The Cleaner (34 page)

“Then how did he call you?”

“I was already there, Joe. What are you getting at?”

“I’m not sure,” I answer, happy to let it go.

“We were getting ready to go out, so we decided . . .” She pauses, but I’ve already heard her mistake. “
He
decided to take a shower.”

“He was at your house? You had a shower
with
him?”

“Don’t be so rude, Joe. Of course I didn’t.”

Images start going through my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’d tear them out if it’d help. The images don’t budge. I’m sweating like a pig. I push my fingers at my closed eyes and thousands of colors appear—like in the chandelier downstairs—and I try to follow the colors with my eyes as they float across my mind. I’m happy to believe they didn’t take a shower together. If she says so, then I’m happy to believe it. Happy to forget she said
we
instead of
he.
Happy to forget this entire conversation. She just has to tell me that . . .

“So, Mom, how did you chip your tooth?”

“It happened when Walt fell over.”

“What?”

“It happened when—”

“I heard you, Mom,” I say, trying to squeeze my eyes closed
even tighter. “But I thought you said you weren’t taking a shower together.”

“Well, Joe, we’re adults. Just because we were taking a shower together doesn’t mean anything of a sexual nature was happening. Just because in this day and age young people can’t keep their hands off each other doesn’t mean we were acting just as immorally. We’re pensioners, Joe. We can’t afford to leave hot water running all day. So we took a shower together. Now don’t you go making a big deal out of nothing.”

“So how did you chip your tooth? He knocked you over?”

I open my eyes, because if they’re open, I see this lovely hotel room wall and not my mother taking a shower with some old guy. I don’t want to question her. She has explained things in enough detail for me, yet the question has left my mouth before I could stop it. I didn’t want to ask—God knows I didn’t. Eyes open, I see a couple of chairs, some paintings, and I can see the hotel room door. Maybe I should run for it.

“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.

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.