Spencerville

except that he left for college with Annie Prentis, and from what Cliff heard, they fucked up a storm at Bowling Green for four years before she dumped him.
    Cliff suddenly slapped the dashboard hard. “Asshole!”
    The thought of this prick who’d once fucked his wife being back in town was more than he could handle. “Cocksucker!”
    Cliff drove aimlessly for a while, trying to figure out his next move. For sure, he thought, this guy had to go—one way or the other. This was Cliff Baxter’s town, and nobody, but nobody, in it gave him any shit—especially a guy who fucked his wife. “You’re history, mister.”
    Even if Landry kept to himself, Cliff was enraged at the mere thought of him being so close to his wife, close enough so that they could run into each other in town or at some social thing. “How about
that?
How about being at some wedding or something, and in walks this asshole who fucked my wife, and he comes over to say hello to her with a smile on his fucking face?” Cliff shook his head as if to get the image out of his mind. “No way. No fucking way.”
    He took a deep breath. “Goddamnit, he fucked my wife for four years, maybe five or six years, and the son-of-a-bitch shows up just like that, without a goddamn wife, sittin’ on his fuckin’ porch, not doin’ shit—” He slammed the dashboard again. “Damn it!”
    Cliff felt his heart beating rapidly, and his mouth was sticky. He took a deep breath and opened the Orange Crush, took a swig, and felt the acid rise in his stomach. He flung the can out the window. “Goddamnit! God damned—”
    The radio crackled, and Sergeant Blake came over the speaker. “Chief, about that license plate info—”
    “You want the whole fuckin’ county to hear? Call on the damned phone.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The phone rang, and Cliff said, “Shoot.”
    Sergeant Blake reported, “I faxed the Bureau of Motor Vehicles with the name Keith Landry, car make and model, and they got back to us with a negative.”
    “What the hell do you mean?”
    “Well, they said no such person.”
    “Damn it, Blake, get the license plate number off the fuckin’ car and get back to them with that.”
    “Where’s the car?”
    “Old Landry farm, County Road 28. I want all the shit on his driver’s license, too, then I want you to call the local banks and see if he’s opened an account, and get his Social Security number and credit crap, then go from there—Army records, arrest records, the whole fuckin’ nine yards.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Cliff hung up. After nearly thirty years of police work, he’d learned how to build a file from the ground up. The two detectives on his force kept the criminal files, which did not interest Cliff much. Cliff had his own files on nearly everyone in Spencer County who was important, or who interested him in some way.
    Cliff was vaguely aware that keeping secret files on private citizens was somehow illegal, but he was from the old school, and what he learned in that school was that promotions and job security were best accomplished through intimidation and blackmail.
    Actually, he’d learned that long before he joined the force; his father and his father’s family were all successful bullies. And, to be truthful, the system hadn’t corrupted him; he had almost single-handedly corrupted the system. But he couldn’t have done it without the help of men who conveniently screwed up their personal and business lives—married men who had affairs, fathers whose sons got into trouble with the law, businessmen who needed a zoning variance or a tax abatement, politicians who needed to know something about their opponents, and so on. Cliff was always right there, sensing the signs of moral weakness, the little character flaws, the signals of financial and legal distress. Cliff was always there to help.
    What the system lacked when he entered it was a broker, a central clearinghouse where a citizen could come to offer a favor for a favor, where a man could come to sell his soul.
    From these humble beginnings, Cliff Baxter started keeping notes, which became files, which became gold.
    Lately, however, a lot of people he didn’t like were getting too involved in the system. Schoolteachers, preachers, housewives, even farmers. Already there was one woman on the city council, Gail Porter, a retired college professor, a nosy bitch, and an ex-commie. She got elected by a fluke, the guy running against her, Bobby Cole, getting himself caught