I crawled under the Mercedes one last time and bent the stiffening ribs to their original positions. Found a push broom, swept away metal dust and the crud that had fallen from the ribs. Put all the tools away, looked around. The place looked about the same as when I’d come in. Not one person in a hundred would notice I’d been here.
McCord would notice. But he wouldn’t be coming by. He quit. Had dropped by the hospital to tell me.
“Why are you leaving the staties?” I’d said. “No good deed goes unpunished?”
“Something like that.”
“What will you do?”
“Think I’ll head up to Alaska. Walk the coast.”
That was how he put it. Not hike, not backpack. He was going to walk the goddamn coast of Alaska.
“That’s a lot of coast, isn’t it?”
“That’s okay,” McCord said. “Got a good pair of boots.” His joke must have tickled him, because he smiled a full quarter inch.
I looked around the garage, found a canvas tool bag that swallowed the fourteen money bricks. I started to leave, thought things through, stopped. Grabbed an X-ACTO knife, sliced through one brick’s plastic, thumbed the brick. “Holy shit,” I said out loud.
Like the bills in the other stash, these were old and beat up—laundered. But there were no fives, tens, or twenties here. Strictly fifties and hundreds.
“Holy shit,” I said again.
Thinking about the Mexican outside, I pulled four grand and stuck it in my jeans pocket. Used red shop towels to cover the money, then grabbed a few decent power tools and filled the bag the rest of the way.
I smiled. To honest thieves, stolen tools are mother’s milk. They might as well be cash.
I waddled across the street toward the Mexican, my side stinging.
The Mexican peered in the bag, spotted an air gun, a torque wrench, a new set of metric sockets, a few other things I’d grabbed.
Slow smile as he looked up. “Candy from a fucking baby, uh?”
I took the four grand from my pocket, pressed it into his hand. “You and me,” I said. “Honest thieves.”
“Just another day on Mechanic Street,” he said, and waved a slow hand and walked through the door of his shop.
I never saw him again.
* * *
So I had a bag of money for Trey Phigg. That was something. Kieu had been a lot closer to death than I was. An eye socket that needed to be rebuilt nearly from scratch was the least of her injuries. Trey’s health-insurance status was beyond sketchy. Charlene had been footing the bills. She didn’t mind, but Trey did. Whatever was in the bag would make a dent.
That was about all the enthusiasm I could put together. I’d been driving around a lot, enough so Charlene worried. She wanted me to see a shrink. The closest I came was a visit to Vicky Lin, the doc at Cider Hill.
“This is more common than not,” she’d said in her office. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”
“He was sober when he showed up here,” I said. “That’s the part I can’t get around. Forty years shitfaced, then he sobered up like that for a couple of weeks. And now he’s worse than ever.”
She looked at her blotter and played with the indentation on her ring finger. When she caught me noticing, she stopped. “It seems Fred had a mission in mind when he got sober.”
“To fuck me over.”
“Revenge,” she said, nodding. “It’s powerful. Has Fred … approached you? Physically or by phone?”
“No. People see him around, they call me. Cops pick him up, but it’s always a different town, and they never ID him till it’s too late.”
We sat. I’d only been out of the hospital two days, so I was sort of twisted in my chair to ease my wound.
“You’ve been through quite a bit,” she finally said.
“Not as much as Fred.” I winced to my feet and left.
Before Vicky’s office door even closed, I wished I’d said more.
* * *
After that meet with Vicky, I’d driven out to Purgatory Chasm. It was where I wound up most days.
Every day, truth be told.
Today: not busy at all, dog-day heat keeping people away. One or two families out for a weekend activity, a few more serious hikers.
I tried to float, tried to let the bag of money cheer me up, tried not to think about Fred.
My cell rang. Charlene’s home number, probably Sophie calling. She was worried as hell about me.
I didn’t pick up.
I floated away. I dreamed of Minnesota. I never remember what happens in my dreams, but I do remember the overall vibe. If it’s a good vibe, it was a Minnesota dream.
My eyes blinked, then snapped wide.
Jesus Christ.
My father stood not thirty yards away, right at the head of the main trail. He’d spotted me and frozen.
We stared each other down.
He’d aged twenty years in three weeks. Sunken cheeks, gray skin, a bum’s no-color Windbreaker.
In his right hand he held a cardboard six-pack of Rolling Rock.
I knew it! my head screamed. I knew he’d come here!
I climbed from my truck like he was a deer I didn’t want to scare.
I said his name, stepped toward him.
“That’s close enough,” he said.
“Past is past, Fred. Want to come home? Want to come to Charlene’s?”
“That cocksucker Josh tricked me,” Fred said. “Said we’d squeeze some money out of you, that was all.”
“That’s all over, Fred. Josh is out of the picture.” I eased forward a few steps while I spoke. I was close enough to see Fred’s eyes flashing from sanity to somewhere else and back.
“I said that’s close enough!” He held up his six-pack to ward me off.
“You haven’t cracked that sixer yet, have you?” I said. “So you’re sober today. Why not keep it that way?”
My father’s eyes flashed sane/not sane, back and forth. He took my offer seriously. “I am sober, ain’t I?” he said. “Technically. Today.”
“Hell yes you are.”
“It’s a good day to be sober.”
“Hell yes it is,” I said, and relaxed just a little as he lowered the six-pack.
So I was caught flat-footed when he took off down Purgatory Chasm. He disappeared from my view. I sprinted to the head of the trail, my side stinging.
Dear God, he was beautiful, just as he’d been thirty years ago. In the time I’d taken to run twenty yards on flat ground, he had mountain-goated forty through boulders. I caught a flash of green: Fred had pulled one Rolling Rock from the carton and tossed it over his shoulder like a grenade. It exploded on a rock. A mother holding her son’s hand farther down the trail said, “Hey.”
I hesitated half a beat. Then I took off.
It came back instantly, completely. That fully alive feeling, making twenty decisions every second—and yet no decisions at all, just running the rocks, floating, gravity my ally.
Fred was flying. What he was doing would be hard for the best athlete in the world. It was impossible for a healthy man in his seventies. For a lifelong drunk who could barely climb a flight of stairs, it was unreal. It was destiny.
I was closing on him. Another beer grenade exploded twenty-five yards ahead. Then a third, twenty yards ahead. I felt a rip in my side, felt the warmth of blood, didn’t even consider slowing.
Fred tossed the rest of his six-pack in the air. While he put on his final burst of suicide speed, I had to duck flying beers. As I regained my balance and slowed, I saw new motion ahead and looked up.
Fred was flying, truly flying, ten yards ahead.
He’d lost his balance, pinwheeled along for a few strides, and taken one last leap. I saw him in full swan-dive position—back arched, arms out, wrists and fingers curled like an orchestra conductor’s.
Then he augured five yards straight down to a rock the size of a grand piano.
The sound when he hit was sharp and dull at
the same time, like helicopter rotors.
Somebody said, “Oh my God.”
Somebody else said, “Nine-one-one. Nine-one-one!”
I slowed, came to a clumsy, boot-slapping halt.
I made my way to Fred, holding my bloody side, sucking air.
He was absolutely still.
I rolled him over.
Blood burbled where his right eye had been. His nose was smashed. His forehead was concave.
He was awake. He was aware.
I got an arm around his neck. “It’s okay, Fred,” I said. “They’re calling nine-one-one.”
He tried to say something. A tooth blew from his mouth and hung by a flesh-thread.
“Don’t try to talk,” I said.
But he shook his head. Stubborn. “Payfoo,” he said.
Painful? “I bet it is.”
More head shaking. “Payfoo,” he said, and pantomimed writing something.
Then I understood.
I used my left hand to pull my wallet. Opened it, plucked the slip he’d given me at the intersection that day. The one that said IOU.
“Paid in full, Pop.” I let him see me crumple the paper and flip it over my shoulder.
My father smiled and closed his eyes and died.
I ignored the little knot of people who told me not to move him. I lifted Fast Freddy Sax, feeling my side rip wide open. Before I began the climb I took a breath, steadied myself. I had a long way to go. Couldn’t afford to slip.
I carried my father up the hill.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
PURGATORY CHASM. Copyright © 2011 by Steve Ulfelder. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ulfelder, Steve.
Purgatory chasm : a mystery / Steve Ulfelder.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Thomas Dunne book.”
ISBN 978-0-312-67292-8
1. Automobile mechanics—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Alcoholics—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3621.L435P87 2011
813'.6—dc22
2011001265
First Edition: May 2011
eISBN 978-1-4299-2426-9
First Minotaur Books eBook Edition: May 2011
Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Page 27