Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery (3 page)

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.

Over time, the rowdy regulars aged and the Barnstormers matured, but the core remained a group of hard cases with an Old Testament credo. Barnstormers believed in an eye for an eye, and they never turned the other cheek.

One mid-sixties Wednesday, during a meeting at a dairy farm, some joker flipped his cigarette butt the wrong way and burned the host’s barn to a cinder. Twist: The host was the town fire chief. Once they realized the barn was a goner and nobody was hurt, everybody (including the chief) laughed their asses off, and the Barnstormers instantly renamed themselves the Barnburners.

Time passed. AA National sanctioned the group. Saint Anne’s became the regular meeting spot. But the take-no-shit mentality hung on, boiling down to a kernel called the meeting-after-the-meeting.

It took me six months to earn my way in. I hit Saint Anne’s every Wednesday. Got there early, set up chairs, made coffee, doled out raffle tickets. Spoke a couple times a week, driving to Ashland, Upton, Clinton, Hudson with a carload of Barnburners to tell my story. Got my first steady job in five years, working the muck pit at a Jiffy Lube.