Clean

by Tom Lytes

  “Me, and me too,” said Sullivan, and Officer Pincus scooped the little boy up in his arms.

  With that said, Officer Pincus led Peggy out a side door leading to the rear of the house. The marsh extended for miles before bumping up against land again. It was an unfamiliar view, from a different angle compared to the marsh view Peggy had seen earlier. The remarkable difference though, stemmed from the way the marsh looked depending on the time of day and the corresponding light from the sun. Right then, the marsh looked like a sea of green, and when the breeze swayed the tops of the grass, it seemed like a living thing. Streams of water formed oxbows that looked like rabbit trails for tiny boats.

  In the immediate foreground, Officer Pincus maintained a tidy yard of sand and grass underneath a picnic table. As happened before when Peggy ventured to the edge of the marsh, thousands of tiny crabs ran for cover.

  “What the heck is going on with you, Ms. Whitfield?” Officer Pincus asked as he settled onto the bench of the picnic table.

  He sat with Sullivan on his lap and looked at the view. Sullivan looked only at Officer Pincus. He played with his face and had two fingers in his ear.

  Peggy said, “I think you got the email because of a computer program, and I’m in a little trouble. I don’t honestly know how much. It could be a lot.”

  Sullivan finished exploring Officer Pincus’s facial contours. He hopped to the ground and suddenly poured himself into the task of trying to catch a crab. They were all too fast for him, but he was unwavering in his determination.

  “With all due respect,” Officer Pincus said. “That doesn’t do much for me regarding clarity. What’s your story?” he asked as he turned to Peggy.

  Peggy looked at her hands and then noticed her feet were in ballet’s first position. Years ago, a riding coach made her take ballet, so she would move gracefully when she wasn’t on a horse. He said you might see a judge before a competition, and if they deemed you elegant on foot, it could positively influence the scores when they saw you ride later. She wasn’t fond of ballet then, and it didn’t seem like it gave her much of an edge to be standing in ballet’s first position in front of Officer Pincus now, either. She wondered again about all the things in her life that she “should” do, and the tasks she put her heart into over the years with the best of intentions. Some might have warranted such effort, but most didn’t.

  “I’m in some trouble,” Peggy said, removing any of the previous doubt she expressed before.

  “Well I am awake enough to see that,” Officer Pincus said.

  “No, I mean, I know,” said Peggy. “You’ve been kind. Especially with the email and uh, Sullivan and Miss Tress.”

  “And the impound,” Officer Pincus reminded her.

  “The thing is,” Peggy said, “I was in New York yesterday. My brother is dead. Two other men were killed in my hometown. An FBI agent, who’s kind of my boyfriend, has to investigate me for a crime in Florida that I didn’t commit. You’re hearing from the D.A. and the office of the FBI in relation to that, I’m sure.”

  “You have been busy.”

  Peggy had her arms out and palms up.

  “I’m not saying I’m an innocent victim or anything like that. I’m not. But I came down here because it seemed someone using a computer was behind the murders in New York. Leonard Roberts says he wrote a computer program that sounds capable of murder. I think my FBI boyfriend might be coming here, and I don’t know how I feel about it.”

  Officer Pincus said, “Well, at least you’re honest. Me, I would have left at least half of that out, and tried to smile more.” He stood up. “Good then, that sounds like about all we should get into before lunch. It makes sense that a computer or somebody who doesn’t know me was behind the email. Anyone who knows me, knows the truth about Miss Tress and Sullivan.”

  Peggy thought she was beginning a conversation with her long answer, not ending one, but it appeared as though Officer Pincus was done talking, at least until they ate.

  While Officer Pincus started towards the house, he stopped and repeated, “Thanks for being honest with me. I knew I made the right choice.”

  “The right choice?” Peggy asked.

  “The FBI asked me to detain you for questioning.”

  “What?” Peggy couldn’t have been more surprised if she tried.

  “There were some pretty insistent demands coming from your neck of the woods, with important people calling me personally to ensure that I knew exactly what they wanted.”

  “But why didn’t you do it?” Peggy asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t have to detain you to know where you are.” Officer Pincus shrugged and started walking towards his house again. He turned to wave her along. “It’s my island, after all.”

  Peggy nodded slowly, “Right, it’s your island….”

  Peggy couldn’t help but think Officer Pincus’s total disregard for the FBI made the mayor back in Hoosick look like a windbag, full of talk without action.

  “What did you tell the FBI?” Peggy asked, imagining one of Finley’s co-workers sitting at his desk calling Officer Pincus, all the while thinking that anyone they called would jump at the chance to help the FBI.

  “I told him I found your car and I’m still trying to locate you on the island,” he said as he opened the door to his house.

  “Thank you,” Peggy said. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot.’”

  Peggy said, “I met Barbara Pelman, and she answered all kinds of questions for me, even though I was a stranger, because I was a police woman.”

  “She may be nosier than anyone else on the planet, but she was raised right. Of course she cooperated with law enforcement.”

  “But when the FBI called you, you didn’t cooperate. What’s the difference?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Officer Pincus asked in exasperation.

  “No,” Peggy said.

  “The federal government has no right poking around in my business, or yours either, telling us what to do. There’s no cooperating with tyranny.”

  “So, you’re saying it’s different.”

  Officer Pincus smiled, “Yup, you’re catching on. Let’s eat.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Peggy, we’ll talk some more after lunch. I’m curious about the computer program that Leonard Roberts is involved with; I always wondered how he got so rich.”

  Officer Pincus stopped and called backwards for Sullivan, who came running to catch up.

  “Do you know Leonard well?”

  “Only from going to his house and breaking up his parties.”

  Before long, Peggy and the assembled Pincus family, biological and otherwise, took seats around a small wooden table.

  “Do you know much about Sullivan’s Island?” Officer Pincus asked Peggy.

  “I don’t.”

  “People from the Midwest, New York and the rest of New England come down,” Officer Pincus said. “They used to show up in the fall and spend the winter, or retire here. That’s changed. With families moving onto the island and raising kids, it’s slowly diluting a proud population of local families.”

  “I can see why people move here.” Peggy, who’d been sustaining herself with Saltines, was famished and decided not to be shy about eating. Between bites of she-crab soup she said, “Most of your New Yorkers will be from the five boroughs of New York City, and not where I’m from in the country.”

  Officer Pincus nodded through a bite of corn bread.

  “This food is absolutely incredible,” Peggy said as she finished her bowl.

  Lisa Anne smiled as she served Peggy another helping and then busied herself dusting the cornbread crumbs from the table.

  “Thank you for the soup,” Peggy said. “The island is so unique. I can’t get over how such a tropical place could be so close to an h
istoric city like Charleston.”

  “Yes, and we don’t try to keep anyone out either,” Miss Tress said. “We welcome new people with open arms. We always have, even in the face of tragedy. Lord, we had a mess after Hurricane Hugo back in ‘89. The island changed forever that day. If it wasn’t for all the new people coming in afterwards, and of course the strength of the folk living here already, there wouldn’t be anything left of this place.”

  Officer Pincus nodded. “To give you an idea of the damage, our house was picked up and moved over to where the Fort’s parking area is now. The water just rose up and took it over there. And those pecan trees in the yard blew clean over in the wind. Used to be three of them, but now there’s only two. The roots for those two were still in the ground. I asked one of the clean-up crews to stand’em back up for me with their bulldozer. A guy put a chain on each one of them and tried to straighten them out. I couldn’t have been more surprised when it worked, and they rooted again. The third one didn’t make it.”

  “We have different threats now, though,” Lisa Anne said, becoming somber. “It used to just be the weather. Now it’s all the drugs and violence.”

  “Not on my island,” Officer Pincus said.

  “It seeps on to the island and you know it,” Lisa Anne said without humor. “Not really as much here as it is in Mount Pleasant.”

  “That area is one of the safest in the country,” Officer Pincus said, puffing his chest. “There’s more violence in North Charleston and West Ashley, but they’re growing.”

  “They are,” said Lisa Anne as she gestured towards Peggy. “But revitalization would happen even faster if New York’s Carson Miller could get elected to national office. I like his ideas. Think about how those areas would benefit from his plans.”

  “Is my South Carolina gal actually contemplating a candidate for national office that’s from New York?” Officer Pincus asked with an exaggerated, incredulous smile spread across his wide face.

  “Oh, get with the times,” Miss Tress said. “Charleston County voted for Obama twice.”

  Peggy said, “Carson Miller’s likely to be the next governor of New York. He has goals beyond that, and he’ll be the first to say it. It’s pretty compelling stuff, this idea that we can morally cleanse our collective souls and fix society.”

  “I just don’t see how he can do it,” Officer Pincus said. “He’s a glamour guy who doesn’t talk in specifics.”

  Officer Pincus watched Peggy closely as the conversation prattled on. What an intriguing arrival on his island. The FBI seemed invested in her capture, demanding his cooperation. And that was interesting. Then there was the email about Miss Tress, attempting to blackmail him into harming Peggy. To Officer Pincus, that elevated Peggy to captivating. But what made her downright riveting, was the call that came through directly from the mayor of Charleston. Officer Pincus knew some of the mayors from the past decades. Most of them came from families that owned a summer place or two out on Sullivan’s. This mayor was different, elected for ideas and not family prominence, which seemed to be the way now, and he wasn’t out on the island publicly at all. In fact, Officer Pincus never had the opportunity to meet him. And yet he put a call into Officer Pincus directly, not through an aide or an executive assistant, but directly to Officer Pincus, to ask that unless absolutely necessary, he leave Peggy alone. Now that call got Officer Pincus’s attention. He wiped at his mouth and pulled up his belt with both hands.

  “There might be some opportunity to be found with Peggy’s arrival on my island,” he muttered to himself. “Some pretty important people want me keeping track of her.”

  He tucked in his shirt and pulled something from the space between his bottom teeth.

  “The mayor of Charleston, the FBI, probably more people than them as time goes on…. With all these people asking me to babysit, there’s bound to be my fair of goodwill on the other side of what happens here. Oh, I’ll definitely keep a keen eye on Peggy Whitfield.”

  Miss Tress looked up from clearing the table and asked, “What did you say?”

  She smiled and Officer Pincus smiled back.

  “Oh, it was nothing, Miss Tress. Just the ramblings of a humble island police officer satisfied from another fantastic lunch, all at the hands of you and my lovely wife.”

  Miss Tress beamed.

  20

  Rube threw the newspaper onto the floor and stamped it till his heel hurt. The front-page article rehashed the murders in Hoosick, which made sense. It was big, sensational news in a small town. The coverage looked fine though, reasonable until the end, until the last two sentences.

  It said, “Officer Peggy Whitfield brought attention to a potential computer program’s connection to the murders. An investigation by the FBI’s local cyber unit—”

  Rube read it four times as he sat in his office, in the heart of Carson Miller’s campaign headquarters. Carson hadn’t missed the newspaper story either, and demanded Rube take care of the Peggy Whitfield problem. He had, or thought he had, but watching television and flipping through national news channels wasn’t providing confirmation or gratification. Instead, overseas terrorism and economic strife dominated the telecasts and left Rube hissing at the screen. He pined for a news story from South Carolina about an attractive, petite, murdered New York Police Officer. He wondered how much longer it would take. Carson had called again to fuss at him about it.

  When he’d yelled at Rube it stung, “The miniature Barbie at the Rotary lunch? That’s the cop that’s jeopardizing everything? That’s the one in the newspaper?”

  Carson did have a way of putting things. Rube wondered why everything bad that happened was his fault.

  What were the chances anyway? The program took out a few local people. Who could have guessed a local cop would put those killings together with Clean? He was trying to understand how it even happened. It made sense Touro would shake down a big money guy like Leonard. It made sense Leonard would tell Touro everything because Leonard was a putz. None of that was surprising. The amazing thing was the police work connecting the Hoosick deaths to a computer program. Now that was impressive. And that’s why Peggy Whitfield had to go. She was dangerous.

  Rube remembered Leonard telling him to stay away from manipulating the program. It was during that long conversation when he covered all the details. Arranging money for Leonard was part of the meeting too, easy with Santrelle Simonson’s Super Pac throwing so much money at Carson’s campaign efforts.

  But over and over Leonard said to let Clean run without interference. All Rube could do was observe, Leonard stressed, repetitively. He implored Rube not to manually alter the lists the program maintained. Leonard warned that if he did, the computer would alter its criteria and might “learn” the wrong people to target with elimination.

  Ah, but it was too tempting and too easy to ignore Leonard’s recommendations. And Peggy Whitfield deserved to die. She had to die.

  Carson’s poll numbers continued to rise steadily, and Carson would win the election. In the meantime, nothing could be allowed to stop Leonard’s program. Carson’s next elections and, in Rube’s opinion, the future of the world relied upon Carson and Clean working in tandem. Thus, it was easy for Rube to ignore Leonard’s warnings if it would save Carson. Besides, he was adding one name to a lengthy list. How bad could it be to add one name? He typed Peggy Whitfield on the guilty list, and anticipated the computer taking her out. He figured it would be over soon and Carson would be happy with him again.

  The waiting sucked.

  He changed the TV back to the local Albany station, and Carson’s face filled the screen with handsome, soulful looks. He wore a charcoal suit, white shirt, and a loosely knotted tie. In the background, the front of the State House made him look like a baron in front of a castle. The massive stone building was built in 1899 with arches, dormers and a roof of slate. Carson’s hair went sideways in the w
ind and just then a light rain began falling. The candidate for governor looked earnest and confident as he and the State House stood up against the elements. Carson spoke to a group of reporters.

  “We have taken strides in making our country safer for the residents who should be in the country. Illegal immigrants are hearing our message: you are not welcome. My opponents say come out of the shadows and participate in our democracy. I say come out of the shadows and leave this country before my administration finds you. Deportation is the minimum penalty I will seek, and I will pursue changes to our laws to allow appropriate punishment for people who are found in our country illegally. Our country’s borders will be respected, I promise. Too many illegal aliens have taken advantage of our taxpayers. We will no longer pay for their hospital care, education or anything else.” Carson paused and pursed his lips.

  Then he said, “We will change other laws too, starting in the State of New York, that will appropriately punish those who break our laws. I will tell you now that we will end the drug problems in the most rural and poor parts of our state and country. We will end nonsensical violence between family members and neighbors. We will end corruption in government. Towns big and small will regain their character. Neighborhoods will be safe places to exchange ideas and conversation, instead of pills and weapons. This will all happen soon. I guarantee the people of New York and the people of the United States of America that we are right now in the process of reclaiming our country’s values, heritage and future.”

  He paused, and the camera zoomed closer to Carson’s handsome face. Rain water dripped from his nose and his skin glistened.

  A voice off camera from one of the assembled reporters asked, “Sir, what do you propose happens to the nearly seven million Americans currently imprisoned, on probation, or on parole. Can you rehabilitate them and have them take part in your vision for America’s future?”

  “I’m glad you asked that question,” Carson Miller said. “And I think you’ve heard me say every citizen should receive forgiveness if they pay for their crimes. Where I disagree with my opponents, is that I don’t believe in endless chances. And no, I don’t believe everyone can be rehabilitated. I don’t. I’ve been clear on this position. So instead of feeding the press with quotes that my opponents will use against me, let me ask you a question. I don’t need to hear the answer out loud. Keep it to yourself but promise me one thing. Be honest with yourself. I ask you: If your finger had an infection that was slowly killing you, would you chop it off to save your life, or would you keep it around, knowing it would eventually cause your untimely death?”