Free Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel by Alex Hughes

how do you know so much about the Frankies?”I asked him after he was done. “You see them kill those people?”
    Joey shut down like I’d flipped a switch. “Didn’t see anything,” he said. Huh. First time he’d shut down. Could mean nothing but…
    “Your boss dealing with the Frankies directly, Joey, cutting you out of the deal? Must be worth a lot of money, a bit of body disposal like that.”
    He set his jaw and thought nasty thoughts about me in specific, creatively nasty thoughts. “Didn’t see anything.”
    “How do you know so much about the Frankies, then, Joey, if you didn’t see anything?”
    He paused, looked at me suspiciously. “I hear plenty. Just about the time they tell you not to ask no more questions, people start asking ’em. I keep my ears open. Keep my eye on the business, you know? A lot of attention on the neighborhood for no reason. I don’t like the Frankies, nobody here does.”
    For the record, I said, “Because they killed a bunch of people and dumped them in your neighborhood after you made a deal to dump them somewhere else.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “It’s insulting, you know? And even if I was inclined to look the other way, too much of that, it’s bad for business. Too much attention. And they’re cutting us out of the game. Bad for business. Somebody should cut them out of the game, you know, all the way out.”
    I ignored the veiled death threat. I needed more details, some actual hard facts I could use. I started tapping the table. “What kind of game we talking, Joey?”
    “The Frankie game,” Joey said with a bit of an attitude. “All the Dead, Dead, and the money.”
    “Where’s the money, Joey? What money?”
    He looked at me for a long moment. Apparently he was willing to help me only so far. He looked down at the table, at my tapping hand. I stopped as I felt him recognize the gesture and try to place it.
    Quickly. “The bodies found in your neighborhood, the ones killed without a mark?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You’re saying the Frankies killed those seven people?”
    “You said there were six. Paper said six too.”
    Bellury gestured significantly. We weren’t disclosing the last body. Crap. At least it would give me an excuse to distract Joey.
    I backpedaled like a marathon biker. “Six, then. Sorry. I have trouble with numbers sometimes.”
    “Dyslexia?”
    “Yes,” I gritted out.
    “You should go to some of them classes. Really helped a buddy of mine.”
    “I’ll look into it,” I lied. This was good, probably. He’d never believe the guy he’d known then would struggle with the words. Even high as a kite, I’d done crosswords. Well, when I’d been in touch with reality.
    Joey shifted in his chair. I think somewhere in his subconscious he did remember me, and that was probably the only reason he was being even this friendly. I hated it. I hated him and the whole former life of mine he stood for, but I couldn’t exactly stop him talking to prove it.
    Joey sat back in his chair. “You’re not really a telepath. You’re bluffing with me.”
    “That so? Well, I know that regardless of what’s on the file, you’ve stolen at least three cars personally.Before you started muscling for Marge. The first was a”—of course, now he was thinking about it—“bright yellow classic Camaro. Black stripe. Second was a Mercedes A-34400.”
    He looked very disconcerted. “There’s no way you could know that.”
    “Want me to tell you how you did it?” I asked. Parlor trick, but it would do the job.
    “What do you want?” he asked me in a dangerous tone.
    “I need to know how all of this relates. Something I can use.”
    “What can you use?”
    My eyes narrowed. “Dead bodies. Frankies. Your neighborhood. Why?”
    “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”
    I held his eyes with a small smile. I faced scarier things than him every day in the mirror.
    “The boss man doesn’t like the Frankies,” he said flat out. “He don’t care who