The Cleaner Page 8

  I slam my fist into the side of her head. She jerks backward and tries to stand, but hits the edge of the bed and ends up falling onto her ass, her hands going behind her to break her fall. She looks up at me and I can’t tell behind all her makeup if she’s frightened or annoyed, but know it has to be at least one of them. There are tears in her eyes and for the first time she looks at least a little attractive.

  “That’ll cost you extra.”

  “I thought I could do what I wanted.”

  “If you want to beat me up, it’ll cost you a grand.”

  I shrug. Lean forward. Pull her back up by her arm. “Then I better get my money’s worth.”

  I try to drag her onto the bed, but it ends up getting difficult because my pants fall around my ankles. I grab her arm, roll her over, and twist it up her back, trying my best not to break it-but these things happen. She begins screaming, so I push her face into the bed to muffle her, and it works pretty well. I let go of her arm. It doesn’t move. Just juts out at an angle I’ve never seen on an arm before. Her other arm is pinned beneath her. When I try to move the broken one, it grates where the bone has snapped. The pain is too much for her to struggle, so she stops fighting back.

  I kick my pants off. The romance is quick and fulfilling, only it seems I keep too much pressure on the back of her head, because when I finish and pull away, I’ve suffocated her. It seems I can’t get anything right these days. At least I’ve saved five hundred dollars. Or was it a thousand?

  I start to get dressed. It’s been a big night for me, and the effects of the combined excitement are starting to wear off, and by the time I’ve got my shirt buttoned up I’m starting to feel tired. The plan to kill Candy where Daniela Walker died has worked without a hitch. It will leave a message to the original killer. I can study the policemen at the station, watch them closely. One of them will become nervous. One of them will know that somebody else knows. He’ll wonder what they want. He’ll react. He’ll be an absolute nervous wreck. He’ll be easy to spot. I decide to grab the pen after all to highlight the message.

  Of course it could be a matter of days, maybe weeks, before she’s found, and this is a problem. If I let it go that long, then bringing Candy back here would have been for nothing. Wrinkling my shirt and getting blood on it would have been for nothing. I grab my briefcase and head downstairs first to the fridge, then to the front door, using Candy’s bra to wipe down any surfaces I’ve touched. Tomorrow I’ll phone in an anonymous tip from a pay phone, telling the police there’s a body here.

  It hasn’t gotten any darker or any colder since spending quality time with Candy. A million stars shine down on me, making my pale skin look even paler. I park the Honda just outside of town and wipe it down. The breeze blows against my face as I turn toward home. I dump Candy’s bra in a trash can outside a corner store. I pass other women on the way, most of them streetwalkers, but I don’t give them a second look. I’m not an animal. I’m not going to kill somebody just because they are there. I hate guys like that. That’s what makes me different from anybody else. That’s my humanity.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  My apartment is the size of a closet compared to the house I’ve just visited. Sometimes it’s all I need. Other times it’s not enough. Can’t complain. Who’d listen? Well, who’d listen and still remember five seconds later?

  The first thing I do when I get inside is open my briefcase and dump the folder on the table with the others I’ve taken over the last few months. These others are souvenirs, but I hadn’t taken Daniela’s folder before because there was never any point. Why keep a memento of another man’s crime? I have yet to get a copy of the two victims’ folders from yesterday. And one for tonight’s murder won’t be available for a few more days.

  I watch Pickle and Jehovah for a few minutes, wondering what they are thinking, before heading to bed. I set my internal alarm clock to seven thirty and am just in the process of climbing beneath the sheets when I notice it-the answering machine. The message light is flashing. Great. I’m in my pajama shorts and not really in the mood to hear what anybody has to say to me, but I figure it’s probably Mom. If I don’t see what she wants, she’ll only keep calling me back.

  Six messages. All from her. If I don’t show up, my life is going to be hell. Last time I didn’t show up for dinner when it was planned, she spent all week on the phone to me, crying her heart out and forcing me to admit I’m a poor excuse for a son. I decide to take my punishment and head over there tonight.

  I climb off the bus a couple of blocks before her house, go into a twenty-four-hour supermarket, and do some quick shopping. The guy behind the counter is so tired he shortchanges me, but I’m having such a good day I don’t point it out. Heart racing, I walk to Mom’s house. Standing on the sidewalk I suck in a deep breath. The air tastes like salt. I look up at the dark sky. Is there any way of avoiding this? Short of hospitalization, the answer is no. I knock on the front door. Two minutes go by, but I know she’s not in bed because the lights are on. I don’t knock again. She’ll open it when she’s ready.

  After a few minutes I hear footsteps approaching. I straighten up, not wanting her to correct my slouch, and start smiling. The door shudders, the hinges squeak, and a small gap appears.

  “Do you know what time it is, Joe? I got worried. I nearly called the police. Nearly called the hospital. Do you not care about my broken heart?”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  The safety chain stops the door from opening any further. My mom, God bless her, put the safety chain on her door four years ago when the “neighborhood kids” stole her money. But she put the chain going up and down, not side to side, so all any intruder needs to do to unhook it is put his finger inside and lift. She closes the door, removes the chain, and opens it back up. I take a step inside, bracing myself, because I know it’s coming.

  She clips me around the ear. “Let that be a lesson to you, Joe.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “You never come and see me anymore. It’s been a week since you were last here.”

  “I was here last night, Mom,” I say, and I’ve had conversations like this with her before, and will have more of them until the day she dies.

  “You were here last Monday.”

  “And it’s Tuesday now.”

  “No, it’s Monday. You were here last Monday.”

  I know better than to argue, but I do point out once more that today is Tuesday.

  She clips me around the ear. “Don’t talk back to your mother.”

  “I’m not talking back, Mom, I’m just telling you what day it is.”

  She raises her hand and I quickly apologize, and she finally seems appeased by the gesture. “I cooked meatloaf, Joe,” she tells me, lowering her hand. “Meatloaf. That’s your favorite.”

  “You don’t need to remind me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” I open up the supplies I brought with me, and pull out a bunch of flowers. I hand them to her. No thorns this time.

  “They’re beautiful, Joe,” she says, her face beaming with excitement.

  She leads me through to the kitchen. I set my briefcase down on the table, open it up, and look at the knives inside. Look at the gun too. My hand rests on the handle of the Glock, and I try to take some strength from it. Mom puts the flowers into a vase, but doesn’t put in any water. The rose from yesterday is gone. Perhaps she thought it was a week old. She reaches up into a cupboard and grabs hold of a packet of aspirin, and drops one into the vase.

  “It keeps them alive longer,” she says, turning and winking at me, as if she’s letting me in on a family secret. “I saw it today on a TV show.”

  “You still have to add water,” I point out.

  “I don’t think so,” she says, frowning.

  “I’m sure of it,” I tell her.

  She looks uncertain. “I’ll try it my way this time,” she says, “and your way next time if it doesn’t work. How does that
sound?”

  I tell her it sounds fine. I don’t tell her that adding aspirin to flowers in water doesn’t make a lick of difference anyway.

  “I brought something else for you, Mom.”

  She looks over at me. “Oh?”

  I pull out a box of chocolates and hand it to her.

  “You trying to poison me, Joe? Are you trying to put sugar into my cholesterol?”

  Oh, Christ. “I’m just trying to be nice, Mom.”

  “Well, be nice by not buying me chocolates,” she says, looking really annoyed at me.

  “But Coke has sugar in it, Mom.”

  “Are you being smart?”

  “Of course not.”

  She throws the box at me and the corner bounces off my forehead. I see stars for a few seconds. I rub my head where it hit. The box has left a small impression, but no blood.

  “Your dinner’s cold, Joe. I’ve had mine.”

  I put the chocolates back into my briefcase as she dishes my dinner. She doesn’t offer to heat it for me, and I’m too frightened to ask. I head over to the microwave to do it myself.

  “Your dinner’s cold, Joe, because you let it get cold. Don’t think you’re going to use my electricity to warm it up.”

  We walk into the living room and we use her electricity to get the TV working and we sit in front of it. There’s some show on-I’ve seen it before, but don’t know what it’s called. They’re all the same. Bunch of white guys and girls living in an inner-city complex, laughing at everything that goes wrong for them, and there’s a lot that goes wrong. I wouldn’t be laughing if those things happened to me. I wonder if there’s a complex like that in this city, or even in real life. If so, I wouldn’t mind finding it. According to the TV the women in those complexes are damn sexy. I seem to recognize this episode but can’t be sure it’s a repeat since they do the same thing every week.

  Mom doesn’t talk to me while I eat. This is a surprise, because I generally can’t shut her up. She always has something to complain about. Normally it’s the price of something. I’m grateful for the silence, so much so that I consider maybe I should be late more often. The downside is her disappointment hangs over the room. I’m so used to it it’s almost part of the furniture. As soon as I throw the last cold scoop of meatloaf into my mouth she uses the remote to kill the TV, then turns toward me. Her mouth sags open, she bares her teeth, and I can see the start of a sentence forming.

  “If your father knew you treated me like this, Joe, he’d be rolling in his grave.”

  “He was cremated, Mom.”

  She stands up and I shrink back, expecting her to tell me off, but instead she puts her hand out for my plate. “I may as well clean up for you.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Don’t bother.” She grabs my plate and I follow her into the kitchen.

  “Do you want me to make you a drink, Mom?”

  “What, so I’ll be up all night running back and forth to the toilet?”

  I open up the fridge. “Anything in here you want?”

  “I’ve had dinner, Joe.”

  I need to cheer her up, so I turn the subject toward something in her element. “I was at the supermarket, Mom, and I saw they have orange juice on sale.”

  She turns toward me, still scrubbing at my plate, the flesh around her mouth moving aside for her beaming smile. “Really? What brand?”

  “The brand you drink.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “In the half gallon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much?”

  I can’t just say three dollars. I have to be accurate. “Two ninety-nine.”

  I can see her thinking about it, but I don’t interrupt with the answer. “That’s two forty-four off. Quite a savings. Have you seen my latest jigsaw puzzle?”

  It’s actually two forty-six off, but I say nothing. “Not yet.”

  “Go and take a look. It’s by the TV.”

  I look at the jigsaw puzzle. I mean, really look at it because I know she’ll quiz me on it. A cottage. Trees. Flowers. Sky. Jigsaw puzzles are like sitcoms, I guess-they’re all the fucking same. I head back into the kitchen. She’s drying my plate.

  “What did you think?” she asks, using a tone that suggests my answer is important to her, but only as long as it’s the right answer.

  “Nice.”

  “Did you like the cottage?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about the flowers?”

  “Colorful.”

  “Which ones did you like the best?”

  “The red ones. In the corner.”

  “The left or right corner?”

  “You’ve only done the left corner, Mom.”

  Satisfied I’m telling the truth, she puts the dishes away.

  Back in the lounge we sit down and continue talking. About what, I have no idea. All I can think about is what it would be like if she lost her voice.

  “I’m just going to get myself a drink, Mom. Are you sure you don’t want one?”

  “If it will shut you up, I will. Make it a coffee, and make it strong.”

  I head into the kitchen. Put the kettle on. Scoop some coffee into two cups. I grab the bag of rat poison that was also on sale at the supermarket, but not quite as good a savings as the orange juice I didn’t buy, but Mom would still be proud of the savings nonetheless. I scoop a generous amount into her coffee. Mom needs her coffee strong because her taste buds are failing her. When the kettle has boiled, I stir the stuff for two minutes until it dissolves.

  Back in the living room she has the TV going again but starts talking to me anyway. I hand over her drink. She adjusts the volume on the TV so she can still hear the voices while talking to me. The white guys are doing something oddly funny. I wonder how funny they would be if they lived in an apartment complex like mine. Mom hunches over and slowly drinks her drink, holding the cup defensively as if she’s expecting somebody to make a grab for it. When she finishes, I offer to wash her cup. She refuses, does it herself, then complains. Since she is complaining anyway, I make a deliberate show of looking at my watch, scrunch my face up in surprise at how late it is, and tell her I really need to be going.

  I have to go through the whole scenario of kissing her good-bye on the doorstep. She thanks me for the flowers and makes me promise to stay in touch, as if I’m heading to another country rather than the other side of the city. I promise I will, and she looks at me as though I’m going to ignore her for the rest of her life. It’s her guilt look, and I’m familiar with it. Nonetheless, it makes me feel bad. I was already feeling bad. Bad that she is alone. Bad that I am a bad son. Sad that one day something may happen to her, God forbid.

  I wave from the sidewalk but she is already gone. Where would I be without Mom? I don’t know and I never want to find out.

  The bus comes along and it’s not the same old guy from last night, and I’m pretty sure I know why that is. This is some young guy in his midtwenties. He calls me man, grins at me, and because I’m the only person on the bus, he feels obliged to make conversation. I stare out the window and nod and say yeah when he expects it, which is far more often than I’d like. There isn’t much in the way of life beyond the bus windows; the occasional taxi, the occasional person out late walking a dog, those occasions become more regular the closer we get to town, then less regular once we pass through it. I am more than three-quarters of the way home when I see it. It’s just lying there on the side of the road, still moving. Kind of.

  “Stop the bus,” I say, standing up.

  “You said. .”

  “Just stop it, okay?”

  “You’re the boss, buddy.”

  He stops the bus, and if I really was his buddy he would give me a quarter of my fare back. The swish of the doors as they close behind me, the purring of the motor, the shuddering of heavy metal, and the bus leaves me behind. We’re about halfway between town and my apartment. It’s a suburb where people who ha
ve made poor choices in life live. I rush over the road and crouch next to it. It’s mostly white, with a few streaks of ginger through it. Its mouth is slightly open. It’s not moving: maybe I made a mistake when I first saw it. When I put my hand on its side, it’s still warm. Its eyes open and look at me. It tries to meow but can’t. One of its legs sticks out in that same awkward way as Candy’s arm.

  Funny what fate does to us. Two nights ago it wasn’t my place in this crazy, mixed-up world to question the fact that animals are used as tools. They’re used every single day. Chemicals are tested on them so we can have higher-quality health care, higher-quality shampoos, matching eyeliners, warmer clothes. Others are killed for food. And here’s my opportunity to balance the scales for what I did to poor Fluffy.

  I pick the cat up, careful to keep my hands away from its broken leg. It meows loudly and tries to struggle, but doesn’t have the energy to struggle hard. The long graze down the side of its body looks bloody and raw. Its fur is matted. Strange sounds are coming from it. Rather than holding it against my body, I remove the plastic bag that the groceries came in from my briefcase and rest the cat inside. I begin to walk home.

  After less than half a mile I come across a phone booth. I find the number for an all-night vet and tell them I’m on my way. Then I call a taxi. It takes five minutes to arrive. The driver is foreign and speaks the same amount of English as the cat. I’ve torn the page from the phone book and I hand it to him. He reads the address and starts driving. The cat is no longer meowing, but it’s still alive. I let it out of the bag before stepping through the vet doors.

  Inside a woman about my age waits behind a counter. She has long red hair tied in a ponytail. She wears little makeup and doesn’t need it-she’s a natural beauty with soft brown eyes and full lips. She’s wearing a white medical jacket unbuttoned halfway down, as if she’s about to step onto the set of a porn movie. Beneath it is a blue T-shirt. A great set of breasts pushes its way forward. She smiles at me for less than a second before her concern turns to the cat.

  “You’re the man who just called?”

  “Yeah.”