The Whole Lie (32 page)

“But cops can't keep their mouths shut any better'n anybody else. I hand you to Wu, then you go to trial. And somehow those pics go public. I've been around too long to see it any other way.”

We were quiet awhile.

“I saw this movie,” I finally said. “Ancient Greeks, or Romans, or some damn thing. A man got busted for a crime, a big one. Know what they did?”

Shep was all ears.

“They gave him a choice. Death or exile.”

“Come on.”

“I want you out of Massachusetts by sundown,” I said. “I don't care where you end up, long as it's in a different time zone.”

Shep looked at me like I had an ear growing from my forehead. “By
sundown
? What are you, Wyatt Fucking Earp?”

“I told you,” I said, shaking my head, “the movie was about Greeks. Or maybe Romans. Send me a postcard from wherever you end up. Iowa's nice.”

I used my forearm to gently move Shep away from my door. I climbed in.

“In this movie,” he said, “you said they had a choice. Death
or
exile. What I want to know, if I tell you to go shit in your wallet, do I get death? Are you really gonna kill me?
Really,
Conway?”

I didn't even look at him as I drove away. I let my reputation do the work.

*   *   *

Checked the message from Sophie. She was incoherent. She babbled three times to call her ASAP, then hung up.

I did. She picked up on half a ring. “He's out!” she said. “He's okay!”

“Who?” Instant regret as I figured out who she meant.

“
Davey.
For God's sake, did you forget about him?”

“Course not. Lot on my mind.”

“They're putting a dressing on, and then we're going to spring him. Come out and see.”

“Well…” Started to say I had a thousand things to do, but she'd clicked off.

I cursed the timing. Not only had I figured out Emily Saginaw was in this mess up to her eyeballs—possibly in on Savvy's murder, even—I'd more or less
told
her so. Who knew what she'd do if I took off?

But.

If you looked at it from another angle, this was a good place to leave her. Without wheels of her own, she'd be forced to tag along with Tinker's people. And when Shep split, she'd likely take it as a sign he was the fall guy.

Yup. Leave her here, thinking she'd pulled it off.

I headed west.

I should have stayed, should have rounded up Emily then and there. Things would've turned out different. Better.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

When I walked into the waiting room at Tufts, Charlene had a credit card in her hand and Sophie had Davey in her lap. She was just about smothering the guy, trying to stroke and kiss and envelop him all at once.

He didn't look like he minded. Purred like a freight train. Maybe his eyes were gummy, and he looked silly because they'd shaved most of his right flank to sew him up, but he was all there. He smelled me, then spotted me, as I squatted before him. His tail made dipsy doodles.

“Conway!” Sophie squealed it when she saw me. Her eyes were wet. She moved to pass Davey over, but I gestured no. He looked happy where he was.

“I hope that cat can sing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner,'” Charlene said, holding a credit card receipt in two fingers, “because I need to take him on the road to recoup my investment.”

She smiled as she said it. Sort of.

“This place smells like rubbing alcohol and wet dog,” I said. “Let's head across the street.”

“Is that what I think it is?” Sophie said. “Where'd you
find
it?”

“I found it,” I said, passing her the cat leash Davey used to love.

Tufts is in a pretty spot. Old-time farm country, a grassy hill that rolls to a river valley and a set of east-west train tracks. There's a rectangular patch, maybe three acres, ringed by a dog-walking trail.

It was now a cat-walking trail, too, or would be as soon as Sophie got Davey in his harness. I kept a close eye on his shaved flank, but it didn't seem to be bothering him, and Sophie was careful.

Charlene and I stood at the trailhead. Her arms were folded. Mine too. In a typical New England trick, the temp had sunk ten degrees in an hour. Making conversation, Charlene said something about snow on the way. I watched Sophie and Davey bounce down the path.

“I'll pay you back,” I said after a while. “For Davey.”

“Never mind that.”

“I'll pay you back for the shop, too.”

“Right.” She snorted it.

That pissed me off. I thought about the collection of checks in my wallet. Daydreamed about snapping one out, signing it over to Charlene, and clearing my debt. Just like that.

I could do it.

I wanted to do it.

I didn't do it. That dough was earmarked.

I started to speak, but my tongue tangled up the way it did, and the idea in my head lost its shape like a smoke ring, the way they do.

But this was important. I dragged the idea back, forced myself to speak, didn't allow myself to worry about how smart—or not—I sounded.

“You think money's the problem for
me,”
I said. “You think I can't handle owing money to a girl.”

Charlene said nothing. I had her attention, though.

“But that's not it,” I said. “The problem is with
you
. Money means more to you than it should.”

“It does not!”

“You're a millionaire single mom with two daughters,” I said, “and you work seven days a week. My new shop is your second job, your hobby, and you've worked more hours there than most people do at their
first
job.”

Charlene: arms folded, mouth working. But no sound coming out.

“It's not about the money for you,” I said. “It's about achieving. It's about being useful. Productive. It's about making up for … for another time in your life. I get it, but there's a time to throttle back.”

Still she said nothing. But her eyes weren't playing offense anymore. She was listening.

“Maybe I should throttle back, too,” I said. “Because what I do … the Barnburners stuff … that's about another time in
my
life.”

A train interrupted. Westbound, silver and purple, Commuter Rail they call it. Things grew quiet in the train's wake. When I looked at Charlene she had turned away, was looking down the valley.

That was okay. I'd said my piece, and she'd heard it. The thought had to percolate.

She said, “What's this I hear about you collecting a training-wheels chip at a meeting yesterday?”

I said nothing. Didn't bother to ask how she knew. AA was a small world, and Mary Giarusso had an itchy dialing finger—we called her Switchboard Mary for a reason.

“Did you pick up?” Charlene said.

“No.”

“Why the chip, then?”

“It was something I needed.” Long pause. “I needed humility. I needed to stop doing everything my way. I didn't pick up, but that was dumb luck. I was out of control. I went to that sushi place in Northborough looking to drink.”

“Dumb luck or no, I'm glad you didn't pick up.”

Quiet.

“I wish,” I finally said.

“You wish what?”

“I wish it was different. I wish
I
was different.”

Ice-blue eyes opened all at once. “
I
wish I weren't a sucker,” she said.

“You're nobody's sucker.”

“That's almost true. I'm a sucker for you, and you know it. You leverage it.”

“Not for a long time I haven't. Not the way you're thinking.”

Seventy yards off, Sophie cooed and clicked at Davey.

“When we were kids,” I said, “didn't people our age—the age we are now—seem
older
?”

“Yes. Because we were young and stupid. And high. What's your point?”

“I thought … I thought by the time I was this age, I'd have my mistakes behind me. The big ones, anyway.”

“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?”

“Cam
paign
ing.”

“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.