I did. And how.
* * *
Without my pals the poll flunkies, I wouldn’t have gotten within fifty yards of the Escutcheon ballroom that night.
It was nine thirty, two hours after my phone’s alarm woke me—barely—in Floriano’s basement. I’d taken the world’s longest, hottest shower, scrambled a half-dozen eggs, washed them down with a quart of orange juice, and dug my only sport coat from my duffel. It smelled like a middle-school gym locker. Oh well.
So here I was for the political wingding.
And a hell of a wingding it’d be, according to news radio. The polls hadn’t been closed thirty seconds when the Associated Press and all the networks projected Betsy Tinker as the new governor of Massachusetts, winning something like 53 percent to 46 percent—amazing, the talking heads said, considering the race had been too close to call just a day ago. The last-minute swing could be explained only by sympathy for Bert Saginaw’s tragic loss.
Everybody loves a winner, so cops were checking credentials to make sure the hotel’s grand ballroom filled only with pols, donors, and volunteers. I milled around until I spotted the boy-genius poll-jockey, the one whose head I’d threatened to bounce off a wall. I approached him. I told him what I needed. He started to speak. He looked in my eyes.
He gave me his badge and lanyard.
In the massive room, the vibe was weird and wild, a frat party crossed with a wedding reception. Classic rock blared, but so did CNN from one huge screen and MSNBC from another. It was a big election night all over the country, but the networks kept coming back to the Tinker-Saginaw fall-and-rise story. And each time they did, the room went nuts. Balloons, a little white-bread dancing, I-love-you-mans here and there as dudes got drunk.
Like that.
Me: stunned, sore, out of place. Hadn’t had half the sleep my body needed, so I chugged black coffee and swayed on my feet.
And planned.
Worked my way to the stage, for starters. Eyeballed its wings, figured out where the big winners would make their entrance. Without asking permission, I hopped onstage and walked around, trying to look like a technician. Nobody questioned me. So I walked stage right and stood near a pair of double doors. From what I knew of the hotel layout, this was the place to be.
At ten, the room went extra crazy. I looked up at a giant screen and figured out Thomas Wilton was giving his concession speech. Couldn’t hear a word of it. Which was plenty.
I waited. After ten minutes, a state cop poked his head in the double doors, looked both ways, seemed satisfied, and closed the doors. In the room, buzz built.
I moved to the double doors.
Krall came in first, flat triumph on his face.
The triumph went away when he spotted me. It was like he’d hit a glass wall—flunkies on his tail banged right into him.
Then, a pro through and through, he recovered. “Such a day,” he said, hands on hips. “Such a … week. Triumph and tragedy.”
“Good title,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“For the book you’ll write about this clusterfuck.”
His face changed. He tugged my forearm, pulled me away from the door. Flunkies came through, bigfooting, telling everyone to clear a path.
“Books are for losers,” Krall said. “I’ll work til I’m eighty off this campaign, and I’ll pull top dollar.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that.
So I punched him in the kidney as hard as I could.
“Umph,” Krall said, sagging.
“You suck blood,” I said. “Now you can piss it, too.”
“Urph,” Krall said.
I stepped close. “If Maria Mendes ever has even a whiff of trouble with the immigration people,” I said in his ear, “I will drive to your house and beat you to death.”
“Hmph,” Krall said.
“They’re all waiting for you,” I said.
He walked away, I’ll give him that. He walked funny, but he walked on stage.
The flunkies had cleared a path for Betsy Tinker. Before she even hit the stage, people spotted her in the wings and went crazy. Cheering, stomping, whistling, chanting. Tinker caught people’s eyes, shrugged, made aw-shucks waves … the works. She did all the right things. They came naturally to her. Betsy Tinker would be fine.
Shoulders back, she strode to the center of the stage. A bunch of preppy-looking twentysomethings piled in—her kids, had to be—along with a couple of perfect little grandbabies who raised a big Awwwwwww from the room.
Krall stood in back, with flunkies and low-rent pols. He didn’t look so good.
Finally, Bert Saginaw came through the double doors. He spotted me. I moved toward him. A statie started to block, but Saginaw waved him away and let me pull him to the same corner where I’d punched Krall.
“You’re going to be lieutenant governor,” I said. Just about had to holler for all the noise.
“I am indeed,” he said. “And I want to thank you for your assistance. Wouldn’t be here without you, Conway.”
He said it like a robot. He was already morphing into a genuine politician.
“My friend Moe once told me something funny about that,” I said.
He waited.
I took my time, remembering, making sure I got the line right. “He said if the vice presidency’s not worth a bucket of warm piss, what’s lieutenant governor of Massachusetts worth?”
Tight smile. “I’m happy to serve any way I can.”
“That’s good. Because you know what you’re going to do?”
“What’s that?”
I leaned forward, cupped a hand to his ear. “You’re going to do your four years. You’re going to be the best goddamn lieutenant governor in the country. You’ll cut ribbons when they open strip malls, you’ll give Kiwanis speeches every Tuesday, you’ll throw out the first pitch at high school baseball games in Gardner.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“You’ll be second banana. The closest you’ll ever come to the spotlight is talking to fourth graders when they take field trips to the State House.”
“I believe this conversation is over.”
“What you won’t do,” I said, “you won’t climb any higher on the ladder. Ever. Four years as second banana, grinning and bearing it, and then you say you’ve had enough. Say you’re going back to Saginaw Fence. Hell, say you want to spend more time with your family. Isn’t that what they always say?”
“The fuck’s this about, Sax?”
“I thought it through,” I said. “Had a long drive, figured it out. If I could hurt you worse without hurting Tinker, I would. I’d tell the whole weirdo story about Emily and Shep and Vernon Lee and dirty pictures and red dots and double-crosses and triple-crosses. Time I was finished, even you would be ashamed of yourself.”
The chants for Tinker were fragmenting. Everybody on stage was looking our way, impatient for Saginaw. Three staties hovered, waiting for a signal from Saginaw to give me the bum’s rush.
The expression that came to his puss was half-smile, half-sneer. “Looks like you’ve got a problem, Sir Fucking Galahad. See, you can’t get me without getting Tinker. So I guess I’ll just go ahead and do exactly what I want to do.”
“’Fraid not, Saginaw. Lieutenant governor. One term as second banana, and then you’re done. With a girl for a boss, no less. From what I’ve learned about you, it’s going to be a lousy four years.”
“What are you gonna do, though? Tell some reporter a fairy tale? Who’d believe a convicted killer, Sax?”
“They wouldn’t believe me,” I said. “But they’d believe the pictures.”
The smirk vanished. In the hall, momentum was dying. Betsy Tinker looked pissed.
A state cop was walking our way.
“I kept a set,” I said. “And I made a few copies. Anything happens to me, the photos go to three separate news organizations.” That wasn’t true, but I did have a plan: Lacross would get a copy of the photos. Neither o
f us exactly trusted the other, and neither could release the pics without heavy personal repercussions. It was perfect.
I clapped Bert Saginaw on the shoulder and said, “Go get ’em, Loot.”
The crowd gave him a nice hand.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
I knocked on the door a long time. Felt, rather than heard, hallway footsteps. Then a porch light went on. I took a step back, made myself visible.
Nothing happened for a while.
Then a dead bolt shifted. The door opened four inches.
Charlene looked at me. She said nothing.
“Of the past forty hours,” I said, “I spent twenty-four driving.”
“You look it.”
“You know I think when I drive. I got to think a lot.”
She said nothing.
“Can I come in?”
She paused half a beat, then stepped back. She wore a sweatshirt, flannel pants, fluffy slippers.
I stepped into the hall, closed the door behind me.
From the great room, far to my right, came election-coverage sounds.
Charlene folded her arms. “What conclusions did you reach during your drive-a-thon?”
“This was where I wanted to be.”
She said nothing.
“This was the only place I wanted to be.” During the drive, I’d planned to say a lot more. Had put together a pretty good speech.
I couldn’t remember any of it.
“You chose a dead girl over me.”
“I didn’t.”
We stood. A light went on in the upstairs hall. Charlene didn’t notice—her back was to it.
“In my more reasonable moments,” she said, “I know you didn’t. But it feels like you did.”
“It was Barnburner stuff.”
“Which you will continue to do.”
This was the part I’d feared during the long drive.
“Yes,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, taking a small step toward me. “You’re not the only one who’s been thinking. I’m not Martha Stewart. I’m not Henrietta Homemaker.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“My daughters do all right by me. All things considered.”
“They do.”
Charlene looked up. Her eyes locked mine. “Can we?”
“We can try.”
Then it was my turn to take a small step.
And wrap arms around her.
We stood that way a good long while.
I began to shake.
I guess Charlene thought I was crying. “It’s okay—” she began. Then: “What’s so funny?”
I turned her gently so she could see what I’d already spotted: Sophie’s head hanging from the second-floor landing, an upside-down grin plastered to it.
I looked at Charlene looking at her daughter.
Laugh lines.
Also by Steve Ulfelder
Purgatory Chasm
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Ulfelder is an amateur race-car driver and co-owner of Flatout Motorsports, a company that builds race cars in Bellingham, Massachusetts. He was a business and technology journalist for twenty years. In addition to trade and automotive magazines, he wrote for The Boston Globe, Boston magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many others. His first novel, Purgatory Chasm, was an Edgar Award Finalist. Visit Steve online at www.ulfelder.com.
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.
THE WHOLE LIE. Copyright © 2012 by Steve Ulfelder. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Ervin Serrano
Cover photographs by Shutterstock
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Ulfelder, Steve.
The whole lie / Steve Ulfelder.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-60454-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-0242-1 (e-book)
1. Automobile mechanics—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3621.L435 W47 2012
813'.6—dc22
2012005473
e-ISBN 9781466802421
First Edition: May 2012
The Whole Lie Page 28