The Whole Lie (19 page)

I told her who I was. “I'm up here in Massachusetts, and I was sorry to hear about Blaine. I didn't know him well, just met him the other night, but he struck me as a good kid.”

“I do thank you for that.”

“I know Max meant a lot to him. Max and Savvy both.”

Long pause. “Max meant the world to him,” she finally said.

“Time like this, it's good he has you and Mr. Lee.”

“When will Mr. Lee be coming back home, sir? Maybe you all know more than I do. Your state police are nice as can be, but it can be difficult getting information.”

“Pardon?”

“I assume Vernon is … making arrangements, doing what-all needs to be done?”

“Not sure I understand you, ma'am.”

There was a pause as Margery Lee realized I didn't know things she'd assumed I knew.

“My husband Vernon is up there, too,” she finally said. “Trying to keep Blaine out of trouble. Working on a project with Savannah.”

Holy shit.

“Oh sure,” I said, trying to be smooth. “Vernon. Big fella in the big green SUV.”

“So you know him.” Her voice fluttered as she spoke. Was Margery Lee nervous about her husband? Scared of him, maybe?

“I do,” I said. “I do know him.”

Quiet.

“Was there anything else, sir?” Margery Lee finally said. “Because I've got a houseful of hungry family and a confused little boy, and I'm afraid there's much that needs tending to.”

Anvils on her shoulders.

I said again I was sorry. Clicked off.

My heart rate was up. My breathing was shallow.

Mystery man: Vernon Lee. Blaine's
father
?

But Vernon's SUV had spun Blaine off the Mass Pike. Had killed him.

And when I'd described Vernon to a tee, Blaine had claimed not to know anything about him.

But the stolen plates on the Expedition fit. Vernon must have thought North Carolina plates would make him stand out. So he'd swapped a stolen Massachusetts plate, had grabbed a toll transponder while he was at it. It wasn't a perfect plan—the lack of a state inspection sticker could give him away to a sharp cop—but it was damn good.

Some family.
Man,
did I want to talk with Randall.

I sighed and called Moe again, just to check in. Had called the night before. He hadn't picked up.

He didn't pick up now.

Huh.

Randall called me back. Phew. Said he'd slept in Bellingham at his insurance lady's place. I asked him to meet me in twenty minutes.

He made it to the Honeydew Donuts in Hopedale just after I did. We grabbed coffees, sat in a booth.

Randall nodded at the envelope, which held a loose tube shape.
“Que es?”

I flipped the envelope, pressed it, smoothed it. Looked over my shoulder. Slid pics across the table.

It was quiet for twenty seconds. “Oh my,” Randall finally said.

“Yeah,” I said, sliding the shots back into the envelope, tucking the envelope in my flannel shirt.

“Know what you've got there?” he said.

I waited.

“An election lost. A political future derailed.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I don't care about that.”

His eyebrows made a question.

“What I care about,” I said, “is who killed Savvy Kane.”

Randall blew on his coffee. Then he sipped. Then again. “Of course,” he finally said. “Mister One-Track.”

“Blaine Lee and Savvy stashed those pics in Blaine's car.” I explained how and where I'd found them.

“Unless Savvy stashed them herself,” Randall said. “From what you've told me, she used Blaine as it suited her. She might've hidden the pics in his car without telling him.”

“I thought about that,” I said, shaking my head, “but it doesn't work. Blaine was a stereo installer. Those guys know car interiors like nobody's business. It would've been his idea to tuck the pics under the seat.”

He nodded, buying it. “Blaine and Savvy held the blackmail bait. How'd they come across it?”

“Don't know yet.”

“Okay, TBD. However they got it, they had it. Somebody wanted it badly. Savvy and Blaine are dead. So the finger points back at Tinker-Saginaw.”

“Maybe. Are you ready for an insane twist?”

Sigh. “Why not?”

“I told you about the mystery man in the green Expedition.”

“Yes?”

Randall almost spit coffee when I told him about Vernon. He made me go through my phone conversation with Margery Lee line by line.

“Huh,” he said when I finished. “Got any ideas? Because I feel like my head's been turned inside out.”

“Savvy, Blaine, and this Vernon,” I said. “Living small in North Carolina, feeling poor,
tasting
Bert Saginaw's dough. They come north to work an angle. The partnership falls apart, the way those things always do. Why? Who knows? Maybe the boys didn't like the way Savvy cozied up to Saginaw. Or maybe Blaine and Savvy planned to double-cross Vernon all along.”

“She was capable of all that?”

“Hell yes,” I said, no hesitation at all. “Savvy was driving this bus.”

“Off a cliff she drove it. Sorry. Not funny. Keep going.”

“What if Savvy got a look at those dirty pictures, saw her opening, and tried using them to chisel Saginaw? Without telling Vernon or Blaine?”

“Huh. A blackmail handle that didn't expose her little boy, is that what you're getting at?”

“Or herself. Which, tell you the truth, might have been more important to her.”

“Charmer.”

We were quiet awhile.

Randall finally said, “You're saying she made her play, and Saginaw killed her over the photos?”

I shrugged. “Someone working for him, more likely. But yeah. Then Blaine panicked. Kid was crazy about Savvy. Plus he was in over his head, and he knew it. So he took off with the pics stashed in his car.”

“Vernon freaks out,” Randall said. “Savvy already hosed him over the
initial
blackmail play, the love-child deal. Now she's dead. For argument's sake, let's say the Saginaw campaign murdered her. Vernon's meal ticket: dead. The pictures give him a second chance at the Bert Saginaw lottery, and now
that
opportunity's slipping away. You can see how desperate he'd be. But…”

I knew what he was thinking. “Could a man freak out enough,” I said, “to kill his own son?”

“Could he?”

I thought about Vernon Lee in the barbecue joint. I thought about the red mist. “Hell yes,” I said. “Besides, I'd bet he didn't intend to kill Blaine. Just wanted to keep him from hightailing south. Have a friendly chat with him.”

“Father of the year,” Randall said, and thought awhile. “I didn't get much of a look at these much-killed-over photos. Am I to assume they feature Mr. Hubert Saginaw and Ms. Savannah Kane? From back in the day?”

“Well, no.”

“What? Who, then?”

“I don't know.”

“Explain.”

I explained.

When I finished, he held his head in both hands. “That doesn't help your theory, though it doesn't extinguish it. The question remains: How did Team North Carolina obtain the pictures in the first place?”

“I don't know. But you know who might?”

“Who?”

“Margery Lee. Blaine's mom, Vernon's wife.”

“She might at that,” he said. “Something's rotten in … where was it again?”

“Level Cross. Birthplace of Richard Petty. You'll love it there.”

He froze, cardboard cup halfway to his lips, as the reason for the meeting sank in. I might have smiled. It's not often I can surprise Randall Swale.

“Come on,” he said.

“I could use the help,” I said. “Flying's not a good idea for me, you know that. And I'm slammed. I need to talk with Saginaw's ex, just to keep Saginaw thinking I'm working for him. Then I'll show my face at the Escutcheon, for the same reason. And I'm worried about my pal Moe. Vernon tailed me there, and now Moe's not picking up his phone. Need to check on him.”

I expected Randall to kid around more before agreeing to head for the airport. But when I finished ticking off reasons on my fingers, he was staring at me with calm brown eyes. “Someday,” he said, “you'll have to tell me exactly what Savannah Kane was to you.”

*   *   *

Sixteen years ago, Paducah. When night fell, I backed the Bonneville from the hotel room and we took off. The bike's seat was more comfortable now that it wasn't stuffed with money. “South or west?” I hollered over my shoulder to Savvy as we hit top gear. “Either one gets us out of state in an hour.”

“Surprise me.”

I aimed south for Tennessee.

Getting the hell out of Kentucky was job one. No cop—no
straight
cop—would stash money and cocaine in a motorcycle seat. So Savvy's pal was either some freak poser who wasn't a cop at all or, more likely, a dirty cop.

Dirty cops: cop resources, cop buddies, crook's worldview.

Dirty cops scared me.

Heat slipped from the air as we rode south. Pines against the night sky seemed blacker than black, somehow. Savvy's chin bounced on my shoulder as she dozed.

Union City, Tennessee: I found the part of town I wanted, slow-rolled the streets. I was looking for a junkie or car thief willing to trade his four wheels for my two. It was okay if he lied to me about who owned the car and where he got it—I would lie right back about the Triumph.

No luck. Either it was too early in the evening, or Union City didn't feature the type of degenerate I needed. When a cop in a Winn-Dixie parking lot spotlighted me—out of boredom, I thought at the time, as he didn't even put his Caprice in drive—paranoia hit. I stayed under the speed limit all the way to the city line, then opened the throttle and angled southwest on I-51. We'd spend twenty minutes slicing through Missouri, then hit Arkansas.

We would have made it, too. But I got lazy. I-51 became I-155, and when we neared the Mississippi, I just rolled across the bridge near Boothspoint like I was Fred Familyman with the missus riding shotgun and the littl'uns snoozing in back.

The staties lit me up when I was halfway across, humming past a clever sign that made some sort of pun about leaving Tennessee (Y'all Come Back Now)/welcome to Missouri (Set and Stay Awhile).

Troopers from both states, who must have been hiding and expecting us, came haul-assing up the bridge, closing on me like crazy.

Instinct took over: I pinned the Triumph's throttle, waking Savannah.

The throttle didn't stay pinned for long. When I cleared the bridge's midpoint, I saw a roadblock at its end that would have been over the top in the
Blues Brothers
movie. Had to be a dozen cruisers down there. Like I said, that was the problem with a dirty cop: crook desperation, cop resources. Maybe the Union City cops had a BOLO on the Triumph.

“Hell,” I said, kicking the bike out of gear and coasting to drop speed without being run over by the hungry staties.

Savvy began to pound me on the back. “Don't slow, don't slow!” she screamed, thumping my back on each
slow
. “I did
not
make you for a pussy, dude. Go go
go
!”

“Go where?” I pointed, braking as we neared the welcoming committee.

“
Go
fucking
go
you pussy, you faggot,
go
!”

She was rocking now like she wanted to toss herself off the bike. If I hadn't been a drunk, coked-up, motorcycle-stealing derelict myself, I might have wondered what was wrong with Savannah Kane. I might have wondered what a tough broad like her was so scared of.

But at that moment, stopping the Triumph without catching a load from one of the dozen pump-action police-spec shotguns aimed my way was all I could handle. The problem was that all the staties were yelling at once, and most were yelling to put my hands in the air, motherfucker, put 'em in the
air.
Which wouldn't be smart for a man driving a motorcycle. But that's what they were shouting.

Finally, with sirens whining and shotguns cocking and Savvy screaming and state troopers hollering, I got the Triumph whoaed up.

The dirty cop who owned it wasn't but three feet away. He stood at the sharp end of the cop-wedge, arms folded across his down vest. He'd lost the gimme cap but not the half-assed beard.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I patted his motorcycle's hot gas tank. “She pulls left just a little,” I said.

He took one step and hit me with a right that knocked me off and out.

*   *   *

Bert Saginaw's ex lived in Cambridge. Initially, I'd wanted to talk with her because the blackmail shakedown felt ugly and personal, and from what I understood that summed up the divorce.

But that had been before Savvy died. Now I had a different idea: Maybe the ex could tell me something about the pictures. About Saginaw's operation. About just how heavy he was willing to get to climb that ladder.
Figure out the blackmail, figure out who killed Savvy
.

I called Moe while I drove. No answer. Spent the rest of the twenty-minute ride calling a half-dozen Barnburners, trying to find someone who'd drop by and check on him.

No takers.

I grew pissed as I listened to their cheeseball excuses. They had doctor appointments, meetings, kids in town, grandkids too. I remembered a time when any Barnburner would drop anything to help any other Barnburner.

I sighed. Or did I? Had it ever been like that for anybody but me?

Finally, I made it to Cambridge. Among the Priuses and Minis, my F-150 was a mastodon. Lucked into a parking spot, walked.

I was looking for an address on the right side of the street, but something to my left—a vibe—made my head swivel that way.