The Whole Lie

by Steve Ulfelder

  He faded. The beeps and boops on the machine changed rhythm. A nurse came in, checked the IV bag. I could tell she wanted me to leave, but her fussing woke Moe. “Don’t worry,” he said to the nurse, “I’ll chase this asshole out in two minutes.”

  Her expression said that was ninety seconds too long. But she split.

  “What did the others tell you on your way up?” Moe said.

  “What others?”

  “The Barnburners,” he said. He sounded surprised. “They left just before you got here. Want to find you, read you the riot act.” He laughed some. “You’re in deep shit.”

  * * *

  Three minutes later, I stepped from the elevator and looked for signs to the chapel.

  Because where else would a group of drunks be?

  When I walked in, I nearly laughed. It was Mary Giarusso, Carlos Q, and Butch Feeley. The funny part was that without realizing it, they’d set up the chapel like a Barnburners meeting—three seats at the right front corner of the room, near the altar, arranged kitty-corner so they could see anybody who came in. They’d even found the only three folding chairs in the joint.

  “You could’ve sat in the pews, guys,” I said, making my way toward them. “They look pretty comfy.”

  “Shut up and sit down,” Butch said.

  Whoa.

  I sat in the front pew. It was like facing the parole board again.

  “The fuck is wrong with you, man?” said Carlos Q, the Colombian. It came out The fock is wrong witchoo, mang? Carlos Q sounded exactly like a bad Scarface impression. But as far as I knew, nobody’d ever been dumb enough to tell him so.

  “How many meetings have you been to this month?” Mary said.

  “It’s not a numbers game,” I said.

  “Hell it’s not,” Butch said. “Bring the body, the mind follows. Leave the body at home…” He shrugged.

  I bowed my head. I would take it. I deserved it.

  “When’s the last time you checked in with your sponsor?” Mary said.

  “A while,” I said.

  “Six weeks!” she said. “Yes, I checked. Don’t look at me that way, Conway Sax. I’m worried about you.”

  It was quiet awhile.

  “We’re all worried,” Butch said.

  “The things you do, the burdens,” Carlos Q said, tapping his shoulders. “Heavy. Maybe too heavy too long.”

  “No,” I said. “I can take the load.”

  “Then take it,” Butch said. “Bear it. Or pass it along to someone who can.”

  They all rose at once, filing past me on their way out. “Please fold the chairs before you leave,” Mary said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If there was a coffee urn,” she said, not liking my tone, “I’d make you clean it. If I could find a mop, and believe you me I looked, I’d make you swab the floors. Do you some good.”

  Carlos laid a meaty hand on my shoulder. “Serious AA,” he said.

  “For serious people,” I said, completing the Barnburners motto.

  Butch came last. “I want you to do ninety meetings in ninety days,” he said. “Get you some routine. Get you some humility.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t ‘sir’ me. I work for a living.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was an old joke between us. But neither of us smiled this time.

  They left me alone.

  I knelt.

  I tried to pray.

  But couldn’t.

  It happens. It’s a bad sign. Means I’m all screwed up in ways I half understand. But only half.

  Frustrating.

  I hit my knees, steepled my hands.

  I tried.

  It didn’t take.

  “Ow,” I said. Didn’t know why. But the word felt right.

  “Ow,” I said again.

  I shook.

  I knelt.

  I steepled my hands.

  I didn’t pray.

  I wanted a drink.

  I wanted a drink so bad.

  Worse than I had since becoming a Barnburner.

  I thought about my early Barnburner days.

  I’d been sober a few months but was white-knuckling it, marking time until I picked up again. I’d hitched a ride to this meeting at Saint Anne’s in Framingham mostly because the car ride would be warm—it was February—and the guy who brought me promised they had better donuts than most meetings.

  I’d known right away something was different about this group that called itself the Barnburners. They took no shit. They brooked no foolishness. Anybody who was serious about staying sober was welcome. Anybody who wasn’t got the bum’s rush.

  I liked it. I was curious. I kept coming around until I got invited to the Meeting After the Meeting.

  The Meeting After the Meeting was a tough crowd. Words meant shit. Deeds meant everything.

  It was the first team I’d ever stuck with, the first group that ever thought I was worth much of anything.

  My eyes snapped open. I wasn’t about to give up my role now.

  But Carlos Q had figured me out. There was weight to everything I did. Maybe it added up gradually. Maybe every ex-boyfriend I beat up, every douchebag boss I set straight, every debt I cancelled sat on my shoulders like a feather.

  A ton of feathers weighs a ton.

  I folded the three chairs, set them neatly in a corner.

  I walked from the chapel shaking only a little.

  * * *

  An hour later I locked my truck, grabbed my duffel and sleeping bag, eyeballed Floriano’s house. Sighed.

  It was this or the Red Roof Inn.

  The sleeping bag, the duffel, and everything in it were twenty minutes old. I’d made a Walmart run rather than drive to Charlene’s to fetch gear. The idea of walking into her house, seeing hope on Sophie’s face, then wiping out that hope … I couldn’t stand it. It made me blue.

  It made me thirsty.

  Cut the shit.

  Floriano either heard my truck or looked out the window at the right time: He opened the oak door before I knocked. The door’s a beauty, original to the 1895 house. It’s flanked by a pair of stained-glass panels, floor to ceiling, that have miraculously survived in this neighborhood. Floriano was once offered thirty grand just for the stained glass by a Back Bay antique dealer. He turned down the offer. Stubborn.

  We looked at each other awhile.

  “The stain job we did on that door is holding up,” I said.

  “Was a long time ago,” Floriano said.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” I said.

  The Mendes house: warm, meat smells left over from the family’s typical late dinner, dishwasher hum, homework-done-getting-ready-for-bed vibe.

  From the entry I could see the dining room, with identically framed images of Jesus Christ and Ayrton Senna, the best driver Floriano and I ever saw. Senna, a Brazilian, died in a wreck when he was thirty-four.

  I nodded at the curved staircase. “Maria?”

  “Putting the girls to bed.”

  “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “No trouble, Connie.” He didn’t quite meet my eye as he said it. “You want a sofa up here? Or the cot downstairs?”

  With an assist from his two older sons, who now ran a for-profit recycling outfit that was growing like crazy, Floriano and I had finished the basement long ago. Put in a bathroom, the works.

  “Cot’s fine,” I said.

  “Well then,” he said, and looked at his hardwood floor. “Long day tomorrow—”

  “Long day today—” I said at the exact same time.

  My friend finally looked me in the eye. We laughed a little. I thought he was going to say more. But he didn’t.

  “Cot’s fine,” I said, stepping to the basement door.

  And it was, I thought. Post-shower, in my sleeping bag atop the cot, hands folded behind my head. Ticking off things that had happened that day. A hell of a lot of things.

  No wonder I was t
ired.

  I sighed. I rolled off the cot. I hit my knees and steepled my hands like an eight-year-old girl. I tried again to pray.

  It didn’t take.

  I tried. Really. But instead of the relaxed hum and loose thought chains I was looking for, I got Moe pictures. So tiny in his hospital bed, white on white on white.

  Savvy Kane pictures. A girl I’d loved, her neck snapped.

  Blaine Lee pictures. Blood and hair and scalp jammed in a cracked windshield.

  The pictures spun, danced, floated. The pictures became Vernon Lee of Level Cross.

  The pictures were stained by red mist.

  No wonder I couldn’t pray. The pictures were the opposite of prayer.

  The pictures made me thirsty.

  Cut the shit.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, whispering it.

  I flopped back into the cot.

  I lay awake a long time.

  My last thought, over and over, when I finally drifted away: Nobody can say I didn’t try.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Funny things, words. The way their meaning bounces off you—until it doesn’t.

  In cold blood.

  Found myself thinking those words early the next morning, Saturday. Full cup of coffee, full tank of gas.

  I cruised.

  I trawled.

  I trawled for Vernon Lee.

  I trawled in cold blood.

  Driving east toward Winthrop, toward Moe’s house, visor down against a cold hard sunrise, I tried to heat my blood with Moe images, Savvy images. Snapped necks, diaper shit-smears, Vernon the freak who had to be getting off on it all. Maybe he hadn’t at first. But he was now.

  I wanted red mist.

  I didn’t get it.

  In cold blood.

  Driving with one eye on my mirror. Trawling, hoping for the first time ever that I would pick up a tail.

  Winthrop, Eastie, back through the tunnel, Mass Pike to the Allston/Brighton tolls, sun at my back now, climbing but not yet warming the day. Just driving to places I’d been. Vernon had followed me before. Maybe he’d follow me again.

  I didn’t know what the hell else to do.

  Cold blood.

  Barnburner experience could only take me so far, I realized on Mass Ave in Cambridge. Vernon Lee wasn’t some gal’s meth-head ex who needed a good scaring. He wasn’t some third-rate shylock I could rattle with a couple of open-hand slaps.

  Vernon Lee was a stone-cold killer, and whatever I was going to do to him I was going to do without a red-mist rage.

  Could I?

  Cold coffee. An illegal U-turn on Mass Ave. Back to the Pike onramp, feeling like a jackass. Driving around hoping to pick up a tail. That was your plan? That was it?

  I wished Randall was around to help me make a better one. Wondered how he was doing down in Level Cross, glanced at the side-view as I merged onto the Pike …

  … and there it was. Green Expedition, gold trim, the Eddie Bauer model.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” I said out loud.

  I may have smiled.

  I drove. I led Vernon west. He planted himself two hundred yards behind me and stayed there. Did he want me to spot him, or was he just stupid?

  I didn’t care.

  Got off the Pike at the Framingham exit. Drove slowly, signaled my turns, stopped looking in the mirror—didn’t want to lose him, didn’t want to scare him off. I worked my way through the strip-mall ghetto, banged a left on Concord Street, drove south.

  Toward my part of Framingham.

  I knew exactly where I was leading Vernon.

  No more hemming and hawing about cold blood versus red mist. Pack that away. Do what you already decided to do.

  Every couple of years, the Framingham powers that be made a Keystone Kops effort to supercharge the downtown area. The idea—or pipe dream—was to add businesses that weren’t check-cashing joints or nail salons, maybe even businesses without a Brazilian flag in the window and a sign reading PORTUGUES FALADO AQUI. Framingham was drooling to attract hip restaurants, yuppie lofts, office condos.

  The projects had a predictable arc: They always launched with fanfare and tax bucks, and they always dribbled to a close years later when some poor developer lost his shirt after being jerked around by the city.

  Eight years ago, one developer who apparently hadn’t learned this lesson had agreed to build a five-story concrete parking garage before he built the shopping-and-professional arcade it would service.

  The garage got built. The arcade was a hole in the ground. The developer tanked.

  Framingham.

  I thought all this as I hung a left and approached the place, which hulked just off Route 135 near the Natick border. Five stories of ugly, maintained (sort of) at city expense, to service a vacant lot.

  For me, right now, it was perfect.

  I reached under the bench seat, pulled out a ball cap, grabbed my sunglasses. The garage would have surveillance cams. Some of them might even work. If they did, they’d be set up to grab license numbers. So no way was I pulling in.

  Given my plans. The plans I’d made in cold blood.

  Instead: I parked on 135, dodged through a hole in the fence made by junkies and thugs who liked to cut from a taco stand to the garage. I walked at a steady pace, not daring to turn and look for Vernon. Had to assume that once I’d sucked him this far, he’d make the full commitment.

  I entered the garage, took a right, and sprinted to the first 180-degree turn, where concrete angled up to become Level Two. Dodged behind a post, listened. For maybe the third time in five years, I wished I had a gun. The damn things are like four-wheel drive: You hardly ever want it, but when you want it, you really want it.

  Heard the gate buzz, heard the Expedition’s low rumble as it came my way.

  Good.

  No stairs; that would ruin my sucker-hole plan. Instead, I double-timed up the ramps. The idea was to keep the SUV far enough back to stay curious, to always wonder if I’d be around the next corner.

  Level Three. One of the many foolish things about this garage was that although it was plunked down in the suburbs, it’d been built to city scale for city-sized cars. So even at a walking pace, the Expedition’s tires complained as it tracked the tight turns at either end. I maintained my double-time pace, never looking back, hoping Vernon’s curiosity would beat out the alarms that ought to be going off in his head.

  Level Four. The parked cars, thin to begin with, were nearly nonexistent up here, a few wrecks clustered near the elevators.

  Level Five: rooftop. Nowhere else to go. Sudden sunlight made me glad for the sunglasses. The wind was a little stronger up here, making a cold day colder.

  I ran hard toward the elevator area. Had a general idea what I was looking for, but needed some luck to find it.

  Got some. There, propping open a stairwell door: a steel wheel from a car, thirteen inches in diameter, once silver, now mostly rust. I snagged it, skinning my knuckles on the deck, and duckwalked back to the only car on this level: an ancient pigeon-shit-covered Montego.

  Squatting, I heard the Expedition’s tires gripe their way around the corner, heard hesitation when Vernon didn’t see what he expected to: me. He was looking at an empty rooftop, pigeon shit, and the Montego.

  While Vernon tipped the throttle and slow-rolled my way, I gripped the steel wheel I planned to use as a weapon and thought about this structure … the rest of the story, as the radio guy used to say.

  The rest of the story was that the contractor who’d lost his shirt was a friend of a friend, and I got to know him during the project. Hell, I was part of a crew who tried to talk him out of the project. We told him how Framingham worked. We pointed out the half-dozen abandoned efforts to yuppify downtown, we made him watch the all-day traffic jams caused by the train tracks, we asked how many big-time retail chains would welcome methadone clinics and bail bondsmen as neighbors.

  Poor sap was too much of an optimist to listen. So I watched hi
m piss away the business he’d built, his thrice-mortgaged house, and his kids’ college funds putting up the world’s least useful and least used garage.

  Near the end, he’d wised up some. Not enough, but some. He threw in the towel on quality, for starters—said he was damned if he’d keep doing top-notch work while the planning commission and the zoning board and the banks jerked him around.

  He skimped on rebar. He skimped on his mix.

  Last time I saw him, he said if I ever parked in his joke of a garage, I’d best skip the top floors. Said a Boy Scout with a penknife could whittle those floors to nothing. Said you hit a main support with a shopping cart, you might bring the whole damn thing down—the concrete was no better’n what you’d buy in a sack at Home Depot.

  I heard he was in Corpus Christie lately, working oil rigs when he could.

  The Expedition would have doors that locked automatically once you reached five miles an hour. There would be no easy way inside that SUV. That was where my rusty wheel came in.

  When he neared the Montego, Vernon slowed even more. He had to be puzzled, wondering where the hell I’d gone. I kept my head down.

  The SUV drew level. Its V8 made a nice little whump-whump at idle.

  I tightened my grip on the wheel.

  The Expedition moved forward. There was nowhere else to go; Vernon was getting set to turn around and drive out.

  Time to stop thinking. Cold blood.

  I rose and stepped from behind the Montego. Hooked a sharp left, flew at the driver’s side of the Expedition. When Vernon spotted me from the corner of his eye, he hit the brakes and the SUV’s nose dipped.

  Perfect.

  What happened next happened fast but felt slow. That was a good thing. It used to work the same way when I was driving well: The world just about froze, and it seemed every move I made was the right one.

  I stepped toward the driver’s door, raised the wheel over my head with both hands, whipped it straight at the window. Needed to smash glass. If I smashed Vernon’s head, too, so much the better.

  Steel shattered glass, and then my arms, head, and torso were inside the SUV. I got my feet on the running board, but before I could let go of the wheel and claw the lock open, something stung the meat of my right shoulder. Hard. And kept stinging.

  Vernon was biting me.