“Betsy,” she said, shaking my hand, looking me in the eye though it probably hurt her neck. Short little thing. “May I call you Conway?”
I said she could. These politicians, the good ones anyway, make you feel like you’re the most important person in the world. You know it’s artificial, that in forty-five seconds they’ll be doing the same routine for someone else, but you like it anyway. I wondered what the trick was.
We sat. A different maid showed up with a tray. Soon I was drinking coffee from a cup whose handle my pinkie didn’t fit through.
“I’m given to understand you’re a man of few words and fast action,” she said. Then she leaned far enough to put a hand on my forearm. “So I’ll belay my politician’s instincts and keep this short. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She leaned back. “Pete Krall says you’re doing good work for the campaign.”
“Mostly,” I said, “for Bert Saginaw.”
Something passed across her eyes. Anger? Worry? Hard to say. She was a pro—it passed quickly. “Yes, well,” she said. “What’s good for Bert is good for me, I daresay.”
I took a deep breath. Time to screw with these people. “For now.”
“Pardon?”
“The way I hear it,” I said, “the plan is to drag you across the finish line, then move you aside. You must know Bert Saginaw doesn’t want to be a pissant lieutenant governor.”
It got to her, I could see from narrowed eyes and flared nostrils. “Drag me across the finish line? Good Lord, Mr. Sax. Conway. I invite you here to thank you, in person, for your derring-do. And you respond by hurling warmed-over rumors from the Herald?”
I said nothing.
“It is entirely possible Bert Saginaw has his eye on the governorship,” she said. “No man worth his salt would be after less, and whatever else you want to say about Bert, he is … he is indeed … a competitor, of the sharp-elbowed genus.”
A young guy in a uniform just like Shep’s came in, waited for his boss to nod, crossed the room silently, punched up the apple-wood fire, and left.
“It may be hard for you to grasp this given your proximity to Bert and his sister and their acolytes,” Tinker said. “But what Bert Saginaw wants and what Bert Saginaw gets will turn out to be very different things.”
“I brought it up,” I said, “to throw you for a loop.”
“And?”
“I didn’t throw you far.”
She laughed a little and looked over my shoulder, where I knew there was a fancy table clock. I wondered how much time I had before the polite bum’s rush.
“Speaking of Bert,” Tinker said, “he and I are speaking to a group of teachers in Holyoke this evening. It’s quite a long drive.”
There it was. I didn’t have much time.
“The reason I wanted to throw you for a loop,” I said, “was Savannah Kane.”
“Bert’s paramour. A former flame rekindled.”
“A former flame of mine, too.”
Raised eyebrows told me I’d finally surprised Betsy Tinker, at least a little. “Do tell.”
“Somebody killed her yesterday.”
“I heard, and I’m sorry. I’m given to understand the case is being investigated with vigor, and that her death was likely an accident.”
“What if Bert Saginaw killed her?”
“Be careful what you say, please.”
“No. What if he killed her, or had it done? The whole reason she showed up was blackmail. What if she was blackmailing him over those weird Jesus pics? What if she leaked them to the Globe, then told him out of spite?”
“If she did,” Tinker said, “and I don’t believe it for a moment, but stipulating that for argument’s sake, it’s impossible to conceive a more indiscreet murder.”
“By the time somebody’s good and ready to kill,” I said, “discretion is pretty much out the window.”
“You say that with conviction,” she said. “Even personal experience, I daresay.”
She raised one index finger in a just a minute gesture. I turned. Shep had silently appeared in the doorway. Sheesh, the rugs here were thick. I’m not easy to sneak up on.
“What is it you hope to gain,” Tinker said, “by informing me of Bert’s history with the tragic Ms. Kane, not to mention your own?”
“I’m going to find out who killed Savvy Kane.” I felt a hint of red mist as I said it. Clouding my eyes, clogging my brain.
“As previously mentioned, I’m told the police are investigating.”
“Sure. But cops are big fans of the path of least resistance.”
“My.”
“And rich folks can put up a lot of resistance.”
Behind me, Shep cleared his throat. “We should get on the road soon.”
“Rich folks,” Tinker said, “such as those who use pocket change to buy Cambridge hotels?”
“And those who own a full block on Beacon Hill.”
“We should get on the road soon,” Shep said, touching my elbow.
Part of me, the red-mist part, wanted to spin and slug. But there was no sense taking anything out on Shep.
I left the room. Behind me, an apple-wood knot popped.
It took two different maids to show me out.
* * *
Forty minutes later, at about five thirty, I backed my truck against a chain-link fence that separated a busted-tarmac parking lot from the east-west railroad tracks.
This was the wrong side of those tracks.
It was the section of Framingham I knew well: methadone clinics, halfway houses, two- and three-deckers overflowing with illegals. I’d done some good work down here for Barnburners who found themselves in a pinch. I’d busted people up down here. Most of them deserved it.
I looked at Lacross Security World Headquarters. It was a dump: an old warehouse subdivided into a couple dozen offices, a martial arts studio that seemed legit, and a modeling agency that did not. In the parking lot were a couple of Accords with rusted-out wheel wells, an ugly GM bomber from the ’70s—closest you’d find to a classic car down here—and a snack truck with its logo painted over. From where I sat I got an eyeful of moms fetching their kiddies from martial arts. They rolled up in sixty-thousand-dollar SUVs. Funny world.
A train rattled west behind me, happy commuters headed home.
I waited, watched, thought. Why talk to Vic Lacross? Why take a chance busting into his place? Hard to say. It was a dumb risk: Getting popped for B&E would send me back for more state time at MCI Cedar Junction, even if I was pals with my parole officer’s son.
But.
Lacross wasn’t a guy who hung around political rallies for yuks. And his half-assed little Web site hinted at dirty tricks. What were they calling it these days? Oppo research. There was a reason he’d been at that high school gym in Braxton. It was a thread I needed to tug. Maybe the thread led back to Saginaw’s blackmail problem.
And maybe the blackmail and Savvy’s death were connected.
When Lacross helped me with a thing a few years back, he’d been a hard guy to figure out. He was a homicide detective for the staties then, which placed him high on the cop totem pole, but he didn’t have CAREERIST HACK stamped on his forehead like most of those guys.
Lacross told a funny story about how he started out as a hostage negotiator. His first gig was a half-assed bank robbery out in Sterling, two meth heads holding a teller hostage. Rookie Lacross, trained in all the latest psychological mumbo-jumbo, expert on defusing tense situations, strolled in and told the punks he was going to blow their fucking heads off. One of them took a wild swing with a straight razor and amputated Lacross’s ear.
Lacross blew their fucking heads off.
The hostage was unharmed.
Lacross’s bosses were not pleased with his bedside manner. No more hostage negotiator. He grew his black hair into a Pete Rose bowl cut to cover the missing ear.
With a first impression like that, he must h
ave been damn good to work his way up to detective. But by the time I knew him, Lacross seemed half-dirty. My vibe: He loved the investigating part of his job but didn’t feel duty bound to hand the dirt to his bosses and prosecutors. He was a freelancer at heart.
Me too.
To my right, the sun dropped. I got cold. I texted Sophie that I wouldn’t be home for dinner. She texted back: K. Miss u. And another frowny face. Why had I texted Sophie instead of Charlene? I tried not to think about that.
At quarter of six I was hungry, cold, and cranky enough so that B&E seemed like a good plan. Followed a little Hispanic guy into what passed for a lobby, waited for him to unlock the staircase door, stuck my foot in it while I figured out which suite Lacross rented.
The Hispanic guy saw me just fine. But it wasn’t the kind of neighborhood or building where tenants brace a stranger. It was the kind where they hustle to get the hell away from him.
Upstairs, in a hall that smelled like ammonia and mouse turds, I found Lacross’s door. Cursed when I saw a dead bolt above the crappy knob-lock. But smiled when I checked: The dead bolt hadn’t been thrown. You can tell by how much the door rattles. People go to the hassle of buying and installing their own dead bolt, but then they lose the key or get lazy.
I stood very close to the knob and gripped it with both hands—if you’d watched me from behind you’d have thought I was taking a leak on it—and twisted one way, then the other. Once, twice, gauging the metal fatigue, torqueing against it, up on tiptoes for leverage—
The lock snapped. Just like that.
It ain’t rocket science.
The office was bigger than I expected, a full twenty by twenty. At the far end, the original warehouse-style windows could have been cool, a yuppie selling point, if the frames hadn’t needed paint and a third of the panes hadn’t been cracked. Desk, chair, lamp, filing cabinet, yard-sale rug, futon with a Mexican blanket puddled at one end, dorm-size fridge, microwave. Atop the microwave: Pop-Tarts, ramen noodles.
Home sweet home.
I cracked a box of Pop-Tarts, took one, squatted before the filing cabinet.
And heard a click.
Not a doorknob click. That particular knob would never click again.
No, I heard the shift-click of a round being chambered.
Hell.
“Fuckin’ Sax,” Lacross said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
First Shep, now Lacross. Two guys had sneaked up on me in the past hour. The grease-monkey life was making me soft.
I rose and turned.
“Stop,” he said. He had an ugly little semiautomatic on me, a nine-millimeter something or other. “Show me the hands and open the … you stole a man’s Pop-Tart? I’ve seen people do some shitty things in my time…”
“Starving,” I said, spreading my jacket to show I had no gun, then waving the Pop-Tart. “And brown sugar cinnamon. It’s my favorite.”
“It’s everybody’s favorite. Sit on the bed.”
I did. Lacross wore black boots, black slacks, a black fake-leather car coat. He sat in the desk chair, set his gun within easy reach even though we both knew he wouldn’t need it.
We looked at each other maybe ten seconds.
“I’m a regular world-beater,” he said, spreading his arms. “I’m kickin’ ass up here.”
“Why’d they throw you off the staties?”
He waved a hand, ignored the question. “You’re here ’cause you spotted me at the Tinker thing. You’re a hero. A dumb fuckin’ hero.”
“Why were you there?”
He slipped a card from his shirt pocket and flipped it to me, but it didn’t tell me anything new. “I know,” I said. “Research. That mean what I think it means?”
“Political stuff.”
“Oppo research. Dirty tricks.”
“Sure.” He shrugged.
“How’s the pay?”
“Better’n you’d think from my, ah, situation here.” Pause. “Three divorces.”
“Say no more.”
“I’m working against your pal Tinker, working for Wilton.”
“I figured.”
“And it’s the screwiest thing, Sax.”
I waited.
“I don’t think Wilton wants to win.”
“Why?”
“I’ve worked three or four of these elections now,” he said, “and Wilton’s people are pros, but they’re doing everything wrong. They send me down blind alleys. When I tell ’em they’re blind alleys, they get pissy. They tell me shut up and cash your check. And when I do dig up something half-decent, they don’t use it. Hell, I had the Jesus pics three weeks ago.”
“What happened?”
“When I passed ’em along, Wilton’s top advisor patted me on the head, but the pics disappeared. The Globe got ’em from another source.”
“So what’s going on?”
“I think Thomas Wilton got pushed into running by the country-club boys, the yacht-club boys. I don’t think he wants to govern anything bigger than a gin and tonic, and I think the best moment of his life’ll come Tuesday night when he makes his concession speech at the Copley.”
Huh.
We sat. A west-east train rattled the office windows.
“That was pretty loose of me,” Lacross said when the train was gone.
“What was?”
“What I just blabbed to you, about my own client maybe not really trying. Something like that gets out, it’s firing-offense loose. It’s you’ll-never-work-in-this-town-again loose.”
“So?” I said. But I knew where he was going.
“So what have you got for me, Sax? Spill it. You saw me at the rally. Whoopy-doo. Takes more than that to make a man pull a B&E. ’Specially when he’s still on paper.”
So he knew about my parole. “Keeping tabs?” I said.
“On everything and everybody.”
I knew I shouldn’t tell Lacross any more than I needed to. He wasn’t a guy you could ever trust. On the other hand, he was more or less an honest thief, like me. Aren’t many of us left. And he sure had come through with dirt on his own client. I decided to take a chance.
“Tinker and Saginaw have this whole damn soap opera going,” I said. “Everybody hates everybody, everybody’s screwing everybody. I can’t say a whole lot about it, but there’s blackmail.”
“The Jesus pics.”
“There’s more.”
“Worse?”
“Yup.” I paused. “Somebody got killed.” I told him a bare-bones version of Savvy. Left out the personal stuff, but the way he looked at me said he knew there was more.
“Huh,” Lacross said when I finished. “Cops sticking with the accident scenario?”
“So far.”
“You’re not buying it. You think she was killed. Over the blackmail.”
“I had to look at Wilton, had to see if he was the blackmailer,” I said. “Especially when I figured out you were working for him.”
He nodded. “I get it.”
“But when you tell me Wilton’s not even trying, it fits. It makes sense. Everything about this blackmail deal feels … personal. It feels like an inside thing.”
“You take a look at Saginaw’s ex?” I must have looked surprised when Lacross said it, because he half-smiled. “Oppo research, remember.”
“Haven’t talked with her yet,” I said, “but I will. That’s the vibe I’m talking about, that brand of meanness.”
“These other pics,” Lacross said. “Are they bad enough so Wilton might actually win?”
“I haven’t seen them,” I said. “But judging by how nervous Saginaw seemed, and stacked on top of the Jesus pics, it’s a possibility.”
Lacross whistled, nodded. “Well, I can make your life a little easier. No goddamn way is Wilton behind any of this. Trust me. If I’m wrong, I’ll wear a pair of his pants all week. They’re green with blue whales.”
“Bullshit.”
“My mouth to God’s ear.” He looked at his watch.
“I need you to scram now. Got some useless oppo research to do.”
I rose, started to leave. But thought of something: If Lacross was trailing around after Team Tinker-Saginaw … “A guy’s been tailing me,” I said.
“Green Expedition. I wondered if you’d made him yet.”
“Who is he?”
“Wish I knew. I made him about a week ago, told my bosses there was a dude trailing around after Saginaw, sometimes Tinker. They told me not to worry my pretty head.”
“If I give you his plate number, can you run it?”
“Already did.”
“And?”
“And unless that big ugly dude is Dinah Wannamaker of Ludlow, Mass., the plate’s stolen. What the smart guys do, they hit an airport parking garage, find a car just like theirs, and swipe the plates. The vic spots her missing plate, thinks it got knocked off in a parking lot, gets a duplicate. I know guys been running around three years on plates like that.”
Huh. That could work. And anybody smart enough to pull it off was also smart enough to pop a FAST LANE transponder out of any unlocked car in a parking lot, which would explain why the Expedition dude had a transponder that wasn’t Velcro’d to his windshield.
But why had he done the plate-and-transponder bit in the first place? “Any way you could take a harder look?” I said. “Maybe visit Wannamaker, imply you’re still with the staties?”
“That’s a hell of a risk.” Lacross shrugged. “And Wilton’s checks clear.”
“Three divorces,” I said.
“Yup.”
I sighed. “You should throw your dead bolt.”
“I guess so.”
“Thanks for the info,” I said, crossing the room. “It helps.”
“Hey Sax?”
I turned.
“You can take the rest of the Pop-Tart,” Lacross said. “I’m not gonna shoot you over it.”
* * *
“If memory serves, Lacross had something to do with your little stay at MCI Cedar Junction,” Randall said thirty minutes later, wiping away a tear. “How far do you trust him?”
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “And he was just doing his job. The DA was the one who was really on the warpath. If anybody hosed me, it was her.” I blew my nose into a napkin.
The Whole Lie Page 11
