Clean

by Tom Lytes

  “Thank you,” he said, still adjusting to his new financial reality.

  The black Sullivan Island emblems on the doors of his police car radiated heat, and suddenly Officer Pincus wanted desperately to be out of the sun. He lowered his sights from the porch and turned to see Peggy at the foot of the stairs. Unzipped, Officer Pincus’s duffel bag lay open on the ground as Peggy inspected the meat cleaver in her hand.

  “Hi, Officer Pincus,” Peggy said. “Do you know anything about this bag on the stairs? It’s got a sharp chopping thing in it.”

  She held up the cleaver.

  “Oh, hello there, Peggy,” Officer Pincus said, as he quickly closed the distance between them. “It’s mine. I’m going to a pig roast later, and I volunteered to help with the carving.”

  “Why is it on the steps?” Peggy asked quizzically as she reached down and held up the bag.

  The sheriff collected the cleaver and put it back in the bag as he took both from her.

  Peggy said, “I didn’t know we’d decided to fake my death. What happened?”

  “Fake your death? Right, I faked your death for your safety.”

  “It didn’t seem like it was a definite plan. Then I read about it in the paper. I’d have preferred you speak to me about it before just going ahead with it.”

  Officer Pincus took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The heat, and the news of his new bank account, a few beers to unwind after the late night on the beach all came together to make him feel woozy. And Peggy stood before him, grilling him about her own death which wouldn’t be fake for long. Officer Pincus’s meat cleaver had glinted in the sun. Did she buy the pig roast story?

  “Yep, should buy you some time, Peggy,” he said.

  Peggy looked puzzled, “Why were you bringing your pig roast stuff to Leonard’s house?”

  Officer Pincus didn’t find a smile to put on his face. He couldn’t adopt an easy-going expression or attitude. It was all he could do just to stay conscious. He didn’t answer Peggy’s question.

  Instead he said, “I’ve got to go. There’s a mess of paperwork related to the cargo fire on that boat.”

  Officer Pincus brought the black duffel bag with the cleaver in it, back to his cruiser, got in, did a three-point turn and left.

  Finley came out of the house and yelled to Peggy, “Was that Pincus? What did he want?”

  Peggy bounded up the stairs to join him. “I don’t really know. He seemed disoriented, hot and confused.”

  “Must be under a lot of pressure with the fire.” Finley pointed to the massive charred cargo ship. “Lack of sleep affects people differently.”

  “Maybe,” Peggy said. “I thought he would say more about my fake death.”

  Finley shrugged.

  “Fin,” she said, “do you think we’re doing the right thing here? Leonard is a terrible guy, and we’re teaming up with him. I mean, think about it. Is this what we should be doing?”

  Finley looked serious. “I’ve been into the architecture of Clean, Peggy. I don’t think it can be stopped unless Leonard’s helping us. Besides, the FBI basically dismissed the doomsday program concept. They think I’m tracking Swiss Bank accounts. No one is expecting you to do anything. You’re dead for all everyone knows. Think about it. If we weren’t trying to stop Clean, Peggy, no one would.”

  “I guess,” Peggy said. “I just wonder if it could be done a different way, if you’re blinded to what’s really happening because you’re in awe of the programming.”

  “Maybe,” Finley conceded, “but I don’t think so.”

  Peggy knew her look told him she wasn’t too sure about that.

  “If we’re going to change course it should be right away,” Finley said. “Clean kills people all day.”

  “Yeah,” Peggy said.

  “You got any better ideas, Peggy?”

  “No.”

  He said, “Don’t be a high maintenance dead person.” He punched her lightly on the shoulder. “Let it rest in peace.”

  “Not funny,” she said, still looking stern. “Seriously though, I just had a weird conversation with Officer Pincus. He didn’t look right.”

  She looked to where Officer Pincus stood, a minute ago, at the bottom of the stairs.

  Under her breath, she said, “He helped me before, by lying and doing whatever suited him. What if Officer Pincus has a new agenda, and I’m in the way of it? What if Bobby Touro was right when he warned me about Officer Pincus? What then?”

  Finley had gone back inside of the incredible house with the amazing view. She wondered if this paradise would prove to be her undoing. Finley and Leonard seemed to be working together, finding common ground in the task at hand, but what if the two of them couldn’t stop Clean. What then? She stepped into the house and closed the door behind her.

  “I have the Clean program running, and I’m checking the names,” Leonard said as he ate an apple and sat at the kitchen table with his laptop open. Peggy looked at the screen and noticed the open tabs in the tool bar. Finley was planted across the room in a similar mode. Looking over his shoulder, she saw search tabs in German that she didn’t understand. There was a tab for the New York Times, the National Bank of Geneva in Switzerland, and a helicopter leasing company. Leonard had the screen maximized with a list of names. He pointed to one. “Yup, Peggy, you’re dead.”

  “Great, just great.”

  “Not bad to be fake dead,” Leonard said without amusement, “rather than real dead.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Oh, man,” Leonard said softly.

  “What?”

  “Bobby Touro’s name is on the list— And he’s been found guilty by the program. He’s marked for death.”

  “He got on the list and was found guilty all at once?” Peggy asked.

  “Yeah, the timings a little off,” Leonard said thoughtfully as he looked up from his laptop. “It seems a little quick. The program usually makes overwhelmingly sure of its decision before acting. That can take weeks. I’m not sure about one day, but it will have been speeding up its processes all the time. I guess it’s possible, too, with the skewed activity in the program.”

  “Are you going to call him?” Peggy asked.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said. “I better call him right away.”

  Vortmit considered the danger he’d put Peggy in with Officer Pincus. He would justify paying Officer Pincus the money, by suggesting to Rhodes it was the only way Vortmit could prevent Pincus from killing her. He looked around the room. Finley remained deep into his program, learning what he could. Vortmit knew it wouldn’t be enough to alter his plans. It wouldn’t be long, now….

  38

  Leonard connected with Bobby when he was in the car, driving somewhere.

  “Bobby,” Leonard said with little lead-in, “You’re on the list.”

  “Ah, shit.”

  “Wait, there’s more,” Leonard said. “The program found you guilty too.”

  “What the fuck, Leonard?”

  “You’re marked for death.”

  “You sure about that, Leonard?” Bobby said into the phone, without emotion. “You gotta be sure.”

  “I am sure,” Leonard said.

  A long pause ended when Bobby said, “Okay. This phone number will no longer work for contacting me. Hansel will be down there today, and he will have a way to get word to me if you need me.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Bobby said, “I’m changing my schedule, my habits, where I hang out, everything.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Leonard said.

  “I’ll worry about me,” Bobby said. “I gotta ask you, Leonard. Are you trying to stop your fucking program or not? Finley and Peggy want to access a supercomputer and try some stuff that seems unlikely. Are you working with them to
lure Clean to that computer in Clemsum? Does it make sense to even try?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for days,” Leonard said, earnestly, “and theoretically we should be able to do it, if we can erase all of the projects the supercomputer is working on. Then it will be just a big blank computer with overflowing potential in the eyes of the program’s analytics.”

  “I don’t know what the words you use mean,” Bobby said. “And I don’t want you to explain them to me. Can you get the program into the Clemsum computer or not?”

  Leonard heard Bobby’s tone and knew that whatever the answer might be, he was only giving one answer.

  “Yes,” Leonard said. “Definitely.”

  “Okay, get it done,” Bobby said. “This isn’t fooling around no more. Hansel will be with you shortly.”

  They hung up the phone and Leonard stared blankly out the window.

  “Bobby’s only going to apply more pressure,” Peggy said.

  Leonard nodded, and Peggy went to the kitchen. She packed a backpack with water bottles. She found herself reaching for her service revolver, and it took her hand grabbing at the empty spaces where it should have been to remember Officer Pincus took possession of it.

  When she returned to the living room, she saw Leonard straighten up his work space, putting paper files in a messenger bag. He went to shut down his computer too, but Peggy watched as he stopped short and the screen captured his gaze.

  She said, “What?”

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  Peggy went to the laptop and looked at what took Leonard’s attention.

  She said to Finley, “There’s a disturbing news story coming out of Virginia. An equestrian facility is on fire and a lone gunman opened fire on a crowd before disappearing. There are three dead and five wounded.”

  After looking at the picture, she said, “I know that place. I’ve been there a dozen times.”

  Peggy swooned, and fell to the floor.

  Finley jumped up, “Oh my God, Peggy. Are you all right?”

  She nodded, and said softly, “Those are my friends, Finley. My true friends out there. I can’t believe this. It can’t be happening.”

  Finley looked at Leonard crossly as he closed his laptop.

  “I think it’s Clean,” Leonard said. “I believe this,” he pointed to the laptop and ran his hand through his hair as he stood, “is the result of somebody having added your name to the program.”

  “This is from Clean?” Peggy asked. Then she answered her own question, “Of course it’s Clean. Everything bad that happens comes from Clean. Finley, the deaths in Hoosick were from Clean. Did you know that?”

  “You’re upset, Peggy. Here’s some water. I suspected Clean in Hoosick, but how can we know.”

  “Forget it—” Peggy said, looking at Leonard.

  Leonard said, “We talked about the ways Clean would deal with your name manually added into the program. These deaths result from that skew of data.”

  “A tragedy at a farm in Virginia came about because someone manually entered my name into the program?” Peggy said, warily. “Why, again, does that make any sense?”

  “An equestrian facility in Virginia,” Leonard said. “Clean keyed in on the horse connection. The program may have deduced that your guilt hinged upon your involvement with horses. If that’s true, then it will continue to kill people involved with horses, until they are all dead.”

  “What?” Peggy asked.

  “I’ve been trying to see where the computer would go next, and I thought it might turn on law enforcement. Imagine the consequences of that. We could have a civil war. I also considered whether the program might consider you guilty because you are a shorter woman with brown hair, a rural New Yorker, somebody with a gun license, or yes, a horse enthusiast. The computer program could have picked up on anything and run with it. It chose the horse connection, for now.”

  “Your program sucks,” Peggy said with tears in her eyes. “We really do have to stop it.”

  “Yes,” Leonard said, “We do.”

  Leonard opened his laptop and refreshed the New York Times website. There were more new stories. The President was in Egypt, a new Indian restaurant planned to open on East 72nd Street in Manhattan, a teacher from Stuyvesant won a national award, and a few other articles did nothing to command attention. Until the article titled, “Poisoning Mystery in Barracks of California’s Horse Shoe Ranch” caught his eye. And there was another one, too, that read “Wyoming Rodeo Standoff as Trucker Barricades Entrance.”

  “It’s definitely horse facilities,” Leonard said, pointing at the screen. “The program is going after people in equestrian places. It seems to be working faster than it has been too. If you were added yesterday by yourself, and then it batched at midnight, consider that it’s still the morning. The program has at least three equestrian places under attack right now. There will be more.”

  “And that’s just about me and horses,” Peggy said. “The program could be doing tons more killing all around the country.”

  “It is,” Leonard said. “It keeps toiling away, getting better at what it does.”

  “You’re a math guy,” Peggy said. “Can you check historical death statistics and see how this past few months compares with the same three-month period during the past ten years?”

  “Should be easy.” Leonard typed something into his computer. “You’re right. The data suggests the death toll is higher in the past few months across the nation than it has been in fifty years, per capita.”

  “Wow,” Peggy said as she whistled. “How much higher?”

  “A few percentage points, not enough to alarm anyone, but rising each month and by quite a bit during the last. The uptick will start worrying somebody in the government eventually, I would imagine.”

  Peggy said. “It could take a while before anyone notices anything unusual.”

  “The numbers are escalating,” Leonard said ruefully. “Somebody, somewhere will be aware of the irregularity soon.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Peggy said. “Just from the law enforcement side of things, I don’t think anyone will take notice in more deaths, especially if they occur throughout the U.S. I mean, we aren’t trained to look for such a large conspiracy.”

  “That’s true,” Leonard said thoughtfully.

  “The point is that the program could go on working for years, killing all kinds of people and the jaded public would complain, but possibly do nothing.”

  “Uh, that’s how I designed the program, so it could function undetected for a long time.”

  “Scary,” Finley said.

  Peggy said, “We’re going to get with Bobby’s guys, get into Clemson’s supercomputer, and this is going to end.”

  “Right,” Leonard said.

  Bobby’s schedule needed to change immediately, starting with the tail end of his weekly trip to Vermont. Bobby felt some of his priorities altering, quickly. He controlled several bars around Bennington, and more further north outside the Burlington campus of the University of Vermont. Bobby benefited mostly from the side businesses and joint ventures that he ran out of them, making it worth his time to visit the state once a week. Bobby knew his consistently predictable schedule could be easily exploited by the program. As a result, Leonard’s call ended the trip as planned.

  “Stop the car,” he said to his driver. “Stop this thing and let me out.”

  His driver pulled onto the shoulder, and Bobby got out of the car. He went to the back and waited for his driver to hit the button that would open the trunk. When it released, Bobby pulled out a small leather case. Circling the car and walked up to where his loyal driver sat, he spoke with him through the lowered, heavily tinted window.

  Bobby leaned over and said to his driver, “I’m gonna be hard to find for a while. Okay?”

  The driver looked
surprised at Bobby’s instant change in plans and demeanor but nodded. From behind the wheel of the large black sedan, his driver looked around at the surrounding farmland. Rolling hills of grass and cut crops continued in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Old silos, white and tall with rounded, shiny metal roofs appeared attached to the ground by the rusty ladders running up the side of them. Red barns seemed to anchor rows of large hay bales to the landscape, and smaller houses were few and far between, dwarfed by the land and scenery.

  “There’s nowhere to go out here, boss.”

  “Look, don’t worry about what’s next for me,” Bobby said. “The less you know right now, the safer you’re gonna be. It’ll be different for a while until I fix this. I gotta lie low, take care of myself. Go ahead and drive my usual routine, eat at Vinciente’s, spend time at the laundromat. Do stuff and stay active. Keep driving to places I usually visit.”

  “What?” the driver asked. “Go to the laundromat, when you’re not even there? You want me to pretend as if you are with me?”

  “Exactly. Do everything we would do together. Drive to all our usual places.” He put his hand on the driver’s shoulder and said, “I’ll reach out to you when I want to talk.”

  “You sure, Bobby?” the driver said again, unable to think further in advance than the next few minutes. “It’s just farms out here. These old families don’t want people on their land. You know?”

  “Go,” Bobby said. “I’m sure. I prepared for this. I’ll be all right.”

  “I know you’ll be all right,” his driver said. “You’re Bobby Touro. We’ve done what needs to be done before this, but I don’t like the computer angle.”

  It was true that Bobby went into hiding a few times in the past. Once while something needed to blow over with the police, and he needed to take care of a witness. Another time somebody put out a hit on him. He pointed to the case in his hand and the driver nodded. Bobby turned away and heard the motor of his car rev through a few gears and then diminish as it drove away. Then Bobby stood by himself. He surveyed his surroundings and saw an area ahead where the road passed over a metal drainage culvert. A tree had been allowed to grow next to it, probably more because the spot’s inaccessibility to a mower than because anyone wanted tall vegetation there. Bobby started to run to it and, having been involved in almost no cardiovascular exercise for as long as he could remember, after a few steps began walking.