Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery (37 page)

Her memoirs come out in October. The other day, Sophie saw her on the cover of
Us
magazine.

An embarrassed cop is a hardworking cop. Two weeks too late, the geniuses on the Josh Whipple task force confirmed what no-longer-Patty had told me: Phigg and Ollie each had very minor bruising on the backs of their heads where Josh had sapped them before hoisting them into necktie nooses.

*   *   *

I hadn’t noticed the skylights in Motorenwerk’s roof until now. Standing in the shop, with the unlockable window closed behind me, I was grateful for them—plenty of morning light.

As McCord had warned me, the cops had torn the hell out of the place. It was one thing to be thorough, but a lot of what I saw was plain mean. Window glass stomped, boxes of subassemblies swept to the floor. Like that. The work of bored, mean assholes.

They’d sliced the interior from Phigg’s Mercedes, and they’d removed, drained, and cut open the fuel tank. I thought about the pride Ollie had shown when he talked about his work. To him, stashing drugs in cars was no different than doing a faithful restoration. The idea was to cover up your work once you’d
done
your work. It reminded me of the old Westerns, where the last thing a guy did to cover his tracks was walk backward wiggling a handful of brush in the dirt.

With a droplight in my hand, I lay flat on my back—my wound had hurt like hell when I’d swung under—and stared up at the car’s underside. “Shit,” I said out loud. If this was anything other than a quarter-century-old Mercedes that had spent most of its life on New England’s winter-salted roads, Ollie Dufresne was a genius. No wonder the cops had focused on the interior.

I’d worked on this car myself, so I knew all its finicky, ahead-of-their-time systems looked just the way they should. The brake lines, the stupidly complex air-ride suspension, the steering rack, the fuel line—I’d replaced them all at least once, and they’d been untouched since. I saw nothing that looked like fresh paint, nothing that looked smooth or shiny when it ought to be rough or corroded.

The fuel line. Silver with light corrosion, quarter inch in diameter, attached to the left-side stiffening rib with stout brackets.

Why was I looking at a fuel line?

Like virtually all modern cars, the Mercedes had a unit body. That meant there was no traditional frame; the entire body served as the frame. Unit-body cars usually have two hollow rails running lengthwise down their undersides. Civilians look at these rails and call them a frame, but they’re not. They’re just stiffening ribs.

And they’re hollow.

They make a convenient place to hide the plumbing that runs from the front of a car to the back.

Like the fuel line.

I remembered like hell, wriggling on my back, looking up. Five, six years back, a fitting on Phigg’s fuel line had cracked. It made a help of a mess and stink because the fuel line ran through the stiffening rib. Typical pain-in-the-ass German overengineering.

But I was positive: The fuel line had run through the rib. So why was I looking at a fuel line on the
outside
of that rib?

I wished for my reading glasses, crawled back and forth, ignored the worsening pain in my side. Finally I found what used to be the hole where the line disappeared into the rib. The hole had been filled, painted, and distressed perfectly. The setup was disguised so well I wouldn’t have found it in a million years if I hadn’t replaced the line myself.

Ollie
was
a genius.

I slid out from under and turned on the shop’s air compressor, a good Ingersoll Rand unit. Jesus, it was loud. I winced at the hammering noise. But this was Mechanic Street, where there was nothing unusual about a compressor on a Saturday. I hoped. I hooked a plasma cutter to the air hose.

Three minutes later, I had safety goggles on and the business end of the cutter—it looked like the spray nozzle you screw on the end of a garden hose—was burning a twenty-seven-thousand-degree hole in the car’s stiffening ribs. It took five minutes to cut a notch at each end of each rib, plus one neat line lengthwise.

I killed the plasma cutter and the air compressor, took a deep breath in the silence. I found a cat’s-paw pry bar hanging above a tool bench, dove under the Mercedes again. Got the cat’s paw deep into the line I’d just cut, levered. The steel gave way easier than I’d figured, moved a good half inch.

And showed me thick plastic.

I slid forward eighteen inches, pried again. Then again, then once more. Then I worked my way back, watching the gap spread. After a couple more trips from the rear of the rib to the front, metal fatigue took over and I just pushed the rib back. It was packed with plastic-wrapped packs.

Of money.

I knew at a glance they’d been wrapped by whomever had wrapped the money in Phigg’s false floor. The plastic was industrial strength, and from the density, I guessed they’d sucked the air from each brick using one of those food-storage systems. Each brick was the length and width of a dollar bill and about three inches thick—the perfect thickness for the car’s stiffening ribs.

I cat’s-pawed seven bricks from the left rib, then went to work on the right, trying not to think about how much money I was dealing with. Finished up, shoved the money bricks out from under, climbed out, stood, tossed the goggles on a bench. I’d been here nearly two hours. Instinct screamed
Get the hell out.
I ignored it. The cops had never paid as much attention to Motorenwerk as they should’ve, and I could keep it that way if I did minor cleanup.

I crawled under the Mercedes one last time and bent the stiffening ribs to their original positions. Found a push broom, swept away metal dust and the crud that had fallen from the ribs. Put all the tools away, looked around. The place looked about the same as when I’d come in. Not one person in a hundred would notice I’d been here.

McCord would notice. But he wouldn’t be coming by. He quit. Had dropped by the hospital to tell me.

“Why are you leaving the staties?” I’d said. “No good deed goes unpunished?”

“Something like that.”

“What will you do?”

“Think I’ll head up to Alaska. Walk the coast.”

That was how he put it. Not hike, not backpack. He was going to walk the goddamn coast of Alaska.

“That’s a lot of coast, isn’t it?”

“That’s okay,” McCord said. “Got a good pair of boots.” His joke must have tickled him, because he smiled a full quarter inch.

I looked around the garage, found a canvas tool bag that swallowed the fourteen money bricks. I started to leave, thought things through, stopped. Grabbed an X-ACTO knife, sliced through one brick’s plastic, thumbed the brick. “Holy shit,” I said out loud.

Like the bills in the other stash, these were old and beat up—laundered. But there were no fives, tens, or twenties here. Strictly fifties and hundreds.

“Holy shit,” I said again.

Thinking about the Mexican outside, I pulled four grand and stuck it in my jeans pocket. Used red shop towels to cover the money, then grabbed a few decent power tools and filled the bag the rest of the way.

I smiled. To honest thieves, stolen tools are mother’s milk. They might as well be cash.

I waddled across the street toward the Mexican, my side stinging.

The Mexican peered in the bag, spotted an air gun, a torque wrench, a new set of metric sockets, a few other things I’d grabbed.

Slow smile as he looked up. “Candy from a fucking baby, uh?”

I took the four grand from my pocket, pressed it into his hand. “You and me,” I said. “Honest thieves.”

“Just another day on Mechanic Street,” he said, and waved a slow hand and walked through the door of his shop.

I never saw him again.

*   *   *

So I had a bag of money for Trey Phigg. That was something. Kieu had been a lot closer to death than I was. An eye socket that needed to be rebuilt nearly from scratch was the least of her injuries. Trey’s health-insurance status was beyond sketchy. Charlene had been footing the bills. She didn’t mind, but Trey did. Whatever was in the bag would make a dent.

That was about all the enthusiasm I could put together. I’d been driving around a lot, enough so Charlene worried. She wanted me to see a shrink. The closest I came was a visit to Vicky Lin, the doc at Cider Hill.

“This is more common than not,” she’d said in her office. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”

“He was sober when he showed up here,” I said. “That’s the part I can’t get around. Forty years shitfaced, then he sobered up like
that
for a couple of weeks. And now he’s worse than ever.”

She looked at her blotter and played with the indentation on her ring finger. When she caught me noticing, she stopped. “It seems Fred had a mission in mind when he got sober.”

“To fuck me over.”

“Revenge,” she said, nodding. “It’s powerful. Has Fred … approached you? Physically or by phone?”

“No. People see him around, they call me. Cops pick him up, but it’s always a different town, and they never ID him till it’s too late.”

We sat. I’d only been out of the hospital two days, so I was sort of twisted in my chair to ease my wound.

“You’ve been through quite a bit,” she finally said.

“Not as much as Fred.” I winced to my feet and left.

Before Vicky’s office door even closed, I wished I’d said more.

*   *   *

After that meet with Vicky, I’d driven out to Purgatory Chasm. It was where I wound up most days.

Every day, truth be told.

Today: not busy at all, dog-day heat keeping people away. One or two families out for a weekend activity, a few more serious hikers.

I tried to float, tried to let the bag of money cheer me up, tried not to think about Fred.

My cell rang. Charlene’s home number, probably Sophie calling. She was worried as hell about me.

I didn’t pick up.

I floated away. I dreamed of Minnesota. I never remember what happens in my dreams, but I do remember the overall vibe. If it’s a good vibe, it was a Minnesota dream.

My eyes blinked, then snapped wide.

Jesus Christ.

My father stood not thirty yards away, right at the head of the main trail. He’d spotted me and frozen.

We stared each other down.

He’d aged twenty years in three weeks. Sunken cheeks, gray skin, a bum’s no-color Windbreaker.

In his right hand he held a cardboard six-pack of Rolling Rock.

I knew it!
my head screamed.
I knew he’d come here!

I climbed from my truck like he was a deer I didn’t want to scare.

I said his name, stepped toward him.

“That’s close enough,” he said.

“Past is past, Fred. Want to come home? Want to come to Charlene’s?”

“That cocksucker Josh tricked me,” Fred said. “Said we’d squeeze some money out of you, that was all.”

“That’s all over, Fred. Josh is out of the picture.” I eased forward a few steps while I spoke. I was close enough to see Fred’s eyes flashing from sanity to somewhere else and back.

“I said that’s close enough!”
He held up his six-pack to ward me off.

“You haven’t cracked that sixer yet, have you?” I said. “So you’re sober today. Why not keep it that way?”

My father’s eyes flashed sane/not sane, back and forth. He took my offer seriously. “I
am
sober, ain’t I?” he said. “Technically. Today.”

“Hell yes you are.”

“It’s a good day to be sober.”

“Hell yes it is,” I said, and relaxed just a little as he lowered the six-pack.

So I was caught flat-footed when he took off down Purgatory Chasm. He disappeared from my view. I sprinted to the head of the trail, my side stinging.

Dear God, he was beautiful, just as he’d been thirty years ago. In the time I’d taken to run twenty yards on flat ground, he had mountain-goated forty through boulders. I caught a flash of green: Fred had pulled one Rolling Rock from the carton and tossed it over his shoulder like a grenade. It exploded on a rock. A mother holding her son’s hand farther down the trail said, “Hey.”

I hesitated half a beat. Then I took off.

It came back instantly, completely. That fully alive feeling, making twenty decisions every second—and yet no decisions at all, just running the rocks, floating, gravity my ally.

Fred was flying. What he was doing would be hard for the best athlete in the world. It was impossible for a healthy man in his seventies. For a lifelong drunk who could barely climb a flight of stairs, it was unreal. It was destiny.

I was closing on him. Another beer grenade exploded twenty-five yards ahead. Then a third, twenty yards ahead. I felt a rip in my side, felt the warmth of blood, didn’t even consider slowing.

Fred tossed the rest of his six-pack in the air. While he put on his final burst of suicide speed, I had to duck flying beers. As I regained my balance and slowed, I saw new motion ahead and looked up.