The Whole Lie (36 page)

“Oh!” she said when she turned and I was still there. “Would you…?” Motioning again to the parlor.

From outside came the sound of a bouncing basketball.

“Is that Max?” I said. “Savvy's kid?”

“It is.”

“I'd like to meet him.”

“He's better off outside.” She spoke quickly, then must have decided she sounded rude. “He spends more time inside than he ought to, truth be told. I'm sure that's my fault.”

“How is he?” I said. “How are
you
?”

“We should really sit,” Margery said, and led me to the front room.

There was a picture window here. She looked at my truck, its license plate. “My, Mr. Sax, did you
drive
down?”

“Call me Conway. I don't like flying.” What I didn't tell her: I'm on a list. I buy an airline ticket, the Massachusetts Parole Board gets an auto-notice and my parole officer calls me looking for answers. The PO is Luther Swale, Randall's father, and we have an informal long-leash deal. But I didn't want to push him or my luck. So I'd driven, and had removed my FAST LANE transponder so I couldn't be tracked through toll payments.

I sat at one end of the sofa, leaving an armchair for her. But she didn't take it, sat at the other end of the sofa instead. I looked at the chair: It was newer than anything else in the room save a fifty-inch flat-screen.

Aha. Margery Lee had been so scared of Vernon that even now she wouldn't use his chair.

We sat awhile. I sipped Mountain Dew. Margery twisted her hands. This wasn't working out the way I'd expected.

You wanted a sweet auntie type to invite you in for pie. You wanted to talk about Level Cross and the Petty family and racing. You thought someone might pull out a fiddle and propose a sing-along. You thought the whole clan would weep with joy when you opened your wallet. Instead, you're sitting with a ninety-pound ghost who's still terrified of the husband who beat her for forty years.

Shit.

“I want to tell you how sorry I am about your son, ma'am,” I said, “and about Max's mother.” I shifted my weight, took out my wallet.

“Thank you.”

“Tough row. For you. For Max. You've lost a lot.”

“More than you know, sir.”

I opened the wallet. The checks had been folded willy-nilly, but they were all there. One by one I removed them, smoothed each crease. Checks from Tinker, from Saginaw, from Tinker-Saginaw for Governor. There were four altogether, including the final one from Betsy Tinker, the one for three times the amount of the others.

Pointed at a Bic pen on the table before me. “May I?”

“Of course. What are those, sir?”

“Call me Conway,” I said as I signed the checks over to Margery Lee.

Then I straightened them up as best I could—the creases were stubborn—and handed them over. “For Max.”

She shuffled through them once. Then twice.

Then she put on the glasses that hung around her neck and shuffled through them again.

Margery Lee kept staring and shuffling, like a Vegas virgin looking at his cards.

I felt embarrassed all of a sudden at my Mister Big act. I didn't want to sit here anymore waiting for gratitude to flow. Instead: stood, turned, looked out the picture window.

“Sir … Conway … this is three hundred thousand dollars.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Why are politicians giving you this kind of money?”

“Long story. They're legit. Deposit them. The taxes'll be my problem.”

“
Why,
Conway? Please stop looking out the window.
Why?
”

I turned. “For Max, like I said…”

My hesitation told her there was more. “And?”

“And … Miz Lee. Margery. Your husband Vernon won't be coming home, I'm afraid.”

She was still for twenty seconds. Outside, traffic streamed.

“Tell me more,” Margery finally said.

“He just won't. Trust me.”

“Will you tell me how you know this?”

“No.”

We stared at each other.

From the backyard came the sound of metal on metal.

“If Max is playing around the car parts,” I said, “we ought to keep an eye on him.”

“I believe you,” she said. At first I thought she was talking about Max.

She wasn't. Fifteen years fell from her face and she smiled, truly
smiled.
“Vernon is gone,” she said.

“Yes.”

Her shoulders loosened. She looked an inch taller than she had a minute ago. “Never to return,” she said.

“Yes.”

She had a nice smile.

“Let's introduce you to Maxie,” she said, and began to lead me back through the kitchen. Spotting my Mountain Dew can, she swiped it from the side table like it was a jar of piss. “And I'll squeeze some lemonade. Maxie does like his lemonade.”

As far as I could tell, Max was a good kid. He had a big bold jaw, like his father. But the eyes were all Savvy: nearly black, smoky, willful. While Margery and I sat on beach chairs he bulldozed around the yard playing with this and that,
atop
this and that, showing off for me, obeying—eventually—his gramma when she warned him away from dangerous piles of junk.

“Are you going to be all right?” I said, looking at my watch.

“He misses his mother,” Margery said. “He doesn't say it, but he misses her terribly.”

“He's got you.”

“Yes.” She started to say more. Stopped. Took a deep breath. “He would have me with or without your money, you know. Am I terribly rude to point that out?”

“No. I knew it was true. The money'll help if you use it the right way, and you will.”

“Yes,” Margery Lee said. “I will.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The sun was rising the next morning when I pulled up at Floriano's. I killed the truck. The absence of engine noise seemed loud. I stared at the steering wheel a few seconds, trying to remember what came next.

The key. You take it out. No, you have to push while you twist it. Like this.

I was that tired. Rubbed my eyes. It'd been a hell of a trip home.

As I stumbled up Floriano's porch steps, a couple of cousins heading to work opened the front door. They took a look at me and began firing questions in both English and Portuguese. I stood on the porch and swayed.

Maria rescued me. Heard the commotion, came out to the porch, shooed the cousins, took my arm, steered me to the basement.

“Cops?” I said, staggering down the steps, glad Maria was guiding me. “Questions? Anything?”

She knew I was talking about Vernon. “Nothing,” she said. “Is good. Sleep.”

“Vote early and often,” I said, giggling. The sound of the giggle scared me.

“Sleep,” Maria said.

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.”