The Whole Lie (6 page)

She took a ketchup bottle from the cart and tried to open it. But it was one of those single-serving jobs with a plastic seal, and she had no real fingernails—she still chewed them, but not when anybody was around—so the bottle gave her trouble.

“You going to take me to Saginaw?” I said.

“All in good time.”

While she gnawed at the plastic seal I said, “Who'd you leave your son with, anyway?”

“Max is in good hands.”

“Maybe ditching a six-year-old to go blackmailing wasn't your best move, Savannah.”

“Oh
really
!” she said, an ugly grin-sneer racking her face. “How old was your boy when you drank your way out of
his
life, hmm? 'Bout the same age as Max, wasn't he?”

There wasn't much I could say to that.

I said nothing.

Savvy looked at the tiny bottle in her hand like she wasn't sure how it got there. Then she fired it at the corner.

Ketchup sprayed like blood.

CHAPTER SEVEN

We were quiet.

“I left Max with his gramma, or close enough,” Savvy finally said. “She loves him to death.”

She left the room. In a few seconds, the shower began to run.

I took the opportunity to fish her phone from her pocketbook and scan her call and text logs. I felt a little bad about it. But only a little.

I found nothing important. She must delete her logs pretty frequently. Which maybe told me something about Savvy and maybe didn't.

I hesitated, decided what the hell, began looking at her pictures.

There were a few shots of a long-haired boy who had to be Max. Good-looking kid, brown eyes maybe a little wiser, warier, than a six-year-old's ought to be. Or maybe I was imagining that. A bowling party, a last-day-of-school sack race, sleeping on a sofa.

There were also a lot of pictures of some guy. He looked familiar. I tried to place him, couldn't quite. Context said he was Savvy's boyfriend, or had been.

“Young'un,” I said out loud. Savvy was ten years younger than me, and the guy had to be ten years younger than her. Chinless and chestless, with curly sand-colored hair that looked like a half-assed perm.

As I clicked through pics slide-show style, the boyfriend came across as half Sherpa, half puppy dog. He was either doing something for Savvy—lugging a microwave oven up apartment stairs, fixing a flat tire on a busy highway, washing dishes in a checked apron—or holding the camera himself to take snaps that seemed to embarrass Savannah Kane. Here was the guy pressing his head to hers in a restaurant, a state park, a Six Flags. He was always holding the phone at arm's length and smiling lovey-dovey. It was obvious Savvy would have preferred to be anywhere else. Her smile was always thin, and her eyes always said,
His idea, not mine.

When the shower stopped, I set the phone back in her bag.

“Is there a legit reason you called me here?” I said through the bathroom door. Truth be told, I was nervous. Wasn't sure how many Savvy Kane sex-bomb attacks I could fend off. “Why didn't I just go straight to Bert's office?”

As I spoke, the elevator doors binged open.

“There's your legit reason,” she said, stepping out in a towel.

Around the corner came Krall.

He looked the room over for three seconds. “For crying out loud, Savannah,” he said to both of us and neither of us. He had no accent at all—draw a line from Akron to Omaha, he could be from any town within a hundred miles of the line.

“Old friends,” I said. “Nothing happened.”

“Yeah.”

“Smirk again and I'll break your jaw.”

“How's Maria Mendes doing?”

“Say her name again and I'll break your jaw.”

“You got it all wrong, Sax,” he said, grinning, hands on hips, suit coat pushed back. “Once you take the dough, you don't get to be high and mighty anymore.”

He was right about that. I said nothing.

“Sheesh, boys,” Savvy said. “Why don't you just whip 'em out and measure right now? Get it over with?” She padded into the bedroom, laughing.

Krall's face was red.

Maybe mine was, too.

“Hell,” he said after a while.

“Why am I here?”

“I had my way,” he said, “you wouldn't be. But a campaign's a funny thing. The candidate's the king, the rest of us are supplicants. We backstab each other all day long, trying to get the king's ear.”

“Savvy's got Saginaw's ear.”

“Along with various other body parts. But the worm turns, Sax. I've been around more of these things than I can count, and the worm always turns.”

“So you're going with the flow.”

“Long as the checks clear, yeah. Savvy talked you up to Bert. Bert thinks you can help him.”

“You don't think I can.”

“I think my last check cleared. So let's go see Bert.” He raised his voice. “Ready when you are, Savvy.”

Ten minutes later, as she punched the button for the ninth floor, Savvy said, “This is Bert's hotel now. You did know this, yes?”

I said nothing.

She sighed. “He's putting up the office building next door. It was supposed to serve as headquarters, but it's not finished.”

“That I noticed.”

“Not even Bert Saginaw can make the Cambridge city council move faster than it wants to,” Krall said.

“He was embarrassed at the delay,” Savvy said, “so he called the men in Dubai who owned this joint and made a cash offer they couldn't turn down.”

“The man's got some serious cake,” I said.

“Bet your ass,” Krall said.

“Then he cleared out a couple of floors,” Savvy said, “and made a temporary HQ.”

“And installed you in the penthouse,” I said.

“Can you blame him?” she said.

The doors opened.

On a hushed nuthouse.

It was a huge space, maybe sixty feet by a hundred, and most of the walls had been knocked out. Temporary desks were jammed together everywhere, and a long Formica counter ran the width of one window wall. Here and there a ceiling tile had been shunted aside and a snake-nest of black cabling—T-1 lines, I assumed—had been pulled through.

For all the workers. There were dozens, maybe a hundred. They banged away at laptops or worked phones, every damn one of them, and none of them looked up. Aside from a crooked
TINKER-SAGINAW
banner near a coffee area, this room could be anything: insurance agency, call center, boiler-room stock scam.

“Usually,” Krall said, “I'd call this smilin' and dialin'. But I know for a fact most of these are
incoming
calls. When everybody knows you're going to win, the big dollars roll. People want it on the record that they backed you. This is the fun part.”

“But you're worried,” I said. “Or I wouldn't be here.”

His smile tightened. He walked away fast without saying anything. Savvy followed, leading me through the cheerful mess. The workers were young for the most part, and chipper in their little rent-a-desk forts, with smelly takeout cartons piled up and sub-shop menus and laptop bags. Everybody likes being on a winning team.

Down a hall, quick left into a swank suite. I whistled. It reminded me of rooms you saw on TV shows about Las Vegas high-rollers. Marble floors, twelve-foot ceilings, sliders to a good-sized patio, animal-skin rugs, sinks and bars and doors everywhere.

“Sax!” Saginaw spread his arms as he said it, crossing the room in a Joe Politician suit that couldn't quite hide his bowlegs, his strange proportions. “Not bad for a college dropout, huh?” He caught Krall's eye and jerked his head toward the door. “Pete, Savvy. Ten minutes, 'kay?”

They left. Saginaw sat on a long sofa, nodded. I took the other end. It was like sitting in a pat of melting butter.

I said, “Nice.”

Saginaw said nothing for a while. Then he put a finger to his lips, cat-walked to the door, set his ear against it, and whipped it open. Looked both ways, closed it, sat again.

“Paranoid,” I said.

“Bet your sweet ass,” he said. “I don't trust a goddamn one of 'em. Especially Krall.”

“You don't trust the guy who's running your campaign.”

“Know anything about him?”

I shook my head.

“Pete Krall would like you to think he's a big man in his world,” Saginaw said, leaning forward. “Truth is, he was a minor-leaguer on his best day. And his best day was a long time ago. Sure, he helped a couple South American guys win reelection, but those were banana republics. Places where Maximum Leader wins ninety-eight percent of the vote, and the next day two percent of the houses get torched. You know?”

“So why's he running the show? You and Tinker are both loaded.”

“It was Tinker's call,” he said. “She waited too long, playing the reluctant-politician bit. By the time she jumped in, the heavy hitters were under contract. Besides, she was supposed to win in a walkover. Didn't think she needed the best.”

“Does he know what he's doing?”

“Not really. Ever see an NFL coach on the sidelines, and you could tell from his eyes he had no friggin' idea what was going on out there? He was just hoping for the best?”

“Wade Phillips,” I said.

Saginaw laughed big, actually slapped his thigh. “I like it! Yeah, when you see Krall in action you get that Wade Phillips vibe. Krall needs a big win to salvage his career.”

We were quiet awhile.

“You going to tell me why I'm here?” I finally said.

“Today's Wednesday,” Saginaw said, not looking at me. “That makes tomorrow Dirt Drop Day.”

I said nothing.

He shifted, looked me in the eye. “Old campaign tradition, they tell me. It's when the other guys throw their last, best, worst dirty trick at you. Thursday's the perfect day because it jams up the news cycle all weekend, doesn't give you much of a chance to come back.”

“What's their dirty trick for you?” I said.

“Tomorrow … meaning tonight, really, 'cause the newspapers release all the good stuff early on the Web … the
Globe
's gonna run a story about me. It's embarrassing, but it's not fatal. It'll trim a bunch of points off our lead, but it won't cost us the election.”

“So what's the problem?”

Long pause. “The problem,” he finally said, “is
another
set of pics.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Let me get this straight,” Randall said on the other end of the line. “Saginaw knows of not one but two, count 'em,
two
sets of photos that could potentially sink him?”

“And Tinker, of course. Reading between the lines, it seemed what scared him most was the idea of pulling her down with him.” I jumped on the brakes to avoid a pair of college kids sauntering across the street. I was on my way from Cambridge to Winthrop. Two miles as the crow flies, but one of those can't-get-there-from-here drives.

“Talk about renaming oneself mud,” Randall said. “Obviously, the Tinker people tried to vet Saginaw before selecting him as her running mate.”

“Yup.”

“Also obviously, he lied through his teeth.”

“Now it's biting him in the tail.”

“It always does.”

“But they never learn.”

“How much did he tell you about this second set of blackmail fodder?”

In his Vegas-style suite, Saginaw had said there was one, and only one, copy of each photo. “They used a brand-new digital camera,” he'd said. “They printed the shots on a virgin printer, then destroyed all the hardware. Never scanned anything, never e-mailed anything, none of that.”

I'd told him that was most likely bullshit—a story to suck him in for the first big payment. Then they'd find more copies so they could keep bleeding him.

“What did Saginaw say to that?” Randall said.

“He was positive that whoever's doing the blackmailing speaks the truth on this.”

Long pause. Finally: “Huh.”

“I know,” I said. “Huh. Guess what he did next?”

Randall waited.

“You know that check they cut me yesterday?”

“Sure.”

“He said a matched set is always nice, reached in his pocket, and slipped me another one for the same amount. But this one was a personal check from Hubert Saginaw.”

“Tell me you didn't take it.”

“Of course I did.”

“Why, Conway?”

“Imagine how fast I can pay off Charlene.”

“Interesting word choice,” he said. “Pay off, rather than pay back.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind.” He was quiet a full thirty seconds. Then he sighed. “So what's the next move?”

“I'm going to see my pal Moe Coover.”

“Who's that?”

“A Barnburner, a real old-timer,” I said. “It was Moe helped me move Savvy down to North Carolina.”

“And?”

“Moe was like
this
with the state cops for forty years. Dirt was his stock in trade. If it happened in this state and it's worth knowing, Moe knows it.”

*   *   *

“Come on now, come on come on come on …
fuck
me.”

“Thanks, nice to be here,” I said, setting down a pair of sandwiches from Royal Roast Beef.

“Shut up a sec,” Moe Coover said, a pair of military-spec binoculars pinned to his face. “Logan-SFO seven-five-seven bearing down, full to the gunwales, heavy jumbo all the way.” I watched the plane roll straight at us, then peel from the runway all at once, nose up, pulling hard left while its landing gear retracted. The wind worked in our favor, pushing noise away. Moe tracked the plane with his binocs, said again: “Come on now, come on come on come on …
fuck
me.”

Without leaving the peeling white wicker chair on his enclosed front porch, he flicked the power switches on one broadcast-quality video camera and two still cameras with lenses as long as my forearm. All three were aimed at the runway that ended a hundred and fifty yards from Moe's house.