Free The Whole Lie by Steve Ulfelder Page A

guys with a rock of cocaine in the cup holder, and guys headed for their exes’ homes with ball-bats in the backseat never tipped to the fact they were being followed. It just never crossed their minds, far as I could tell.
    I guess I was no smarter than the ball-bat guys and the cocaine guys, because after leaving Moe’s I doodled through Winthrop into East Boston without noticing the forest-green Ford Expedition.
    Hunger saved me. Hunger and the fact I’d left two Royal Roast Beef sandwiches untouched at Moe’s place. Deluxes with horseradish and a large order of curly fries. As I drove I cursed Moe, who’d hit that old-man phase where he no longer ate or slept, for ignoring them.
    Rolling west on East Boston’s main drag, I thought about grabbing another sandwich and fries to make up for the ones I’d abandoned. I sat at a red light, staring at Royal Roast Beef & Seafood kitty-corner to my right. My wallet said no: Go straight, funnel into the Ted Williams Tunnel, shoot under Boston Harbor, and make a fast run west. Back to Charlene’s, where the food was free.
    My stomach said hang a right and eat.
    While my wallet fought my stomach, my eyeballs ignored the Expedition that was riding my ass.
    The light went green. My stomach won. As usual. I grabbed the quick right turn.
    Talk about dumb luck.
    I heard commotion behind me, checked the mirror. The Expedition had started through the intersection, then stopped dead. It was now fighting across two lanes of traffic to follow me into the parking lot. The driver had jammed himself in an awkward wedge and was trying to straighten out his wheel. He was having a tough time of it because pissed-off locals were leaning on their horns and not giving him room.
    Even with all this, my stomach would have betrayed me if the Expedition’s driver had played it cool. I rolled into Royal’s lot and headed for a parking spot—just in time to see the desperate SUV chirp its tires, free itself from the traffic mess, and bounce over the curb to join me in the lot.
    â€œShit,” I said out loud, finally figuring out the deal. I sat for maybe three seconds smelling fried clams and roast beef and delicious curly fries. The whole day was shaping up as a conspiracy to keep me from eating a damn meal.
    I got a decent look at the driver, who wasn’t more than thirty feet dead ahead.
    I knew him.
    But where from?
    Click: The guy who’d sat next to me in the barbecue joint. The weird guy. He’d crowded me, had started a conversation out of nowhere. What was it he’d said? Folks who involve theirselves in the business of others … slice their balls off and stuff ’em down their throats.
    Jesus. Had he followed me from Moe’s?
    Had he followed me to Moe’s?
    Who was he? Who sent him?
    Option: Jump out, trot over, and pull him out.
    Problem: He’d just lock the doors, flip me off, and drive away.
    Option: Ram him.
    Problem: What the hell for? From the looks of his bumper cover, he was no stranger to contact. In fact, it looked like he enjoyed it. The bumper was misshapen and gouged, its two-tone green-and-gold all chipped up. And if I hit him hard enough for airbags to deploy, a half-dozen looky-loos would call the cops.
    Option: Park and eat a sandwich.
    Problem: I wasn’t hungry anymore. Was pissed off instead. Pissed that I’d led some clown to Moe Coover’s house, pissed that I’d been so easy to tail. When you came down to it, I was mostly pissed that Savvy Kane had walked into my shop and screwed everything up just when I was doing okay for a change.
    One option left.
    I took off.
    Dropped the tranny in drive and bounced over the low curb into the street. Got lucky: The curb could have peeled back my oil pan and banged up my custom exhaust, but it didn’t. Behind me, the Expedition slammed over the curb and never even knew it was there. Tall truck, high ground clearance, thick-sidewall tires. If