she said, “Hey, Bobby.”

  “Peg,” Bobby Touro said, “what a nice thing for you to call me out of the blue like this. It was great having lunch with you yesterday.”

  “We didn’t have lunch,” Peggy said, trying to stay on track with why she called. “You were at a Rotary lunch, and I stepped into the room for a minute. That’s not having lunch. I need some information.”

  “What happened to pleasantries?” Bobby Touro asked. “Why are you so upset all the time? You were at the lunch. I spoke with Carson Miller about you too. Maybe we can get you a state trooper job down the road, huh?”

  “Bobby, I’m not interested in any of that. Listen, I need some information on one of the guys who ended up dead here yesterday.”

  “That’s not the way it works, Peg,” Bobby said. “I get information and favors from you when I need them. You don’t ask me, I ask you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Peggy said. “I just need to know about the unknown guy in all this. He’s a professional out of New Orleans. Somehow, he found himself getting roasted by our local electrical provider. I was in a room with his wife yesterday, and she seems convinced a computer hired him and started this whole thing.”

  “Don’t ‘yeah, yeah’ me Peg. And I’m serious. You need to remember how this works between us— Wait, did you say a computer hired him?”

  “Yeah,” Peggy said. “I know it seems crazy and all, but that’s what his wife said, and it kind of lines up with another situation from yesterday.”

  “She actually said it was a computer?” Bobby asked.

  Peggy thought she heard something like paranoia suck Bobby further into the conversation.

  “Yes,” Peggy said. “She said she flew up here personally to tell us.”

  “Huh,” Bobby said. “I can’t tell you a lot about the dead guy, except he was a shooter from the bayou.”

  “I knew he was from New Orleans.”

  “No,” Bobby said. “He was from the bayou but went up to New Orleans for business.”

  “I didn’t know there was that big of a difference.”

  “Oh, Peg,” Bobby said. “Let me tell you about the people who live down in the bayou, where that shooter is from. They are some of the toughest, most loyal people you will meet anywhere. They’re living in houses on stilts and combing the marsh all day on flat-bottomed boats looking for oysters. They’re hunting and fishing. They grow up wrestling alligators. You can imagine that a man who grows up wrestling alligators knows how to fight.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s dead now,” Peggy said.

  “That he is,” said Bobby. “All I know about the shooter is that he spent his time in the bayou with a voodoo woman. He came out for jobs and then went right back, deep into the bayou.”

  “What the heck is he doing in New York?” Peggy asked.

  She thought the voodoo woman must be the wife she and Finley spoke to the night before, that Finley later took into the woods.

  “I don’t know,” Bobby said. “The computer thing is interesting though.”

  Bobby couldn’t help thinking about Leonard, and Clean, and the growing number of people being monitored by the program each day. He wondered if there was more he could be doing to stop the renegade program. It seemed like it was closing in on him. He’d increase the pressure on Leonard and see if the boy wonder could figure some way to stop it.

  “We got a problem with Bobby Touro,” the biggest guy in the bathroom said. “After he got the boss arrested, Touro ain’t been bashful about trying to crowd us out. And when we take back what’s rightfully ours, look what he does to our men.”

  There was a graphic picture of Bobby’s handiwork with the Black and Decker from the laundromat.

  Leonard turned away from the picture and nodded sagely. “Vito, I can take care of Bobby Touro. If you give me a few weeks, I will provide an opportunity for you to take over his business.”

  “Easier said than done.” Vito shrugged his shoulders and tucked in his shirt. “And you know, I gotta warn you. It’s not me that’s pulling the strings on the puppets here. It’s the boss, Rhodes.” He paused to let the comment receive proper attention. “He sent us to get this arranged with you. There is no room for error. None. Nothing. Nada. Nadle.”

  Leonard asked, “Nadle? What’s that?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that,” Vito said, dismissing the interruption with a wave of his hand. “Stop wasting time,” he scolded. “Listen, the boss wants you to take out Carson Miller too.”

  “I have already made arrangements to expedite his demise,” Leonard said calmly.

  “Good, that’s good,” Vito said. The two other guys were nodding their approval and started to murmur to each other something about it serving Carson Miller right to act so sanctimonious. “So, you know, it’s personal with the boss and Carson Miller. Boss thinks Carson Miller is responsible for him being in jail and serving time rather than being put on probation.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Leonard said, his interest peaked.

  “Yeah,” Vito explained, looking like he enjoyed being the authority on the subject. “When he was the District Attorney, Carson Miller told his prosecutor not to settle the case. It went to trial and that’s why the boss is running things from inside.”

  “Hmm, I see,” Leonard said conversationally. “Well, thank you for the background information. Do give Rhodes my best regards and tell him I have set to work on disgracing Carson Miller. And he will be able to take over Bobby Touro’s business within a few weeks.”

  Vito looked away from Leonard and said to his men, “I don’t believe this guy can get all that done. I mean Bobby Touro? He’s a badass. And Carson Miller is gonna be governor. I don’t think it can be done.” He turned to Leonard and looked at the other man challengingly as he said, “And I told that to the boss.”

  “That’s why your boss is the boss. And why he will pay me the fee, and the most proactive thing you will do is deliver messages,” Leonard said without a smile. He got up and said over his shoulder, “Satisfaction guaranteed. When the next installment is wired to my account, my plan will proceed.”

  The three men in the room knew the boss w
ould send Leonard the money. He was a man whose reputation preceded him: you hire him, you leave him alone to work, and he gets done what he promises one way or another. It didn’t mean the men liked the prospect.

  When they were outside, one of the men turned to Vito. “Why we hiring somebody? That dude doesn’t look so tough. Couldn’t we just handle Bobby Touro and Carson Miller by ourselves?”

  Vito waived the other man’s comments away as if they were stinging his ears and he didn’t want the sound waves anywhere near him, “Leonard is plenty badass, plenty.”

  The two other men debated between themselves what Vito knew to be a fact. He ignored the ongoing discussion. Their opinion didn’t matter anyway. The boss ordered them to be in touch with Leonard, so they were.

  10

  Leonard left by car for South Carolina after the meeting. In North Carolina, he opened the window, injecting the sweat of the southern evening into the car.

  “Never gets old,” Leonard said aloud, embodying the humid air with deep breaths.

  He put the window up before too much of a good thing made him feel like produce under a mister at the grocery. South of the Border’s shops and shenanigans welcomed him to South Carolina.

  “Okay, Leonard, Leonard, Leonard…”

  Reminding himself of his persona might have been unnecessary, but he still did it. The ride was long and stultifying by this point, its affects would last into tomorrow. He planned to close the bars along Middle Street and he wasn’t going to slip up now. But the drive was far from over, and his butt would be sore before he arrived at the edge of the continent.

  He kept alert thinking about Clean. The three deaths in New York would keep his plans moving. As attentive as he was to the program’s workings in that situation, there were other areas of the country where Clean was doing its work with nobody paying any notice. In Montana, fifteen people died two days ago. Leonard knew it was from Clean’s swift justice, and he wondered if the sudden increase in deaths might raise alarm. On the other hand, maybe Montanans rationalized it away. He could hear almost hear them, huddled in their communities, making excuses to each other.

  “Something has to be done,” lilting his voice with forced consternation. “We need gun control.” In a different voice he said, “The opiate problem is out of hand.” He found yet another octave to say, “What do you expect with the economy screwing the middle class? People are angry.”

  Society produced cover for Clean every moment of every day.

  He smiled to himself, content to know the program was working. There might be bugs in the damn thing, and wouldn’t that be expected? He didn’t have a thousand employees checking his work. In fact, there was nobody else, just him. And that meant the money he was making was just his. Money and power grew from his fingertips, literally, with his computer connecting like a parasite onto society’s obsession with itself online.

  He chuckled and lowered the window again for more deep breaths of humid air, anticipating his arrival on Sullivan’s Island. He pictured himself crossing the rotating bridge, leaving the mainland and switching to island time. Even when Clean seemed barely in control, the island made him feel calm.

  “The past doesn’t seem to find me there,” he thought. “And the nightmares—”

  He stopped the thought, willing himself to think about anything else. The bad dreams slowed down on Sullivan’s too.

  Hours later, he pulled up to The Obstinate Daughter buying drinks at the bar for him and everyone else until he couldn’t remember walking the few blocks home.

  As late morning threatened to become afternoon, Leonard sat up. His bedroom looked out over the Charleston Harbor and in the distance, he could see bright blue cranes hard at work unloading cargo containers from a big two-toned black and white ship. The bright-white beaded board of his walls and ceilings were only interrupted by the massive window looking out over the water, and a single piece of art: a framed black and white charcoal sketch of a foot by Michelangelo. He stood before the picture now, moved by it as he always was.

  He retrieved water from the bathroom faucet and stumbled out to the balcony off his bedroom. The air immediately started to rejuvenate him, and he could see the innocuous clouds of yellow pollen in the air that blew around for a week just before the hottest time of the summer.

  Taking a pair of swim trunks from a hook in his bathroom, he went downstairs. He prepared regular, drip coffee in the French contraption he bought for its Frappuccino, cappuccino and expresso abilities but didn’t know how to use that well. Numerous false starts with abundant button pushing finally produced bubbling, and water began flowing through the grounds.

  He needed salt water on his body and the sand rushing underneath his toes, as he anticipated the strong currents that rallied around Sullivan’s Island. The small sand trail to the beach began at the end of his yard. Little sideways running crabs scurried into holes as he came close to them. To the left, a dog had its owner out for a stroll, and it seemed to be working. To the right there was nothing but the end of the island, the harbor and the city.

  When he was knee deep in the warm water, he collapsed into it fully, and gave himself completely to the ocean. Some of the roughest edges of the morning were duller and he thought he might be okay. Little ocean birds harvesting something tiny hopped and flew around the edge of the water as it came up the beach and then slowly receded. He returned to his house and skipped the outdoor shower. It felt good to have salt on his body. The housekeeper would clean up the sand from his feet.

  When he put on fresh Tommy Bahama pants and a shirt, it felt like enough. He collected his cellphone and laptop, poured some coffee and found his way poolside.

  The program’s quick view screens expanded as Leonard opened his laptop, and he could see that Carson Miller’s office had logged into Clean. He clicked through the screens of gross data before looking at the details. Sixteen hundred deaths were attributed to the software, a thirty percent increase in deaths during one short night.

  “Whoa,” he muttered, “forty-one people from a community in Iowa.”

  A quick Google search told him an entire congregation of a small-town church perished in a fire.

  “Makes you wonder what they were up to.”

  He went back to Clean’s data screen. Eighty-nine thousand new names joined the list of people the program monitored. It was just a matter of time before the death numbers would pick up even more, and Leonard imagined Rube and Carson Miller glued to their computer screen as the raw data flashed before them.

  Leonard needed food and didn’t have any.

  He picked his phone up to order the turkey avocado sandwich he preferred from the Co-op that operated a few blocks down on Middle Street. The island allowed golf carts for local travel and in a few minutes, he would drive his to the Co-op and pick up the sandwich before returning to the pool.

  That annoying cell phone thing happened, though, when Leonard hit the dial button to call the Co-op and a call came in at the same time. Inadvertently the incoming call connected, and there Leonard was, smack dab in an ill-timed conversation with Bobby Touro.

  “Len, I’ve been calling you this morning.”

  “I got lost in the program,” Leonard said, “searching for your name. There are a lot of new names each day.”

  “Well,” Bobby asked, “did it pick me up?”

  Leonard typed fast on his keyboard and made it seem like he was navigating his way through an arduous process. Bobby thought it took time to search for his name in the list, and it was a perception Leonard encouraged.

  “I checked early this morning, and your name doesn’t appear in the Clean program,” Leonard said. “And it hasn’t been added since. You know, Bobby, you need to think about what you are going to do if it does show up.”

  “I’m counting on you to find a solution to this mess, Leonard. And when I’m saying that, you should be lis
tening really good. I mean what I’m saying, you understand? But don’t for a second think I’m not taking care of myself in the meantime.”

  Leonard watched the little robot drive around the bottom of his pool and pick up debris. He rubbed his eyes and held up his head with his free hand.

  “Uh huh,” he said.

  “Len, am I fucking bothering you?” Bobby Touro asked.

  “Uh no, uh… I’m a little tired, that’s all.”

  Leonard didn’t realize he sounded so uninterested in Bobby, and he tried to be more engaged.

  “Well, wake the fuck up,” Bobby said. “I’ve been looking into the death of Floyd up here. We know he was on the list. A shooter from Louisiana was up here to do the job.”

  The little pool robot got stuck on the skimmer and reversed itself before continuing.

  “So what?” Leonard asked.

  “So, the shooter thought he was hired by a computer to do the hit.”

  “A computer hired him? He said that?” Leonard asked.

  “That’s what his wife thinks,” Bobby said. “She told a local policewoman who works with me up here. It’s got to be Clean that did it, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, sounds to me like it was. When Clean wants you dead, it’s only a matter of time.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too,” Bobby said. “I’m expecting you to solve this.”

  “I’m doing what I can.”

  “It ain’t enough,” Bobby said, “Get creative.”

  Bobby was done, and Leonard hung up, resenting Bobby’s constant demands. Soon he wouldn’t take commands from anyone. That made him smile. Then he’d just need a solution for the nightmares—