The Whole Lie (10 page)

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 the 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.

Not again.

Not this time.

Now she was a body.
The
body, to Wu.

He must have been watching me close, because when he spoke again he sounded damn near sympathetic. “You knew her. Well?”

“Once.” Long pause. “How'd she die?”

“Fell off an air conditioner. Landed bad, broke her neck.”

“What do you mean, fell off an air conditioner?”

“Industrial unit. The size of a rail car, a full story tall.”

“But what was she doing on it? Hell, what was she doing
there
? In Charlestown? Makes no sense.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What is it to you? To you cops, I mean. Accident or murder?”

“Homicide investigation for now,” Wu said. “But it's shaping up like an accident. No evidence to the contrary. Nobody saw nothing.”

“What about fingerprints? Footprints?”

“All that good
C.S.I.
shit?” He shrugged, half-smiled. “Construction guys in and out of there all day. Then kids at night, drinking, screwing around.”

Now was the time to give up the Expedition guy.

I said nothing. Put my head in my hands.

No way. No damn way is Savannah Kane dead.

I'd seen her at her worst. I'd seen her at her best. I'd never seen anybody more alive.

*   *   *

Sixteen years ago, Owensboro, Kentucky. We took that Triumph Bonneville and flew from the cop and the bikers. We went on a tear, me and Savvy.

South to Bowling Green, where we bought scissors, a disposable razor, and hair dye at a Flying J truck stop. Savvy had me choose the dye.

“Don't matter to me,” I said. “I'm shaving my head.”

“Pick for me then.”

I looked at the rack. I chose black.

“But my hair's black
now.
”

“Make it blacker.”

She laughed.

Man did I like that laugh.

We slipped into a coin-operated shower together. We cut and dyed her hair, shaved mine, got good and clean.

Then we made love.

It'd been awhile for me. Whiskey, speed, and road-bum paranoia had pushed sex low on my priorities totem pole.

Savannah Kane pushed it back to the top.

And how.

Once I got going, it seemed neither of us could stop. Used up most of the hot water at the Flying J before we staggered out of the shower.

“Will you do something for me, Conway?” Savvy said as we walked through rows of big rigs toward the bike, holding hands like we were at the prom.

“Anything.” I meant it.

She slipped a small wad from the back pocket of her jeans, tucked it in my fist. “You want to dig us up a little something?”

I knew what she meant. “Up or down?” I said. “Asleep or awake?”

“Either way,” she said. “I just need …
something.
Anything. Big old place like this, somebody must be holding.”

Off I went.

I scored.

We gobbled truck-stop speed. We gassed up the bike. We slashed west.

When false dawn hit, we were outside Paducah. Even behind shitty speed and occasional slugs from a pint of Wild Turkey, we understood that a motorcycle stolen from a working cop would be a big damn deal. I pulled into a motel that looked to have sufficiently low standards, paid nineteen of Savvy's dollars for a room around back, and trundled the Bonneville right in the door.

“Heh,” I said, killing the bike.

“Sleepy,” Savvy said. She launched herself from the bike to the sagging bed, and I swear she was asleep before she landed, truck-stop speed be damned.

Not me: I felt like I'd be awake three eyeball-jangling days.

I sighed, set the Triumph on its kickstand, stretched, grabbed a towel from the bathroom. It was as big as a wanted poster and not much thicker. Just for something to do, I set about cleaning the bike. Checked fluid levels, wiped bugs from the headlight, then began to polish.

What a beautiful machine. It was a T120, which made it damn old, but it'd been restored by an amateur who knew what he was doing and loved the bike. Only some lumpiness in the seat made it look less than factory-perfect.

The lumpy seat bugged me. I began working the leather cover, trying to get the padding beneath to set just right. (Why? Mechanic's instinct and shitty speed. I shouldn't have to say more.) I kneaded it this way and that but couldn't get the padding quite right. I grew frustrated, grabbed the cover with both hands, tried to roll it back so I could reset the padding.

I rolled it back all right.

And found out why everything was slightly off.

My mouth made an O.

After a minute or two I tried to wake Savannah. It wasn't easy—she'd begun a little kitty-cat snore already. I had to rock her pretty hard.

“Whumpf? Humph?” she said, blinking, finally focusing on me. “The
fuck,
dude?”

“You need to take a look at this.” I pointed.

She blinked a few more times. Hard to blame her. It's not every day you wake up in a motel outside Paducah with a motorcycle eight inches from your feet.

Then she spotted it. She took in a sharp breath. “Dude.” She flipped around, crawled to the foot of the bed, pressed a thick clear plastic bag, then another. “Is this? Are these?”

“It is,” I said. “They are.”

Four plastic-wrapped packets of hundred-dollar bills.

And four of cocaine.

*   *   *

After the Barnburner meeting, Charlene followed me to her place. Her one-car garage is full of junk, so we both park in the driveway. I leaned on my fender, waited for her to climb from her Volvo SUV.

She did, then came around and leaned on
her
fender. We faced each other, our toes no more than a foot apart, each with arms folded across our chests. Our breath-clouds collided.

“It's hard to know how to feel,” Charlene said. “All the way here I practiced saying ‘I'm sorry Savvy is gone.' I couldn't do it. I couldn't sell it even to myself.”

“I get it.”

“No you don't,” she said. A little too sharp, a little too quick. “You
love
her, Conway. Some little part, some little corner of you loves her. She was something to you that I can't be. You never talk about it, because you never talk about anything, but…”

I wanted to admit Charlene was right, at least partly. But I didn't want it to hurt when I said it. I couldn't figure out how to do both.

So I said nothing.

“What was she to you?” Charlene said. “What corner of you does she own? How can I own it?”

She was pleading, or damn near. I'd never heard her do that.

Quiet.

“We didn't … do anything,” I said. “Not this time, I mean. She wanted to, but we didn't.”

Charlene flicked a hand. “I know. You wouldn't have been able to hide it.”

Jesus,
everybody
read me like a book.

“Savvy didn't own any part of me,” I said. “I'm here. I'm with you.” I moved to hold her.

But Charlene took both my elbows, kept the hug at bay. “Prove it,” she said. “Come to work tomorrow. Come to the shop at seven-thirty on the dot, fix cars all day, shoot the breeze with Floriano. Be kind and serious but a little funny, the way you are when you're relaxed.” Pause. “The way you
were
.”

Her voice, her eyes, her hands on my arms told me how much it meant to her.

“I can't,” I said.

Charlene set me loose.

“She was a Barnburner,” I said. “And I already took the money.”

I said that last bit to nobody. Charlene was already halfway up the front steps, sobbing, keening something at the same time. It sounded like, “I knew it, I
knew
it.”

But I may not have heard correctly.

*   *   *

I didn't even want to think about Savvy while Charlene lay awake next to me. Wasn't sure why that felt wrong, but it did. So I waited, staring at the ceiling until her breathing went slow and deep and settled right at the edge of a snore.

Then I let my head go where it needed to go. Which was not a good place.
Because you are a joke, a goddamn unfunny joke. Square up. Face it.

I faced it. Charlene and Randall had seen right through me: Savvy and the Bert Saginaw circus had come along at a perfect time. They'd provided me a little vacation from growing up and buckling down. And they'd fed me money that served as an excuse. A lame excuse, an excuse nobody who knew me bought, but an excuse.

While I'd been diddling around here and there, Savvy'd been killed.

Accident? Bullshit. Savannah Kane was more likely to fly to the moon than to find herself in a Charlestown construction site. Somebody'd manipulated her there.

Why?

It had something to do with blackmail. Had to.

So who was worried about blackmail, and might be happy enough with Savvy gone?

Bert Saginaw. Or his campaign, anyway.

Figure out the blackmail, figure out who killed Savvy.

Simple.

But not easy.

Figure out the blackmail, figure out who killed Savvy.

I tried using it to fall asleep, repeating it in my head, forcing my breathing to slow.

It didn't work, not for a long time. It just made me think about Savannah Kane. I'd loved her. And how. A pointless, screw-'em-all love that had left a hole in me for a long time. Forever. Charlene sensed it, even if she could never understand it.

Hell, I didn't understand it myself.

I didn't understand a lot of things.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Did you
see
this?” Sophie said the next morning, Thursday. She spun her laptop to face me, polished off her cereal, and set the bowl on the floor for Dale to lick. Then she stepped to the granite counter and read the Post-it her mother had left.