Switcheroo (13 page)

Chapter
21

After my attorney Willie Crandle
bailed me out I picked up my car from the impound lot.  I paid my fine, got a
jump start from a wrecker and drove to Auto Shack.  I waited while they
installed a new battery.  I saved the receipt to add to Tammy’s tab.

So I got home at noon, on Monday. 
My answering machine had messages from Tammy, Grandma Tuttle, Wendy, my mother
and a man named Wysinski.  It took me a minute to remember that Wysinski was
the Handy Self Storage manager.  This could not be good, the truck must be
gone.

“Wysinski, it’s Rust Stover. Is my
truck gone?”  I sat listening for the inevitable.

“No, but your unit got broke into.
Truck’s still there, but now it has some pretty serious front end damage, you
better come down here. There’s also some uh… crap in the corner.”

“What kind of crap?”

“Real crap. You know feces,
manure, shit. Somebody pinched a loaf in the corner of your storage unit!”  He
hung up.

I drove around randomly for
fifteen minutes even though the storage place was two miles away.  No cars
seemed to be following me so I pulled into the parking lot.

Wysinski had no life.  He lived in
a flat above the Handy Self Storage office. The building was Volunteer orange
and white painted cinder block.  In spite of the cheerful color scheme, the
high fence topped with barb wire surrounding the storage compound gave the
building the charm of a gaudy Folsom Prison.

Wysinski was on call every day and
spent a good deal of time eating take out pizza and sub sandwiches.  This was
obvious from his shape and his smell. The fact that someone broke into one of
his storage units and dropped a deuce in the corner probably made his week.  
As I walked in he was telling this story to a frightened housewife at the front
counter.  She took advantage of the interruption when I came into the office
and bolted out before the door closed.

I followed Wysinski out the door
as he stuck the ‘back in five minutes’ sign on the glass door of the office. 
We headed toward my storage unit. His strong body odor was like the presence of
a third person.  I noticed his old blue Volvo 850 sedan parked in front of the
office. I asked him how it was working for him.

“Yep. Motor blew up and had to be
replaced two years ago.”

I think it’s a mistake to replace
the motor in any vehicle.  Especially for me since I am usually about to wreck
my car. It makes more sense for me to replace the whole car, rather than doing
an expensive repair.

We walked along the side of the
structure, passing row after row of orange sliding garage doors.  He stopped in
front of the unit I had rented.

“Noticed dents in the door when I
was making the rounds yesterday.” He pointed.  He used the key to open the
master lock, which was intact and undamaged.  He threw up the metal sliding
door and my head began to pound.

“What I can’t figure out is how
the bastard got in here.  I got surveillance cameras everywhere and nobody has
opened this door in the last forty-eight hours. I checked.  There was activity
at some of the neighboring units, but I don’t see any damage to the interior
walls.  I don’t see how the bastard could have gotten from one unit to the
next.”

“How do you know he was a
bastard?”

“It’s a figure of speech, man.
Come on.” Wysinski was agitated by my sarcasm. He was no longer numb to it as
he had been in New York or New Jersey or wherever he came from. When a Yankee
moves south, their blood gets thin and so does their skin, I guess.

Wysinski was dumbfounded when we
looked at the truck and found no body damage. He did not know that the trucks
had switched places since yesterday and this was the undamaged one. I was not
going to explain anything.

“Looks okay to me,” I said,
playing dumb, which is easy for me.

“The front of this truck was all
bent up, man.  I saw it myself yesterday.  Did you get it fixed?”  He was
turning pale.

“Nope, no one’s been here in
forty-eight hours, you said so yourself.  Besides, I’ve been in jail. There’s
no way I could have fixed the kind of damage you’re describing.”

I gave him a pitying look, as if
he were ill. I turned and walked to the front of the truck.  In the far corner
of the metal room was a stinking pile of crap and some smelly urine.  A tire
iron had been tossed off to the side.  The bottom of the door was bent and
curled up. Six small blackened dents surrounded the area of the latch, the bent
steel pushed outward. Gunshots?  The intruder had been unable to make a large
enough gap to escape. The lock had stayed in place. This meant that whoever it
was, had spent a day locked in here, with no food or water, until the trucks
switched back.  This made me feel better about spending last night in a tree in
the cold.

“Okay,” I said. “Listen. I want to
move the truck to a different unit and get some more locks.” Wysinski was still
looking at the front of the truck. He agreed to let me switch units, but was
still shaking his head in confusion over the truck’s undamaged condition.

After I parked the truck in its
new garage bay I decided to try something.  I disconnected the positive battery
post.  Glancing at the gauges on the dash, I saw that the digital clock was
blank.  Maybe these trucks would stay put now.   I bought another Master lock
from Wysinski and urged him to take a couple days off or maybe go get a massage
or something.  I left Wysinski’s office quickly, as I was tired of breathing
through my mouth.

Early Tuesday morning I picked up
Grandma Tuttle, Tammy and Hannah at the Holiday Inn on Cedar Bluff.  Their
motel and room service tab heated up my credit card.  I had that martyred
feeling, but they are good people and it was hard not to sympathize. That
feeling would be replaced with self loathing when I got my credit card
statement.  I tried to be the strong silent type, but I was back to my
talkative goober personality by the time we got Hannah and the bags to Grandma
Tuttle’s old Pontiac.  Tammy and Hannah were both very sleepy and said little. 
Grandma Tuttle talked to me about how awful the Holiday Inn was.  She said the
sheets made her skin itch.  She said the maids were rude, spoke no English, and
did mediocre work while playing on their cell phones all day.

Grandma Tuttle wanted her stove,
her oven and her clothes, her hair dryer and her curlers.  If she ever
remarried it would probably be to the Maytag man.

Hannah fell back to sleep in her
car seat, looking like an angel.  Her smooth forehead showed no signs of worry.
A lock of light brown hair fell across her cheek and I tucked it behind her
ear.  I struggled to buckle her car seat, which was similar to a NASCAR
restraint in both effectiveness and complexity.  Hannah’s breathing was now
whistling softly.  I knew I had twenty jobs from LISA at the office, but I
still watched her for a moment.  She was charming in a way that I can only
compare to the little boy in ‘Jerry McGuire’, the way he steals your heart and
makes you love him, like it or not.  I was gonna have to go to the firing range
or maybe a football game to counteract these chick-flick feelings.

Tammy was going to ride back to
Grandma Tuttle’s house with me.  I told them I would check out the home and
grounds before I went to work.  Tammy and I could discuss her case and its lack
of progress on the drive over.

“So, we’re not gonna have sex
anymore then, right?”

“Shut up!” she snapped, rubbing
her eyes.

“I was just seeing if you were
awake. Just kidding. Wow,” I said innocently. She was not a morning person
after a late night’s work of hustling drinks and humoring drunks at Orby’s
Place.

“Listen, your Grandma’s house is
probably as safe as anywhere now that the truck is hidden. I suggest you keep
the garage door open so that anyone who looks can see that the truck is not
there.”

“You’re right.”

“Tammy, I gotta make some money
and pay some bills.  I’ve incurred some unforeseen expenses since we met.” I
thought of my car and my credit card balances and my back log of LISA work to
be done.

The early hour and the lack of
progress in getting both of the trucks back to her were working on Tammy’s
nerves.  She pulled the fingers of both hands through her unwashed hair and lit
a cigarette.  Her hand trembled slightly as she pushed the button to put down
her electric window.  The cool air and nicotine worked their magic and she
spoke as she smoked.

“Why don’t you just get in the
truck and teleport to where the other one is and take it.  You could shoot the
bad guys if they’re guardin’ it.  That’s the only way.  I went through it and
it didn’t hurt me.”

She was right.  Persuasive. Even
with the dark rings under her eyes she was still an attractive girl.  She was
just a shower and some make up away from being beautiful again.

“I’m not prepared to do that yet.”

Scared was more like it, but I
still pretended otherwise.

“Let me go back to Oliver Springs and confront this guy.  And we’ll talk some more.  I’ll call you tonight to
check on you.”

We were pulling into Grandma’s
driveway.  I hopped out and walked around the house looking for rednecks with
shotguns.  Finding none, I headed into the house. It had been left unlocked.  I
conducted a quick room by room, closet by closet search.  No one seemed to have
been inside. On the back porch, the contractor had replaced wood siding and
Grandma Tuttle’s kitchen window.  There was still some painting to finish and
shotgun pellets to sweep up.  I gave Tammy a reassuring hug, told her not to
worry and left her in the den with Grandma Tuttle and Hannah. I think they were
feeling like strangers in their own home.             I drove off toward Knoxville wondering if I should be leaving them alone.

Chapter
22

When we were stationed in Columbus, Georgia in the Army, Jake Haskins had asked me what kind of town Knoxville, Tennessee was.  With a lot of free time on our hands, sometimes there wasn’t
much to do but talk.   Haskins had already told me all about Bunnykill, Arkansas or wherever he was from, so it was my turn.

“Well, it’s not like the other
towns in East Tennessee,” I answered.

“That doesn’t tell me shit about
it.”

He was right, but I wasn’t sure
how to answer his question.  Since there was plenty of time, I did my best.

I told him that Knoxville had been
settled by ambitious Carolinians who came to East Tennessee to escape frequent
Indian attacks and swarms of mosquitoes.  This is like moving to Manhattan from Chicago to escape overcrowding.   The new Knoxvillians had to fight the
Indians for about one hundred years and then the British for a few years and
later the Confederate army at Fort Sanders. We are still fighting the
mosquitoes, but mostly at sunset.  As living there became safer, the property
developers came.  They built office buildings for banks, insurance companies
and lawyers. They built department stores, furniture showrooms and whatever
anyone else wanted built so they could hang up their shingle downtown.

In the 1970's they built malls and
shopping centers in the suburbs.  Knoxville began to grow outward - urban
sprawl.  To the south was the Tennessee River and to the north, there were
mountains.  So Knoxville grew wider and wider, eventually extending to the
county line.  Kingston Pike runs down the middle of this haphazard, narrow
development. No matter what you are looking for it will be off of Kingston
Pike.

All these people in the suburbs
wanted to work in the suburbs.  So the property developers built more offices
west of town. They built neighborhoods with hundreds of houses in only three
colors: white, blue or beige.  All this lead to vacancies downtown.  Downtown
had a brief rebirth where it almost revived.  In 1982, Knoxville played host to
the World’s Fair.  A burst of building and business growth lead up to the
event, but it could not be sustained after the fair was gone. Paris got the Eiffel Tower. We got a giant gold ball on a stick, The Sun Sphere. Eiffel Tower vs. Awful Tower.

I was remembering this while
hiking up the hill from my parking garage to my office. It was a little before
eight o’clock on Tuesday. On occasion, memories of friends and acquaintances
play through my mind like a ghostly movie projector. This was starting to
happen more often, since my ex-wives had garnered most of my money and all of
my friends from the good old days.

The sidewalks were crowded with
people walking from parking garages to their offices and a few homeless
panhandlers. Used to be that a man on the street, shouting into the air, was a
mentally ill homeless guy.  Now it was usually a business man with one of those
annoying Bluetooth ear buds.

I walked up to the Arcade Building and headed up the stairs to my office.   Peeking into attorney Crandle’s
office, I spied lovely Wendy Forsyth, but decided not to go in when I saw
Thelma the office Nazi near her.  I wondered if Willie had mentioned my
trespassing arrest to Wendy.

It took me an hour to throw out
most of my mail (which was ninety-percent junk) and to download and print
twenty field inspection jobs from various LISA e-mails.  I pocketed the
important mail (checks from LISA) and headed to the bank.

I was definitely being followed. 
A man I had seen get out of his car after I arrived at the State Street parking
garage was now tucking a newspaper under his arm and walking slowly in the same
direction I  was.  After the monster Jeep truck incident ended with me wrecking
my car, I was anxious to be on the offensive this time.  It was four blocks to
the First Knoxville Bank Building; Knoxville’s tallest building at forty-five
stories.  Keeping my eyes mostly on the brick sidewalk as I walked, I looked up
periodically, using store-front glass as a rear view mirror. Dude was still
back there.

I slowed down and browsed the
window of a jewelry store.  He slowed down and glanced at a closed store front;
the windows were covered with brown paper from the inside. It was an awkward effort
to appear natural. Then he began walking again and slowly passed me.  I did not
look at him, but immediately headed back the other way and cut down some metal
stairs that went down to parking below two buildings.

After I was out of his sight, I
darted under the steps so I could look between to the stair treads and saw his
feet descending quickly. As he passed I reached through the opening and grabbed
one of his ankles.  He fell forward and I heard a few bangs and a howl.  It
looked as though he simultaneously banged his chin on the hand rail and smacked
his knee on the pavement before he finally hammered down on his right elbow.

I hurried out from under the
stairs.  He was whimpering and feeling his injuries with his good arm.  The
elbow seemed to be the worst.

“Who do you work for?” I said
bending low and close to his face. I had always wanted a reason to say that. It
felt good.

“I cracked one of my crowns,” he
slurred, rubbing his mouth. He tried to hold his knee with his bad arm and had
to flinch.

He was a smallish person with an
inexpensive suit and a gray raincoat.  His chin was swelling, but he was
sitting up now. He was an old-looking forty-five or a young sixty, I wasn’t
sure.  His thinning hair was mussed and his skin had the clammy look of chilled
pork sausage.  A woman, probably late for work, was walking up to us in the
parking lot.

“Sir, are you okay?” She said,
looking at the fallen stalker.

I bent down and helped him up by
his good arm before he could yell for the cops.

“Uh…Billy, is fine, aren’t yah?” I
said loudly, to cover up the man’s grunts and groans of pain.  I put my arm
around him and walked him toward the back of the parking lot. The woman watched
us struggle for just a moment before she went on, her heels clicking quickly up
the metal stairs to the sidewalk.

As soon as I let go of the man he
sat down on the pavement of the parking lot.

“So are you going to beat me now,
until I say who my client is?  ‘Cause you know the agency doesn’t even tell
us.”

Since I had basically assaulted him
for no reason I could explain to the authorities other than paranoia, beating
information out of this man would be very risky.  And it wasn’t my style.
Having been in jail once already this week, I took the high road.

I scooted him around and pulled his
wallet out of his back pocket.  There was a PI license and a Pinkerton agency
badge.  His home address was in Nashville.  His business card showed the
Nashville Pinkerton location and his name, Fred Smithey.

I took one of the business cards
and his Pinkerton ID badge from its holder. I jotted his badge number down and
handed his wallet back to him. Still flinching with pain, he made no move to
put it in his pocket.

Sitting sadly on the bleached
pavement, he reminded me of the weeds struggling up through the cracks nearby.
I think the weeds were more prosperous.  I told him to drive south on Gay Street and he would come to Baptist Hospital if he decided his injuries needed
professional care.

“No beating today,” I said,
sounding tough. “You’ve been made, so you’re off the case.  Tell them to send
someone more cunning next time, possibly a hot female agent.”

In the lobby of the First
Knoxville building I used the bank’s courtesy phone to make a anonymous call.

“Pinkerton Agency. How may I
direct your call?” said the receptionist, in a calm, courteous tone.

“Agent services, please,” I said
and my call was transferred.

“Brenda Jenkins, may I help you?”

“Brenda, this is Fred Smithey,
Badge number q47586i0.” I say, counting on the fact that Brenda does not know
all the field agents personally. “I have a question about a job I’m in Knoxville working on.”

“What’s the job number?”

“I don’t know, the guy I’m
supposed to tail is Russell Stover, like the candy?  Ha.”  I say what anybody
else who doesn’t know me would say.

“Hang on a sec,” Sound of keys
tapping. “What did you need?”

“I’m headed back to the hotel to
type up my notes and I can’t find this file.  Who is the client on this job?”

“Uh, that would be Andrew
Chandler. Did you need anything else?” She was friendly, but I barely noticed.
I was too busy trying to think why my mother’s cadaverous boyfriend would have
me followed.

“No, that’s all I needed, I’ll get
these notes sent in pronto.”

I gently placed the receiver back
in its cradle, puzzled about Chandler having me tailed.  To me, he seems
already so close to death, I can’t imagine what his ambitions might be in the
world of the living. I will have to figure it out later since it is time to
earn some real money; the kind of money that will pay mortgage payments and
utility bills. Tammy’s case was interesting, even fascinating, but I was
starting to doubt that it would end in a pay-off for me.

On the way out of the bank’s
cavernous glass lobby, I stepped onto their antique scale near the ATM’s.  This
scale is there to make all the yuppies spend their lunch money more prudently.

Two Hundred and twelve.

“Would it kill you to do a sit-up
every now and then, Rust?” I mutter to myself as I head out the revolving
door.  The day ahead inspecting trailer homes and eating at convenience stores
would not bring down that 212 number. It’s hard to lose weight when your health
club is Seven-Eleven.