Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery

by Steve Ulfelder

  “Got some paper towels?”

  He nodded at a roll of blue shop towels on the bench beside me. I snapped off a half dozen and toweled my hair.

  Josh said, “Where’d you come from?”

  “Ollie live nearby?” I said.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Jesus, kid!” I fist-thumped the bench as I said it. “I don’t know what Ollie is to you. He’s more than your boss, isn’t he?”

  Josh said nothing.

  “I’m going to talk with Ollie,” I said. “Soon. Here. What I need from you is his last name, how close he lives to this place, his phone number. This is going to happen, with your help or without.”

  “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” he said, twirling the mallet in his hands. “Maybe you’re going to get your head busted in again.”

  Jesus, had I ever misread this kid. “It wasn’t you who nailed me yesterday. Was it?”

  Josh said nothing. He didn’t drop his gaze, didn’t stop twirling the mallet.

  Something clicked. I smiled slow and big and edged past Josh, putting my hands up when he cocked the mallet. I cleared the corner and saw what I’d anticipated: One corner of the car cover on Phigg’s Mercedes had been lifted.

  “What the hell is it about this car?” I said.

  “I think you ought to leave.”

  “Tander Phigg hanged himself this morning,” I said.

  “I heard.”

  “What is it about this car?”

  Josh said nothing.

  “Look,” I said, sighing. “I need to talk with Ollie. Here, tonight. Let’s work it like this: You give me his number. I’ll bust a window around back, tell him I climbed in after you left. I’m guessing he used to pay for a security service, but not anymore. That sound right?”

  Josh nodded.

  “Must be twenty ways I could find his name and number without your help,” I said. “You’re just my shortcut.” I took a Sharpie from the bench, slid it and a dry shop towel toward Josh.

  He stared at me for twenty seconds. Then he wrote a number on the towel. “When you talk with Ollie, you won’t mention this,” he said, nodding toward Phigg’s car. “In fact, you’ll forget all about it now that Phigg’s dead.”

  I said nothing. It was easier than lying. Instead I tore off another paper towel and wrote my name, cell, and e-mail on it, shoved it to him.

  He eyeballed it. “What’s that for?”

  “This place is going to change, fast and soon,” I said. “It’s probably going to go away. Maybe you’ll need help finding your next job. I know a lot of guys in the business.”

  As his fingertips touched the paper towel, I put one of my own on it. “Or maybe you’ll just want to tell me more about Ollie,” I said. “About what the hell’s going on here. You thought it was a high-end restoration shop. Thought it’d be more fun than doing oil changes at the local Toyota store, huh? But it was something else.”

  Josh wanted to tell me. I could feel him tipping, the same way he nearly had in the garage yesterday. But he just reached a hooded Windbreaker from a hook and unclipped a huge key ring from his belt loop. “I’ll need to lock you out,” he said, flipping through keys. He looked at me. “Second window in on the back side is so sticky we can’t close it to lock it. Be easy to open it with a pry bar. Ollie would think you just got lucky and found the right window.”

  * * *

  Two minutes later I fired the F-150, watched Josh drive away in a rough old Audi 4000. It was a cult car, an all-wheel-drive sedan that came out back when that was rare. They were hard cars to keep running right, especially now that they were a quarter-century old.

  I sat in the truck and figured out how to work what I wanted to do next. The weak link was going to be a missing cop car. I needed to pressure Ollie, rush him, to get him to overlook that.

  I was going to get wet as hell, no way to avoid it. The thunder and lightning had moved past, but the rain was hard and steady. The upside was with the sky gray to begin with, it’d get dark earlier.

  I called Charlene at home. She was brisk, chopping something while we spoke. Sophie was fine. Work was fine. She hadn’t heard from Jesse. I wouldn’t make it for dinner tonight? Fine. Click.

  By eight o’clock it was dark enough. The rain wasn’t dramatic anymore, but it wasn’t letting up either. I cleared my throat, hit *67 to block Caller ID, and dialed the number Josh had written.

  Ollie took his time answering. I heard a TV as he said, “Yeah.”

  “Mr. Dufresne?” Said it Doo-FREZ-nee on purpose.

  He sighed. “Doo-FRAYNE. What?”

  “Sorry. Rourke PD, sir. We got a report of a lightning strike here at your shop. Looks like it holed your roof. Helluva lot of water coming in.”

  It worked. The TV clicked off. Ollie said, “Office or garage?”

  “Garage.”

  “Fuck me. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  I was set to click off when he said, “Who is this? Scharf?”

  “Giarusso.”

  “You new?”

  “Been here almost eight months.” I tried to sound offended.

  “How come you show up as ‘Unknown Caller’?”

  “They’ve got us using our personal cells for calls like this. Budget, you know?”

  “Do I ever. Ten minutes.”

  I worked fast. Parked my truck down the street, alongside the upholstery place, while the pit bull barked.

  I rain-sprinted back to Motorenwerk, tire iron in one hand, stout flashlight in the other. It’s the kind cops use—knurled aluminum barrel, eighteen inches long, packed with four D batteries. It’s as much a club as it is a flashlight. Comes in handy.

  I ran around back, found the unlocked window Josh had described, levered it with the tire iron, climbed into the garage.

  Dark as hell in here. I flashlighted my way to the front, killed the light, rested it on my shoulder.

  Waited.

  Not long. I saw headlights. I heard a heavy splash out front, then a key-scrabble as the office door opened.

  But the office lights didn’t come on.

  Dufresne wasn’t stupid.

  I heard the door close gently, a tiny air-puff really. I heard water drip from Dufresne. Pictured him standing in the dark no more than five feet from me.

  I heard a gun’s slide rack. Dufresne definitely wasn’t stupid—had a semi-auto, with a round in the chamber now.

  Shit.

  I pictured him listening hard, breathed slowly through my mouth. The gun changed things. I decided I had to take a chance.

  I clicked the flashlight on, took loud steps, tried for the same voice I’d used on the phone. “Mr. Dufresne? That you up there?”

  Nothing.

  “You wanna hit the lights out here?” I said. “I banged the bejesus out of my shins once already.” Walked toward the door as I said it.

  It worked. Dufresne couldn’t take the risk, couldn’t walk in pointing a gun at a cop. He had stowed the gun in his raincoat by the time he stepped through the door, reached for the light switch, and said, “I thought—”

  As the lights came on I flicked my heavy flashlight at his forearm, meaning to break it. But I missed, got the meat of his upper arm instead.

  Dufresne was most definitely not stupid. He took one look at me and processed the whole scene before I could hit him again. He reached in the raincoat for his gun.

  I closed fast, head-butted his nose, heard it break. He’d gotten his right hand on the gun, but his hand was hung up in the wet raincoat. I bear-hugged him to keep it there.

  He was strong for a short guy. His left arm hung useless from the shot with the flashlight, and his right hand was tangled up in the gun and the coat, but he fought like hell anyway. He pushed up at my chin with the top of his head, nose-jetted blood into my shirt, stomped at my feet and ankles.

  But his sneakers didn’t bother my work boots. I poured on the bear hug, forced air from him, kept his right arm pressed against his chest.r />
  Funny thing: As we fought, Dufresne’s foot-stomps going weak, me squeezing and waiting for my chance to knock him out, I felt like I was up in the garage’s rafters and to my left, watching it all.

  That was new.

  I used to forget everything in a fight. I used to lose myself in a red-mist fury that always meant bad things for the other guy—and good things for Barnburners. This was different. No red mist, no hate. I just wanted to weaken Ollie enough so I could take away the gun.

  I was getting old.

  I thought all this while I floated above and to my left, watching Dufresne’s blood jet against my chest, watching myself crush him more or less to death.

  He finally fainted. I could tell because his dead weight nearly pulled me over. I let him drop, making sure he didn’t slam his head on polished concrete. I fished the gun from his raincoat. It was a Browning P35 Mark I, but different. I squinted, studied the piece, finally figured it out: The gun had been modified to fire beefy .40 S&W loads rather than stock 9 millimeter stuff. I’d heard you could mod the P35 that way, but hadn’t seen it done.

  I stuck the gun in the back of my pants, then realized I needed to black this place out right now, before a cruising cop spotted lights in Motorenwerk and swung by to check things out.

  I killed the lights and checked Dufresne. He was out cold. I pocket-patted, found his keys, stepped out front.

  The rain was slowing. Dufresne’s 5-series BMW, mid-nineties, black or dark blue, was angle-parked. I hopped in and pulled it around the side of the building, between the Dumpster and the stack of old tires. Locked it, stepped inside, locked the office door behind me, stepped in the garage, flashlighted Dufresne.

  His eyes were open. He stared at me, wheezed, squeezed his left fist like he was testing it. Twice he tried to speak, but wheezed and coughed instead.

  I hadn’t planned for this. The way I’d planned it, I would humiliate him, terrify him. I would zip-tie his wrists to the lift, slap him with an open hand, maybe pull down his pants. Pull a man’s pants around his ankles sometime and slap—rather than punch—his face awhile; you’d be surprised how fast it can break a guy.

  But it wouldn’t break Dufresne. His hot-rod Browning, his street smarts, the way he fought with no arms and a broken nose: This was a soldier.

  He took a huge, wheezing oxygen-suck and said, “What the fuck?”

  “I was going to do the half-assed torture bit on you,” I said. “I was going to scare you till you peed your pants. But you fight like a man, so let’s skip the bullshit.”

  I took one step toward Dufresne, still prone on polished concrete, and set my left foot on his left shoulder. Applied steady pressure, watching pain flow to his eyes. He tried to kick me in the nuts, but it was halfhearted. I pulled the P35 and set it against his left temple. “You chambered a round yourself,” I said, “am I right?”

  “Fuck you.” He looked me in the eye as he said it. I liked him.

  “Tell me everything you can tell me about Tander Phigg and his Mercedes,” I said, “or I’ll put one of your own souped-up bullets in your head and walk out the door and drive home and sleep like a baby.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  You have to mean it.

  I thought I meant it. I tried to get a good mad on. I thought about getting whacked in the head and lied to and dragged to a Dumpster, thought about Tander Phigg hanging from a pipe stub.

  But as Ollie stared at me, studying my face, I got that feeling again—sitting above myself and to my left, looking down at the whole scene. Knew I wasn’t going to blow a man’s head off, wondered if he knew it, too. I killed my flashlight and left us in sudden dark so he couldn’t read my eyes.

  We were silent a full thirty seconds.

  “Can’t do it, can you?” he said.

  “Done it before,” I said.

  “But can you do it now, friend? Do you have it in you?”

  He was a man, a fighter. “I’m not going to do it now,” I said. “Not to you.” I took the P35 from his temple.

  “In that case,” Ollie Dufresne said, “let’s have a cup of tea and talk.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, a bandage from the shop’s first-aid kit covered Ollie’s gashed nose—blood stained through, but only a little. He was hard to figure out. Short, round, looked soft, sat sipping tea he’d made on a hot plate. But he fought like hell, even with his arms pinned.

  I leaned on a counter with his gun loose in my hand. “Tander Phigg died this morning,” I said.

  “Jesus. How?” His surprise seemed genuine. I wondered why Josh knew about the hanging but Ollie didn’t.

  “They say he hanged himself.”

  He shook his head. “That’s rough. An old friend of yours, I presume?”

  “He was a horse’s ass.”

  “On that we can agree, though I hate to speak ill of the dead.” He hesitated. “Given that assessment, what’s your role? Your mission?”

  “I promised to get his car back,” I said, nodding toward the covered Mercedes. “And the thirty-five hundred he paid you up front.”

  “And now that he’s gone,” Ollie said, “you might as well help yourself. Spoils of war, eh?”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No, I won’t help myself. Still helping Phigg.”

  “Phigg’s dead.”

  “I said I’d help him. I’ll help him.”

  Ollie looked at me awhile. “We have here a rara avis,” he said. “What’s your intent? Send Phigg a money-gram care of the great beyond?”

  “I’ll sell the car, give the dough to his next of kin if he has any.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “I’ll donate it to AA. I think Phigg would be okay with that.”

  “Fair enough,” Ollie said. “Let’s move on to the next problem: I don’t owe the late Tander Phigg a fucking nickel. He lied to you about what was going on with his car. Through his teeth he lied.”

  “So straighten me out.”

  Ollie folded his arms, pulled at his lower lip with thumb and forefinger, said nothing—a man considering his options. I took that as confirmation there was something dirty going on. Ollie had painted himself into a corner where he had to either tell me about it or let me keep believing he’d scammed Phigg. Maybe killed him.

  “Or I could just point the cops your way, let them straighten it out.”

  His silence dragged. I needed to get him going. “I used to own my own shop,” I said. “European cars, mostly German.”

  “I know,” he said. “You invented tools for working on transmissions. You held patents and ran training seminars for Mercedes USA.”

  I popped eyebrows.

  Ollie said, “I attended one of the seminars.”

  “Small world.”

  “Remarkably.”

  I spread my arms. “I’m guessing you used to do some good work here.”

  “I still fucking do!” he said. But then he looked around, dropped his shoulders. “Well … maybe not so much lately.”

  “What changed?”

  He stared at nothing for a long time. I let him. I noticed the quiet and realized the rain had stopped.

  Finally Ollie said, “What changed is that I got into something else.”

  “Chop shop?”

  He shook his head, met my eyes. “Runs up to Canada.”

  “Cocaine?”

  He said nothing.

  “Heroin?”

  “I’m not going to say it out loud,” he said. “Not here, not to you. We made runs.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Shorten it.”

  Ollie half laughed. “That’s not a bad idea, actually.” He looked at the floor and rolled his chair in little circles while he organized the story. Then he told it.

  Two years ago, Ollie had been running Motorenwerk, getting by on local projects but not building the big rep you need to get high-dollar restoration work. His shop was on
a slow downhill slope, and he knew it. He could picture an eventual SPACE FOR RENT sign across the plate glass.

  That’s when Ollie got a visit from an old friend of his father. The visit was out of the blue: Ollie’s father, a Quebecois, had died of cirrhosis fifteen years prior. The friend drove up in a Cadillac Escalade. He had a killer suit on, a layered haircut, a massive bodyguard.

  At first, the dude tried a friendly-uncle bit—said he’d always kept track of little Ollie, had loved him since he was a pup, had made his dad a deathbed promise to keep an eye on him.

  Ollie said that was a load of horseshit and they both knew it. He asked what the friend really wanted.

  The friend’s eyes went dark a few seconds. Then he laughed, slapped Ollie’s shoulder, said he liked a blunt man, and got to it. He sold things in Montreal, he said. He’d done well. But after nine-eleven, it was hard as hell to get merchandise into Canada. He had an idea, a way to get back on top, that was right up Ollie’s alley. Everybody’d win.

  Ollie looked into my eyes. “We both knew what he was selling,” he said. “Obviously, nobody wanted to say the word.”

  “Like now.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Jesus, it’s just a word,” I said. “Heroin or cocaine?”

  Long pause. “The former.”

  The dealer had done homework. Everybody thought drug-sniffing dogs were impossible to fool, and cops liked to keep people thinking that way. In truth, the dealer had learned, mutts were mutts. If you wrapped heroin carefully and didn’t leave sloppy residue everywhere, you could fool them pretty well. If you wrapped it very carefully and buried it deep enough inside the car that carried it across the border, you could fool them every time.

  I said, “That’s where you came in.”

  Ollie sat straighter. “You wouldn’t believe the work I did. I could hide ten kilos in a brand-new Dodge Caravan. Turn the minivan over to the very engineer who designed it, I swear it would take him a week to find anything.”

  “Just a guess,” I said. “Cut the gas tank in half, put the wrapped drugs inside, weld it back up?”