The Whole Lie

by Steve Ulfelder

  In the light traffic, it soon became clear the Sentra was tailing the SUV. It darted lane to lane whenever he did, rode his bumper too close, then too far—an amateur-hour tail-job.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said out loud. Racked my brain. Had I seen a Sentra in Winthrop? Eastie? In the tunnel?

  No. I was sure. So the car had picked up the Expedition somewhere on the Pike.

  I thought all this through as our weird little caravan trundled through the tolls at Route 128, the Sentra crowding the SUV, me giving them both plenty of room.

  As we pulled away from the tolls, I drew level with the Sentra. Took a good look.

  Then another.

  I damn near swerved.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said again.

  Savvy Kane was driving the Sentra.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  What the hell?

  I dropped back, wrote down license numbers, and thought. Thought about the mystery man in the Expedition. Thought about Savannah Kane in a car she got God knew where, following the mystery man.

  Mostly what I thought was that I was in over my head.

  Especially when I realized the Expedition wore a Massachusetts license plate. I’d already seen it didn’t have a state inspection sticker. What did that mean? Out-of-state truck with a stolen plate?

  A text came in just as I watched the Expedition take the Framingham exit, Savvy following. I glanced at the text:

  Please come home 911

  From Sophie.

  I’d taught her to tag texts with 911 only in emergencies. She’d never done it before.

  Hell.

  I had two seconds to decide: Hang on to Savvy and the mystery man? Or stay on the Pike and see what Sophie needed?

  I canceled my turn signal, headed west. To Sophie.

  * * *

  I swung into Charlene’s driveway, hopped out, trotted up the steps sifting keys and worrying about Sophie. Thought I heard something, stopped, listened.

  “Saaave me! Saaaaaaaave me!” From around back.

  Sophie’s voice.

  Back down the steps in one leap, around the house at a dead sprint. It’s not a big place, but it’s built into a hillside, so I was pounding uphill the whole time.

  “Saaaaaaaaaave meeeeee!”

  Scrambling uphill, a nightmare run—like the bad dream where you need to move fast but are up to your hips in muck.

  As I cleared the back corner, I heard her more clearly and it all made sense.

  “Daaaaaaay-vee! Where are you, Davey?”

  Jesus. My ears had played tricks. My head, too, I guess.

  She was patrolling the deck in fluffy boots, pink sweatpants, a T-shirt I’d given her that read FLATOUT.

  “You should have a sweatshirt,” I said.

  Sophie ignored me, yelled some more. “Daaaay-vee!” She rattled a bag of kitty treats the way I’d showed her. “Would you like a treat, Davey? Who wants a treat?” I could see her breath. I could see her trying not to cry.

  My older cat Davey was about fifteen. Dale, the other one, was ten. Take cats that age to a shelter, you might as well gas them yourself and cut out the middleman.

  When Charlene and I had talked over the idea of my moving in, we’d sidestepped the cat question as long as we could. Charlene didn’t like animals one bit, and didn’t mind telling you so.

  Give her credit, though: Either she understood it was a battle she couldn’t win, or she knew how much the cats meant to me. Especially Davey. He’d been about all I had for a while, when things got truly bad for me. Before I found the Barnburners.

  The night before I moved in she’d said, “What do you think about putting the litter box in the basement? You can install one of those kitty doors.” She’d said it real casual. But it hadn’t been. It cost her something to say it. It was a classy move.

  Davey, being a cat, had repaid Charlene by turning into a pain in the ass. Furious at moving, living in a house for the first time—with me he’d lived in a series of rented rooms, then apartments—he spent our first week in Shrewsbury behind the powder-room toilet, hissing at anybody who came near. He stopped letting me trim his nails, and he used them to destroy a living-room sofa that cost more than some cars I’ve owned. Every once in a while he dropped a turd wherever he was standing, then looked you in the eye and walked away.

  He also started escaping. He’d been an indoor cat nearly all his life, but he turned into goddamn Houdini: silently appearing when a neighbor or UPS guy rang the bell, flitting through your legs and down the steps and into the bushes, and good luck catching him.

  I didn’t get worried until the first time he spent a night outside. The next morning, he was happy enough to come in and show off the chipmunk he’d killed. For a while there, Davey’s midnight murder sprees had been funny.

  But it was fall, and nighttime temps dropped near freezing. And there were fisher cats and foxes and coyotes in this neighborhood—you saw them in broad daylight sometimes—and it wasn’t funny anymore.

  And this time, Davey had been gone two nights running.

  And I was pretty sure he was dead.

  And that would wipe out Sophie. The day I’d moved in, with the cats as a pot-sweetener, had been the best day of her life. She told me so. She was finally part of a genuine family, with pets and everything. We were all pretty beat-up in our own ways, and we were sketchy as to how this family deal was supposed to work. But we were a legit family nonetheless.

  Lately, Charlene and I hadn’t been doing so hot. Hard to say why, though there were times I admitted to myself that having my girlfriend bankroll my business didn’t feel right. Made me resentful. Then I felt ashamed of resenting someone who was just helping out.

  Charlene and I had an unspoken agreement not to discuss all this. We were pretty good at not talking about things.

  The problem was, Sophie was too smart to hide things from. So maybe it wasn’t just Davey she was worried about.

  “Cats know how to take care of themselves,” I said, taking off my jacket, setting it on her shoulders while she rattled the treat bag. I left my arm across her shoulders.

  Cold and stiff, she resisted the hug.

  Then she didn’t.

  Sophie dropped the bag and put her arms around my middle and cried.

  She cried so hard.

  I made noises and kissed the top of her head and rubbed her back to warm her.

  When Sophie was all cried out, the sun was just an orange slice above treetops. I put our backs to the wall. We slid down until we were sitting on the deck. We looked at the orange slice.

  Sophie lifted my arm from her shoulders—gently, like she was worried my feelings would be hurt—and wiped her eyes and nose on my jacket.

  We watched the sun drop away. Then we watched our breath.

  “He was such a good guy,” I said.

  “Is such a good guy.”

  “Remember taking him for walks?”

  She half-laughed, half-snuffled. “He thought he was a dog.”

  I smiled. One year, I’d gone to a Yankee Swap–style Christmas party and had come home with a useless nylon dog-walking rig. I tossed it in my truck and forgot about it until Sophie, nine at the time, asked what it was for. When I explained, she said it looked like a good fit for Davey. We laughed, but one thing led to another and soon we had the poor growling guy trussed up in this silly red harness. We took him outside …

  … and damned if he didn’t love it. He took to it right away, and suddenly he wanted to go for walks all the time. Sophie and I couldn’t believe it. We became neighborhood characters who took our cat for a walk around the block every day, earning smiles and honks as the black cat paced ahead, sniffing like a bloodhound, tail-dancing all the way.

  But after a week of this, Sophie discovered the drawback. Rounding a corner, she and Davey came face to face with a neighbor’s high-strung dog. I forget which breed—the kind that looks like a dirty mop-head. Mutual sniffing turned into a fight, and Sophi
e learned the hard way that when a cat fights, you can’t break things up with a leash-tug and a bop on the nose. She tried to heft Davey and wound up with a claw piercing her lower lip. Through and through, as the cops say about bullet wounds: in and out. Davey was more or less hanging off her face.

  Nine-one-one. A ride to the hospital. Two stitches. A visit from Framingham Animal Control. The works. It took some tap dancing to keep Davey out of the gas chamber. And since all this happened on my watch, in my old neighborhood, in which it wasn’t a great idea for a nine-year-old to be walking around the block by herself, Charlene had been good and pissed.

  As far as taking Davey for walks, that had been that.

  Sophie had to be recalling this, too, because she touched her lip where she would have a tiny scar forever.

  “Did you come to get your stuff?” she finally said.

  “Huh? What? ’Course not.”

  “It’s just a matter of time.” Dead voice that hurt my heart.

  I said nothing.

  “Why, Conway?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  I decided to stop playing dumb. Thought awhile, trying for a good answer. Or at least an honest one.

  Couldn’t find it. “I always fuh … I always screw it up, don’t I?”

  “It’s all here,” she said, waving her arms to include everything. “We’re all here. Everything you say you want.”

  “I do want it. Your mom. You. All of it.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s something you want more. There must be. Otherwise, why would you fuck it up?”

  * * *

  Four and a half hours later, I parked outside St. Anne’s, home of the Barnburners. I was way late for the scheduled open meeting we called the Civilian Hour, but the important stuff—the Meeting After the Meeting—was still in session.

  That was good. Sort of. I had news to break. It’d been one hell of a four and a half hours.

  I rubbed my eyes. Tired. Didn’t want to climb from the truck. Didn’t want to think.

  Everybody stared as I made my way to the front of the basement meeting room. Mary Giarusso scribbled in her notebook, as always. Carlos Q, a nasty Colombian who wouldn’t speak to anybody with less than a year of sobriety, sat looking bored with his meaty arms folded. There was Chester Bagley in his laugh-out-loud toupee, the biker dude with a cobweb tattoo on his neck, the Brazilian gal who spoke perfect English but never opened her mouth unless we needed a translator. There were three or four others whose names I couldn’t be sure of—the cast changes, and a corner of my brain reminded me I hadn’t been coming around enough lately.

  Maybe that was why the other Barnburners’ stares felt ugly.

  I knew why Charlene’s felt ugly.

  When I sobered up for the last time, more than a decade ago, I was white-knuckling it and getting ready to backslide for the hundredth time when I stumbled into a Barnburners meeting. I saw right away they were different: serious people, serious AA, no posers or excuse-makers need apply. Knowing there was something extra, something different about this group, I hung around until they let me into the Meeting After the Meeting. Which, it turned out, was where they did some hardcore work that stemmed from the Barnburners’ heritage as a post–World War II biker gang.

  Barnburners stood up for each other. No exceptions, no mercy. If you were in the group and anyone—your ex, your boss, a bookie, anybody with a score to settle—gave you a hard time, the Barnburners had your back.

  I’d spent a long time bouncing around hobo camps, county jails, rail yards, the streets. I’d learned skills.

  The skills came in handy.

  Cut to the chase: The Barnburners saved my life. The debt dies when I die. I do what’s needed. No exceptions.

  I don’t always enjoy it.

  Tough. I chose it. I make no excuses.

  “You need a new watch, Conway?” said Butch Feeley, the closest thing there was to a boss of the Meeting After the Meeting.

  “Sorry.” I sat on a folding chair. “When you hear this, I think you’ll forgive me. Some of you remember Savvy Kane from way back.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Charlene said.

  “She ain’t no Barnburner,” Carlos Q said. “She been gone like ten years.”

  “Seven,” I said. “Barnburner once, Barnburner always. Am I right, Butch?”

  “Welllllllll,” Butch said, shifting. “There are Barnburners and then there are Barnburners. I think we all know which kind she was.”

  “Barnburner once, Barnburner always,” I said. “How many times have I heard the words, Butch? How many times have I heard them from you?”

  Butch felt the weight. “She did work her way in here,” he said, meaning the Meeting After the Meeting, which wasn’t an easy crowd to break into. “And did some good work while she was around.”

  “Savvy Kane is back in town, running around and backstabbing people as usual,” Charlene said. “She found Conway like that”—snapping her fingers—“and made big sexy eyes at him and played the Barnburner card. Now he’s going to help her with whatever her latest scheme is.”

  Dead quiet. All eyes on Charlene, Charlene’s eyes on me.

  “And he’s going to do it,” she said, her voice about breaking. Mary put a hand on Charlene’s forearm, but Charlene shrugged it away. “He’s going to forget about his family, his business, his … sobriety to help the little slut. All in the name of his idiotic Barnburner code.”

  Dead quiet.

  “Tell me I’m wrong, Conway.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Eyes swung my way.

  “Savvy Kane is dead,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Here’s what happened between Charlene’s house and the Meeting After the Meeting:

  I’d talked Sophie into leaving a bowl of cat treats on the deck and going inside to warm up.

  Then I’d driven around some. It’s how I think. It’s what I do. It’s especially what I do when I ought to be doing something else. Like stopping by my own garage to work a few hours.

  I’d been noodling east on Route 135 when a call came in. I didn’t recognize the number, but the area code was local. Picked up.

  It was Emily Saginaw. “Can you come to Cambridge immediately?” she said. She spoke fast, biting off each word.

  “What for?”

  “There’s been a development. There are police. Bert would like you here.”

  I didn’t give a damn what Bert wanted. Started to sound off about what his checks did and did not pay for, but Emily’s breathing on the other end of the line made me skip that. Instead: “What development? Tell me.”

  Long pause. “Savannah Kane is dead.”

  “Bullshit. I saw her what, three hours ago. Maybe less.”

  “You saw her today? Then you really must come to the Escutcheon. I’m sure the police will want to speak with you.”

  Did they ever. Forty-five minutes after the call, I was in a room down the hall from Bert Saginaw’s Vegas suite. He must have offered the cops the room as a temporary HQ. There were two state police detectives: a Chinese-looking guy older than me with loose bags beneath his eyes and the smell of a smoker, and a pretty young woman who never said a word, taking notes like there’d be a test later.

  The Chinese-looking guy was named Wu, and he was no more Chinese than I was. He actually had a pretty brutal Boston accent, which I’d never heard out of a guy who looked like that.

  “Where’d you grow up?” I said. “Curious.”

  “Quincy. South Shore.” South SHO-ah. He jerked his thumb in a direction he must have figured was south. “Tell me one more time, will you? About when and where you saw Kane on the Pike.”

  I told him again. Had told him everything, starting at Moe Coover’s place, twice already. Had told it all, told it straight.

  Almost.

  After a quick battle in my head, I held back about the mystery man in the green Expedition, about th
e mismatch between the SUV’s missing inspection sticker and its Massachusetts plate.

  Why?

  Partly con’s instinct. Never tell everything. Keep a hole card.

  But there was another reason, I admitted to myself.

  If the mystery man had killed Savvy, I didn’t want the cops tracking him down.

  Wanted to take care of that myself.

  I tried to come to grips with it. Savannah Kane was dead.

  As I retold my story, Wu surprised me and the other cop by flopping onto one of the hotel room’s queen-size beds. He laced his fingers behind his head and looked at the ceiling and listened.

  I wasn’t used to talking with cops in non-suspect mode. But by the time I’d arrived here, Wu had pulled the electronic toll records for my truck. Given the time they found Savvy’s body, he knew I’d been too far west to kill her.

  When I finished, the room went quiet.

  “Tell me what happened, Wu,” I said after a while. “I deserve that. I knew her.”

  He sat up, scooched back, tapped his cheek while he looked at me. Then nodded once. “You know the CambridgeSide Galleria mall? Right next to the Museum of Science there?” THAY-uh. That accent.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Well, it’s where Cambridge butts up against Charlestown. The Monsignor O’Brien Highway divides ’em.”

  “Okay.”

  “Cambridge, being Cambridge and all, won’t let Saginaw’s heavy equipment sit here overnight while he works on the hotel. Every evening, the crew has to blow an hour hauling the gear to a staging site. And every morning, they blow an hour hauling it back.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  Wu shrugged. “Maybe the Harvard kids faint at the sight of a front-end loader, who knows. Point being, the staging area’s a vacant lot in Charlestown right across the road from the Galleria.”

  “And?”

  “And that’s where the body was found.”

  I said nothing.

  Savannah Kane.

  I said I’d help her.

  I said I wouldn’t betray her.