The Whole Lie

by Steve Ulfelder

  “Well, you made a goddamn doozy with Savvy Kane.” She wanted to say more, I thought, but her jaw clamped like a bear trap.

  “We didn’t do anything.” I hated the whiny tone even as I said it.

  “You made a choice,” Charlene said. “You chose a dead girl over me.”

  “Maybe it’s not that simple.”

  “But maybe it is.”

  We looked down the hill at Sophie and Davey, who were now coming back.

  “How is she?” I said.

  Charlene smiled some, watching Sophie trot. She held the leash like a dog-show pro, Davey bounding along looking up at her and smiling. I swear, smiling.

  “She’s absolutely devastated. How did you think she’d be?”

  “Well.”

  “Yeah, ‘Well,’” Charlene said. “It’s the innocents who get it. They can handle it the least, and they get it the worst.”

  “Did you see this good boy?” Sophie covered the final few yards, panting. She knelt to undo Davey’s harness. He side-flopped to the grass, stretching, rolling. “Conway,” Sophie said, “you have got to keep taking Davey for walks. He loved it!”

  “You’re the expert,” I said. “I was thinking you ought to take him for walks.”

  “You mean like a dog-walker for cats?” Sophie frowned, looked from me to Charlene and back. Then again. “Well, I suppose it would depend on where you lived … and I’d need rides over and back … and, you know…”

  “What I meant,” I said, “you ought to keep him. Hang on to him. He’s gotten used to your house, and it’s a good neighborhood for cat-walking.”

  “Oh my God. Really?”

  “Well.”

  And then it was a wait for Charlene.

  A long one.

  I held my breath, felt Sophie doing the same. I strained my ears listening for a train, hoping none would come—I didn’t want anything to interrupt the moment.

  Finally Charlene said, to nobody in particular, “If it doesn’t work out, I suppose it’s reversible.”

  “Yes?” Sophie said. “This is a yes?”

  Charlene crouched and stroked Davey’s belly fur in that awkward way of non-cat-lovers. He sensed the non-love and nipped at her fingers.

  But only a little.

  “As long as it’s reversible,” she said. “There’s no sense burning bridges.”

  “No sense burning bridges.” Sophie and I said it at the exact same time.

  Looking down at Charlene—sweatshirt riding up, jeans gapping, cotton underpants showing just a little, awkward half-crouch/half-squat, white-blond hair, dark roots—I knew I’d never loved her more.

  As we split up and I started the drive east to the Escutcheon, I locked the words in my head for hope: I suppose it’s reversible.

  * * *

  Tinker-Saginaw HQ was humming. As I crossed the space, I could see—feel, really—the intensity had been turned up a notch. Every phone was manned. Every volunteer working those phones had access to a coffeepot and a plate of bagels, and the volunteers manning the coffeepots and bagels thought they were as important as anybody else in the room. Like that. The campaign may be in deep shit—news radio had sure made it sound that way—but it hadn’t thrown in the towel.

  A bearded guy I’d never met hollered my name, sprinted across the room. I asked how he knew me. By way of answer, he passed me an envelope the color of coffee with cream. On the back: an honest-to-God wax seal, purple, with the initials ET. “Governor Tinker’s staff wanted to make sure you got this,” he said.

  “She’s not governor yet,” I said.

  “She will be.” He strutted back to his desk like he’d just run the Olympic torch through downtown Boston.

  I opened the envelope, looked at the check inside, tucked it in my wallet with the others. Betsy Tinker had come through.

  I pushed through the frosted-glass doors of the war room.

  And froze.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Only the two polling geeks were here. They didn’t even look up from their laptops.

  “Where is everybody?” I said.

  “Campaigning,” they said at the same time.

  “How about Emily Saginaw?”

  “Campaigning.”

  “Where?”

  They just shrugged.

  Feeling dumb for assuming Emily would have come back already, I left the room and began asking where Bert Saginaw was campaigning this afternoon. None of the phone jockeys knew. Everybody told me to ask Amy, gesturing vaguely toward the building’s north side.

  I never did find Amy, but while knocking on doors I found something else.

  Something that gave me an idea.

  A printer-copier-fax-machine-scanner. Plugged in, ready to go, in an office whose dust layer told me it was rare for anybody to stray this far from the central area.

  “Huh,” I said out loud.

  I knew how to get Emily Saginaw here.

  On the double and on the QT.

  I closed the office door. Unplugged the four-in-one machine’s telephone line. Took the envelope from the back of my shirt, chose a pic in which it was obvious—oh boy, was it obvious—that neither Tinker nor Saginaw had a red-dot disguise.

  I scanned the picture. Used a cord to jack my phone into the scanner. Pressed arrows and menu buttons until I figured out how to get the image to my cell. Did so. Confirmed I had the image on my phone.

  Then I picked up the scanner, stepped onto the desk, and dropped the machine to the floor.

  Loud loud loud.

  Tough shit: I was gambling that any volunteer who heard the racket would be too focused to check.

  The drop split most of the scanner’s casing from its guts. My boot finished the job. I twisted out the hard drive, stuffed it in my back pocket.

  Left the office, confirmed nobody was investigating the noise. Spotted the poll geeks leaving the war room. One of them said something about pad thai.

  I entered the war room. Sat in a rolling chair, sent Emily Saginaw a text message.

  And a photo.

  I looked through the window-wall at the end of the room. The snow Charlene had mentioned was falling. It’s hard to take snow seriously the first week of November, but this wasn’t one of those fluffy-flakes-here-and-there deals. The sky’d gone good and gray, and the snow seemed to have a head of steam.

  And my rear-wheel-drive, light-in-the-back-end F-150 wore summer tires. Baldish summer tires.

  Great.

  Emily called a few minutes later. “What in God’s name?” she said, semiwhispering. In the background: Bert Saginaw droning about good jobs for good people, thumping his fist in his bargain-basement MLK imitation.

  “You thought you had Shep whipped,” I said. “And maybe you did. But he wasn’t too whipped to make his own little copy of the pics and stash them away.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  I sighed. People lie even when you’ve got them dead to rights. “Where are you?”

  “Dedham.”

  “Get yourself here to the Escutcheon war room,” I said. “I don’t care how. Make an excuse. You and me can settle this thing.” I left Savvy out on purpose—thought the mention might spook Emily. Better to let her think she could con her way out of the mess.

  Emily thought for a few seconds. “It’ll take a while in this snow.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Click.

  I sat and waited and looked out the window. Smiled some, thinking about Savvy Kane and snow. In Virginia, she’d grown up accustomed to one four-inch storm per year, and she thought that was plenty. Had refused to adjust when she moved up here. Never owned anything heavier than an Irish wool sweater, swiped my coat and gloves whenever the temp dropped. I could still see her sliding my work boots, which she could nearly camp out in, through slush on her way to the convenience store for Old Golds and coffee and a newspaper.

  She was something.

  I wondered what to do about Emily Saginaw. And stopped
smiling. Couldn’t tell her to leave town, as I had Shep.

  Take her to the cops?

  Wait until after the election, then take her to the cops?

  No and no, for the same reason I hadn’t hauled Shep to Wu: Betsy Tinker would be hurt more than anybody. The dirty pics would be everywhere. Tinker didn’t deserve that. She was a rich lady who felt entitled to a whole hell of a lot, but she hadn’t done anything worse than hop in the sack with guys she wasn’t proud to associate with.

  When in doubt, call Randall.

  “Make it good and make it short,” he said when he picked up. “I am cuddling by a fire with a beautiful woman. A California Cabernet, some Wes Montgomery, and a dandy view of the season’s first nor’easter.” Background: jazz guitar, giggling.

  “Here’s the problem,” I said. I explained.

  Once I got started, the music volume dropped and the giggling faded. When Randall spoke, he sounded different—had gone to a smaller room, maybe, to be alone. “Here’s what I don’t want you to do,” he said in a harsh half-whisper. “Don’t do anything stupid. No matter what you learn from Emily, don’t go into your one-man posse routine. Promise me.”

  I said nothing.

  “Call the police. Hell, call them now. If they’re there when she shows up, that’s perfect. They’ll keep you from flipping out. Let them deal with Emily.”

  “So many people get hurt that way.”

  “Tough! That’s how the big ugly world works.”

  I said nothing.

  “Promise me, Conway—”

  I clicked off.

  When she walked into the room, I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Emily said, “Who are you, Hercule Fucking Poirot? Planning to wheedle an abject confession out of me?”

  “I don’t know who Hercule Poirot is,” I said, closing the door behind her.

  Emily Saginaw surprised me then: She laughed.

  It was an exhausted, nothing’s-really-funny, twenty-hours-into-a-twenty-four-hour-drive laugh, but still.

  She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “What now, O Dramatic One? Are you going to call a news conference and explain to the breathless media how you cracked the case? Are you going to ruin the lives of Bert and poor old saggy-tits Betsy Tinker? Am I to be frog-marched past a hundred TV cameras to await the trial of the century?”

  “I thought about that,” I said, “but it doesn’t work. It wipes out the wrong people.”

  “Those people being?”

  “Betsy Tinker, for one. She shouldn’t be humiliated just because she got drunk and screwed a guy. And then there’s your brother. He’s a harmless gasbag. I’ve known a dozen like him. Got lucky, got rich, thinks it makes him a genius.”

  “You bet he got lucky,” Emily said, bumping a thumb to her chest. “He got me for a sister.”

  Cork: popped. Good. I made a skeptical face to keep her rolling.

  “Bert’s a decent front man,” she said, looking more than ever like her brother as her eyebrows formed an angry V, “and he could sell iPads to Quakers, that much I’ll give him. But for product plans, schedules, targets—anything demanding even a whiff of organization—he is one dim bulb, not to put too fine a point on it. Always has been, always will be.”

  “Somebody told me you were his secret weapon.”

  “Bet your sweet ass I was! The plain-Jane sister from Fort Collins. Gal Friday, never much luck with men, never much luck with life, just good old Em typing up memos for brilliant Bert.”

  Push. Keep her rolling, don’t let her settle down. “If you were the brains,” I said, “how come Bert went belly-up twice before the fence biz worked out?”

  It worked. Maybe it worked too well. Maybe something in her head broke. “Don’t you blame those clusterfucks on me!” she screamed. “I tried to bail his ass out! I wanted to make nice with that Euro-turd flooring company! I begged him not to sign anything without running it past our lawyers! Bert, old high-wide-and-handsome Bert, patted me on the head and did whatever the hell he wanted. Both times, I might add, he was trying to impress broads. God forbid we listen to our sister when we’re trying to bed down some sweet little gash!”

  That was a good-enough segue. “What happened when Savvy Kane rolled into town?” I said.

  “Besides Bert thinking with his cock, as usual, and making goo-goo eyes at her? Kane was a tough one to figure out. I’d known all about her, of course, from way back when. She topped the list of possible bimbo eruptions. We were ready to pay her off and send her on her way…”

  “But?”

  “But didn’t she shock the hell out of everybody,” Emily said, “by being a little sweetheart. Didn’t want a thing, she kept claiming.”

  “The way I heard it, Vernon put her up to all this. She was ready to settle down in Level Cross and be Mrs. Blaine Lee.”

  “True enough,” Emily said, her eyes dancing in a way I didn’t like. “But do you know why she had to go along with Vernon? Do you know what his lever was?”

  “She slept with him,” I said, “and he threatened to tell Blaine, which would have crushed the kid. How’d you know that?”

  “Vernon and I became partners.”

  “You and Vernon. You and Shep. Hell, you and your brother. You’re a busy gal.”

  “I spotted him following campaign staff around in his ridiculous SUV with out-of-state plates,” Emily said. “Clever like a dancing bear, he was. I had the plate traced and figured out who he was, then introduced myself.”

  “And told him to switch plates before somebody else figured him out, too.”

  She nodded. “By then, it was clear not only that Savvy Kane had no plans to blackmail Bert, but that she was ready and willing to interfere with my plan. Mine and Shep’s. I don’t know how or when, but the little twat must have heard us talking, because after a meeting at Betsy Tinker’s home, idiot Shep confessed to me that a set of pictures had been lifted from his room.”

  And stashed under the seat of Blaine’s car. “That’s when Vernon became useful to you,” I said. “You signed him on to get the pics back.”

  “A task he set about with typical grace and stealth.” While Emily spoke, she began to move her feet like she was marching in place. Her shoulders rolled. Her fists clenched and unclenched. I flashed back to the gym in the Framingham house, Bert and Em working out. Remembered how fit she was, how much energy she’d showed that day.

  As usual, Randall had been right. Calling in the cops would be the right move.

  But it wasn’t the move I wanted to make. Not with the woman who helped kill Savvy Kane standing right in front of me.

  I felt a pulse in my temple. My breathing sped up. I pictured myself reaching for Emily Saginaw’s neck.

  That pulse in my temple, the squiggly vein that would be sticking out. An ugly vein. Peripheral vision going away, red mist setting in …

  I fought it.

  I breathed myself out of it. A shrink in a detox taught me how. Long time ago.

  Emily Saginaw marched in place, fighting her demons while I fought mine.

  I beat mine. For now.

  I pulled my cell.

  “No!” Emily said, screaming from deep in her throat. Her eyes damn near rolling around in her head now, she whirled, spotted a chair behind her. The chair was no lightweight: stout base, four casters on chrome spokes, steel frame. But she picked it up like it was made of paper, one fist on each of its arms.

  She growled, truly growled, and began to spin like a discus thrower.

  One of the chair’s casters whipped past my temple, close enough for me to feel a breeze.

  Instinct took over: I hit the deck, rolled beneath the giant surfboard-shaped table. Dropped my phone in the process.

  Emily spun once more and let fly the chair. It would’ve creamed me if I’d still been standing. Instead it flew a full eight feet and crashed, casters first, through the window-wall.

  I rolled from beneath the t
able, knowing I ought to wrap up Emily before she grabbed the next chair.

  But stopped.

  She had broken like the window.

  She slumped against the table, hands over her eyes, sobbing.

  Wind-whistle from the window-wall. Big snowflakes coming in.

  I watched them while Emily Saginaw sobbed.

  I kept an ear cocked. If the volunteers sitting forty feet away had heard the window break, they weren’t doing much about it.

  “Of all the gin joints,” Emily said, huffing a laugh against her tears.

  I looked a question at her.

  “Don’t you see it?” she said. “Shep and I had it nailed. If the next guy Betsy Tinker had decided to bang had been anybody but Bert, the election would be in the bag and we’d all be counting down hours til sweet Betsy resigned for unspecified personal reasons.”

  “And then Bert would be governor.”

  “Yes.”

  “And soon he’d be president.”

  She looked at me from the corner of a bloodshot eye. “You’re patronizing me. What else did Shep tell you?”

  “Enough,” I said. “Everything he knew. Emily?”

  She sniffled.

  “Bert was never going to be president of the United States.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Bert was never going to be governor, either.”

  “Shut up!” Emily swiveled and hopped as she said it, and then she was sitting on the giant table.

  Then she was standing on it.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Shut up!” she said, kicking one of her shoes at my head. Damn near hit me, too.

  She giggled.

  More than anything she’d done, the giggle tipped me. It was a five-year-old’s sound.

  “Hey now,” I said, moving toward her like she was a chipmunk I wanted to feed a peanut. “Settle down now.” I needed to get close enough to grab an ankle. Jesus, hadn’t anybody heard the window break? I could use a hand.

  “Shut up!” she said in the five-year-old’s voice, and launched her other shoe at me. While I ducked, she took two quick steps toward the shattered window-wall, sliding on stocking feet.

  Behind Emily, snow blew in and turned to water droplets on the table.