Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Read online

I spelled it, pronounced it again. “It’s a Brazilian hardwood. Good stuff, lasts forever.”

  “Cost?”

  I shrugged.

  Randall shook his head, bent, picked up more ipe, headed for the back of the house. I scooped ipe and followed. “The plan was bring this place up to code, pretty it up a little, and sell it fast,” he said. “Remember?”

  We stepped through the skeleton of the new deck we’d built off the kitchen. I said, “In case I wind up renting the place instead of selling, the ipe’ll save me money in the long run. No maintenance, no splits.”

  “You can barely say that with a straight face,” he said. “What about blowing out that kitchen wall? What about the fancy tile in the bathroom? What about pulling the perfectly decent vinyl siding?” He finger-ticked as he spoke.

  I said nothing.

  We went around front for more wood.

  “You keep finding excuses not to finish up and sell,” Randall said. “And the neighborhood’s going downhill fast, so every nickel you spend is a nickel lost.”

  We stacked a half dozen twelve-footers and each took an end. I walked backward and said, “Nothing wrong with doing a job right.”

  “Nonsense.” Randall’s voice was soft now.

  I said nothing.

  Randall said, “Ask yourself what’s really going on, Conway. And be honest, okay?”

  “I’ll get the chop saw.”

  * * *

  Five hours later we stood sweating on ipe. I held a water. Randall held a beer.

  “Nice,” I said. “Small, but a good selling point. You think?”

  “Sure.”

  “’Preciate the help. You take off. I’ll clean up, put a coat of oil on it tomorrow.”

  He toasted me, finished his beer, set the empty next to the kitchen door, grabbed his T-shirt. On his way past he set a hand on my shoulder. “Ask,” Randall said, “and be honest.”

  My jaw felt tight. I nodded.

  I swept, policed up screws we’d dropped, stacked leftover ipe in the one-car detached garage we planned to tear down soon. Although lately I’d been rethinking that: It’d make a nice workshop. For someone.

  I brought the chop saw and cordless drills into the kitchen. I didn’t dare leave them in the garage, with its rotted door. The way this neighborhood was going, they’d be stolen and traded for meth before the eleven-o’clock news.

  I drank another water. Talked to my cats, Dale and Davey. Thought about dinner.

  Thought about Charlene. I should call.

  I texted instead: Wrking on deck, will stay here 2nite, xoxo.

  She texted back: K.

  I stared at the letter.

  I’d been pushing Charlene away for a while.

  It was working.

  Shit.

  I looked at Dale. “We like it here,” I said. “Right?”

  Both cats stared.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next morning, a Tuesday, at nine, I parked across from Das Motorenwerk and crossed the street. Out front was parked a BMW 2002tii, one of the last ones they made. It was rotting from the rockers up, the way those cars do.

  Through the open roll-up doors I saw two cars on lifts, a newish Mercedes SUV and an Acura Legend. The Acura told me a lot. Snooty German garages don’t work on Japanese cars unless they’re in deep shit. A few years back, when I had my own shop, I’d been forced to bite that bullet myself. It was Charlene’s idea. The move had worked, business had grown. Then a jerk I’d hired out of pity had torched the shop.

  I stepped inside the garage, knowing I’d learn more there than in the office, and looked around.

  In a back corner I saw what had to be Phigg’s car beneath a dustcover. I started toward it but stopped under the Mercedes SUV. They were doing a soup-to-nuts brake job. On a two-year-old truck? I spotted the old brake pads and rotors on a rolling cart, picked up a pair of front pads. They were only two-thirds gone.

  The garage held some expensive restoration tools: an English wheel and metal brake for bodywork and fabrication, a small paint booth, a bead-blasting cabinet. But all that good stuff looked unused, tucked away, shoved in corners. This used to be a serious automotive shop. Now it was doing yawn-city maintenance. Why?

  “Help you?” The bathroom door closed and a voice rose. Work boots squeaked toward me. “Sir, please don’t stand under the lift!”

  I turned. He was a young guy, short, with red wire-brush hair and pale green eyes that were bugging with anger.

  I stepped from beneath the SUV, knowing how the kid felt. No tech likes civilians in the shop, let alone dicking around under the lift.

  I held up the brake pads. “I’m guessing here,” I said. “The customer’s a lady, probably a mom with young kids. She came in and said her brakes felt funny.”

  The kid folded his arms. From the way his lips thinned I knew I was on to something.

  “So your boss looked her in the eye,” I said, “and told her brakes aren’t something to gamble with. Now you’re nicking her for all four corners, rotors and all. I’ll say … eleven hundred, eleven-fifty?”

  His face had gone the same color as his hair. “What the heck do you want, mister?”

  “Was I close?”

  Long pause. “Fourteen hundred,” he finally said. “The parts for these German cars, you wouldn’t believe it. Besides, the dealership wanted seventeen hundred. Can I help you?”

  The way he looked at me made my shoulder blades tense, and I wasn’t sure why—if I had to, I could pick him up with one hand and body-slam him. But there was something at work behind his eyes, an ice-cold evaluation, that tweaked me.

  I pointed at the office. “Boss in there?”

  The kid nodded and wiped his hands as I walked away. I felt his stare. My shoulder blades didn’t unclench until I was through the door.

  In the office, the boss stood behind a counter and tried to sell work to a tall thin man. I listened as I eyeballed the usual ASE certification plaques, photos of the Little League team the shop sponsored, and Chamber of Commerce testimonials. The thin man owned the 2002 out front and didn’t look like anybody’s sucker. His frozen smile told me he wouldn’t let this shop touch his car. He was waiting for a pause so he could leave without being rude.

  But the boss knew all this too, and he wasn’t giving the thin man a pause to leave on. On the other hand, he wasn’t pitching real hard. He should’ve had the prospect out in the shop, showing off the spray booth and the English wheel. Instead, he was going through the motions.

  In four minutes the thin man stopped being polite. He said he’d take a business card and call later, then walked out.

  I stepped to the counter, elbow-leaned, shook my head. “Selling the job,” I said. “It’s always the hardest part, huh?”

  “Right you are, friend, right you are.” He looked past me through the plate-glass window, wondering what I’d driven up in, whether I was another prospect. If he stood five-six he was lucky. He was bald on top with a ring of black-running-gray hair. Above the pocket of his light-brown work shirt: MOTORENWERK and Ollie.

  In maybe three seconds, he figured out the F-150 was mine and realized I wasn’t a potential customer. His eyes shut down. “Help you?”

  “Tander Phigg’s 450SEL,” I said, nodding toward the shop. “The one you’ve got covered in the corner.”

  The eyes went hard. “What about it?”

  “He wants it back.”

  Ollie reared back, laughed hard, clapped his hands a couple times. Later I wondered if it was a signal, or maybe a distraction while he hit a panic button.

  Ollie’s laugh slowed. He wiped an eye. I said, “Wants his thirty-five hundred bucks, too.”

  Ollie loved that. He slapped one hand on the counter, braced himself with the other on his thigh. He was laughing too hard to stand up straight, saying “thirty-five hundred!” over and over like a punch line.

  The laughter was contagious: It made me smile even while I wondered what the hell was going on. I watched
Ollie, waited for him to catch his breath so I could get the real story.

  I felt an air-whoosh as the door behind me opened. Ollie cut his eyes toward the door. I started to turn.

  Too late. Something busted my head open. I watched the floor come up at my face. The flooring was antique oak. Good stuff.

  * * *

  I woke up on my left side, scrabbling away from a roar, then finding my back against something hard. I felt a pulsing ache that was like biting down on tinfoil—but in my head.

  I creaked an eye open and reached behind me, figuring things out. The roar was a train, a long CSX freight, forty feet dead ahead.

  I squinted at my old workhorse Seiko diver’s watch. It was going on ten. I’d been out fifteen minutes or less. The hardness behind me was a Dumpster.

  Connection: I was at the end of Mechanic Street, a few lots west of Motorenwerk.

  I blinked, shook my head to clear it. Saw the Mexican from the upholstery shop. He was maybe ten feet away with his back to me. Had his hands splayed on his hips while he took a piss and watched the train.

  His pit bull was licking blood from my head.

  The train passed. The Mexican zipped up. I started to put my right hand to my head wound, but the pit bull growled and got low. The Mexican turned. “He like you better when you out cold,” he said. “Think I do, too.”

  I said, “Willya?”

  He whistled. The pit bull backed off but stayed low. I sat, got a head rush, closed my eyes, let it pass. “You didn’t do this to me,” I said.

  The Mexican said nothing.

  I said, “You see who did it? Who dragged me here?”

  He said nothing.

  I swiveled left. My neck felt like somebody’d poured sand between the joints. “How bad is it?”

  “Pretty bad,” he said. “I looked while you out. Nothing busted, I think. Lump like this, though.” He made a fist.

  I rose, turned, got both hands on the rim of the Dumpster to steady myself. Felt okay for a few seconds. Then the heat-wave trash stench came at me, and I lobbed puke into the Dumpster. Then again.

  I took deep breaths and looked at my truck, seventy yards away. I could make that. Took two steps, still holding the Dumpster.

  Behind me the Mexican said, “Hey.” Then I heard soft sounds in the weeds next to me and looked down. He’d tossed my wallet, phone, and keys. I stooped for them.

  As I straightened I said, “You leave my plastic in the wallet?”

  “Fuck yes,” the Mexican said. “I got no taste for ID theft. ’Sides, you don’t look like you got much of a credit limit.”

  I waved to thank him. Criminal etiquette: He was within his rights to rob me, and we both knew he’d done me a favor by not throwing my stuff over the tracks. It was the only break I’d gotten so far on Mechanic Street.

  I wobbled toward the F-150. As I passed Motorenwerk I stared in the plate-glass office window. Ollie was gone. In the garage, the redheaded kid was lowering the Mercedes SUV. He looked at me from the corner of his eye, pretended not to see me. I decided that when I came back, I’d start with the kid—creepy or not, he was the weak link.

  And I would come back.

  As I neared my truck I saw they’d slashed all four tires and busted out the side and rear windows. “Windshield’s good,” I said out loud. “My lucky day.”

  I opened the door, brushed safety glass from the bench seat, climbed in, and fired it while I thought. There were a dozen people I could call for a lift, but any of them would have to piss away their day coming up.

  I sighed. Tander Phigg. He lived nearby and deserved to see his day pissed away after what he’d sucked me into.

  I called. Voice mail. Like anybody in hock, Phigg was screening his calls. I needed to leave a message that would bring him quick. “Good news on your car,” I said. “Get over here to Motorenwerk before Ollie changes his mind.” Click.

  By the time Phigg rattled up in a shitbox ’92 Sentra, I’d talked the redheaded kid into helping me. His name was Josh Whipple. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I didn’t ask him who’d cold-cocked me. Gain trust now, ask questions later. We used two floor jacks to trundle my truck to a lift. That way I didn’t have to pay for a flatbed to haul it to a tire shop.

  Phigg popped from his car with hope on his face. As he looked at me, my truck, and the back corner where his Mercedes sat covered, the hope faded. “I got your message,” he said. “Good news on my car?”

  I rolled him a tire, faced him full, waited for him to spot the lump on my head. He stopped the tire with his foot. “Put the tire in your car,” I said. “Looks like we can fit two in the trunk and two in the backseat. What’s with the shitbox? Thought you were driving a Jag.”

  “It’s a loaner. Jag’s in the shop. What about my Mercedes?”

  I stepped toward him and pointed at the lump.

  “What happened?” he said.

  I jerked a thumb at Josh, who was lugging tires to Phigg’s car. “Somebody who works for this kid’s boss clocked me.” I did a double take as I said it: Even with all the air gone, those tire-and-wheel units had to weigh sixty pounds apiece, and Josh had one tucked under each arm like beach towels.

  Phigg fingered his collar. “So you haven’t, ah, liberated my Mercedes?”

  “I told Ollie you wanted it back,” I said. “He laughed in my face. Then somebody creamed me. We’re going to buy me new tires now. While we wait you can tell me the truth.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, we sat with our backs against the shaded side of an Exxon. I’d bought us each a Gatorade. Red for him, yellow for me. I’d also bought a bag of ice. I pressed it to my head and said, “Cost you almost seven hundred with the mount-and-balance and the disposal fee.”

  “Me?” Head-whip.

  “You sent me in there with a bullshit story. You didn’t tell me Ollie’s some kind of hard case. You’ve heard stories about me, about what I do for people. You thought I was going to walk in and kick the snot out of Ollie, then drive your car out of there whether he liked it or not. I got that about right?”

  A semi blatted past on Route 31, downshifting for the speed zone ahead, full load of tree trunks on its flatbed. I smelled pine and diesel.

  When the noise died Phigg said, “About right, yes. But … you do kick the shit out of people. The stories are true. I’ve seen the aftermath. All the Barnburners have.”

  Well, he was right about that. “Point is, my fresh tires are on you,” I said. “New glass, too.”

  “I don’t have it.” Real quiet.

  I sipped. “Say again?”

  “I don’t have any money,” he said. “I’m broke, Conway.”

  “Finally.” I looked at him for the first time since I’d sat. “It’s obvious you don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out. I can’t help you unless you tell me what’s really going on.”

  “I’m broke.” I barely heard him over the air compressor inside. Phigg’s face was pale, his eyes flat as he stared at his shitbox Sentra that wasn’t a loaner after all.

  “You drinking?” I said.

  “Hell no.”

  “Cocaine? Prescription drugs?”

  “No!”

  I wondered what else could burn through the kind of money everybody thought Tander Phigg had. Needed to get him talking.

  “Your dad made paper, do I have that right?” I said. “Did okay for himself.”

  “Phigg Paper Products, Inc. Biggest employer in Fitchburg for thirty years.”

  “Left you in good shape?”

  Phigg half laughed. “Money to burn,” he said. “But good shape?” He tried to shrug and laugh again, but his breath hitched. He put up a hand as if to scratch his forehead—he didn’t want me to see him cry.

  The Exxon guy leaned out the door, hollered my tires were all set.

  I paid with the credit card the Mexican hadn’t stolen.

  Phigg and I were quiet as we loaded tires in his shitbox, drove back to Motorenwerk, and
unloaded.

  As Phigg got set to drive off I stepped to his window. “Let’s meet at eight tomorrow, that diner again. You can tell me what’s going on, we’ll try this Ollie again.”

  “Sure.” He rattled away, pale, staring straight ahead.

  Five minutes later my F-150 was down on its fresh rubber. While Josh torqued the wheels I said, “Where’s your Shop-Vac?”

  “I vacuumed the glass out of your interior already.”

  I looked. He had. “Thanks.” I stepped to the right side of the truck, away from the office. Josh was finishing the right front wheel. He straightened. I said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Working.” He looked me in the eye, and my shoulder blades tensed again.

  “You know what I mean,” I said. “What are you doing here? You’re fast, you’re good, you’re ASE certified. You could be pulling sixty an hour at any dealership. Something stinks about this place. Best case, Ollie’s set to go belly-up. I think it’s worse than that. I think there’s some crooked shit going on. You may think you’re not part of it, but you are.”

  “Why are you even talking to me, after what happened in the office?” Josh said. “Why aren’t you either talking to the cops or hightailing it home?”

  “I’ll answer your questions when you answer mine.”

  He held my eyes. For a few seconds he looked like a nervous kid, and I thought he might tip and talk to me.

  “Yoo-hoo!” The voice came from the office. We turned. A mom, maybe thirty, cute, two little kids hiding behind her jeans. She said, “I’m here to pick up my car? The black Mercedes?”

  Josh said, “Right with you, ma’am,” and walked away fast.

  Shit. Almost had him. I would have to come back later.

  I climbed into my truck, backed out, and drove to the mouth of Mechanic Street. Phigg had turned left here. A right would take me south, homebound.

  I took a left. Why not? Phigg wasn’t telling me everything. Thanks to him I had a gashed head and a big-ass credit-card bill coming. I help Barnburners, no questions asked. But not all Barnburners are created equal.

  * * *

  When they saw I was showing up at every meeting and working hard, Barnburners filled me in on the group’s backstory. It was launched by outcast bikers, post-WWII GIs who were into vendettas as much as sobriety. They called themselves the Barnstormers because AA National refused to sanction them, and without the sanction they lacked a regular meeting place. For fifteen years they met every Wednesday in people’s homes, fields, warehouses, barns.