The Whole Lie

by Steve Ulfelder

  “Her husband was a politician for a long time,” I said. “They were rich going back to the Mayflower or somesuch. When he died in a car wreck, she took his seat in the Senate.”

  She nodded. “Won reelection on her own, in a landslide. Adored by all. The Darling of the Bay State.” Emily’s lip curled when she said that. “Tinker’s so damn beloved that she’s running as if this is 1796.”

  I looked a question at her.

  “Back then,” Emily said, trying to be patient with me and almost pulling it off, “’twas considered beneath the dignity of a statesman to actually campaign. Pete Krall and some of the Harvard twerps advising Tinker told her to try the same thing. It’s a tough sell, but so far she’s pulled it off.”

  “Bert does the roadwork,” I said, “while she coasts along.”

  “Exactly.” Emily paused. “The question is, why does she want to be governor in the first place?”

  “Why not?”

  “She could have held her Senate seat for life. It’s the best job in politics. It’s an exclusive club, and you only have to run every six years. Best of all, you don’t do anything. You sit in hearings. You move your mouth on unwatched Sunday morning TV shows.”

  “Governor’s a pretty good job, too,” I said.

  “Like hell it is. Every time there’s a snowstorm, you ride around with a plow-jockey for TV. A flood in Hull? You’re up at three in the morning, wading around with the locals, trying to look like you give a damn. You kiss the state cops’ behinds, and the teachers’, too. And I haven’t even gotten to the senior citizens.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I give up. Why does Betsy Tinker want to be governor?”

  “If you’ve already got the money and the power, there’s only one reason that makes sense.” She leaned toward me. “It’s what you do if you want to be president.”

  “So?”

  “So Betsy Bite-My-Bag Tinker will be president over my dead fucking body,” Emily Saginaw said, snapping off each word, her face going a deeper red.

  Then she slapped a hand across her mouth. If she could have reached out with the other, grabbed the words and stuffed them back inside, she would have.

  I smiled and let the moment stretch against the disco-pop and the jump rope’s thwap. “Why’s that?” I finally said.

  “My brother,” Emily said, composed again, “will be president someday. Sooner rather than later.”

  “And two Massachusetts pols grabbing at the same brass ring is a losing proposition.”

  “For both parties,” she said. “Now if you’ll pardon me, I’ll do a little cardio of my own.”

  She shot from the bench and bounced toward her brother, grabbing a jump rope on the way. Facing Saginaw, she took a moment to figure out his timing, then got to work in perfect synchronicity.

  They faced one another.

  They smiled at one another.

  They were still skipping and smiling when I left the gym.

  “Care for a banana split?” Savvy said as the door closed. “Maybe a nice root beer float?”

  She stood behind the counter of Saginaw’s bizarre transplanted ice cream shop. Across from her, Krall sipped a drink from one of those classic soda-fountain glasses.

  I looked at Savvy. I was poleaxed by the Bert and Emily Show. Didn’t know what to say.

  “An interesting pair,” Krall said without looking up. He was an inch taller than me and thirty pounds lighter but with big shoulders, maybe a former college swimmer. Dark brown hair that should’ve been cut last week and should’ve been washed this morning, parted on the left, shaggy over the ears. Brown gunsight eyes that took in everything and gave nothing back. Brown suit that cost more than my truck, brown shoes that cost more than my tires, burnt-orange tie that cost more than a tank of gas.

  “These people are going to run the state?” I said. “I’d sooner vote for Lobster Boy and the Bearded Lady.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Krall said. Guy still wouldn’t look up. “Hell, I’ve put worse in office. And this I assure you, friend: Saginaw’s money spends as well as anybody else’s.”

  “You’re earning every nickel,” I said, and made a little salute to Savvy. “Good-bye and good riddance.”

  I only made it one step.

  “Speaking of money,” Savvy said. For the first time I noticed a pale blue check, the big kind from a ledger-style business checkbook. It rested on the counter next to Krall’s drink. Savvy pushed it three inches in my direction.

  From where I stood I couldn’t read it.

  “He won’t sully himself by looking,” Krall said to Savvy. “He’ll walk out and never look back. Like the assholes in the action movies.”

  “Stop it, Pete,” Savvy said.

  “But those action-movie assholes, they don’t owe big money to their girlfriends.” He looked me in the eye for the first time, finishing his soda, making a sucking noise with his straw. “Do they?”

  My hands made fists.

  I made myself turn 90 degrees. I made myself take a step that would lead me out. There was no sense beating up this jerk. Say good-bye to Krall, to Savvy Kane, to the Saginaws. You can be home, showered, eating dinner with Charlene and Sophie, in thirty minutes.

  I took a step.

  “Another thing about these action-movie assholes,” Krall said. “They don’t work with illegals.”

  I stopped.

  “Pete,” Savvy said.

  He ignored her. “Your shop is F&C Automotive, right? The F is for Floriano? Floriano Mendes?”

  “Pete,” Savvy said. “Can you give us a minute?”

  While the two of them stared each other down, silently refighting some battle, blood pounded in my head. I wanted to bust up this dumb-ass room, this jerk Krall.

  I made myself breathe instead. In through the nose, out through the mouth. When I finally spoke I spoke carefully, like a college professor. “Floriano’s not illegal.”

  “But his wife Maria is,” Krall said, chewing his straw. “Or am I wrong about that?”

  I took a step toward him. He flinched.

  “Pete!” Savvy said. “Give us a minute.”

  We watched him walk away. He took his soda.

  “I’m sorry,” Savvy said, stepping to me, hugging me. “I told him that horse shit wouldn’t work on you. I told him it wasn’t needed anyway. Obviously, he paid no attention. He’s pissed I’m even around.”

  “What do you mean, ‘wasn’t needed’?” During her hug, Savvy had let her hands run south to my rear end. Bad idea. I stepped out of the hug, crossed my arms.

  Her eyes flitted up, then away. “You know what I mean. We share something.”

  “You didn’t need Krall’s flavor of blackmail,” I said. “You came at me with your own.”

  “‘Blackmail’ is a kid’s word, Conway. A soap-opera word. We share something.”

  “Pound sand.”

  “See you tomorrow,” she said to my back. “Bert’s using the Escutcheon Hotel in Cambridge as his headquarters.”

  As I walked the long hall to the front door, clenching and unclenching my fists, I heard a crinkle. It was coming from me. I checked my back pockets, damn near smiled in spite of everything: She’d tucked the big blue check in my pocket.

  Savannah Goddamn Kane.

  * * *

  Here’s the first thing I ever said to her, sixteen years ago: “Ahhhhh-woooooo!”

  It was something I said when I took quaaludes and drank. Which I did whenever I could find and afford quaaludes. When I couldn’t, I just drank. I always did like the loose reel of ’ludes—riding them was like being drunk without the puking, hangovers, and other assorted miseries.

  Owensboro, Kentucky. Biker bar called the Shovelhead, just west of State Route 81. You could throw a beer bottle from the parking lot to the main runway of the local airport.

  I was fresh off a barge making its way southwest on the Kentucky River. Can’t remember much more than that, but I had to be flush to be in a bar in the first place—
by then, drinking fortified wine in hobo camps was more my style—so chances are I’d been working on the barge, had bailed out in Owensboro with a week’s wages in my pocket.

  In addition to three pocket-lint quaaludes I’d bought in the parking lot, I’d treated myself to a triple Wild Turkey and a Bud. I know that because when Savvy bumped my elbow, an honest shot of the bourbon slopped onto the bar, and it was all I could do not to lean over and slurp it up.

  She’d spent most of the night ignoring me the way a cat ignores you—licking its leg, pretending it doesn’t know you’re watching. As she danced and flirted and drank free without ever quite falling into the bikers’ knuckle-tat mitts, a word had come to me: smoky.

  And then here she was: bumping precious whiskey from my glass.

  “You look like you just lost your best friend,” she said, her back against the bar rail, a longneck Bud of her own in both hands. She had to shout over the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove,” which was playing for the third time since I’d come in.

  That’s when I said: “Ahhhhh-woooooo!”

  Her mouth twitched. She leaned toward me, locked eyes for a full twenty seconds, and said: “Ahhhhh-woooooo!”

  It was a pretty fair imitation.

  Smoky, I thought. I’m not sure I fell in love right then, exactly, but I fell into a place where I wanted to impress her, take care of her, show her I was a man. All man. A good man. The stinking, swilling, flea-toting bum who stood before her in a peacoat stolen from a passed-out sailor was not me. This was temporary. This would pass.

  I thought all these thoughts just fine, but when I spoke, what came out was, “Temp’rary.”

  “Pardon me, stud hoss?”

  There was so much I wanted to say.

  I said: “Ahhhhh-woooooo!”

  “That much we’ve ascertained,” said the woman whose name I didn’t yet know, looking over her shoulder. “Here’s my problem, stud hoss. There’s a man in this bar who’s bothering me. He seems to think I know something I don’t know. He keeps buying me beers. Now if he was buying me beers and trying to get me in the sack, I’d be on comfortable terrain. Terrain I can handle dead drunk with my eyes closed.”

  “Wherrizzy?” I said, looking around.

  In the manner of people who’ve spent their share of time talking to drunks in bars, she knew what I meant. “Past my left shoulder, leaning on the wall next to the Rusty Wallace poster. Don’t look too long. I believe he’s trying to stare a hole in me.”

  He sure was. Beefy guy, gimme cap that said SNAP-ON, red face, week’s worth of beard that looked wrong on him, down vest over flannel.

  “The problem, my problem,” the woman said, “is near as I can tell, fuzz-face doesn’t want to get me in the sack at all. He keeps wanting to talk, talk talk talk, and he keeps pulling the talk back around to some people I may know and an episode I may have witnessed.”

  I said nothing.

  “Or may not have, of course.”

  “Zimacop?” I said.

  “He might just be,” she said.

  “Ifugginkillim.”

  “That’s the spirit,” she said, squeezing my bicep through the peacoat. “But tell you what, I’ll settle for an escort outside and help finding a lift, even if it’s on one of these miserable Harleys. Once I get clear of fuzz-face and the parking lot, I imagine I can make my way.”

  “Lezgo.” I drank what was left of my triple and drained my beer.

  “My hero,” she said. She batted her eyelashes twice, smiling, and stuck out a tiny hand. “I’m Savannah Kane. They call me Savvy.”

  As a ZZ Top song kicked in, I towed her toward the bar’s front door, a sorry-ass plank job with a mesh window and a Z-brace. I bulled straight ahead, shouldering past a couple of bikers hard enough to raise murmuring in our wake.

  I took a look over my shoulder as the door slapped open and we hit fresh air.

  Fuzz-face had set his beer on a tall table. He was coming after us, adjusting his cap and working a no-bullshit stride.

  I smiled. I wanted to show Savvy Kane how useful I could be.

  * * *

  The soft bing of an incoming text pulled me back as I worked west in rush-hour traffic. It was from Charlene. Randall was dropping by and she’d had a hell of a long day, could I pick up dinner at the barbecue joint we liked?

  Sure.

  I pulled in, made the order, took a cream soda from the cooler, sat on a stool to wait. A TV in the corner bleated local news. I blocked it out, thought about Savvy Kane and Bert Saginaw.

  A man sat next to me. Which was strange, because the joint was three-quarters empty. I hopped my stool away from him some. He didn’t notice, far as I could tell. Dug into his baby back ribs.

  I sipped.

  “It’s more or less impossible to escape the glow of the boob tube,” the man said after a few minutes.

  “They’re at gas pumps now,” I said.

  “Annoying.”

  “Yup.”

  That was plenty of conversation for me. I looked at the man from the corner of my eye. He was big in a sloppy way, a high-school-football-player-gone-fat way, with greasy hair too long for a man his—my—age.

  The TV news gal launched into a story about a protest at a soldier’s funeral. The GOD HATES FAGS people were at it again.

  “Freaks,” I said. “Gimps, clowns, dipshits.”

  “You’ll find no disagreement here, friend,” he said in a smooth voice. Southern? “I myself am a firm believer in minding one’s own business.”

  “Amen.” I toasted with cream soda.

  “Folks like that,” he said, nodding at the TV, “folks who involve theirselves in the business of others … well, you just daydream about slicing off their balls and stuffing ’em down their throats. Don’t you?”

  Whoa.

  I said nothing, cut another glance at the man. He looked the same way he would’ve if he’d made a comment about the weather.

  I got lucky: The girl behind the counter called my order number.

  “Happy trails, friend,” the man said, licking each of his fingers as I rose. “This here’s some pretty passable barbecue for this far north.”

  And my friends wonder why I don’t like talking to people.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Ah,” Randall said, reaching up the right leg of his jeans to unstrap his foot and ankle. “At the end of a long day, that’s the ticket right there.” He scratched his pantleg, flexed his knee.

  “I will never, ever get used to that,” said Sophie, Charlene’s younger daughter, twelve going on twenty. She looked at the titanium-and-ceramic prosthetic, which Randall had dumped near the sofa the same way a teenager kicks off his sneakers. Which made sense, as the prosthetic’s perfectly formed foot was inside a white-and-blue Nike running shoe.

  Randall Swale was the son of my parole officer, Luther. We met awhile back, and he’d helped me with a few things. He lost a foot and half a leg in Fallujah, Iraq, three weeks after he got there. He’s the smartest guy I know, but he did something dumb that day: kicked a trash can lid. Turned out it housed an IED. Now he walked around on his quarter-million-dollar prosthetic, and ran faster than me when he needed to.

  Randall had colleges lined up to give him full-ride academic scholarships. “There would appear,” he’d said once with a couple beers in him, “to be a dearth of black, one-legged, veteran, certified geniuses with four-point-oh high school transcripts. Go figure.” He talked about the scholarship offers all the time, but had let them slide so far. Sometimes I wondered why. He’d met a nice gal with her own insurance agency. She was five years older than him and head over heels. She was dragging him around New England for leaf-peeping and outlet shopping that fall, which seemed fine by Randall.

  We were sofa-flopped in the great room of Charlene’s house. Shrewsbury, two towns west of Framingham. Charlene wasn’t more than ten feet away, heating up dinner, but between her anger over Savvy, microwave noise, and the little TV she had tuned to the news, she
might as well be in the next county.

  Randall and I’d been discussing Savvy and Bert Saginaw before Sophie joined us.

  I cut my eyes to her.

  “Sophie,” Randall said, leaning to grab his prosthetic. “Be a good kid and run this out to the front hall for me.”

  “Hop it out yourself.”

  They locked eyes, then cracked up. Sophie rose, snatched the prosthetic. “For the record,” she said over her shoulder, “I know you’re just getting rid of me.”

  Smart smart smart.

  “Don’t tell me you’re actually planning to help this Saginaw turd,” Randall said, leaning in, keeping his voice low.

  “Take a look at this before you say that.” I pulled the blue check from my back pocket, unfolded and smoothed it, set it on the cream-colored hassock.

  Randall’s eyes went big, and he made a near-silent whistle. “Who do you have to kill to earn that?”

  I tucked away the check. Randall sat with his elbow on his good leg, chin on fist. He squinted. After a while he shook his head. “It still doesn’t make sense. You’re not a money guy. You’re … you. Somebody offers you dough to do something you don’t want to do, you’re more likely to make them eat it than you are to take it.”

  I was ready for that. “Maybe that’s why my girlfriend holds the note on my business. Maybe that’s not the smart way to play it when you’re my age. And your parole has a ways yet to run. And everything you own fits in two dresser drawers.”

  Did Randall buy it?

  Maybe.

  Almost.

  Probably not.

  But if he knew there was more to it than the money, he didn’t press. He sighed instead. “What’s your move, then?”

  “Meet Saginaw tomorrow morning,” I said. “See what they want with me.”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  I nodded.

  “Which would be,” he said, and made a big show of counting on his fingers, “the third day of existence for your nascent business.”

  “What’s nascent?”

  “The point is, you’re doing it again.”

  He wanted me to ask what I was doing again.

  I didn’t ask.

  “What you’re doing,” Randall said as if I’d asked, “you’re misdirecting your energy. Lighting into a wild-goose chase just when you’ve got something worth concentrating on.”