[Quinn 01] - The Cleaner

'Believe me or not, Johnny. It's up to you. But you found out too much, too quickly. You were a problem that needed to go away. That's how it's done here.' Durrie paused. 'Remember that job interview in Houston? The one where they were going to fly you out?' .

Quinn nodded, brow furrowed.

'What if I told you there was no job?' Durrie said. 'What?' 'I'm just telling you, if I hadn't shown an interest

in you, you'd have been dead. Of course, if you hadn't been too smart for your own good, I wouldn't have cared about you one way or the other.'

Quinn remembered how Durrie's revelation had sobered him. It was at that point things started to become more real for him.

As for Orlando, she had been plucked from the ranks of a computer trade school in San Diego – a hacker who was constantly riding the probation list. She, like Quinn, had been curious about things most people left alone.

Because their mentors tended to work together a lot, and since they were both new to the business, it was natural that Quinn and Orlando would form a bond of friendship. What was more surprising was that Durrie and Orlando would form their own kind of bond. Years later, when Quinn was a successful solo operative, and Durrie's own career had taken a bit of a downturn, things for all three of them changed.

When Quinn was just an apprentice, Durrie was the most buttoned-up person in the business. But not later. At some point in the years after Quinn struck out on his own, Durrie lost focus. Quinn heard about all sorts of things: jobs Durrie worked on that didn't go as planned, assignments where things were missed, and more times than not the need for extra work to keep events suppressed.

It wasn't from Orlando that he heard these things. It was from Peter at the Office, who was forced more and more to hire Quinn instead of Durrie.

Orlando was quiet at first, telling Quinn nothing when he called. But eventually she told him about Durrie's growing anger and frustration. At first she thought it was just with work, his lost jobs, his lessthan-stellar performances. Not that he ever talked about how his work went; she just knew him too well not to be able to read between the lines. But as his slide continued, she realized it was more than work. It was as if he were mad at life itself. And when his anger turned to depression, it seemed almost a natural progression.

When Quinn called Orlando and told her he had a project he was thinking about offering Durrie a job on, she had told him she thought it was a great idea. She said she'd even encourage Durrie to go. And when Durrie said yes, Quinn assumed Orlando's influence had helped.

The job should have been a simple one. But somewhere along the way, it turned ugly. A gunman had been hidden in the warehouse they'd been sent to. Even then, they should have gotten away unhurt. Durrie, though, entered the building before they'd done a proper assessment. Quinn had tried to stop him, but his mentor just scoffed.

Thirty seconds later, gunfire broke out. Even as Quinn dove for cover, he could see Durrie jerk from the impact of several bullets.

Quinn knew it was too late even before he reached Durrie. Durrie's clothes were drenched in blood, and though Quinn searched frantically, he could find no pulse. Stunned, Quinn knelt next to Durrie's body. His mentor was dead. Orlando, he thought. How am I going to tell her? Guilt over what he could have done to save Durrie collided with the realization that it didn't matter. There was nothing he could.

Something hard hit him in the back of the head. His vision collapsed into a narrow tunnel. Then everything went black.

The job was a bust. When Quinn awoke, he was in the passenger seat of their van. Ortega, the man Quinn had hired to drive and act as backup, was behind the wheel. In back, Durrie's body lay on the floor. When they reached their medical contact's office, Ortega looked into the back of the van.

'What do you want me to do with him?' he asked Quinn. Quinn paused, then said, 'The usual. But bring me back the ashes.'

It was several hours before Ortega returned, finding Quinn in a small, makeshift hospital room in the back of the office. He set a cardboard box on the end table next to Quinn's bed and removed a brushed-metal urn from inside.

'It was all they had on short notice,' he said.

'It's fine,' Quinn told him.

This was the way it was in their business. Even when one of their own died, the cleanup had to continue.The only difference was instead of dumping the contents of the urn, Quinn had saved Durrie's ashes for Orlando.

But when he first went to Orlando's house, he couldn't find her. She had already heard the news and had disappeared. By the time he located her, ten months had passed and the son none of them knew she'd been pregnant with at the time had already been born. This had been in San Francisco, at her aunt's house. At first Orlando refused to see him. Even when she finally relented, she wouldn't let him in the door.