Repo Madness (19 page)

“And?”

I glanced over—Katie was regarding me intently.

“And what she had to say makes some sense. She says she saw me pull into the 7-Eleven that night. And while I was inside, she saw Lisa Marie open the back door of my car and get out.”

“Let's not tell her about the other part, the man who helped her. I don't want to scare her,”
Alan cautioned.

I bit off my irritation. Katie was watching me with round eyes.
“Then what could have happened?”

There, see, Alan?
The story made no sense without the rest of it. I told her about what else Amy Jo had seen, and she put a hand to her mouth. “This … My God, Ruddy, I don't know what to say,” she commented when I was finished. “It changes everything.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Are you okay? This is huge.” Her gaze searched my face.

“I'm okay. I'm still processing it. And trying to see if I can figure out, if she wasn't in the car, what really happened.”

She squeezed my hand. “That's so
you,
Ruddy. Even though you didn't do anything wrong, you still feel responsible.”

I pulled into the driveway and stopped, and we sat and looked at each other. She slid across the seat and kissed me, softly and gently, on the cheek and then quickly on the lips, and then she pulled back and gazed at me, passion and speculation in her eyes. This part of our relationship had always worked.

“Ruddy! Stop!”
Alan yelled desperately.

I straightened abruptly. If I took things where I wanted them to go, it would be with her father right there, not just watching, but participating. There was no way I could subject him to something like that.

Why the hell wasn't he asleep?

“Is everything okay?” Katie asked me, a bit puzzled.

“Yeah, of course. I just … need to get home to the dog,” I told her, loathing myself.

She smelled the lie and a coolness came into her eyes. At that moment I
hated
Alan Lottner.

“This was nice, Ruddy,” she whispered after a moment. She slid away from me, and I controlled the impulse to go after her. “But…”

“No, please don't say
but
. There doesn't have to be any
but,
does there?” I pleaded.

She gave me an unreadable look. She seemed angry, somehow, or sad. “I just don't think you're the sort of man my father would have liked,” she whispered. “It's like I can feel him disapproving or something. He always told me I could be anything I wanted to be, and now here I am.” She gestured around the inside of the repo truck and shrugged.

“You
can
be whatever you want to be,” I told her fiercely. “Look, you decided you wanted to sell real estate, so you studied and took the test and that's what you're going to do next. I'm proud of you.”

“Thank you,” she responded tersely.

“I mean it,” I proclaimed desperately. I'd made her angry, somehow, and could feel the whole wonderful evening going down the drain.

“I know. I should go.”

I walked her to her door but didn't try to kiss her again, and not just because of Alan. Something told me she wouldn't have accepted my affections at that moment. She slid inside her house, giving me a small wave, and I crunched down the snowy driveway to my truck. Alan was mercifully silent.

He and I didn't say a word to each other as I drove through town and turned onto M-66. I was focused on my driving and didn't even notice the sheriff's vehicle until it flipped its lights on behind me.

 

15

You're Going to Be Mad

I was unsurprised to see Deputy Timms struggle out of the front seat of his patrol car, his belly pinning him under the steering wheel for a delicious moment. There was no sign of Sheriff Porterfield.

I rolled down my window. “Evening, Deputy. Where's your sheriff daddy tonight?”

Timms turned his flashlight up into my eyes, the beam so bright, I could feel heat. I clamped my eyelids down and waited patiently. Finally it dropped away. “License and registration, please.”

I handed over the documents, and he yanked them out of my hand. Every single motion he made was an aggressive act—he marched his way back to his vehicle, stomping on chunks of ice with real force. The whole ritual of running my license was theater—he knew who I was, knew there were no outstanding warrants.

“What a dick,”
Alan said.

I grinned. “He's the guy your daughter was going to marry before I came along,” I reminded him. Alan didn't have anything to say to that.

Timms returned and handed me back my papers. “You know why I pulled you over?”

“Because you saw me out with my fiancée?” I responded. Even in the desaturating light from his flashlight, I could see his face redden. This was apparently news to him.

“Careful,”
Alan warned softly. Timms's grip on his flashlight was tightening, and I could picture him hitting me with it and then me taking it from him and hitting him back.

“You crossed the center line back there,” Deputy Dumbell finally told me.

“That's bullshit.”

“I'm citing you. These moving violations, they're expensive.”

“Let me know if you have trouble spelling any words.”

He sneered at me. “I guess you don't get it. My job is to make sure that every time you hit the road, you get a traffic ticket. One of these days, you and your Arab boss are going to get the message—no repos in Sheriff Porterfield's territory.”

“Arab? Oh my God, you think Kramer is an
Arab
name?” I hooted.

He scowled. “I don't give a damn what kind of name it is. I'm just telling you what's what. I see you breaking the law, I give you a ticket and that's that.”

“So wait, is it what's what, or that's that? They seem like two different things.”

Alan laughed.

Timms handed me my traffic ticket. “Drive carefully and obey the speed limit,” he mocked.

I waited until he was long out of sight before I scrupulously signaled and pulled onto the road, my speedometer a good five under the limit.

“No idea what Katie ever saw in that guy,”
Alan groused.

“Yeah? Well, what about me?”

“Sorry?”

“Katie feels like you've been sending her messages that I'm not the man for her. Have you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You don't? Haven't you been saying I'm not good enough for your daughter? Well, take a look at the alternatives, Alan. How long will it be before her
landlord
figures out a way to get her back? You heard her: She's vulnerable. She needs to figure things out. And she's getting subconscious messages from you to dump Ruddy McCann and get back together with Deputy Dumbbell!”

“You don't have to shout. I can hear you just fine.”

“Deflection!” I accused. “You're deflecting because you don't like the question. Let me ask you something, Alan. Have you noticed anything different about me and Kermit?”

“What?”
he responded, truly puzzled by my shift in subject.

“Kermit Kramer. My sister's husband. Remember when I first met him? I despised the guy. And you kept saying that my sister loved him. And you were right. But I couldn't see it because you know what? Nobody was good enough for Becky. If it were up to me, she'd never get married. Just like nobody is good enough for your daughter. But she's going to wind up with somebody someday. And when I got to know Kermit, I realized, he's not that bad. That's what you've missed, these eighteen months. I looked for Kermit's qualities and then realized the most important one was that he loved Becky. The same way I love your daughter! So if you want to send her messages, tell her
that
.”

*   *   *

I woke up early the next morning because my dog was snoring. I rolled over and gave him a gentle shove. “Jake. You're snoring.”

He eyed me blearily, clearly not believing me.

My imaginary friend was asleep. “Okay, now you sleep, Alan.
Now,
” I chided him, thinking how much more convenient it would have been for him to wink out last night at Katie's. I would not even have minded if he'd snored.

I dressed and went into the kitchen. The folder with the printouts from the library was sitting on the table, though I didn't remember putting it there. I opened it and flipped idly through the pictures—Alan's lineup of supposed murder victims. I stopped dead when I came across a news clipping I'd not seen before—basically a recounting of the sad fate of Nina Otis, who had fallen off the car ferry and drowned. This one had a photograph of Nina on the boat itself, taken, the caption read,
most likely just a few moments before she fell unseen into the cold waters of Lake Michigan.

The picture wasn't a very good one—Nina wasn't even the intended subject. Three young women were posing and smiling, and Nina, on the left, was both blurry and cut off by the frame. It looked as if she had been trying to get out of the way of the photographer when the picture was snapped.

I was troubled by two things. First, how could anyone identify the blurry woman when less than half her body was caught by the camera? And second, how the hell did the printout get into the folder? I knew I didn't put it there.

Alan.

*   *   *

As if sensing I needed to have a stern conversation with him, Alan slept through two repossessions that day, and was still asleep when I showed up at the Black Bear to see how my career as a bouncer was progressing. It was a lively night for early February—meaning, almost no one was there. Jimmy was at the bar, watching one of Becky's home improvement channels. It looked to me as if people were turning their garage into a rec room, which to me meant they would be parking their vehicles outside where they would be easier to repo.

I sat down with the Wolfingers, who were discussing the best time to take their Hawaii trip.

“Why wait until March?” Wilma pouted. “I want to go
now
.”

“You don't go now,” Claude said dismissively. “You wait until you're sick of winter.”

“I
am
sick of winter!” Wilma responded.

“No, you're not!” Claude snapped, glaring at her. “You get sick of winter in March, when it starts to sleet and the slush freezes at night.”

I thought they both had good points.

Wilma shook her head, agitating her huge bejeweled earrings. “No. Stop trying to tell me how to think! I like March. The sun comes out. Sometimes.”

“Jesus! I'm telling ya, you don't know what you're talking about! I've lived here my whole life, and March is the worst month!” Claude crashed his fist onto the table.

“I want to go
now
! You're not the only person who gets to vote!”

“Goddamn it, Wilma, do you see? You see? It's like you don't even have a brain. Everyone knows you don't go to Hawaii now; you go when I say!” Claude bellowed at her.

Wilma had perhaps a quarter of an inch of beer in her mug, which she tossed into Claude's face with the kind of accuracy that comes from years of practice. I wondered how many more times I was going to see that in my life.

“You can go now if you want, but I'm taking my trip in March,” Claude told her as he wiped off his face.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

I stood up and reached for her empty mug. “You know what you should do? You should let Kermit help you with this.”

They gaped at me, momentarily distracted. “Huh?”

“He's good at this. It's how he used to run his fiscals. Give me the card, Claude.”

Claude handed over the plastic case with the one-in-five card in it. “Don't lose that,” he fretted.

I went toward the back of the kitchen, where Becky and Kermit were working on installing a surveillance camera so that we could see that there was never anyone in the alley. I made a couple of photocopies of the card, telling Kermit I was ready to do the deal—buy the Wolfingers their tickets. I asked him to call the one-in-five phone room and make sure they would have their “vacation,” their hotel room in the flophouse.

“When do they want to go?” he asked me.

“I'd say get them the hell out of here as fast as you can.” I told him to let me know how much—I had the cash.

“You want us to split it with you?” Becky asked.

I shook my head, touched. “No, thanks. But I appreciate the offer.”

The two of them glanced at each other, passing a married-couple message between them. “There's something else, Ruddy,” Becky advised. They were both grinning as if they had another new repo truck waiting outside.

“Yes?”

“You're going to be an uncle!” Becky's eyes positively glowed.

“What? Wait,
what
? No kidding! That's amazing. I'm … amazed.” And I
was
amazed. Just a few years ago Becky's options in the male department were limited to the drunken passes feebly launched at her at last call by swaying, slurring idiots who didn't see me glowering behind them. Now she was married and starting a family—everything had changed.

“We've been trying to be patrimonious for months,” Kermit told me.

I had a vision then: Becky's children playing with
my
kids under Bob the Bear; me, not just Uncle Ruddy but Daddy, married to Katie, innocent of all crimes, a pillar in the community, with a responsible job. Well, I'd still repo cars, but more for the sport than for the money.

I gave Becky a hug and shook Kermit's hand and thought afterward I probably should have hugged him, too.

Becky told me they were keeping the news under wraps until she was further along, and I promised their secret was safe with me. I went back to the bar, floating on the good news. Jimmy hadn't moved. I put a fresh mug under the tap for Wilma. “Hey Jimmy,” I hailed him cheerfully, “date with Katie went pretty well last night. I mean, really well. We didn't sleep together, but I think she wanted to.”