Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery (2 page)

Like that.

As I exited Route 495 I set aside my dislike and focused on the interesting development: Tander Phigg smelled broke. Back when I’d worked on his Mercedes, he was a cost-no-object guy—and happy to tell you about it. He’d moved to New Hampshire to escape Taxachusetts and build his timber-frame dream house on a river. For a while, he’d bored us all half to death with artist’s renderings and blueprints.

Now he was a man who seemed itchy to get thirty-five hundred bucks out of a car-repair place. And as I thought about it, I realized it’d been a long time since he’d bragged about his big house at the Barnburner meeting-after-the-meeting.

*   *   *

I sobered up a long time ago. I’ll never know why: People talk about hitting bottom, but what’s the bottom? I’d crashed through a dozen.

Whatever the reason, I woke up one day in the dry-out wing of a Brockton, Massachusetts, VA hospital—a clerk’s mistake; I’m not a veteran—and grabbed the tired mattress with both hands and white-knuckled my way through the worst of the DTs. When they figured out I shouldn’t be in the VA hospital and bounced me, I wound up in Framingham. Salvation Army cot, day-labor gigs, food-pantry handouts.

What you have to learn for yourself is that each AA meeting has its own character. Some groups—in Framingham, a town full of halfway houses and methadone clinics, a
lot
of groups—go through the motions so attendees can get their parole cards signed. Others wheeze along for the benefit of a half dozen old-timers. Some groups give you the hairy eyeball if you bring up drugs. Some are cliquey as hell. All you can do is stick with it, try meetings until you find the right fit.

It took me three months. My knees were bruised from praying. My knuckles were death-grip white. I was tipping, getting set to backslide, feeling ashamed of the next inevitable relapse, when I hitched a ride to a Barnburner meeting.

As soon as I stepped into the basement at Saint Anne’s, everything changed. I knew I was in the right place. Didn’t know
how
I knew—still don’t—but I knew.

Three people shook my hand. A biker with a cobweb tattooed on his neck took one look at me, knew I didn’t have a buck for a raffle ticket, and gave me one on the house. When I made my way to the coffee table and started throwing back Dunkin’ Munchkins like they were dinner (they were; it was February, a slow month for day labor), people pretended not to notice, and an old-timer who turned out to be Mary Giarusso disappeared into a back room and came out with another box.

As soon as I sat on a folding chair, I figured out the Barnburners’ core. The key players sat at the left front, kitty-corner, where they could see the speaker while keeping an eye on the rest of the room. Charlene wasn’t there yet—she came along later—but most of them were. Mary Giarusso took a seat. Butch Feeley, who was seventy then and beefy, sat near the center like the group’s Godfather (he was), arms folded, legs stretched, ankles crossed, a lieutenant whispering in each ear. One of the lieutenants was Chester Bagley, who didn’t yet wear a toupee but did have a horrendous comb-over. The other was a mean-looking South American dude—Colombian, I found out later—who wouldn’t even speak to you until you were sober a year.

Tander Phigg was in that front corner, of course. Hair already white, vinyl jacket with a Porsche logo, Rolex Daytona slopping around on his wrist. He was telling a Commander McBragg story to a shaved-head black guy who looked like he wished he’d picked a different seat.

There they sat, nine or ten altogether, giving off a parole-board vibe I hadn’t yet seen in a meeting. The vibe said this was serious AA for serious people. No tools, posers, or dilettantes need apply.

I wanted in. Hung around after the meeting, putting chairs away and checking out the parole board, who were in no hurry to leave. Aware of me, they hemmed and hawed and made small talk. Finally the cobweb-tattoo guy took my arm. “See you next week, pal?”

“Well,” I said, glancing at the front of the room.

“That’s the meeting-after-the-meeting, pal,” he said, gently aiming me at the door. “You’re not ready for that. No way, no how.”

*   *   *

I hit my house just before twelve and saw Randall Swale in the driveway staring at a pile of decking. The wood delivery was the reason I’d made the Phigg meeting a very early lunch deal: In this neighborhood, anything we didn’t screw down today would be stolen tonight.

A friend had left me the house. He’d died badly. I made sure the guys responsible did the same. I was spending a lot of time there, rehabbing the place so I could sell it. Needed the cash: My last job at a Pontiac-GMC dealership hadn’t worked out, and I’d sworn off working for anybody but myself. The idea was to flip the house and use the dough to start another shop of my own.

It’s an old four-square colonial on a quarter acre, south side of Framingham. For years the neighborhood had been mostly Brazilian, but the Brazilians were moving out because the feds were busting illegals. That was a bad deal for the neighborhood. Brazilians liked to get drunk and fight each other with knives on Saturday night, but otherwise they mostly worked their asses off and minded their own business. And as the houses emptied of Brazilians, they either went to Section 8 tenants or became squats for bums and junkies.

The guy who left me the house, and his mother before him, had lived here sixty years. Everything needed work, especially the in-law apartment on the top floor: I couldn’t sell the place until I brought the place up to code. I was nibbling away at the work. Sometimes I slept here. Sometimes I slept at my girlfriend Charlene’s place in Shrewsbury.

I stuffed my truck at the foot of the driveway and climbed out. Randall wore work boots, khakis, no shirt. He worked shirtless a lot in this freak mid-June heat wave. His skin had started UPS-brown and had gone purple-black in the sun. He’s half a foot shorter than me and has half a pound of fat on him. Earned his muscles in the army, not the gym. His father, Luther, my parole officer, introduced us. Randall had standing offers, some with full-boat academic scholarships, from a half dozen good schools. I didn’t know why he was still hanging around with me; the nearest I’d ever been to college was a transmission swap I did for the dean of Framingham State.

Heat wave or no, Randall always wore long pants. He’d lost his right foot to mid-calf in Iraq and wore a prosthetic with a cool ceramic-and-titanium ankle joint. You’d never guess he had a leg and a half—especially if you challenged him to a footrace.

He swept a hand. “What in God’s name is this?”

“Lumber for the deck,” I said. “Ordered twelve hundred linear feet. Looks about right.”

“You call this
lumber
?” He picked up an eight-footer, sighted down it at me. “I’ll never claim to be an expert, but this isn’t Home Depot decking. This is serious, tight-grained hardwood, and the truck that delivered it had a fancy specialty-shop logo.”

My face went red as he spoke. I knew where we were headed. I said, “Ipe.”

“Ee-pay?” he said. “Are you speaking Pig Latin now?”

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.