Clean

by Tom Lytes

  He pointed to a group of heavily tattooed men sitting on a bench, a few hundred yards away. They were throwing empty, over-sized beer bottles into the river.

  Bobby Touro nodded. “Yeah, this is actually pretty right here, but you’re right. Those guys are trash.” He pointed to the men and one of them took notice of Bobby and his driver standing there. “They contribute nothing and take everything. Thing is, their parents probably worked the nightshift in one of these buildings for thirty years to give the family an education and some dignity. And now these assholes piss it away during the early years of a new generation.”

  “Hey, you looking at something?” asked one of the men in the group.

  Bobby looked away. His driver stepped out into the direct glow of the street light, making a show of reaching into his jacket pocket with his right hand. Leaving it there. The other men shared a few words between themselves and seemed to make a collective decision. They walked away from the river quickly and followed the line of an immense buried water pipe that came out of one of the factories and in the old days probably polluted the river.

  The driver took his hand back out his jacket and returned to stand next to Bobby.

  “Carson Miller would clean this place up.”

  “The problem with Carson Miller is that he’s a fascist,” Bobby said. “Where the fuck is Jimmy?”

  “There he is, boss.”

  Jimmy was trying to walk towards them but seemed to be having some difficulty. He was leaning heavily on the metal bannister that ran down the length of the river along the broad walkway. His steps were different sizes and he faltered and almost tripped as he tried to hurry.

  Bobby started walking towards Jimmy and his driver followed.

  “He’s a half mile away,” Bobby said. “It could take him an hour to make the trip over here. Geez, will you look at that guy?”

  “He doesn’t look so hot, boss.”

  They closed the gap and when they got to Jimmy he said, “Mr. Touro, I’m sorry to be running a little late.”

  Bobby said. “You say that like you got caught in traffic. You’re late because you’re high.”

  “Uh, uh,” Jimmy said.

  Bobby turned to his driver. “Do we have somebody else who can take Jimmy’s place?”

  The driver thought for a second and said, “Tony or Hansel might be able to handle it.”

  “Hansel,” Bobby said. “I think maybe Hansel.”

  Jimmy said, “Hey guys, I’m standing right here. I can hear you talk about replacing me.”

  Bobby looked at Jimmy like he forgot he was there. He grabbed him by the shoulders and in one fluid motion, Bobby muscled Jimmy off his feet and over the metal bannister. Jimmy fell onto the rocky riverbed below, landing with a “whuumpf” sound.

  “Call Hansel,” Bobby said as he re-tucked his button-down shirt into his slacks. He and his driver walked over a footbridge, past a student dormitory and out to the front of the Tsongas Center.

  He said, “Get me back to New York,” as he opened the door to his illegally parked vehicle.

  He was already dialing Peggy back as he settled into the back seat of his shiny, black Lincoln Town Car with dark tinted windows.

  Peggy answered the phone on the first ring.

  “Hi Bobby. Thanks for calling me back so swiftly.”

  “Hey, Peggy, you know I always have time for you,” Bobby said. “While you might need time to think about it, you know we could date. Whatta you think?”

  “I think that isn’t why I called,” Peggy said. “And don’t get your hopes up. It’s not happening, ever.”

  “I think you told me to go fuck myself last time I asked.”

  Peggy said, “I think you’re right.”

  “So, good then. We can both agree that I’m making progress with you,” Bobby said. “I’m starting to break through, aren’t I?”

  “No,” Peggy said. “I’m calling for something else. It’s the Clean program.”

  “Finley find you?” Bobby asked. “I hear the FBI sent him down there. Some kind of fucking computer genius, apparently, from what I heard. Here I am, thinking he’s another white-shirt grunt.”

  “Yeah,” Peggy said. “Finley’s here right now.”

  “So, hitch up with Leonard and stop the program, already.”

  “We might have come up with something. Do you think you might have a way to get us into a computer lab at Clemson?”

  “What did you catch?” Bobby asked. “Is that some kind of sickness you have? Did Finley give it to you? Honestly, I’ve never heard of it, but Clemsum doesn’t sound so good.”

  “No, Bobby. We didn’t come down with something. We have an idea. We came up with an idea. Clemson is a University down here that’s really good for engineering.”

  “Oh,” Bobby said.

  “Well, do you think you can get us into a computer lab on their campus in the middle of the night?” Peggy asked.

  “Let me work on it,” Bobby said. “It’s life or death with this program. Just a matter of time. We gotta try everything.”

  “Thanks, Bobby.”

  “Not a problem,” Bobby said. “I’ve got a meeting to go to, and I’m in the car a few hours first. I’ll work on it and let you know.”

  They hung up and Peggy turned to Finley and Officer Pincus.

  “What did Bobby say?”

  “He said you better not get me sick,” Peggy said.

  “What?” Finley asked.

  “Who’s Bobby Touro?” Officer Pincus asked.

  Peggy and Finley said, at the same time, “Don’t ask.”

  A few hours later when Bobby’s car pulled into the back of the dry cleaner, he said to his driver, “Why the fuck didn’t anyone, back in the day, in this part of New York, know how to lay bricks like they did when they made all those buildings in Lowell?”

  The driver shrugged like he’d been asked the question a few times. In back, Bobby pointed to the corner of the dry-cleaning building where the mortar was coming loose around several areas of brick. A small pile of brick had crumbled to the ground.

  “It’s only a matter of time before water gets into there and starts to rot stuff.”

  “Want me to get it fixed up?” the driver asked.

  “Nah, I don’t want nobody back here.”

  An old dishwasher with weeds growing up around it sat off to the side of the back door. A rusty chain link fence had buried itself into an old beech tree. Old bottles and cans mingled with cigarette butts. Some were old enough to have lost their paper covering, leaving fuzzy cylinders that refused to decay.

  Bobby found a key on his ring and opened three locks before the door swung open to reveal a dark room with unpainted wood trim and worn edges. Bobby used the space as one of his many offices, but before that the dry cleaner was a speakeasy during Prohibition. The same family owned it for sixty years and used it for most of that time to store dry cleaning supplies. When Bobby bought the building in 1984, he found the old booths and a closet with a makeshift bank vault on the door. He investigated and found that the heavy door safe originated at the New York Savings and Loan Bank that used to operate down the street. At one point, they upgraded their safe and the speakeasy got the door off the old one. Bobby sat down and looked at the sports section of the Daily News.

  About ten minutes later, Hoosick’s mayor walked through a door leading to the front, where the dry-cleaning establishment operated.

  “Always a good day when we get to meet up,” Bobby said as he shook the mayor’s hand. “Have a seat.”

  “I don’t have much time tonight,” the mayor said. “I’ve got something I can’t miss, sorry.”

  The mayor checked his watch.

  Bobby made a show of checking his watch, too, and looked at his driver. “You got, what the fuck is it? FOMO?”

 
“FOMO? What is that?” the mayor asked. His driver looked at the floor.

  “’Fear of Missing Out,’” Bobby pounded both fists on the table. “Like you don’t want to be here. Like by being here you’re missing out on great opportunities to do other shit with your time.”

  The mayor did his best to look offended by the idea, “No, of course not. It’s definitely not like that, definitely not FOMO.”

  “Good, ‘cause I got FOKYA, which is ‘Fear of Kicking Your Ass,’” Bobby said with a snarl.

  There were a few long beats of silence that accompanied the complete stillness of the room.

  Then Bobby Touro laughed. “Always on the run until election time, right? Then you have all night to sit with me until I write you that big check. Am I right? Or when you need the union to stand down on something. Then you’ve got time, eh?”

  “Bobby, it’s not like that,” the mayor said.

  Sitting up straight in his chair, the politician suddenly looked like he was eating lemons. And riding a rollercoaster. His white knuckles gripped the table in front of him.

  “Relax,” Bobby said. His body language didn’t go along with the recommendation, and the fire didn’t leave his eyes. “I’m just joking around. Listen, I want to hear what’s happening with Peggy. I figure it’s been a couple days since she took off and it’s going to be a problem, eventually.”

  “You’re right,” the mayor said without relaxing. “The FBI didn’t tell us what they were doing. They filed the search warrant for Peggy’s place and I made a lot of noise about her being a police officer. At the end of the day, though, there isn’t much I can do about what the FBI does. When she fled, I gave her leave because her brother died, which at least made her disappearance make sense. And nothing came back on that warrant, by the way, so she came out okay there.”

  “Damn,” Bobby said. “I wasn’t expecting the FBI to be on her like that.”

  “Something about a tip they got. They connected her to an old murder down in Florida and suspected her of hiding the weapon from that old crime at her place.”

  “Glad she didn’t have anything for them to find,” Bobby said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, me too,” the mayor said.

  “Any idea who made the tip?”

  “No one knows. When she split, the FBI decided they wanted to talk to her even more.”

  “I spoke with Peggy,” Bobby said, “and they sent Finley down to work on a computer thing that has to do with the murders, maybe.”

  The mayor nodded, “I heard they’ve coerced cooperation from a local policeman down in South Carolina.”

  “Is he playing ball?”

  “He’s working with them enough to impound her town-owned cop car. I called the police union boss over in Albany. I figured you were okay with it if I used your name to speed up the communication. That worked, by the way, because he returned my call right away. He said he’d tap the union boss in Charleston, SC which is the closest city to where Peggy is staying. I’m pretty sure the message got down to the right people that Peggy was to be left alone.”

  “Huh,” Bobby said, “all right, thanks. You able to keep the local force out of the mess with the murders? I know you try to do that.”

  “Oh yeah,” the mayor said. “The Feds stepped in and see some big conspiracy involving Doyle and Floyd and the dead guy from New Orleans. There might be wire fraud too, I’m guessing, because Finley’s a computer expert.”

  “You’re thinking wire fraud, huh?” Bobby asked, intentionally leaving Clean out of the conversation.

  The mayor shrugged. “What else could it be?”

  “Sounds good,” Bobby said. “So, you aren’t investigating Peggy at all.”

  “No, she’s been a model police officer,” the mayor said. “We have nothing but love for her. She’s on leave.”

  Bobby nodded. “But the FBI is another story.”

  “Agent Finley’s down there,” the mayor said. “No telling what he does.”

  “Thanks for the information,” Bobby Touro said as he nodded. “You can go.”

  The mayor stood, and Bobby’s driver walked him to the door. As he began to leave, the driver handed him a shirt on a hanger with a clear plastic bag draped over it. The shirt was purple and looked to be at least twice the width of the mayor.

  The mayor took it but looked quizzical.

  The driver said, “You been in a dry cleaner. You gotta walk out with a shirt or something.”

  The mayor took the shirt and stepped out the door without another word.

  Officer Pincus returned to his family for the evening, leaving Finley and Peggy alone.

  “What now, Peg,” Finely said, moving close to her.

  Peggy rebuffed his advance by moving to the other side of the table.

  She said, “We skip to your next idea of what to do with our alone time. I’ll be back in a minute. I need warmer clothes.”

  As she left the room, Bobby rang her cell.

  “How you doin’?” Bobby asked when Peggy picked up.

  “Bobby, I’m fine,” Peggy said. “I’m getting dressed. Can we skip the small talk and get to it? Did you come up with a plan to get us into the Clemson computer? We’ve got to get in tonight.”

  “Hold your horses,” Bobby said. “First, don’t tell me you’re getting dressed. I don’t need the distraction. Second, I got nothing on getting you into mess with that computer ‘cause I’m too busy watching out for your ass.”

  She stopped dressing and gave her full attention to Bobby. “What’s happening?”

  “You know Agent Finley?”

  “You know I do,” Peggy said. “He was kind of my boyfriend, and we already talked about him being down here.”

  “No shit,” Bobby said. “Thanks for not lying to me about the boyfriend thing. I know you’ve been sleeping with him for a while, the bastard.”

  “What about him?” Peggy pictured Finley in the living room next door perusing the fishing books on the shelves.

  “He’s into you, but you gotta realize he’s gotta lot of other agents counting on him to solve these murders.”

  “We’re cooperating,” Peggy said.

  “Right,” Bobby said. “All I’m sayin’, is take all the cooperation you can get. Just know that at some fucking time, he’s gonna look out for himself. He’s a Fed, don’t forget it. Maybe it’s when Clean gets wiped out, maybe it’s if Leonard does stupid shit, maybe it’s because nothing happens, and he needs to justify his time down there. Could be anything, Peg.”

  “Yeah, I hear that,” Peggy said. Finley wouldn’t turn on her, would he? “We’re working with a local policeman, too. Between us, we might be able to thwart Clean if we can get into Clemson.”

  “One step at a time,” Bobby said. “I’m still trying to protect you from Finley.”

  “I think I’ll be all right.”

  “You say that now, but when it’s too fucking late, nobody can do anything. So, tell me, Peg.”

  “Tell you what?” Peggy asked.

  “You’ve been with the guy,” Bobby said. “You know better’n anyone how we can slow him down if that’s what’s needed. I don’t want you in custody. Who knows? Maybe it’s you that stops Clean, Peg. You can’t do that from an FBI holding cell. Tell me what Finley’s done, and I’ll make sure he gets handled if the situation calls for it.”

  Peggy let out a breath and cursed herself for again leaning on her survival instincts. If she were a better person, she thought, she would tell Bobby that she didn’t know anything about Agent Finley. Those pure thoughts became muddied by the memory of Finley’s face before the warrant was executed at her place. Looking past her and into her house, he was looking out for himself. Peggy wondered if everyone thought in circles, constantly. Hers usually brought her to the same conclusions: watch out for yourself and do what you have to
do. She made her choice regarding Finley, wondering for the first time if she might be capable of something more forgiving. Maybe fighting Clean and its savagery could help her see another way to think, eventually.

  Peggy said, “Agent Finley was in the woods with the female contract killer from Louisiana. It’s Ms. Bourgeaux, now the main suspect in Floyd’s murder. After we questioned her, he took her down to the river. She left town afterward, and then Finley realized she was the shooter.”

  “He did that?” Bobby asked with what sounded like some mixture of disgust and respect. “Did he have sex with her?”

  “No, I don’t think he did. He blew off a date with me to be with her though.”

  “Stupid, stupid man,” Bobby said. “All right, thanks for the information.”

  “You’re not going to use it, unless it’s absolutely necessary, right?

  “Yeah, that’s the point.”

  Peggy hesitated before she said, “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it. It’s no fucking problem for me.”

  “Get us into the Clemson supercomputer. Okay?”

  “One of these days you’re gonna be my girl, Peggy,” Bobby said. “We will be unstoppable.”

  Peggy disconnected the call.

  27

  Vortmit logged into Clean.

  The data-sets maintained patterns that showed steady growth in all categories. Clean’s personal contact harvesting consistently added five percent more names to the previous night’s totals. These people’s emails, texts, and utterances were considered by Clean, and sorted, along with their public posts on social media. The program’s quiet decisions about guilt and innocence altered the trajectories of whole families.

  Most of the killing orchestrated by Clean found roots in something dangerous that society understood. Car accidents, heart disease, muggings, drownings, senseless killings all delivered their share of deaths. Monthly deaths increased steadily as the program became better at sorting people out. Those steady trends were prior to today, however, when the deaths attributed to the program spiked, with an increase by five and a half percent in seven hours.