Little White Lies

by Ace Atkins

  “Instruction,” Hawk said.

  “Dance or tap?”

  “Tap, tap, tap,” he said. “Gun work. Busting heads.”

  “Might need to split up for a while.”

  “Bliss offer me room and board out on the range,” he said. “Says he got a new crew of folks needed breaking in. That’s what they do out there. They make a lot of dough training city folks for the impending end of America. I don’t know how the gunrunning figures into it. Working on it.”

  On TV, Shane rode up to the old homestead. Jean Arthur looked worried.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I didn’t ask you,” Hawk said. “This woman Connie a friend of yours. A friend of Susan.”

  “Friend may be too strong a word,” I said. “She was our client.”

  “All the same.”

  “You find out Bliss’s deal with Wells?”

  “Not yet,” Hawk said.

  “From everything I see, the church is run by this preacher,” I said. “Josiah Ridgeway. He and Wells are in cahoots. They tell the church they’re raising funds for Christian freedom fighters in the Middle East.”

  “Instead they raising money to buy guns and flip ’em up north,” Hawk said. “Josiah. Bless his old heart.”

  “Looks like the Crypt-Keeper mated with Lionel Barrymore.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Lots of music,” I said. “Lots of hugging.”

  “Any black folk?”

  “Plenty,” I said. “You know, your people sure can sing.”

  “Swing low,” Hawk said, singing in a decent Paul Robeson. “Sweet chariot.”

  “I’ll pull some corporate records tomorrow,” I said. “See how Wells, the church, and the gunrunning to Boston all shakes out.”

  “And talk to your boy Tedy?”

  “The number I have isn’t good,” I said. “Might have to drive up his way and track him down.”

  “Figure if Wells wants you gone, he’ll employ Bliss,” Hawk said. “He put Bliss in motion, I’ll be there to stop him.”

  “You really do like me.”

  “I ain’t telling Susan that I’m bringing your ass home in a carry-on.”

  “I’ll find Tedy,” I said. “Wells will want me gone fast.”

  “Folks around here know his real story?”

  “I’m sure he’s conned plenty of locals, too.”

  “Guess the small shit don’t matter,” Hawk said. “Only if he killed Miss Kelly.”

  “If he didn’t, he’ll know who,” I said. “And he’ll definitely be part of the why.”

  “You got all the shit figured out.”

  “How’s the champagne?”

  “Mother’s milk.”

  I drank some beer. The television flickered images from Shane across the spare hotel room. It was nearly the part where Shane and Van Heflin get into a big scrap. Soon horses would be spooked, water troughs overturned, and fences busted. The kid would watch with wide eyes as he finally saw some spunk from his old man.

  “I’m not sure I like this plan,” I said. “Lots of ways to blindside us.”

  “You got something better?”

  “Nope.”

  Hawk didn’t say anything. He sipped on the champagne, grinning when Shane socked Van Heflin in the jaw. At midnight, I walked over and turned off the TV. Hawk had fallen asleep with the glass in his hand.

  As I reached for it, his hand shot out and snatched me by the wrist. A big .44 Magnum pulled from under a pillow. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he recognized me.

  “Only me, friend,” I said. “Only me.”

  I took the glass, washed it in the sink, and returned to bed. When I returned, Hawk lay facing the door. The trucks and cars zipped along the cold interstate outside the window.

  43

  I was shocked Wells wasn’t at the church office the next morning. So I told a secretary I would wait.

  Not long after, two large men came into the room and asked me to leave. These were not the men I’d met before. They were new and not at all friendly. They had freakish large muscles bulging from identical blue polo shirts with a Greater Faith logo and cross on the breast. The secretary offered to call the local cops. The men just stood there and tried out tough-guy looks.

  “Pastor Wells asked me to meet him this morning,” I said. “He’s going to try and work me into Sunday’s show. I’m a juggler.”

  No one smiled.

  “Juggling for Christ,” I said. “Pastor Wells knows a thing or two about keeping his balls in the air.”

  I walked back to my rental and searched for records on his wife, Patrice Wells. My exhaustive Google search yielded an address in less than five seconds. I routed my car in that direction and set the phone on the dash. Sleuthing with Google just didn’t seem fair.

  Wells and his family lived in an upscale McMansion community about ten miles from the church. The tract homes had been built around a golf course and large recreational facility. Nearly all the homes looked the same. A light stone façade, tall pitched roof, and bay windows. Many of the homes had three- or four-car garages. I spotted several walkers, a few joggers, and some couples zipping around on golf carts. The neighborhood seemed very golf cart–friendly.

  I parked outside the Wellses’ house and rang the doorbell. Wells must’ve seen me from a window. He opened the door before my finger had left the buzzer.

  “Good morning, Pastor.”

  “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing,” he said. “This isn’t the time or place.”

  “Not at the church,” I said. “Not at your home. Not last night. Not this morning. I’m beginning to think you don’t want to talk with me.”

  “Not now.”

  “Not in a boat,” I said. “Not with a goat.”

  “My wife is here,” he said. “And my young daughters. This is my private residence.”

  I looked at him. “It’s the middle of the day,” I said. “Do I need to inform the local truant officer?”

  “My children are homeschooled.”

  “You had two men waiting to brace me at the church,” I said. “This is as good a time as any to talk. Tell your wife we’re going to sit outside and have a Bible study. We’re going to talk redemption the hard way.”

  “Are you mocking what I do?”

  “You?” I said. “Yes. Very much.”

  “I can’t speak about Connie,” he said. “Under advisement of my attorney.”

  “I bet I can change your mind.”

  Wells turned his back to me and walked into the house. But left the door wide open. I followed. The giant room was cavernous, with snow-white carpeting but oddly bare of furniture or decoration. A bluish couch, a TV hung over a fireplace, some dolls with slack jaws lying on the floor. An open space near the kitchen stood wide open, no dining room table or chairs. Nothing on the walls. There were many dirty plates and glasses in and around the sink. I heard kids yelling upstairs.

  He offered me a coffee. I accepted and followed, cup in hand, to the backyard patio looking out onto the edge of a pine forest. Even with his new inky hair, Wells seemed too old to have such young children.

  “You must understand my position,” he said. “My work, my life elsewhere, is very separate from my home and family here.”

  “And you must understand mine,” I said. “Your lover and my client was found dead. I’m down here to find out why. And get her money back.”

  “She fired you,” he said. “And her money is hardly an issue anymore. Not after she killed herself. What does it matter?”

  “Three hundred grand,” I said. “Not a penny more. Not a penny less.”

  “You’re joking,” he said. “She’s gone. She took her own life. There are much greater concerns than money.”

  “Nope,” I said. “To
be paid to the charity where Connie worked for three years. Jumpstart. In your case, I’d prefer a cashier’s check.”

  “She invested two hundred and sixty thousand in the Concord project,” he said. “When it crashed, we all lost our money. I am not responsible. If you’d like to see a contract, I will speak to my attorney.”

  “Extra is for interest,” I said. “And you’re going to tell me what happened.”

  “She was very depressed,” he said. “She’d been drinking and making threats. I didn’t even know she owned a gun. Why would you think I’m responsible?”

  “Wells,” I said. “The only thing I think of you is not much. You are a B-movie flimflam man. You’ve made a living telling people you were a SEAL and a spy. And now a man of God. None of it’s true.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “You don’t know a damn thing about me. Or my faith.”

  “I don’t care if you were Vietnam’s Audie Murphy,” I said. “Or the evil spawn of the Moral Majority. What happened to Connie Kelly? Who killed her and why?”

  Wells placed both hands over where his heart would have been. He had on a gray cardigan over a plain button-down. He’d recently shaved and his newly brown hair had been parted neatly to the side. He had on tortoiseshell glasses in an attempt to appear studious.

  “I was no longer with her.”

  “So she moved South for the fresh air and fine country living?”

  He looked to a sliding glass door. His wife, Patrice, stared back behind the glass. She had on black pants and a long black sweater that stretched to her knees. Her arms were crossed over her chest. Wells held up a hand to her and turned back to me. “You knew her,” he said. “She could be quite emotional and prone to making rash decisions. I told her I no longer in good conscience could be with her.”

  “God bless you, Pastor.”

  “She came down on her own,” he said. “By the time she found me, she’d already quit her job and rented an apartment. I told her there was no way I was leaving my wife. She told me that it didn’t matter. She said she’d have me any way she could get me.”

  “True love.”

  “She was too young for me,” he said. “I know that. I was overstressed trying to make the business in Boston work. The Concord project was falling apart. John Gredoni had turned on me. What I did was wrong. I am not a perfect man. I know that. But now it’s between me and my God. I have asked for forgiveness.”

  “And what did He say?”

  “Someone like you can’t understand,” he said. “My faith is very important to me, Spenser. You can mock me and mock my church. But you’re crossing the line when you talk about my very true and close personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”

  “I haven’t met Jesus yet,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure he’d think you were a creep.”

  Wells took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Slipping them back on, he looked as if he were seeing me for the first time. “When I learned Connie was dead, I hadn’t seen her for weeks,” he said. “We never had anything going down here. I never touched her. Our physical relationship was in the past. I give you my word.”

  “You never visited her apartment?”

  “No,” he said. “Of course not. I don’t even know where she lived.”

  “Yeah. You did.”

  “Why would you think someone killed her?” he said. “The police said it was a suicide.”

  “Because she was about to out you and your frauds,” I said. “Not only to your wife, but to your church down here and the good ol’ Reverend Josiah.”

  “Reverend Ridgeway?” he said. “Do you think I haven’t confided in my own pastor about my failures? He knows everything. Connie tried to poison my relationship with the church. She called him incessantly. Go ahead, tell him. He knows far worse things about me than you do.”

  It was bright and sunny and cold that morning. The flagstone patio was nearly covered in scattered leaves. Plastic toys and rusted bicycles lay haphazardly in the back lawn. A small pink plastic playhouse stood with an open door to the empty forest behind it. I drank some coffee and waited for more of the growing list of lies from Wells.

  “You do realize a military record is easy to check?”

  “Not mine.”

  “Really?”

  “In 1968, I was recruited into a very special, very secret program right out of the University of Georgia. It was another time. Things were chaotic.”

  “And here I thought you were a Harvard man.”

  “I went to Harvard some years later, for graduate studies.”

  “Harvard has no record of you.”

  “Much of my life has been about disappearing,” Wells said, trying his best to pass on an understanding smile. “I have eliminated much of my life before I met my wife. She and my children are top priority for me. What I have to do is all for them. I am first and foremost a husband and a father. My work as a pastor is a calling.”

  “Jesus.”

  Wells rubbed his face with frustration. “How can I explain this to some liberal Yankee who has no idea about what I stand for?”

  His face had grown red. I leaned in very close to Wells, maybe a foot from his nose. “I know about your business with Brother Bliss,” I said. “I know about the gun deals with John Gredoni.”

  “Bliss isn’t connected with the church.”

  “Nope.”

  “My work with him is separate,” he said. “OCS is a special group, doing very special things. I help raise money for them. But it’s not affiliated with the church.”

  “Why Connie?”

  “I loved her,” he said. “I loved her, Spenser.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “You won’t leave this alone,” he said. “Will you?”

  “You’re just now getting that?”

  “Connie was crazy. She could not let me go. When she couldn’t have me, she—”

  “She what?”

  Wells swallowed. I looked inside the house and pretended to wave to his wife.

  “Goddamn it.”

  “Goodness gracious,” I said.

  “Who you see here is me,” he said. “Simple old Mike Wells from Conyers, Georgia. Please give me a chance to be with my family. Give me a chance to make up for horrible things I did when I was with the Agency. I’m so sorry for what happened to Connie. But I had to walk away. I had to make things right.”

  At any moment, I expected Rod Serling to step into the picture and announce, “Beyond this door is another dimension.”

  “This is more than a waste of time,” I said. “It’s performance art. I’m not even sure if you know the difference between fantasy and reality.”

  “Connie killed herself,” he said. “Sometimes things are just exactly as they seem.”

  “How can you see through the smoke and mirrors?”

  Wells didn’t answer. He just stared out beyond the pink playhouse and deep into the pine forest, hand over his mouth, with thoughts perhaps even God didn’t know.

  44

  Mike Wells?” the big woman said. “Of course I know him. I’ve lived here most of my life and have run this paper for the last ten years.”

  We were in the office of Mrs. Betty McCullough, editor and publisher of The Rockdale Citizen. When all else fails, contact the local muckrakers for the skinny. I found the office in a little yellow house on Main Street where I presented my card. McCullough seemed to be halfway impressed to meet with a big-city snoop like myself. She sized me up like a hungry dog following a Christmas ham.

  “What’s he into now?” McCullough said.

  “I was hoping you might tell me.”

  McCullough was a stout woman in her early sixties with stylishly cut red hair and clear blue eyes. She had on a black blouse with designs of birds, numerous bracelets on both wrists, and a large wedding ring. T
he office smelled like perfume and cigarettes.

  “Are you asking about all this spy nonsense?” she said. “He’s been telling that story since he came here ten years ago. He was selling used cars over at the Ford dealership. People around here ate up the story. He was a frequent speaker for the Kiwanis. Wanted me to do a story on him, but he could never prove what he said.”

  “And a veteran?”

  “He marches in all the parades,” she said. “Goes to the VFW and talks Vietnam. Some people believe him. Idiots. I think it’s absolutely shameful. My father was in Korea. I know what that man went through. You in the service?”

  I nodded.

  “When?”

  I told her. It had been a while. But not as long as some might believe.

  “Then you know what I mean.”

  “When did he get on with the church?” I said.

  “Oh, he’s been with the church since Ridgeway rolled his traveling medicine show into town,” she said. “Have you met Josiah Ridgeway?”

  “I heard him preach last night,” I said. “I guess I need to make room for more love in my heart.”

  “Ha,” she said, reaching across her desk for a pack of cigarettes and a BIC lighter. She lit one up, stood, and opened a side window. The cold air rushed into the room, fluttering the many papers on her desk. “And a bigger wallet. He’s a piece of work, too. But if I were to write a column about what I really think about Ridgeway, they’d run me out of town on a rail. Publicly, he welcomes minorities. Privately, he’s a racist bastard.”

  “Popular?”

  “And powerful,” she said. “Why are you down here anyway?”

  “The woman who was found dead last week,” I said. “She was my client.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Of course. Connie Kelly. Lived in some apartments outside town. I tried to do a little bit more on that story. But no one seemed to know her. She didn’t have a job or any connections to Conyers. The police wouldn’t give me any information on her family up north. You think she’s tied in with Greater Faith?”

  “She’s tied in with Wells,” I said. “And the church. But I don’t understand what a big church like Greater Faith has to do with some military training facility and private hired guns.”