I have scrubbed the blood of three mayors, two judges, and a guy who owned a professional football team. I am the person people call when they do something very bad and want to pretend it never happened. My name is Frankie, and I am the best janitor for the worst people.
My hands always smell like bleach. No matter how many times I wash them, the scent of chemicals stays in my skin. It reminds me of why I can’t hug my son, Jax, without him wrinkling his nose. I’m doing this so Jax can go to a private school and never have to see the things I see. I want him to be a person who doesn’t know what a brain looks like when it hits a marble floor. That is my secret fear: that the smell of death will eventually soak into his clothes just because he lives with me.
Last Tuesday, my team and I got a call for a “special project.” It was Senator Miller’s home office. When we walked in, the room looked like a red paint can had exploded.
My partner, Ike, whistled low. Ike is a big man who looks like he should be breaking legs, but he’s actually very gentle with a mop. Piper was with us too. She’s small, fast, and can find a single hair on a white rug in under five minutes. We spent six hours making that room look like a church. We used lasers to find spray. We used special foam to eat the DNA. When we were done, the office was so clean you could eat lunch off the floor.
Then my phone buzzed. It was a photo of me and Jax at the park. Below the photo was a text: “Don’t go home. The clean-up was a trap. You’re the only evidence left.”
The text was from a burner phone, but I knew the sender. It was Commissioner Ray. He was the one who hired us. He didn’t just want the Senator gone. He wanted the cleaners gone too. If the Senator’s body was found in a clean room, the police would know it was a professional job. They would hunt us down and find the people we work for. Or worse, Ray would just kill us and tell the world we were the murderers.
“We have to go back,” I told Ike and Piper. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by a cold hand. I could feel the sweat itching under my heavy rubber suit.
“Back where?” Piper asked. Her eyes were wide. She was shaking. “The cops are going to be there any minute.”
“We cleaned it too well,” I said. “If that room is empty of clues, we are dead. We have to un-clean it. We have to put the crime back, but this time, we make sure it points to Ray.”
We drove the van back to the Senator’s mansion. My hands were shaking on the steering wheel. This was the opposite of everything I had done for ten years. Usually, I am a ghost. Now, I had to be a storyteller.
We broke back in through the side door. The air in the house was still and heavy. It felt like the house was holding its breath. We had the “waste bags” in the back of the van: the stuff we had sucked up with the vacuums and wiped away with the rags.
“Piper, get the hair,” I whispered. My voice broke. I felt a stinging in my eyes that wasn’t from the bleach. “Ike, start with the spray.”
We had a little plastic baggie. It didn’t look like much. It was just a few gray hairs and a gold cufflink. Piper had found them under the Senator’s desk earlier. They belonged to Commissioner Ray. We had planned to burn them. Now, they were our only way to stay alive.
I took a bottle of the Senator’s blood we had sucked out of the carpet. It was cold and thick in the container. I had to pour it back. It felt like I was committing the murder myself. I poured it onto the floor in the exact spot where the Senator had fallen. I used a spray bottle to make it look like it had splashed.
“I hear sirens,” Ike said. He was standing by the window. His face was pale.
“Not yet,” I said. “We need the cufflink.”
I placed Ray’s gold cufflink deep in the crack of the floorboards. I made sure it looked like it had been kicked there during a fight. Then, I took a glass from the bar. I wiped it clean of our prints and pressed Ray’s old cigar butt against the rim. We had taken that cigar from his ashtray at the precinct a week ago for insurance. I never thought I’d actually use it.
The sirens were louder now. They were coming up the long, gravel driveway. The blue and red lights started to dance on the walls of the office.
“Frankie, we have to move!” Piper grabbed my arm. Her fingernails dug into my skin.
We scrambled out the back window just as the front door crashed open. We hid in the thick bushes of the garden. I pressed my face into the dirt. It smelled like rain and worms. It was a beautiful smell compared to the bleach.
We watched through the glass. The officers walked into the room with their guns out. They looked confused. They expected a clean room, a mystery. Instead, they found a mess. They found the blood. They found the cigar.
And then I saw him. Commissioner Ray walked in. He looked confident. He was smiling a little bit. He expected to see a room that looked like nobody had ever been there. He expected to find us dead on the floor or gone forever.
But then his eyes hit the floor. He saw the blood. He saw his own cufflink shining under the police flashlights. His face turned a strange shade of gray. He looked like he was about to throw up. He reached for his wrist, feeling the empty spot where his gold link should be.
One of the detectives, a guy named Miller who didn’t take bribes, walked over to the cufflink. He didn’t pick it up. He just pointed at it with his pen. He looked at Ray. Then he looked at the cigar on the table.
Ray started talking fast. He was waving his hands around. He looked like a panicked pufferfish. But the other cops were backing away from him. They weren’t looking at him like their boss anymore. They were looking at him like a killer.
We crawled through the mud, staying low until we hit the woods behind the property. We ran until my lungs felt like they were full of hot coals. We didn’t stop until we reached the old warehouse where we kept the van.
I sat on the floor and put my head in my hands. I was covered in mud and grease. I smelled like the earth.
“Is it over?” Piper asked. She was sitting on a crate, hugging her knees.
“For Ray, it is,” I said. “The news will have his face on it by morning. He can’t kill us now. If we die, everyone will know it was him.”
I reached into my boot and pulled out the crumpled photo of Jax. He was smiling, holding a red balloon. I looked at my hands. There was dirt under my fingernails. For the first time in a decade, I couldn’t smell the bleach.
I don’t know if I can ever be a “good” man. I have spent too much time hiding the truth for bad people. But as I sat there in the dark, watching the sun start to peek over the city buildings, I knew one thing.
I’m done cleaning up other people’s messes. I have my own life to scrub clean now. And for the first time, I think I might actually be able to do it.
I walked to the sink and turned on the water. I didn’t reach for the chemicals. I just used plain soap. It didn’t smell like a crime scene. It just smelled like lemons. I washed my hands until they were red, and then I went home to see my son.