The cleanup, p.1
The Cleanup, page 1
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE $AVEMORE
1. PLASTIC
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
2. BAD GOAT
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
3. PROTECT AND SERVE
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY SEAN DOOLITTLE
PREVIEW OF BURN AND RAIN DOGS
COPYRIGHT
For Neil Smith and Victor Gischler
A Plot with Guns
PROLOGUE
$AVEMORE
I. MEAT AND FROZEN
Worth couldn’t get over the looks people gave him. It seemed like an easy question.
“Um, paper,” the woman said. “I guess.”
He swiped open a sack and went to it. Beside him, Gwen skimmed her cheat sheet for produce codes. Up and down the line, scanners beeped. Groceries clattered. Tinny Top 40 swirled in the rafters.
The woman finally leaned across the checkout stand. “Forgive me for asking, but don’t they have employees who do this?”
Worth did his best to ignore the way her breasts pressed together above the zipper of her jogging top.
“I don’t mind,” he said, already lifting the first sack into the cart at the end of the stand. Square. Stable. Not too heavy.
“Hey,” said the woman. “Wow.”
Worth touched a salute and quickly reduced the leftover rubble to three neat bags. He saved a little room at the top of the third, nestled a loaf of bread in the space. The woman was smiling now.
“Say…do you think you could put the meat in plastic? And the frozen stuff?”
“Meat and frozen stuff in plastic.” He nodded to the young boy at her hip, drawing his baton. “Okay with you, partner?”
The boy shrank, staring, chewing on the neck of his soccer shirt. Worth kicked himself for showing off. He raked the new pile forward with the side handle, leaned the stick out of sight beside his knee.
Gwen struggled along, scanning with her good hand, running the keypad with her bum wing. Soon the cart was full, the total totaled. The woman scribbled a check.
“Is that a real gun?”
He smiled down at the kid, who now gazed at Worth’s gear belt closely. “It’s real, kiddo. But it’s only for emergencies.”
“Have you ever shot somebody?”
“Not even once.”
“Ethan. Don’t bother the officer.”
Worth fished a Jolly Rancher from a vacant Mace holster. “Here you go, pal. That’s official candy. Omaha PD.”
Ethan looked to his mother. The woman slipped Worth a grin, gave kiddo the nod. Worth handed the candy over. He finally spotted one of the regular sackers sauntering back in from a carry-out, twirling his apron, nowhere special to be. Worth flagged him while Mom admired her cart.
“You know,” she said, “you’re pretty good at that.”
He held up his hands. “Long arms of the law.”
She laughed and tried to tip him. Worth took Ethan’s empty wrapper instead. Something in the boy’s newly fascinated expression depressed him a little. He dropped the kid a wink.
When they were gone, Gwen closed her drawer with a hip and batted her lashes. “You’re so good at that.”
“Don’t start.” He nodded to the wrist she’d sprained playing volleyball in some bar league. She’d come on shift with a brown club of bandage for a right hand; by now her long slender fingers looked like spoiled knockwursts. “You should go home and put ice on that.”
“It’s okay.” She flicked his elbow with her good hand. “How come you’re here so early? No life?”
“Law enforcement is my life.”
“My hero.”
He liked seeing her smile.
Gwen pushed him out of her stand with his own baton. Worth strolled back to his spot by the cigarette case. He reholstered the stick, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and tried to look like a cop for a while.
II. GWEN
Once per session, usually during a lull, Dr. Jerry Grail would take a hand mirror from his middle desk drawer and hold it up in front of Worth’s face.
“Describe what you see. Use only nouns.”
Sometimes it was adjectives. Once it was animals. It always felt canned, insipid, a little bit demeaning, but Worth needed the grade, so he did his best to play along. Sometimes Dr. Grail scribbled something in his case folder. Sometimes not. Half the time Worth felt pretty sure the shrink wasn’t even listening.
One afternoon, when he saw Grail’s hand moving toward the drawer, Worth said, “No offense, Doc, but don’t we pretty much know what I look like by now?”
Dr. Grail stopped his reach and leaned back. He had a narrow face, a shell of thinning hair, and a way of looking across the desk that always made Worth feel like he was letting the guy down.
“The mirror is only an exercise, Matthew,” Dr. Grail said.
“You say that like it’s a positive thing.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“Not really.” No way was he falling for that one again.
Grail ran a finger around the inside of his watchband. He did it ten or twelve times an hour. Worth sometimes counted.
“Last week you mentioned feeling concern for somebody at work.” The shrink checked his folder, flipped a page. “Gwen?”
Worth wished he’d never brought it up. “Right.”
“Would you like to talk further about that?”
“I guess not.”
Grail scribbled a note.
“By that I meant I guess there isn’t much to say.”
She was a nursing student at Clarkson and worked a combination of graveyards and swings. Weeknights, she kept a battered textbook under the register with a pack of Dorals and a highlighter pen. She had big gray eyes, a sly sense of humor, and a manner that seemed feisty and fragile at the same time. The first time he saw her, Worth thought of the bird that once came in through the chimney and tangled itself in the fireplace screen.
He wasn’t about to tell Dr. Grail that he’d grown to look forward to the shifts he worked with Gwen. That sometimes, watching from his spot by the cigarette case, he found himself entertaining pathetic fantasies.
Worth imagined coming to her rescue. More than once, in the long dead hours after midnight, he’d passed the time constructing elaborate scenarios in which he demonstrated steely-eyed heroism. Occasionally, he caught himself making adolescent, X-rated, cop-and-checkout-girl movies in his mind.
Ultimately, he drove back to assembly after sunrise feeling like either a sleaze or a sham.
Worth didn’t kid himself. He probably never had been hero material, but he wasn’t typically a letch. He was just lonelier than he’d realized. And he really didn’t know Gwen at all.
She sprained her other wrist in September. One night, she came in with a limp. Sorensen, the night manager, told him that Gwen seemed to play volleyball all year round.
“Rough sport,” Worth suggested.
Sorensen stood quietly in his tie and shirtsleeves. He scribbled something on his clipboard, met Worth’s eyes briefly, then agreed that it must be.
By then he’d already found himself in the habit of going for coffee when she took her breaks. One night she caught him off guard.
“I found stuff out about you.”
It messed up his regular small talk. “Stuff?”
“Mm.” Gwen looked up from her textbook. She took a drag from her cigarette and watched him through the smoke. Even in the harsh light of the employee break room, her gray eyes caught a warm glimmer. “I asked around.”
Worth went to the counter and worked a foam cup from the stack by the coffee machine. He suddenly felt clumsy. “Stuff like what?”
“Stuff like what. Hmm.” Gwen tapped her highlighter against her chin. “Let’s see.”
“You shouldn’t tease the police.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“How’s that?”
“I heard you punched another officer.”
He stopped pouring, tightened his jaw. Ricky.
Or Curtis. He couldn’t keep them straight. He didn’t know what the hell was the matter with him lately, telling macho stories in the stockroom for those two knuckleheads.
Gwen said, “Is that really true?”
“Not really.”
“I wondered,” she said. “You don’t seem like the type.”
Worth slid the pot back. “I punched a detective.”
Now she closed her book and leaned over it, elbows on the table, cigarette trailing smoke beside her ear. “You did not.”
“Unfortuna
Vargas in Homicide. He’d told the Modell brothers, Ricky and Curtis, only about the Vargas-on-his-ass part. Worth hadn’t mentioned the part where Vargas came back up, feinted left, and shattered his nose with a straight right. He hadn’t even seen it coming. Just thinking about it was humiliating.
“Why did you punch a detective?”
“Poor impulse control.”
“Ah.”
“It’s a long story.” It was a fairly short story, actually. Pretty simple.
She nodded along. “Is that how you ended up here? Keeping me company?”
Going on ten weeks, he’d realized coming on post tonight. The store had reported a rash of shoplifters in June and an unarmed robbery the first week in July; some crankhead from Fremont had jumped two checkout stands and run out the front doors with a cash tray under each arm, trailing loose coins.
Worth’s lieutenant had manufactured the detail when he’d initialed the reinstatement papers. Six months, A-shift, SaveMore at Saddle Creek and Leavenworth. Provisional duty pending a fitness sign-off from psych.
“More or less,” he told her.
“That’s interesting.”
“It’s not that interesting.”
Gwen sat back. He liked the way she smoked: thoughtful, slightly awkward, one eye pinched. He’d never really seen anybody with eyes that color. They sort of fascinated him.
“I heard something else,” she finally said.
“Boy. What else did you hear?”
“You’re a faker.”
He burned his tongue on the coffee. “Sorry?”
Gwen looked at his left hand. It took a moment before he got it: the wedding ring. Worth chuckled, felt his ears get hot.
“Right,” he said. “That.”
“How long?”
“How long was I married? Or how long have I been divorced?”
“Whichever.”
“Marriage, ten years,” he said. “Divorce, eight months.”
“Ah.”
“It was over before that, I just didn’t know it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
She nodded as though she understood. “Still hung up, huh?”
“It’s complicated.” It wasn’t.
Somebody came in then, and they both looked. Worth recognized LaTonya, one of the other full-time checkers, cornrows beaded tonight, smock draped over her shoulder. She went to the clock, punched out, and slid her time card back into the slot on the wall. She hung the smock on a hook.
“Night, Gwennie.”
Gwen smiled. “See you tomorrow, babe.”
“Night, Supercop.”
“Good night, LaTonya.”
LaTonya glanced at Gwen, chuckled a little, and walked out humming.
When she was gone, he said, “What was that all about?”
Gwen had already gone back to her textbook. She shrugged, uncapping her highlighter with her teeth. “Who knows with that girl?”
III. SUPERCOP
Lately, he’d been thinking about something Sondra once said.
You want to know your biggest problem? This had been a few months before she’d left him for Vargas in Homicide. It’s not the job. It’s not the department. Christ, Matthew, news flash: It’s you.
He’d written the comment off at the time. She’d been pissed because he hadn’t put in for the sergeant’s test, decided to get mean about it. At some point in their marriage, Sondra had grown disappointed. He hadn’t even seen it coming. Just thinking about it was humiliating.
Lately, even Worth was beginning to see the irony.
His great-grandfather took a bullet in the ribs when the courthouse fell to the mob in 1919; the way all the stories told it, Mort Worth had gone on bleeding and cracking heads even after they set the building on fire. His grandfather worked Boss Dennison’s funeral in ’34. A great-uncle made captain in the Southeast. His father gave the force thirty years and his liver; his older brother Kelly gave three and his life.
He was the last in four generations of Worth men to wear the shield in this town, yet somehow it had taken the SaveMore to remind Matthew Worth why he’d wanted to become a cop in the first place.
This store had been a Food 4 Less when he’d worked here as a teenager, but mostly it felt the same. Back then, he’d always been the one zero his age who actually enjoyed having a part-time job at the supermarket.
He’d enjoyed sacking people’s groceries. There was something satisfying in fitting a mountain of shapes and sizes into a few uniform packages. He liked helping folks out to their cars, getting them on their way. It made him feel good when they said thanks and meant it.
Over the past few weeks, Worth had come to accept the sad facts:
He was living in a world where tired soccer moms were so accustomed to watching some apathetic teenager drop the milk jug on top of the eggs that they wanted to tip you just for trying to put a little extra “serve” in Protect and Serve.
And he probably felt more useful wearing an apron and a name tag than he’d ever felt wearing a gun belt and a badge.
Anyway, he only kept wearing the wedding ring because he knew it burned the shit out of Vargas in Homicide.
The last week in October, a cold front sliced down from Canada like a blade.
Worth hadn’t listened to a forecast for a couple of days. The night the weather turned, he took his 2 A.M. spin around the perimeter with his jacket collar up, bare hands in his pockets, watching his breath form frosty clouds in the drizzle. He heard her before he saw her.
“Russell, please.”
The lamps out front cast a faint blue sheen over the oily wet surface of the parking lot. One of the lamps had gone dark. As he rounded the last corner of the building, Worth ID’d a tricked-out GTO parked askew in the shadows around the base of the pole. Muscle era, glossy black, rear spoiler, mag wheels. Vanity plates stamped BadGoat. Cute.
Gwen stood half-bent at the driver’s side.
“Honey, I’m sorry,” she said. “Okay? You’re hurting me.”
Worth saw the driver’s hand, clutching her arm through the open window. He lengthened his stride.
Whoever sat behind the wheel spotted him coming. Gwen got her arm back just as Worth reached the car’s front fender. He rested one hand on the butt of his stick as he came around the driver’s side.
“Everything okay over here?”
Gwen folded her thin arms and looked at the blacktop. “Hey, Matthew. Just finishing my break. Everything’s fine.”
Worth put his hand on the Pontiac’s roof. “How about in here?”
In the driver’s seat fumed a lean, muscular guy in jeans and a tank top. The guy gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead, stubbled jaw shaded amber in the panel lights of a custom stereo.
Russell, he presumed. Warm air laced with cologne blasted from inside the car as Worth’s fingers grew numb against the cold wet steel.
He said, “It’s not polite to ignore people when they ask you a question.”
“Man, you heard her. We’re fine.”
Worth straightened and turned to Gwen. Looking at her just then, he thought of Tiffany Pine. Unpleasant images flashed in his head.
He shook his head and said, “Walk me back inside?”
Before she could answer, the car roared to life. A sudden assault of headbanger metal came blaring as headlight beams leapt through the mist. Russell dropped into gear and gunned toward the nearest exit, leaving the two of them standing alone.
Worth waited until the GTO’s taillights disappeared around the curve, tires whining, before he asked her again if she was okay.
Gwen looked at the blacktop. Everything suddenly seemed too quiet.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
“Gwen, that’s why I’m—”
“No. I mean you really shouldn’t have done that.”
Gwen didn’t have a coat. He was halfway out of his tac jacket when she turned, hugging herself, and walked back toward the entrance of the store alone.
He found the Modell brothers clowning around in the break room, throwing box cutters at empty soup cases. They’d scrawled crude bull’s-eye targets on the sides of the boxes, presumably with the Sharpie marker now stuck behind Ricky’s ear.
Most nights Worth didn’t mind the guys. Good-natured, blond-headed tree stumps, both of them, stocking shelves full-time since losing university wrestling scholarships to a combined grade point average somewhere in the high decimals. But they had manners. They went out of their way for people. Either one of them would lift a car if you asked them to.
