The Cleaner

by Paul Cleave

  “No, no, he kicked me in the mouth. His foot slipped out from beneath him, and the heel of his foot kicked me in the mouth.”

  Don’t ask, Joe. Just don’t ask. “But how did his foot reach so high?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t standing. I was kneeling. I was. . um. . well, it just happened, Joe, okay? He kicked me in the mouth.”

  It just happened. What just happened? Oh God, please don’t show me. .

  Only my mind does show me. My entire shirt is wet. I become so scared that she might confirm exactly what she was doing that the moment she starts talking again I put the phone down and run to the bathroom, reaching the bowl only just in time.

  A hiccup, a convulsion of my stomach, the taste of bile. Vomit explodes from me in a roar and splashes into the water, while drops of water and puke flick onto my face and roll down onto my chin. I keep coughing it up until I have no more to cough, but I keep coughing anyway, watching it form a yellowish soup in the bottom of the toilet. As my body shudders, all I can picture is my mother in the shower. My throat quickly becomes raw, and my stomach shrinks into a small ball of pain. I can taste blood as it drips off my lips and plinks into the syrup below. There is something floating in there that looks like one of my dead goldfish.

  My mind is spinning and I feel light-headed. I reach out and slap the lever and the mess that surely couldn’t have come out of me, but did anyway, is flushed away.

  It hasn’t stopped flushing before I kneel back over the bowl, trying to throw up once again. Now I’m only gagging. Blood clots land in the water and spread out into rose petal shapes. I flush, but the toilet hasn’t regained pressure, so the petals don’t disappear. They just swirl around the edges of the bowl. Strands of drool hang from my bottom lip. They stick to the rim of the bowl, and they stretch when I lean back, eventually breaking. The tops of the strands swing down onto the black linoleum. Thinking about the thousands of people who have sat here and pissed and shat is better than thinking about Mom and her broken tooth.

  When I was in the faggot’s house, I tried thinking of other things to take my mind away from what was going on, and in the process I thought about Dad and what he would say. Bending over the toilet, I start to remember something I saw. Something Dad was doing. I wasn’t supposed to be home. I can’t remember why, but what I can remember is coming home early and finding. .

  Oh God.

  I start to gag, but I have nothing left to cough up except blood. I keep my eyes closed so I don’t have to see the red water below, but behind my eyes the memory is playing. Images of Mom and Walt in the shower fade in and out, replaced slowly with images of Dad in the shower. Only he’s in there with somebody else. Who? And why in the hell did I walk into the bathroom when I heard the damn shower going in the first place?

  That somebody else was another man.

  Oh Christ. I open my eyes. My lungs hurt and my stomach is hot. My throat feels as though it’s closed over. I try my best to shake the images away. Dad’s trying to calm me as the naked guy dresses and leaves, and Mom isn’t there to hear it because she is playing bridge at the local bingo hall. It was the last time she ever played.

  I think back to the policeman and his boyfriend pounding the bedroom wall, and this helps to take away the memory, this false memory, because surely that never happened.

  Of course! I’m remembering a dream. Dad wasn’t gay. Of course he wasn’t. And I never killed him. I loved him. Dad was as straight as they came, and why he decided to take his own life, I’ll never know. And maybe I don’t want to know.

  I stand up, my legs like rubber. I wash my face and rinse out my mouth, but can’t get rid of the taste. I pick up one of the complimentary soaps and take a bite. A white lather mixed with blood foams from my mouth.

  Tastes like chicken.

  Actually it’s the vomit that tastes like chicken, and as I chew further into the soap, my mouth starts closing over and my throat starts to burn. My remaining testicle starts to throb, though more than anything it is itching. I wash the soap from my mouth and stumble back to the phone. Unbelievably, Mom is still talking.

  “Okay, Mom, I’m glad you’re okay,” I interrupt. “And yes, I’ll come and visit Walt while he’s in the hospital, but my taxi’s just arrived. I’ve got a meeting with a client. Got to go. Love you.”

  I glance at my watch as if she can see me, send a kiss down the phone, and have the phone halfway back on the hook when one of her words stops me from hanging up.

  “What was that?” I ask, pressing the phone firmly against my ear.

  “We had a nice talk. She really loves you, Joe.”

  “Who?”

  “Your girlfriend. I’m never that good with names. There was an s in there somewhere. Maybe it started with one.”

  “You don’t mean Melissa?”

  “Melissa? Yes, that was it. I remember telling her she had a beautiful name.”

  “She came around?” I ask, deciding not to point out that Melissa has two s’s in her name.

  “That’s what I was saying. Joe, you really need to clean out your ears.”

  “She came around last night?”

  “Joe. Do you ever listen to anything I say?”

  I tighten my grip on the phone. I can hear my breathing getting out of control. “I listen, but Mom, this is important. What did she say?”

  “Only that she was worried about you. And that she thought you were a really nice person. I liked her, Joe. I thought she was lovely.”

  Yeah, well, she wouldn’t think Melissa was lovely if she knew what she was capable of. Why would she go and see my mother? Just to prove her control?

  “I had no idea you had such a lovely woman in your life, Joe.”

  “I’m just lucky, I suppose.”

  “When will I see more of her?”

  “I don’t know. Look, Mom, I gotta go.”

  “Did you know her brother was gay?”

  “What?”

  “She told me.”

  “What?”

  “That he was gay.”

  I have no idea what she’s on about. It’s as if she’s picking up on another conversation somewhere, perhaps a faulty phone connection.

  “Seriously, Mom, I really have to go. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I don’t wait for a response. This time I hang up.

  I walk to the window and look out at the city. I want to jump out and crash into the sidewalk below. My mind is churning with images of my mother and Walt, but they’re only shadows now. The day is winding down. Daylight is being replaced by streetlights and headlights. Hardly anything happens on a Wednesday night. Garbage trucks are rolling up and down the streets, taking away the trash left by shop owners and businesses. I wipe at the tears running down my face with no idea why I’m even crying. Finally I start to focus on why I’m here. I turn on the hotel room light, then start to make myself familiar with my surroundings, doing what I can to forget about my mother. It’s a distraction, but it works. I go back into the bathroom. I flush the toilet and spray some air freshener about the place. Only the distraction ends up pissing me off. It makes me think of what I have at home, or, more accurately, what I don’t have. It’s like being married, and then buying a swimsuit calendar. Thinking of my little apartment without the minibar and soft bed makes me want to start crying again.

  I walk into the kitchen area-or kitchenette, as gays and hippies would call it. I rummage around in the drawers, searching for a knife that looks mean enough to do a rather mean job. I find one, walk to the bed with it, and study it beneath the bedside lamp. The blade isn’t long; it’s bigger than a fruit knife, but smaller than the standard issue given to horror movie directors. I sway my hand up and down, feeling the knife’s weight and the balance, learning its specifications and limitations. It isn’t something I’d pay for, and it’s the first thing I’ve seen in this hotel that doesn’t look horribly expensive. It will take either some serious amount of stabbing, or some serious accuracy.

  I can do both.<
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  I open my briefcase and take out a cleaning rag to remove my fingerprints from the knife. This isn’t essential, but it’s better to be safe than jailed. I slip on a pair of latex gloves, clean the knife once again, then slip it into a plastic bag from my briefcase.

  I grab the list of phone numbers from my briefcase. Look up Detective Inspector Calhoun’s and dial it from the cell phone Melissa bought me. Since it’s a prepay, if the number shows up on Calhoun’s caller ID display, it can’t be traced back to me. Because of the latest break in the case, many of the detectives are putting in extra hours, and from what I can make out Calhoun is one of them. After six rings I’m beginning to doubt he’s there. If he isn’t at his desk the phone automatically switches through to his mobile, which these guys carry with them every moment of the day.

  Finally he answers. “Detective Inspector Calhoun,” he says, and I can picture him standing on a street somewhere with the phone pressed tightly against one ear and his finger jammed in the other.

  “Evening, Detective.”

  “Evening, sir. How can I help you?”

  “No, it’s how I can help you.”

  “Who is this?”

  “That’s not really important, but what is important is what I know.”

  “I don’t have time for any games,” he says, and I picture him the same way as a few seconds ago, only now looking pissed off.

  “This isn’t a game. I know something.”

  “And what is that?”

  I’m grinning, yet I’m also nervous. I can’t remember the last time I had a reason to grin. I can remember the last time I was nervous, though. “I know that you’re a killer.”

  Silence. Then, later than he should have replied, he says, “What the hell are you on?”

  “I’m not on anything.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “Do you know who this is, Detective?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “I’m the person you’re looking for.”

  “Look, if this is a joke, I’m not laughing.”

  I’m nodding down the phone line, like people do even though nobody can see them. At least I’m not waving my hands around. “You know I’m not joking.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “We’re getting off track, Detective. Now, let’s get to the point,” I say, scratching at my testicle. The itch is getting worse.

  “What point is that?”

  I walk over to the window. Look out at the city. “Tonight’s point, or moral, is that I know you have a sexual dysfunction that you attempt to put right by using prostitutes, and that that dysfunction has led to murder.”

  Rather than denying anything, or abusing or threatening me, he says nothing. We both stay that way for almost half a minute. I know he’s still there: the sound of the open phone line hums loudly.

  “This is bullshit,” he eventually says, but doesn’t hang up.

  “That’s not what Charlene Murphy thought when you took her to the Everblue. And I’m sure Daniela Walker would say differently too. Well, if you hadn’t killed her.”

  He’s silent for a few more seconds while he absorbs the fact that I know exactly what he’s done. “What is it you want?” he finally manages to ask.

  “Money.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten grand.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “Cashel Mall.”

  “I can’t risk being seen paying somebody off. How about somewhere more secluded?”

  “Like where?” I ask, knowing he would ask this.

  I can imagine exactly what he’s thinking. His speedy answers are proof of that. He’s suddenly inside that game he told me he didn’t have time for. Like chess, he’s setting me up, but again like chess, I can see it coming. I’m half a dozen steps ahead of the guy. Nobody’s going to have ten thousand dollars on them, ready to make a payoff in thirty minutes, and nobody is going to want to make that payoff a few hundred meters from the police station in which they work. But he’s seeing an ideal opportunity to eliminate me as a risk. Because I’ve sprung this on him pretty quickly, he hasn’t had long enough to think it through properly. He thinks he’s doing a pretty good job. Being clever. Being smarter than me. But I’ve been thinking through this all day. He’s going to ask for somewhere way less public and much more secluded.

  “You know where the Styx Bridge is?” he asks.

  “Out Redwood way, right?” I ask. I went over it the other night to reach the highway when I took Walt for a drive.

  “Meet me at ten o’clock underneath it. Don’t try anything funny.”

  I’m no comedian. “I won’t.”

  “How do I know ten grand buys your silence?”

  Good question. I’m surprised he’s asked this, considering he can’t afford to fuel me with any suspicion that he’s preparing to kill me. Again, I’ve been thinking about this all day knowing he had no choice but to ask it.

  “For ten grand, I’ll give you both the photographs and negatives of you at the Everblue. I’ll give you the negatives and photographs of you leaving Daniela Walker’s house on the night she died. And on top of that, if I wanted more money, I’d be asking for more. I just want enough to get out of the city before the cops close in on me.”

  “Ten o’clock then.” He hangs up without waiting for a response. He’s realized I’m cleverer than he first thought, I’m clever enough to have photos of him from the crime scene, and he’ll wonder how this is even possible. It’ll take him a while, but in the end he’ll conclude that I’m lying. I look at my watch. I have more than three-quarters of an hour not to show up. Plenty of time not to do several things.

  Plenty of time not to kill.

  I reach down and scratch at my testicle through the padding, realizing it isn’t my remaining testicle that has me in discomfort, but the missing one. The itch is where the skin is mending. Melissa left me some disinfectant and some talcum powder. I grab them from my briefcase and sit down on the edge of the bed. I remove the padding-it pulls at the hairs and I have to stifle a scream-then clean the area and sprinkle on the talcum powder. By the time I’m done, my testicle looks as though it’s been dusted for fingerprints. I replace the padding and lie down on the bed and focus on not falling asleep. The problem is the bed is so comfortable I’m wondering if I can somehow steal it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The graveyard is mostly deserted. It’s late to be out here, but Sally wanted somewhere quiet to think. She parks next to a car that has a guy inside it slowly drinking from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag. He looks at her and she can see pain in his eyes and for a moment she wants to help him, to tell him that things will get better, but she isn’t so sure it’s true, not for this guy. She’s seen him out here before, and she’s seen him around the police station a few times too, talking mostly to Detective Schroder. She thinks he used to work there. She doesn’t know his story, and doesn’t want to ask.

  She makes her way to her brother’s grave. Long blades of grass, those close to the gravestones missed by the lawn mower, are bending under the weight of the dew. Other than going to church, she feels like the cemetery is the closest place to God.

  Last night, rather than having some of her questions answered, Sally was only led further down the path of her confusion. No, further into the world of Joe’s fiction. Just how much is he lying about? Did he attack himself?

  She thinks about the blood on the stairs at his apartment building. If Joe attacked himself, he must have done it outside. It doesn’t seem likely. As unlikely as Joe driving? She knows she needs to confront him. She was going to today at work, but she’d become scared. She didn’t want to lose Joe. Though, really, that has probably already happened. Maybe his mother hasn’t told him yet of her visit, but she soon will.

  She wipes the back of her hand across her face, streaking the tears across her cheeks. Her breath is forming a mi
st in front of her face. She doesn’t want to let Joe down.

  The same way you let down your brother?

  The tears start to come more freely. Nobody blames her for what happened to Martin, at least that’s what they say, but she knows they do. She certainly does. Her parents must do. As for Martin and God, well, one day she’ll find out. She pulls out a tissue from her pocket and dries her face. Across the graveyard, mist looks as though it’s seeping out of the ground. Fog is hanging around the gravestones but doesn’t have the strength to climb any higher. By the time she gets back to her car her legs feel damp.

  She turns the heater on to full as she drives to Joe’s apartment. The hot air dries her legs and her face. Sometimes on the way home from seeing her dead brother, she can’t stop the tears.

  She parks in the same spot she parked in the first time she came here. She grabs the first-aid kit from the backseat. She will help Joe by removing the stitches before she will help him by confronting him.

  Nobody appears as she makes her way up to the top floor. The small splotches of blood are still on the stairs. Some of them have been smeared to the size of a watch face. She knocks, but nobody answers. A cat appears at the end of the hallway and walks down to her. It has a slight limp. She squats down next to it and starts petting it.

  “Hey, little one, aren’t you just the cutest?”

  The cat meows as if to agree, then starts purring. She knocks on the door again, still hunched down next to the cat. Joe doesn’t answer. Is it possible he has passed out again? Or been attacked? She knocks louder. Most likely he isn’t home, but what if he is? What if he is lying on his bed, bleeding, the other testicle removed?

  She reaches into her first-aid kit, where the copy of Joe’s key has been since the day she had it cut. She stands up and inserts it into the lock. She realizes the chances are higher that she’s looking for an excuse to enter rather than Joe being in trouble inside. This realization doesn’t stop her from turning the handle and pushing the door open.