The rain in Los Angeles does not wash things clean. It just makes the dirt slicker. I was standing in a phone booth on Sunset Boulevard at three in the morning, watching the neon from the all-night diner bleed into the puddles on the sidewalk, when I called the number.

I did not know why I called it. I knew I would regret it in the morning. But the whiskey had worn off and the memory had not, and I needed to hear a voice on the other end that was not my own.

The phone rang once. Then a voice: I have found something in the cold storage that should not be there.

I said nothing. The rain drummed on the glass around me.

It is a body, the voice said. Left arm has a tattoo—a ship. Chest has a bullet wound, entry from the right side, exit left. Brown leather shoes, size ten, scuffed at the toe.

I looked down at my shoes. Scuffed at the toe. Size ten. I had bought them at a thrift store on Venice Boulevard three months ago. I had worn them every day since.

Who is this? I asked.

You know who I am, the voice said. But you do not want to know.

I wanted to hang up. I wanted to step out of the phone booth, walk back to my apartment above the pool hall, and drink until the memory went away. But I could not move. The voice was right. I did know who it was.

Tell me what you know, I said.

I know that you are a private investigator who lost his license because an innocent man died. I know that you have been drinking for two years to forget it. I know that you took a job last month to clean up a mess for a man who pays in cash and never shows his face.

My hands were shaking. I gripped the receiver until my knuckles went white.

Who are you? I said again.

I am the part of you that remembers, the voice said. You forget. I do not. You drink. I stay sober. You take the job and tell yourself it is just a job. I know what it is.

What is it?

You are not the investigator, Jack. You are the cleaner. You killed Francis Delaney. You put him in the cold storage. And then you forgot because you could not live with yourself if you remembered.

The rain kept falling. The neon kept bleeding. The voice kept talking, calm and cold and merciless.

I know how you did it. One shot to the chest. You used a .38 with the serial number filed off. You drove the body to the cold storage on Alameda Street yourself. You locked the door from the outside. You walked away into the rain.

Just like tonight.

I dropped the receiver. It swung on its cord, clicking against the plastic housing. I stepped out of the phone booth and into the rain and let it run down my face, mixing with something that might have been tears if I had allowed myself to cry.

I got into my car and sat in the dark and listened to the rain hit the roof. Tomorrow morning, I would get a call from the man who paid me in cash. He would tell me to go to the cold storage on Alameda Street and clean up the body. And I would go. Because that is what I do. I clean up messes. I am very good at it.

I did not know that I was the mess.

I started the car. The engine coughed and caught. I drove into the rain, toward the cold storage, toward the body, toward the part of myself that had been waiting for me all along.