[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner

She peeked around the edge of the folder. 'That's him.' 'Can I also get a copy of this?' he asked. 'Don't you have a picture of him?' Quinn shook his head. 'Nobody thought to give

me one,' he said truthfully. Ann shrugged. 'Just take that one. If I make a copy the picture will only be a black smudge.'

'Thanks,' he said. He folded the paper, careful not to crease the photo, and slipped it into his pocket.

Quinn and Nate were able to make it to Denver just in time to catch a 7:00 p.m. flight home to Los Angeles. While Nate was shoehorned into the cattle section in back, Quinn relaxed with a glass of Chablis in the comfort of his first-class seat. After they'd been in the air for an hour, Quinn pulled out his computer and wrote his report.

By the time he finished, it was only a page long. He liked to keep things brief. 'Overload with facts,' Durrie, his mentor, had once told him. 'They can never fault you for that. Leave out all the cream puff stuff and opinions. Nobody wants that shit. And if you find somebody that does, they're not worth working for.'

Good advice, but it had taken a while for it to sink in with Quinn. When he'd first started working clean-and-gathers, he knew his task was to just hand over whatever he found out and move on. Curiosity was discouraged. But it had been frustrating. There were always so many unanswered questions.

'What the fuck do you want to know more for?' Durrie had asked him one time when Quinn wanted to keep probing after a particular assignment was nearly completed.

'It just seems so unfinished,' Quinn said. 'Just once, I'd like to know what it's all about.'

'What it's all about?' Durrie asked. 'Fine. That I can answer. You see this guy here?'

They were in an unpaved alleyway on the south side of Tijuana, Mexico. It was well after midnight. On the ground only a couple feet in front of them was the body of a man in his late twenties. 'I see him,' Quinn said.

'This guy's a runner. You know, a messenger boy? But he could've just as easily been a cleaner.'

'Like us, you mean?'

'Like me. You're just an apprentice. You'll be lucky to live through this year the way you're going.' 'I'm careful,' Quinn said defensively. 'You're not. Worse, you don't even realize it.' Quinn's face hardened, but he said nothing. 'You want to know what it's all about, Johnny

boy?' Durrie continued. He pointed at the corpse on the ground. 'That's what it's all about. The more you know, the more likely you'll end up like him. We come in, gather whatever information's been requested. Maybe do a little cleanup if necessary. Then get out. That's the job.' Durrie's eyes locked with Quinn's. 'Kill your curiosity, kid. For your own sake. Hell, for mine, too. Because until you're working on your own, I'll be responsible for your fuckups.'

It took nearly getting shot six months later before the lesson sank in. Still, Quinn was never able to completely dampen his thirst to know more. He later realized that despite what Durrie said, curiosity was an important part of the job. He just had to learn how to control it. As he reread his report about Taggert, he knew there was a lot that remained unanswered. Who had started the fire? Why had Jills been there? And who the hell was Taggert anyway? Questions that nagged at him, but ones he probably would never know the answers to.

Otherwise, the information Quinn had been able to gather wasn't much more than what he'd already told Peter over the phone. The only omissions were his stops at the coroner's office and Goose Valley Vacation Rentals. And the most those stops had done was to confirm what little Quinn already knew. The exception being the lung tissue sample, which Quinn had added into his report as something Chief Johnson had mentioned.

It wasn't until he'd put away his computer that he remembered there was one other thing he had neglected to include in the report, the silver-colored bracelet Nate had found at the house. At first Quinn thought it had meant nothing, but in light of finding Jills, maybe he'd been wrong.

Chapter 6

Quinn and Nate separated at LAX, Quinn telling his apprentice to meet him at his house in a couple hours to go over everything. Before that, Quinn wanted to have a nice quiet dinner alone.

He picked up his car, a black BMW M3 convertible, from the VIP lot he had parked it in before he'd left on his vacation. The drive across town took a little longer than he'd planned, but soon enough he arrived at the Taste of Siam restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. It wasn't the most popular Thai restaurant in L.A., nor the biggest, but it was Quinn's favorite. His usual table was open when he arrived, so he took a seat and ordered pad kee mao with chicken, choosing as always to wash it down with a Singha beer.