Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Part 1

Purgatory Chasm_ A Mystery.

Ulfelder, Steve.

For Martha, with love.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

My family's encouragement never wavered. Peerless agent Janet Reid, like everybody at FinePrint Literary Management, toils on my behalf even when I forget to send whiskey and chocolate. Anne Bensson and the entire editorial, production, and design teams at Thomas Dunne Books made the novel better. So did friends from Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and several writers' groups.

Finally, I thank the gang at Flatout Motorsports for giving me the time and s.p.a.ce I needed, even if they had an ulterior motive: keeping me away from wrenches is a wise business move.

CHAPTER ONE.

There are drunken a.s.sholes, and there are a.s.sholes who are drunks.

Take a drunken a.s.shole and stick him in AA five or ten years, maybe you come out with a decent guy.

Now take an a.s.shole who's a drunk. Put him in AA as long as you like. Send him to a thousand meetings a year, have him join the Peace Corps for good measure. What you come out with is a sober a.s.shole.

Tander Phigg was a sober a.s.shole.

I was thinking this while he bought me lunch at a diner in Rourke, New Hampshire, just across the Ma.s.sachusetts border. From the outside, it looked like one of those small-town diners people wish were still around-plate-gla.s.s windows, fifties-style brushed-aluminum letters that spelled DOT'S PLACE, turquoise tiles surrounding the door.

But once you got inside you stopped pining. It smelled and felt like fifty years' worth of grease had coated the floor, the walls, the vinyl stools, even the black-and-white pictures of locals and the deer they'd killed. The food was bad, too.

Sitting across from me in a booth, Tander Phigg gave me an eyeful of some of it while he chewed-an egg-salad sandwich. He was pushing seventy-five and getting heavy. His belly pressed Formica through a yellow polo shirt with the collar flipped up. He had a red nose that twenty-plus years of sobriety couldn't get rid of, snow-white hair that was too long for a man his age. He'd always worn it that way. You got the feeling somebody once told him he had a great head of hair, and he believed them.

There were other things: The hair was a little too greasy, and Phigg's eyes had gone greedy when he looked at the menu, and there was a smell to him he hadn't quite masked with Old Spice.

Tander Phigg was desperate.

I'd never liked him, hadn't wanted to drive an hour to meet him. But I shut up and ate my burger and listened anyway.

Tander Phigg was an a.s.shole, but he was also a Barnburner. Barnburners saved my life. I help them when I can. No exceptions.

"So what do you think?" Phigg said. "You going to let these crooks hold your baby hostage?"

"My baby?"

"Hey, you were always talking about how she was ahead of her time, all the technology packed inside her."

"Here's what I liked about that car," I said. "The technology you're bragging on was always screwed up. It kept me busy, made me money." I hit the it extra hard. I hate when people talk about cars like they're women or babies. A street car's a tool. A race car's a weapon. When they break, I fix them. There's not much more to it.

Phigg's baby, his her, was a 1980 Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9. Nice car, ahead of its time. It had the first antilock braking system I ever saw, a suspension you could adjust from the driver's seat, and a bunch of other fancy features.

But the fancy stuff broke-all the time. Those 450SELs made techs like me a lot of dough, even when they were brand new. And by '99, when Phigg bought one with 140,000 miles on the clock, it was an a.s.s-dragging smoker. I went through each system at least once. I'd been happy to do it as long as his checks cleared.

Which they didn't always anymore, according to the Barnburner grapevine.

"I had to fix her," Phigg said. "With a car like that, a cla.s.sic, I didn't see myself as the owner. I was more of a caretaker."

I rolled my eyes, wiped my mouth, dropped my napkin on the plate.

Phigg's eyes darted to the plate. He made a lightning grab for three fries, chewed. "How about it?"

h.e.l.l. He was a Barnburner. "How long they had it?" I said.

"Going on eighteen months, for chrissake."

That did seem like a long time, unless there was something else Phigg wasn't telling me. "How far have they gotten with the work?"

"I went by last week. They've done nothing, Conway. They parked her by a back wall and threw a tarp over her."

"Why'd they say it's taking so long?"

"Blah blah this, blah blah that, parts from Germany, other customers ahead of me."

"That's bulls.h.i.t," I said. "They ought to've taken it apart by now, put it on a rotisserie. Or given you a good reason why not."

"So you'll take a look?"

"Where's the shop?"

"Two blocks back."

"On Mechanic Street," I said.

"How'd you know?"

"Every town has one."

The waitress came by, coffeepot poised. I flat-handed a no-thanks. Phigg ignored her until she left, then leaned in. "I want my car and my money back," he said. "I can drive it around a few more years before I fix the rust. h.e.l.l, maybe I'll sell it as is."

"What money back?"

His face went the same color as his nose. "They wanted some dough to get started."

"That was stupid and you know it," I said. "How much?"

"The way the guy explained it, it's like when a contractor gets money up front."

"How much?"

"Thirty-five hundred." Phigg fingered his yellow collar, ran the back of a hand across his mouth.

I took a breath, let it out. "Stupid."

"You'll help me?"

"I'll talk to them. Not today, though. Busy."

He smiled, rapped the table twice, reached to touch my forearm.

I pulled it back.

He wrote the name of the shop and his phone number and address on a corner of his paper place mat, tore it off, handed it to me, said thanks, split. He was in a hurry to get out the door before the waitress made it over with the check.

a.s.shole.

I wanted a peek at the shop before I headed home. I hadn't lied to Phigg: Every town does have a Mechanic Street, and they're all the same. They run perpendicular to the main drag in whatever part of town was lousy when the town was born. More often than not they dead-end at railroad tracks, as this street did. Before I U-turned at the tracks, I pa.s.sed an off-brand transmission shop, a generic diesel station with a propane-refill cage, and a place called Santo's Custom Interior where a Mexican and a pit bull chained to the Mexican's chair stared at me.

I cruised past the place that was ripping off Phigg. It had been high-end once. The building was a former barn, thirty feet across and deep. It had two roll-up doors and a simple sign: DAS MOTORENWERK.

One of the roll-up doors was open. I saw a two-post lift with an Audi A4 up high, its engine oil draining into a long funnel stuck in a drum.

I'm a grease monkey myself-I've worked at dealerships, run a shop of my own, even been part of the NASCAR traveling circus-so I could see Das Motorenwerk wasn't breaking any records. For starters, there was no little group of customer cars outside. One lousy oil change was the day's workload.

The Dumpster at the side of the barn was overflowing, which meant the shop had saved a few bucks by switching from an every-two-weeks Dumpster service to monthly. Next to the Dumpster stood a triple stack of used tires with weeds growing through. It costs money to get rid of tires, and G.o.d help you if you're caught sneaking them into the Dumpster.

I put my F-150 in reverse, backed to the upholstery shop. As I neared, the pit bull went crazy. Without looking at the dog, the Mexican hit its nose with a closed fist. The dog shut up.

I leaned, rolled down the pa.s.senger window. "I'm a tech looking for work," I said. "Heard Motorenwerk was a good outfit, but the shop looks pretty tired. Know anything about it?"

He looked at me fifteen seconds and said, "Where the f.u.c.k you hear that?"

I'd wanted him to ask. Pretended to hesitate. "The guy who told me, he's been away awhile."

The Mexican smiled, rose, hitched his khakis, came to my window. The pit bull whined. Up close the Mexican looked older. Had a tear tattooed at the outside corner and just below one eye. He said, "State time?"

Another fake pause. "Walpole."

"You on paper?"

"Eleven months to go," I said. "How about the shop? They any good?"

"Used to be. Now..." He fluttered a hand, stopped in mid-flutter, narrowed his eyes. "State time down in Ma.s.s. Ma.s.s. license plate. So why you looking for work up here?"

"I live in Townsend, ten minutes away, so my PO said I can work in New Hampshire." I took off before he could ask more questions. Or unchain the pit bull.

I'd lied. I didn't live in Townsend. Lived in Framingham, Ma.s.sachusetts. Or Shrewsbury, a couple towns west. Or both. I wasn't sure, and that was a problem.

I headed for Framingham, thought about Tander Phigg while I drove.

He'd been sober forever, was already a Barnburner old-timer when I showed up ten-plus years ago. I'd looked up to him for a while, the way new fish always look up to old-timers. h.e.l.l, he'd even been my sponsor for six months.

But the more I hung around, the less I liked him. The stories he told at AA meetings changed as years pa.s.sed. What had been arguments became bar fights. What had been funny DUI stories that ended with Phigg in the drunk tank became COPS-style megachases, half the cruisers in Worcester County hound-d.o.g.g.i.ng Phigg.

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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 h.e.l.l. 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.dfather (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."