The CleanSweep Conspiracy

by Chuck Waldron

  They walked into the room and past ruined displays, most now reduced to the remains of potting soil, broken pots, and boards torn from the shelving. Mattie was in a hurry and led the way directly to another door. It squealed in protest as she pulled it open.

  “We’re safe in here. Nobody comes into the ruins this far, usually. Except for the teams on foot, those vans just spend their time driving around the streets looking for people like me.”

  “And me,” a man’s voice boomed from the shadows.

  “Damn, I almost pissed myself,” Matt said. “How about some warning? I’m sure my heart skipped a beat—or three.”

  “Clifford,” a muscular man said as he stepped out of the shadows. “If you need to write it in one of your notebooks, for your record, I’m Clifford Horne, with an e.” He looked at Matt with a steady gaze as he walked over and draped a protective arm around Mattie’s shoulders.

  She didn’t pull back and shout at him as she had at Matt, and he felt irrationally annoyed at that.

  “You two know each other, then?” He looked at this latest character in the nightmare that would have made Alice feel at home.

  “We didn’t. Not until this business with CleanSweep brought us together.” Clifford brushed some glass from the top of a box and looked as if he was going to sit.

  “We friends now.” Mattie looked at Clifford, and her voice had a softness that surprised Matt.

  Instead of sitting, Clifford motioned them to a far corner. The threesome walked there and squatted, leaning back against the walls. It was the first time in hours Matt could have relaxed, but he soon began to feel cramping in his right leg. An involuntary pang shot a bolt of pain up the muscles in his leg, and he yelped, jumping up to shake out the cramp. When the pain eased, he sat down again.

  Nobody talked for what seemed like minutes, but it was a comfortable silence. Matt wondered if this was the time to bank his emotional strength for the conversations he knew were coming.

  Both Mattie and Carl seemed to be hyperalert to sounds. She swiveled her head from side to side, reminding Matt of a radar dish on the mast of a ship, spinning around and scanning as if peering into the distance for hazards.

  “We listen for those van sirens,” Mattie said. “We listen for car doors slamming. But we don’t really worry until we hears footsteps.” She didn’t finish—and didn’t need to.

  “We hide in different hiding places every night of the week,” Clifford added. “So far, we’ve stayed safe.” His voice lacked conviction about the “safe” part.

  “May I call you Cliff?” Matt wanted to know.

  “Clifford will be just fine, thank you.”

  Matt looked at the two of them. Is it turning to daylight already? He realized he had no idea what time it was; the ambient light was likely just coming from the unspoiled part of the city.

  Their collective gloomy moods suddenly filled the Cactus House room.

  “What can you tell me?” Matt finally asked. “Carling—Detective Carling—said you two escaped from CleanSweep. How is that possible?”

  Neither answered immediately, and Matt started to worry that this was all going to be a zilch, a waste of time, an excursion through hell for nothing.

  “We each done it different,” Mattie said finally. “You know, escaped. It was different for each of us.”

  “Like she said, we each escaped their clutches in different ways,” Clifford added.

  Matt, getting used to Mattie’s speech pattern, waved off Clifford’s need to explain. She had an odd way of speaking, but her meaning was quite clear.

  “What happened to you? How did you get out, Mattie?” Matt asked.

  She grimaced and sniffed, as if detecting a foul odor. “I was sleeping in a doorway near my regular corner, cold, needed more blankets. I heard the tires screech. Their van stopped, and three mens jumped out.” She paused, wrapping her arms around herself. “I grabbed onta my bag and held it tight. I knowed they wasn’t up to no good. One of the mens grabbed me by my arms, one held my feet together. They throwed me into the van like a sack of potatoes. One of them threw ’way my bag.” The sadness of its loss was etched on her face.

  She was quiet for a long time then, and Matt wondered if she was going to continue. Pain was fixed on her face. He knew enough to wait.

  “They had another man already in there. He was tied to the wall with bracelets.”

  “Handcuffs,” Clifford said, “locked to U-bolts welded onto the wall.”

  Matt gave him a withering look for the needless explanation, but Mattie kept talking.

  “This guy and me was locked in the back of the van together. He kept yelling as we slid around corners, but I kept quiet. Then they locked in another man and drove us around some more. We ended up at some building. I couldn’t see much, but I think we were still on the east side.”

  Matt was scribbling her story in his notebook as fast as he could write, using his own cryptic version of shorthand.

  “They dragged us out of the van, and then we was all inside a building, in a big room. The lights hurted my eyes. They marched us in a line.”

  Her pain at telling this was evident.

  “You know how it was, don’t you, Clifford?” she asked.

  “Yep, they took me to the same building. I wasn’t sure where it was, but I guessed we were east of Parliament Street. I will never forget the smell. You know how it is when people are nervous. They have a nervous smell. Some of the people reeked because they hadn’t bathed in days. Add an overlay of an aroma I called ‘eau de cleaning solvent.’ Phew! And the stink from all the smoke in the air…”

  Mattie picked up her story again. “There musta been ten or more of us in a line. As we got to a counter, they had us take all our clothes off. It was embarrassing—mens and womens all naked like that together. It wasn’t sexy or anything like that, just embarrassing.

  “They took everything I had in my pockets and throwed it in a bin. I never saw any of it again. I lost the only picture I ever had of my two kids.” She started a low, mournful keening at the memory. She wrapped her arms around herself again and began to rock forward and back.

  “You have children?” Matt asked with his pen poised.

  “They live with their father, back east. Last time I seen them, they was with their nana. Nobody wanted me to see them.”

  Matt was intrigued by this new glimpse of Mattie’s life, but he knew he had to stay focused on CleanSweep. Her full background story would have to wait for another time—if ever.

  He noticed her wardrobe was certainly a unique assortment, but that she kept things clean. He wanted to ask her about her ballet, the dancing he used to see from the streetcar, but he didn’t want to distract her. It’s a question for another time, he thought again.

  Mattie was in constant motion as she talked, her head jerking to one side and back to the front, like she was turning to listen to something neither Clifford nor Matt could hear. She kept biting her fingernails. Matt looked carefully at her hands, saw that the nails were bleeding and raw. He knew it was painful for her, just like her life.

  Clifford sat at her side, placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  “How did you escape? What happened?” Matt prodded again.

  “They put us in those orange suits. You remember, Cliff?”

  He nodded.

  I have to remember to call him Clifford, Matt thought, letting his annoyance drift away like a balloon. I was just trying to be friendly.

  She went on. “When they moved us to the other place, there were four of us womens chained together in a van when we started out. They told us we were going to the Spadina place. They didn’t use no bracelets, though—just locked us inside. One woman was crying, and another told her to shut up. One pounded on the door, but it didn’t do any good. I learned a long time ago that quiet was best. I kept my mouth shut.”


  She screwed up her face in thought. “Partway there, we gots hit from the side. The dumb driver wasn’t looking when we was crossing a road, and a streetcar hit us. We were throwed all over. The van was pushed almost a block, and we ended up on the side. The back door flew open. I took one look at the driver and guard and knowed they was both hurt bad.

  “I crawled to an alley. It was dark there, and I curled up like I was a baby. I just laid down real still and acted dead.”

  “Go ahead, Mattie,” Clifford said. “Tell him the rest.”

  “The other women tried to run, but a patrol van was following us and saw the accident and stopped. Men jumped out of the van and started shooting. They killed them other womens. I saw it. One man talked on his radio, and soon another truck pulled up. The bodies were tossed in the back of that truck, and they all left. Nobody paid any attention to me in the dark. Wouldn’t you ’a figured they kept some kind of count?

  “After a long time in the dark, I heard voices. I heard three other different men’s voices and knew they was talking about me. I squeezed my eyes tight. I felt them pick me up, and I musta passed out. The next thing I was in a garage, behind a burned-out house. The one that picked me up was a giant, but he was so gentle. Then I passed out again.

  “I’d been blessed. When I woke up, a skinny guy was sitting next to me. Lord, how that guy stank.”

  Matt had a good idea who that giant might’ve been, and she had certainly described Stinky perfectly.

  CHAPTER 29

  Clifford and Mattie

  Matt tried to rub energy into his tired writing arm when Mattie stopped talking and leaned back against the wall. He watched her draw her knees up to her chest, her eyes staring over his shoulder at some secret place only she knew about. He rested his notebook on the ground and set his pen on it.

  He wondered, Is it sadness I see? No, far more than sadness. I see melancholy so deep it can’t be measured. Is she thinking about seeing the women murdered, shot down while trying to escape? Did she think about her children, long ago lost to her? Perhaps she’s thinking about the days she danced her ballet at the park.

  Clifford patted her arm, reassuring her once more. It was a simple gesture, but it seemed to carry a lot of significance. Mattie closed her eyes and absorbed Clifford’s contact. Matt remembered again her reaction to his touch when he met her.

  Silence tried to reclaim the room, but distant traffic sounds and other city noises pierced the stillness. Matt could hear, off and on, the distinctive sound of sirens rising and falling, singing a frightful musical scale.

  “That’s an ambulance,” Clifford told Matt, describing one siren wail. “We’ve learned to recognize the sounds of different sirens.” His voice seemed louder than necessary in the quiet darkness. “The police use a warbling siren. It makes a noise like they’re always in a hurry.

  “CleanSweep vans are the ones to be afraid of. They use a siren that sounds like the honking of a giant goose. At least that’s what it sounds like to me.” Clifford shivered and crossed his arms to grasp his own shoulders. “It will be full light soon. What do you think, Mattie? Is it time to hunker down?”

  She nodded her agreement but didn’t say anything. Matt saw her stand and pick up the belongings she carried in a tattered pillowcase. She reached down inside and pulled out a plastic food container. In the growing light, Matt could see the box held an assortment of carrots and other vegetables. She turned without speaking and rushed to the doorway of another room. She pulled back a sheet of plywood that served as a door, stepped into the room, and lugged the wood into place behind her.

  “We need to get you settled,” Clifford said. He watched her leave and then turned to Matt. When he saw Matt’s questioning look, he added, “It’s not good to be out and about during the light of day. We will hide here. We’ve used it before. I guess it’s as safe a place as anywhere.”

  Matt didn’t feel reassured. “I didn’t realize—”

  Clifford stopped him by pointing to another part of the conservatory. Matt gathered up his notebook, hurried to put it in his backpack, and followed.

  “It took you too much time to get here. That’s not good. We have to hide today, and you can finish your interview tonight, unless…”

  He didn’t need to finish, letting the words trail off as he led Matt past the detritus of plants. Most were dead or dying, but some were trying to recover on their own. Matt was surprised that they could thrive even without a gardener’s touch.

  Matt followed as they turned right, left, and left again. They came to a hallway. Clifford pushed open a metal door, and they winced at the scraping noise. Looking around, he appeared satisfied.

  “Crawl under that table,” he said, pointing. “Stay there, and do your best not to move. If any auditors nose around, they use heat-and-motion detectors.”

  “Auditors?”

  Clifford laughed. “It’s someone’s idea of a cosmic joke. They call them auditors, but they’re just teams of CleanSweep agents, scouring the city now, on the lookout for people like Mattie and me—anyone considered redundant. Redundant, how’s that for a word to describe people like Mattie—people like me? They look for people who upset Claussen’s ideal of perfection, try to remove us from sight. Claussen and men like him”—he spat out the words—“hide their evil behind a lot of innocent-sounding terms like that. If you ever feared being audited by the tax man, know that’s nothing compared to being audited by the CleanSweep agency.”

  Clifford reached into his shoulder case and handed over a brown paper bag. “Here’s some food. It’s not much, but it will have to do. If you have to pee or anything, well, just be quiet about it.” He pointed to a corner. “That’s your fancy pissoir,” he said with a laugh. Then his face turned serious again. “Don’t answer to anyone. Make sure you only reveal yourself to me or Mattie—no one else!”

  Matt got down on his knees and crawled under the table. He clutched the brown bag, suddenly famished. After he had adjusted his position, he looked back to say something, but Clifford was gone. It’s time to settle in for a long wait, Matt thought, hoping he wouldn’t end up on the list of people being audited.

  A siren pierced the quiet, and Matt was racked with fear, trying to remember what Clifford had told him about identifying sirens.

  The thought of attempting to remain still and comfortable while lying on a dank concrete floor was discouraging. His hips and elbows soon became pressure points and reminded him that flesh and concrete don’t make good partners. Feeling tired, he drifted off to sleep, as incredible as that seemed to him later. It was easier to succumb to sleep, he found, than to face the reality of his circumstances.

  What am I doing here? The question was like a tape playing on an endless loop as he drifted to sleep.

  “Whaaat?” Matt almost shouted. The crash of breaking glass brought him to full alertness in an instant. He thought he heard muffled voices, and the sound of wrenching metal caused him to rise up so quickly he hit his head on the underside of the table.

  “Damn, that hurts,” he said—and then realized he had said it aloud.

  His waking-up fog passed quickly. Is it night or day now? he wondered.

  In the darkness, every nerve ending was on high alert. He listened. He was trying to brace himself—but for what? He sought to remember where he was and what was making the noise. Voices and the sound of twisting metal receded. Quiet returned, and city sounds and bird chirps were the only noises he heard. He tried to peer through an opening in the roof and judge the time.

  A sharp hunger pang reminded him of the brown paper bag. Let’s see what’s on the menu, he thought. He didn’t expect it to be so good. Expecting something unidentifiable between slices of moldy bread, instead he found a nice corned beef sandwich, a small package of chips, and the requisite dill pickle in a plastic pouch. The wrapping was from a deli Matt knew and liked, and he wondered how Cli
fford had arranged that.

  When it happened, it came uninvited.

  Matt began to cry.

  It wasn’t some faint cry. It came from deep inside. He realized how deeply he was in over his head. With no concept of time, Matt became aware of a new sound: a rattle of scraping footsteps. He counted the steps. One, two, three…stop. One, two, three…stop. His stomach contracted at the sounds of wood paneling being ripped away from the nails. Then he heard excited talking, but he couldn’t make out any words. He was relieved to be looking at Mattie and Clifford. His relief soon turned to something else, though, when he heard the fear in their voices—exposed, naked fear.

  “Hurry—this way—follow us!” The urgency of Clifford’s command was all Matt needed to hear.

  “Them’s be CleanSweep sirens!” Mattie yelled as the sound of a siren grew in intensity. “We heard them earlier, the auditors, walking all around here,” she said, waving her arms. Matt saw her face drawn tight and pale. Her eyes flitted in all directions. She hopped from one foot to the other as if she had to pee.

  “We don’t have any time,” Clifford said. “They’re close. Damn, I don’t know why I went to sleep. Still, there’s no time to think about that now. Keep up with us,” he said to Matt, breathing hard. “We have to run. It’s getting dark, but it’s not dark enough yet. Damn.”

  They raced through the conservatory, and Clifford stopped at the south entrance. Matt looked over his shoulder and saw bright beams of powerful flashlights sweeping through the dusk at the far end of the building, up and down, right and left.

  “Don’t let them get you in the light!” Clifford called out. They all knew it for the needless warning it was.

  They paused at the south entrance, the door leading across the grass to Gerrard Street.

  “They not on this side of the building yet!” Mattie yelled. “Hurry! Run!” She didn’t wait for a response and moved with surprising speed, heading toward the street. Matt could see that if she made it across the road in the shadows of George Street, she would reach cover and safety.