The Whole Lie

by Steve Ulfelder

  “Blackmail.”

  “Not your blackmail? Other blackmail?”

  “You bet. Weird, isn’t it?”

  What was weird, I thought, was the pencil-necked kid staring at us from the Shell. He stood by a red Lumina. He was looking death rays at me. Trying to puff out his chest, but he didn’t have much of one.

  I wouldn’t have noticed him, but the Lumina had North Carolina plates.

  Huh.

  I filed the car away and took Savvy’s elbows. “We had a thing a long time ago. You were a Barnburner. You asked for help, I helped. But you were supposed to vamoose and stay vamoosed.” She tried to interrupt, but I shook my head and something in my eyes told her to keep quiet. “You made your deal, and you’d best stick to it. Here’s your smart move: call a cab, go to Logan, and grab the next flight south.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ll do,” Savvy said.

  I said nothing, knew there was more coming.

  “All I ask,” she said, “is that before I go, you come see Bert in action. He wants to meet you. Just watch him, shake his hand, hear him out. Then give a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. You won’t hear a peep out of me.”

  I checked my watch, looked at the shop. Between a newspaper feature and some e-coupons, we’d gotten off to a good start. We were hip-deep in boring Japanese cars that needed boring service.

  “When?” I finally said.

  “Right now! Bert’s doing a rally downtown.”

  I sighed and led her to my truck.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Now some people,” Bert Saginaw said, leaning toward the microphone like he was having a neighborly talk with a pal, “some people, even some people whose names are on ballots this year…” He waited for hoots and applause that didn’t come. “Some people would defund the programs I’m talking about, programs that are helping Framingham bootstrap its way back, programs that help good people find good jobs at good wages…” He thumped the podium on each “good,” working himself into the Martin Luther King–wannabe rhythm that politicians love.

  I stopped listening to the words. People who listen to the words of a man running for office deserve what they get. I looked around instead, knew I’d learn more that way.

  Saginaw stood at the top of the steps to the Memorial Building, Framingham’s city hall, speaking to maybe a hundred bored citizens.

  Framingham’s a funny place. A little too big to be a town, a little too small to be a city. Route 9, an east-west road that may be the original strip-mall hell, cuts it in half. North of 9, Framingham’s a solid little suburb full of Boston commuters. South of 9, it’s more of a has-been city. Railroad tracks, a long-closed GM plant, old-school small industrial, two-family homes. Salvation Army, methadone clinics, halfway houses, oldsters who missed their chance to move out. And wall to wall Brazilians, some of them legal. Fine by me: Every Brazilian I know works as hard as three of anyone else. If Saturday night knife fights and crazy soccer parades don’t bother you, Brazilians make good neighbors.

  We were on the south side of town. The Memorial Building squats on a three-way intersection whose rotary screws up traffic all day, every day. The rally was making things worse. Background noise: horn honks, siren-blats from ambulances forcing their way over to the hospital. Behind Saginaw stood a dozen people with signs reading SAGINAW—LT GOV in red, white, and blue.

  I’d never seen a sign for a lieutenant governor that didn’t mention the candidate for governor. I wondered what Betsy Tinker, his running mate, thought about that.

  The sign holders were props for the TV news cameras, nothing more. I recognized a few of them. There was the gal who runs a soup kitchen, the preacher who shows up every time a kid gets shot in the projects, a couple guys with purple union T-shirts. Like that.

  One woman behind Saginaw, jammed in with a half-dozen handlers in suits, looked so familiar it bugged me. Sandy hair, squared-off jaw, beet-colored suit that didn’t do her any favors. I asked Savvy who she was. “Bert’s sister Emily,” she said. “Faithful assistant, gal Friday, cast-iron-bitch gatekeeper. Take your pick.”

  I looked from sister to brother, and saw it. They could just about be twins. Hell, maybe they were. I felt for Emily: The face she shared with her brother, with its compass-arrow nose and its Dudley Do-Right jaw, suited a man more than a woman.

  I recognized a bunch of folks around me in the crowd, too. Half of them were Brazilian illegals—their bosses must have shooed them over to make a pretty TV picture.

  Add it all up, you came away with an impression of a half-assed rally, a place nobody wanted to be. Except Bert Saginaw.

  He was rolling now, wrapping up I hoped, doing dime store MLK until his voice cracked and his fist had to hurt from podium-thumps. Finally, in a nice touch, he snapped a white handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit and wiped his forehead like he’d worked up a sweat. The crowd waited half a beat too long, wondering if he was finished, then finally clapped. A two-fingers whistle cut through. It was one of the handlers, a twentysomething boy whistling and stomping like he’d just heard the Gettysburg Address.

  Savvy leaned into me, her breast pressing my arm. “Warning,” she said. “Potential disaster looms.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bert’s supposed to lead a spontaneous march through town. Pressing babies, kissing flesh, primo telegenic shit. But the adoring masses appear to be sprinting back to work.”

  “They don’t look all that adoring.”

  “Or that massive. Look. He’s pissed.”

  She was right. Saginaw had continued the man-of-the-people routine by taking his coat off even though it was late-October chilly. He now one-fingered the coat over his left shoulder, leaving his right hand free to wave and shake. But there was nobody to shake with, and the only thing to wave at were illegals’ backs as they hustled to their shops or apartments.

  Wearing what he probably thought of as a TV grin, but which looked to me like that old Life magazine photo of some poor sap riding a rocket sled, Saginaw whispered to handlers. One in particular gave off a boss-man vibe. He was letting Saginaw’s rant roll off his back.

  I checked my watch. “Well,” I said.

  “You’re not getting off that easy,” Savvy said, pulling me by the arm. “I said you need to meet him, remember?” We tucked into the hind end of Saginaw’s parade, which now consisted of him, his handlers, the two guys with union T-shirts, and a pair of gals I recognized from the Brazilian bakery a block down.

  As we crossed Concord Street, Saginaw pretended the cars were honking for him, not at him. Sure enough, the two gals slipped into the bakery—their manager flipped green aprons to them before the door even closed. Now I was three steps behind Saginaw.

  You could plunk him down in any town, any state, and nobody’d be surprised when they heard he was running for office. He had that born-winner look. Straw-colored hair cut almost in a Boys’ Regular, but not quite, like he’d been using the same barber since he was eight. High forehead, that unapologetic nose, smart blue eyes.

  But something was off.

  It hit me when I compared Saginaw to the campaign manager he was reaming out. The campaign manager—at least I assumed that was his job—looked a lot like Saginaw, a born winner. But he was a full seven inches taller.

  Bert Saginaw was a shrimp.

  I looked harder, first at him and then at the manager, and I saw he was a shrimp in an odd way: He had the torso and shoulders of a six-footer, but it looked like someone had sawed four inches out of his legs.

  Huh. I’d known guys like that who developed complexes, resentments. A few of them would have been taller but for childhood sicknesses. I wondered if that was Saginaw’s deal. Looking at his jacketless back, his expensive shirt that had to be custom made, I saw he had a hell of a V shape. Easy guess: He was a fitness guy, a junkie for it. An overcompensator.

  Leading his sad little parade through downtown Framingham, the locals avoiding his smiles mostly out of pity, Bert Sagin
aw was giving the campaign manager hell. He waved, he shook hands with anybody who wasn’t quick enough in clearing out of his way, he maintained the grin/grimace. But he was hissing in the ear of the taller man, occasionally grabbing his upper arm in a way that had to hurt. I caught snippets.

  “… couldn’t even round up a couple dozen teachers, for Chrissake?” Saginaw said.

  “… Good call. I’ll take that bullet,” the man said.

  “… Tinker’s talking to three hundred goddamn people in Brookline right now,” Saginaw said.

  “… Worcester promises they’ll have ’em hanging from the rafters tomorrow,” the man said.

  This went on for the better part of a block. Finally, seconds after the last diehard camera crew dropped away—unable to resist the smells from a churrascuria that would pile meat on your plate until midnight for $9.95—we came to a mini-caravan just north of a Salvation Army where I’d bunked a long time ago. Leading was a BMW X5 SUV, black. Behind it, a brand-new Chevy Malibu in the same color.

  Saginaw made for the right rear door of the BMW, but the campaign manager spoke in his ear and guided him to the Malibu, with sister Emily right behind. The manager and his flunkies doubled back to the SUV. Savvy and I stood on the sidewalk.

  “Take shotgun,” Saginaw said to Savvy, pointing at me. “I want to talk to this one while we ride.”

  Me, Emily, and Saginaw made for a tight backseat fit.

  “What kind of car is this?” Saginaw said, looking around the gray cloth interior.

  “Chevy Malibu,” I said, “the new one. Supposed to be pretty decent.”

  “Piece of shit,” he said. “Krall says I have to ride around in American cars during the campaign. Probably after, too.”

  “Krall?”

  “Campaign manager. Costing us a mint, soul of a vampire, but he’s been around the block a few times.”

  “He makes you drive American,” I said, “while he rides in your BMW. Pretty ritzy deal for him.”

  “Good point,” Saginaw said, half-laughing. “Am I a sap or what?”

  “Way I hear it,” I said, “you’re nobody’s sap. What do you want with me?”

  “You were right, Savvy,” Saginaw said. “He does have a short tolerance for talk.” Then he leaned across and forward, putting a blue-sleeved arm through the gap between the front seats, and twined his fingers in hers.

  It wasn’t a move I expected from Saginaw. It made him look awkward and needy.

  It made him look like he cared about Savvy.

  A lot.

  Huh.

  Meanwhile, sister Emily was looking at her brother’s arm like she wanted to cut it off.

  Double huh.

  “Savannah tells me,” Saginaw said, “you’re some kinda miracle man for the local AA crowd. Robin Hood for drunks.”

  “Did she tell you I’m a convicted felon?”

  “She mentioned it. Why?”

  “I couldn’t vote for you even if I wanted to,” I said. “So stop blowing smoke up my ass and tell me why I’m here.”

  Long pause. Saginaw’s eyes went stormy.

  Then cleared, and he laughed like hell. “You were right!” he said to Savvy, squeezing her hand, still leaning. “You were sure as hell right about this cat.”

  “So tell him,” she said. Annoyed? She worked her hand free of Saginaw’s and folded her arms.

  “Yes,” Emily said. “Tell him.”

  “You know the gist of the situation,” he said after a few seconds.

  “Savvy had your kid,” I said. “She holed up in North Carolina for a long time, cashing your checks. Now she’s back.”

  “There’s more to it.”

  “She came north to squeeze you for more dough.”

  “Asshole,” Savvy said.

  “She’s not,” Saginaw said.

  “Of course she is,” Emily said.

  “At first, maybe, yeah,” Saginaw said. “Not anymore. But somebody’s squeezing, all right. Somebody’s running all sorts of games to push me out of the race.”

  “Isn’t it a little late for that?” I said.

  “Not too late, not with this state’s screwy laws.”

  “Okay,” I said, “you should know. But let’s get down to it. I assume you’re talking about the guy Betsy Tinker’s up against. What’s his name?”

  “Thomas Wilton,” Emily and Savvy said at the same time.

  “What I don’t get,” I said, “is why’s this Wilton working on you instead of Tinker?”

  The car went quiet.

  “Tell him,” Emily said.

  “Yes, tell him,” Savvy said. “In for a dime.”

  Saginaw leaned forward so he could look across his sister at me. “I’m pretty sure the squeezer is my bosom-buddy running mate. Sweet Betsy Tinker, the next governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Then it was quiet some more. Savvy broke the silence. “Strange bedfellows,” she said.

  The driver swung right. I remembered reading about Saginaw’s massive house when he built it. The place was in Framingham, but barely: If we’d continued two hundred yards we would have been in Sherborn, one of the swankest towns around.

  The driver pushed an overhead button and waited for a wrought-iron gate set between stone pillars to roll open. We eased up blacktop that was technically a driveway but was as wide and well-crowned as most public roads. We burst through a final stand of pines and there was the home of Bert Saginaw, rent-a-fence tycoon.

  “Well,” I said.

  More money than taste was my first thought. I’m not Frank Lloyd Wright, but as I climbed from the Malibu I saw something had gone wrong with the mansion. The place had started as a good-sized stone house, nicely balanced. Then the shit had hit the fan. It looked like each time Saginaw made another ten million, or found a new girlfriend, or tried a new hobby, he’d added a wing to the place. But the wings had nothing to do with the original building, or with each other. So this handsome French (I guessed) home sprouted on one end a Japanese-looking atrium, which sprouted a redbrick gentleman’s library, which sprouted a damn indoor squash court, which sprouted something Danish-looking—a deluxe sauna?—with dark vertical siding, which sprouted …

  Like that. And that was just the side of the house nearest me. The other end of the place, hard to see from where we stood, had its own set of sprouts.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Wow,” Savvy said. Poker face.

  Saginaw and Emily jumped from the car. “I’ll be there in four minutes!” Saginaw said to his sister, loosening his tie as he strode to the main house.

  “I’ll be there in three!” she said, sprinting past him.

  Savvy and I stood by the car.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “They work out together,” she said. “Religiously.”

  We followed Krall inside.

  It looked just the way I’d figured, given the outside. Each section of the building was a perfect version of what it was supposed to be—but had nothing to do with the next section. “We’ll wait here,” Krall said to Savvy at one point, and he and his flunkies peeled off.

  I elbowed Savvy, made a what the hell? face.

  She knew what I meant. “Rite of passage,” she said. “Bert and Em like to show off for newcomers in the gymnasium.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s their fave place.”

  “Weird dude,” I said. “Weird house.”

  “No comment,” Savvy said as we walked. We cruised through a room full of pinball machines, then what looked to be a museum for suits of armor and swords and shields, then a full-fledged soda shop plucked straight out of 1956. Savvy clipped through each space, paused at a set of double doors, showed me her best deadpan, and shouldered us in …

  … to a fitness center that would cost yuppies a couple hundred bucks a month in Boston. Blue carpet, mirrored walls, spinning bikes, pro-caliber treadmills and elliptical machines, medicine balls, free-weight area, Pilates
area, white-painted Nautilus gear. You name it. Disco-pop blasted. Bert Saginaw, changed already into shorts and a T-shirt, held a pair of boxing trainer’s paddle-style gloves and used them to catch the punches of Emily, who was dressed in a hot-pink running shirt and black workout pants that left no doubt she was in great shape.

  “Hi! Hi!” she said with a left-right combo. “Hee-hee-hee!” she said, right-right-left. “Hoof! Hoof! Hoof!” On the last Hoof!, she fired an uppercut from her belt line that looked like it could do some damage.

  “All right!” Saginaw said, wiggling his hand to show the punch had stung. Then, in what was obviously an old and frequent custom, they both snapped their wrists, flipping their gloves to the floor, and jumped against each other—performing one of those chest-bumping high-fives that were big in the NFL that year.

  Emily walked over, water bottle in one hand and sweat towel in the other. “I don’t think my rude brother made a proper introduction,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Emily Saginaw.”

  I said my name while she tried to break my hand. She was strong. Hell, if my hand hadn’t been twice as big as hers, she might’ve hurt me. As it stood, she was a mouse trying to judo-flip a cat.

  “Fill him in while I do cardio,” Saginaw said. He walked off without looking at me, snapped a jump rope from a hook, and began to use it.

  Emily led me to a pair of weight benches, nodded at one, sat on the other. I sat and let her look me over. Her face was a little red from the workout, with a tiny sweat sheen, but she still managed to hold herself like a vice principal. She wanted me to feel like I was in a job interview. I wanted to let her know I didn’t give a damn about her brother’s problems.

  “I hear you’re not much for politics,” she finally said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Anybody who wants to wear a suit and sit in meetings all day is crazy as a shithouse rat. Hard to imagine why you’d trust a bunch like that to run a country.”

  “Or a state.”

  “Or a state.”

  “But even a guy like you must know Betsy Tinker,” she said. “She transcends politics around here.”