'The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man' Chapters 17 & 18

His look indicated my offer wasn’t good enough.

I didn’t remember setting my alarm clock, but it woke me up at six a.m. I felt like I’d been beaten. I eased out of bed and went into the bathroom, looking sadly into the old, red eyes of Ruddy McCann. Life was not supposed to turn out like this.

Jimmy had picked up the scattered bills and placed them back on the table. It looked like he’d polished all the glasses in the cabinets, too. I didn’t deserve a friend like him. I found some thousand-year-old beef taquitos in the freezer and heated them in the micro, eating them quickly, before Alan woke up and gave me a nutrition lecture.

I was experiencing the hangover of a lifetime. My head was oddly clear, but the rest of my body hurt as if I’d spent the day working out in a gym and then being beaten by a karate instructor. My stomach was tender with the same soreness I’d feel after the first day of crunches at football practice.

I sighed despondently. I was only a couple of years older than Deputy Timms, but he looked a lot younger, his chubby cheeks lending his face a childlike exuberance, like maybe a child with really ugly parents. When Katie compared the two of us, she probably thought of me as over-the-hill.

The light was blinking on my message machine. As if she sensed I was thinking of her, it was Katie Lottner, asking me to come to a memorial service in East Jordan on Thursday at Burby’s funeral home. The county had finished its tests on Alan’s body and released it to the family. I listened to the message several times, straining through it to find nuggets of passion or affection, but it sounded like I was just one of several on a list she was working. I was glad Alan wasn’t awake to hear about his funeral; I wanted to think about a way to tell him about it.

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Kermit picked me up at exactly seven o ’clock, handing me a tall cup of coffee as I climbed in. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy. When he passed over a new folder from his uncle, I decided his behavior was downright acceptable.

The assignment was an easy one—some nut living in the woods “off the land” and selling the bank’s collateral—a Ford Explorer—a part at a time to the junkyard so that he’d have a few bucks to his name. I hauled in what was left of the thing, and because the guy was officially a skip, got five hundred bucks for my efforts. “I guess the bank thinks if you don’t have a mailbox or a phone you’re a skip,” I observed to Kermit.

By the time we were headed up to see Einstein Croft, it was almost noon. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the temperature was flirting with the fifties. We were about to repo Albert Einstein, and I now owed Milt nothing and had a check coming besides. “I’m back to being satisfied,” I told Kermit. He eyed me cautiously.

We swung into the guest parking of Einstein’s job, avoiding the guard who protected the employee lot. “Okay, here’s the thing. I’m going to get the receptionist to let me use their internal phone system. As soon as she does, I want you to distract her, okay? You’re good at that kind of thing—just keep talking to her, don’t let her overhear what I’m doing, all right?”

Kermit seemed nervous. “Wait! What should I say?”

“I don’t know. Explain the difference between swipe and nonswipe.”

We pushed open the glass doors and approached the receptionist in the lobby. She looked like she was barely out of high school—thin and pale, her short hair dyed unnaturally black. Up close I could see the small holes where she inserted her lip and nose rings after work.

I hooked my finger over my shoulder at the tow truck. “I’m supposed to phone the guard when I get here, somebody needs a tow. Can you connect me, somehow?”

She seemed unsure about my request, which was good, because it distracted her and kept her from asking me why I didn’t just pull up to the employee entrance and talk to the guard in person. She picked up the phone and stared at the switchboard. After moving her lips and nodding as if she had a dead Realtor of her own to talk to, she brightened.

“Jed? It’s Charlene. Hang on, please.” She smiled at me triumphantly. The second she handed me the telephone, Kermit pounced on her with a focused ferocity.

“Have you thought about handling call overflows from your station?” I heard him ask.

“Hello?” I said, trying to sound like a factory employee, what ever that meant.

“Security.”

“Hi, I need a tow truck, I busted my brake cylinder,” I told him. “Can you call one for me?”

“Call it yourself, this ain’t road service,” he advised gruffly.

“Oh, well, I don’t know how to make an outside call on this phone.”

“Just dial nine, like every other phone system in the universe.”

“Okay, so, when the tow truck pulls up, let it in, okay?”

“It’ll make my friggin’ day,” he responded, hanging up.

So far, so good: a call from inside the factory advising the guard to let in the tow truck. Now we just needed to stall for a few minutes. Kermit showed no sign of winding down, so I pretended to be interested in a bunch of pictures hanging on one wall. They were all businessmen and women, each identified with little golden name tags.

When my eyes drifted across one of the photographs, my jaw dropped.

“Hey, Alan.” I stood and stared.

“It’s him,” Alan breathed.

I reached out and touched the golden nameplate.

“Franklin Wexler,” I read out loud.

Unmistakably, the man with the shovel.

18

The Man with the Shovel

I strode over to where Kermit was still holding the receptionist hostage with a constant barrage of words. Her nameplate said CHARLENE.

“Hey, Charlene,” I interrupted. “Can I ask you a question about that guy over there?”

Charlene’s mind surfaced slowly, shaking off Kermit’s conversation like a dog getting out of the water. “Who?” “Franklin Wexler.”

“Who?” she repeated.

“Come on, Charlene, snap out of it,” Alan urged.

“There’s a picture of a guy over there, and this little gold plaque says ‘FRANKLIN WEXLER.’ I take it he works here?”

Charlene frowned as if she had never noticed the pictures on the wall ten feet in front of her. “Those are board members,” she decided.

“Okay, right. I’m interested in Franklin Wexler.” “They’re board members,” Charlene repeated.

“They’re members of the board,” Kermit interpreted helpfully.

“Right, I get that, but Franklin Wexler. Is he in?”

“Oh, no. They don’t work here.”

“They’re board members,” Kermit said again.

“Okay but what does that mean?” I snapped, losing patience. I knew Alan was going to say “It means they’re members of the board” before he said it.

“They don’t come in or nothin’. That’s just the people on the board,” Charlene elaborated.

“They’re on the board but they don’t come in?” I asked. “Right,” Kermit answered. I shot him a look.

“That’s fairly common,” Alan lectured me in a Business 101 tone. “They’re on the board and supposedly have oversight of the corporation, but the CEO actually runs the place. Technically, the CEO works for the board, and sometimes the chairman has a lot of power, but usually the board members don’t do much but collect an honorarium.”

“I never seen ’em,” Charlene avowed.

“Well, I need to talk to Franklin Wexler,” I told her.

I saw the doubt in her eyes—a tow truck driver needs to talk to a board member? “Actually, he does,” I amended, hooking a thumb at Kermit. “He’s my boss. It has to do with his nonswipe account. Kermit, tell her the difference between a swipe and a nonswipe account.”

Kermit drew in a breath. “Wait!” Charlene pleaded. “I don’t know anything about them. They aren’t in the company directory. I don’t have any way to get in touch with ’em.”

I mulled this over. “Okay, thanks.”

“Franklin Wexler,” Alan repeated in my ear. “We should be able to track him down; that’s an uncommon name.”

Yes, Alan, I thought, but I don’t have time for that right now, I need to repo an Einstein. I slapped Kermit on the arm. “You did good,” I told him as we walked back out into the sunshine. “Now here’s the plan. I’m going to hunch down in the passenger seat and pull a tarp over myself. You drive around to the side, where the entrance to the employee lot is, and tell the guard you’re the tow truck for the guy who called. He’s expecting you, so he’ll just let you in. You drive far enough into the employee parking lot so he can’t see you, then I’ll hop out and switch places and we’ll go hunting for Einstein’s truck.”

The plan worked like a dream. The guard waved us in without taking his eyes off his television and within a few minutes I was back behind the wheel of the tow truck, slowly cruising the rows of vehicles.

“What if the guard gets suspicious?” Kermit asked nervously.

“Relax, will you?” I muttered. Then I spotted the pickup I was after. “Uh-oh.”

“What? What is it?” Kermit pressed.

“Looks like they’re having a picnic. Guess we’ll have to call it off,” Alan remarked.

Drawn outdoors by the nice weather, a group of burly factory workers sat at a picnic table at the far end of the parking lot, eating lunch together and basking in the sun’s rays. Parked directly in front of them, the back bumper not more than twenty-five feet from the picnic table, was Einstein Croft’s vehicle. Einstein himself sat as if to keep his eye on the prize, facing his truck.

“That’s the truck? Right there, in front of the table?

There are all those guys! They’ll see us driving up!” Kermit exclaimed in alarm.

“Right, right. Okay.” I thought about it, then turned my wheel sharply and drove down another row of vehicles, headed away from the picnic table.

“We leaving?” Kermit asked, relieved.

I turned the wheel again, then stopped. We were now all the way at the other end of the lot, the rear end of the tow truck facing the front end of Einstein’s pickup. “Croft’s driver’s side window is open. That means the truck is probably unlocked. Manual transmission—I can yank it into neutral.” I grinned at Kermit, who paled.

“Ruddy,” Alan warned.

“Here’s what we’re going to do, Kermit. You ever notice the sling that hangs at the bottom of the tow cable?”

I nodded out the rear window, and he followed my gesture. Dangling from the high boom was the thick cable, and at the bottom were two heavy rubber skirts joined along the lower edge with a steel rod—the sling. “Okay. In a normal repo situation, you got three parts: the tow hook, the sling, and the safety chains. You put the sling under the front bumper and raise it—the car you’re towing rests on the sling, but isn’t attached to it—that’s why you need the hook, which you affix to the car frame. And then the safety chains are your fail-safe option. That’s a repo term meaning that even if the hook fails, the car won’t fall off the sling because of the safety chains.”

“This isn’t a normal repo situation. The men are right there, twenty feet away!” Alan protested.

“But this is not a normal repo situation,” I told Kermit agreeably. I slid out of the cab and yanked on the side lever, lowering the sling. Kermit watched me through the back window, his mouth gaping. When the sling was all but touching the ground, I came back and got behind the wheel. “I’m going to back her right up to the front of Einstein’s truck, fast, jamming the sling under it,” I told him. “I’ll jump out and raise the sling just enough to get the hook on the frame. You slide over to the driver’s seat and get ready to go. I’ll open the door and pop the truck into neutral. When I’ve got her hooked just enough to get out of here ...” I put the gear shift in reverse, grinning at him. “I jump back in and you floor it. We’ll do a better job of attaching things when we’re half a mile up the road. Simple. Ready?”

“What? No, wait . . .” Kermit protested faintly. I was already backing up, looking over my shoulder, the transmission whining as I gave it some gas.

“This strikes me as very risky!” Alan announced in alarm.

I was watching the guys at the picnic table. So far, none of them had done anything but observe our approach. I pressed down on the accelerator, ignoring Alan’s gasp.

“Wait!” Kermit shouted.

We slammed into Einstein’s truck with neck-snapping force, his vehicle bouncing on the sling. I jumped out and ran back, grabbing the lever and jamming it forward. With maddening slowness, the sling began to lift. I realized I was holding my breath, so I forced a casual expression onto my face and exhaled, glancing over at the men at the picnic table as I walked to the driver’s side door. Unlocked. I opened it and leaned in and grabbed the gearshift, rattling it loosely. Neutral. Parking brake off.

Events were unfolding with such speed that no one had even moved. Einstein himself had a sandwich halfway to his mouth and was frozen in shock. I nodded at him. Just another five seconds or so and the front of his truck would be up high enough to attach the hook and haul it off. This was going to work!

Suddenly the tow truck lurched, pulling away from me. I stared in disbelief. “No, Kermit!” I yelled. “Not yet!”

With a blast of black exhaust, Kermit took off, Einstein’s truck trailing behind the tow truck. I gazed after him for a moment, then turned and looked back at Einstein. He and his buddies had come to life and were boiling off of that picnic table. They didn’t look like they were in a good mood anymore.

For a moment it was my turn to stand frozen, and then I spun and sprinted after Kermit, who was speeding away. “Kermit! Wait!”

Einstein’s truck was bouncing on the sling, threatening to let go, but Kermit kept accelerating. Cursing, I waved my arms at him as I ran after him through the parking lot.

In what I could only classify as more bad news, another lunch shift full of workers was emptying out of the big doors to my right and, spotting their buddies in pursuit of me, decided to take up the chase like a second pack of hounds joining a foxhunt.

Kermit reached the end of the row of cars and turned left, heading for the exit. With nothing to keep it on the sling, Einstein’s truck decided it would rather keep going straight and dropped off the tow truck, gliding forward until it bounced up against a curb and stopped.

“Look out!” Alan shouted.

In front of me a couple of guys lunged out from between parked cars and blocked my path. I sized them up as if I had a football tucked in my outside arm and jinked left, cutting between them. Three more workers reached for me, their eyes widening in surprise as they realized I was already flashing past them. They fell in behind me and I heard the sound of their footfalls fading rapidly away as if it were game day at regionals.

Only one obstacle lay in my path: the security guard, who had stepped out of his booth and stood in the center of the narrow driveway, a bit hunched over, his arms out to his sides as if getting ready to give me a giant hug.

I suddenly remembered that when he played defensive end for East Jordan High School he was like an open valve; all it took was a little head feint, like this, and he was groping at the empty air. I sailed past him untouched.

I turned on the road and saw that Kermit was still driving away as if pursued by the hounds of hell. I ran after him, my legs moving up and down in easy cadence. Maybe it was the sunshine getting to me, but I felt better at that moment than I had felt in a long time. I was almost disappointed when Kermit pulled over; my legs wanted to keep going, run to the gym, lift weights, learn Pilates.

I was barely winded and full of endorphins. Kermit regarded my approach like the accused waiting for the judge to pass sentence. “So Kermit, at what point did you decide to leave me alone at the factory?” I asked, flexing my knees.

“Uh . . . ,” he responded as eloquently as he could manage.

“Let me drive. You wait until I get up to fifty-five miles per hour, and then jump out,” I told him pleasantly. He nodded, swallowing.

“That was just crazy. Those men would have caught you before you could have gotten that truck hooked up,” Alan fretted.

“Kermit, the voice in my head wants me to take you out in the woods and eat your liver,” I said. Kermit’s eyes bulged.

“For God’s sake, Ruddy, he’s going to think I’m a lunatic,” Alan complained.

I called Milt and told him we had to go writ of replevin on Einstein Croft. “I’ll serve the summons, though, Milt,” I said. I’d at least get fifty bucks for throwing some papers at Einstein’s face.

“And where do we stand with Jimmy?” Milt asked.

“You know, Milt, your focus on collecting money isn’t nearly as much fun as lending money,” I chided. When he didn’t give me so much as a dry chuckle I cleared my throat. “Why don’t you hold on to fifty bucks out of what I have coming from picking up the Explorer this morning,” I suggested.

“You sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s Jimmy, Milt,” I said simply.

Between the sunshine and the way the oxygen was coursing through my leg muscles my mood remained nearly euphoric, and I opened the door to the Black Bear for Kermit as if he and I were old friends. Becky gave us a bleak look, waving some papers at us. “Kermit, what are these?”

Becky held three notices in her hand, the type that bank computers issue when you’ve overoptimized your checking account. Kermit read them, his brow furrowed, while Becky looked over his shoulder at me and shrugged.

“These are customer inquiries. What it is, is the customers are disputatious on the nonswipe charge.”

Becky and I looked at him blankly. “English, please,” I requested.

“See, the psychics are telling the customers that the charge will be the Black Bear Bar and Grille, but the cardholders forget sometimes, so when they see the charge, they don’t know what it is, and they’re like, ‘Black Bear in Kalkaska? But I’m in Omaha or some dumb place,’ so they dispute it with the credit card company. So the bank sends us this notice.”

“Wouldn’t the psychics know in advance which customers will forget?” I asked cleverly. Both Becky and Alan groaned.

“They should,” Kermit agreed.

“What do we do?” Becky asked him.

“The thing is, you have to protect the integration of the nonswipe account. So we don’t even challenge it. We credit the customer back the full amount. Our thirteen percent plus the psychic’s eighty-seven percent. Take the eighty-seven percent out of today’s receipts from the psychic line. How much did we get today?”

I found myself irritated over the “we,” but didn’t say anything.

“We received two thousand two hundred,” Becky stated. I turned a fond gaze upon her and her ability to manage numbers like that.

“Okay, and these are for a total of six-twenty, so we’re fine,” Kermit pronounced with such confidence I instantly felt apprehensive. “We get any more of these, handle them the same way.”

It was on my mind to advise Kermit that he was to ask, not tell, Becky what to do, but I knew Alan would chide me later for always busting the guy’s chops, so I bit my lip.

Becky invited me to step out the back door into the alley, and I followed her, curious. I blinked at a fresh wall of cinder blocks. “What’s this?”

Becky looked flushed with excitement. “I’ve never laid bricks or blocks or anything before. See how level it is?”

Okay, well, if it made my sister happto build a wall in the alley, what did I care? There was still plenty of room for cars to get around. “It’s nice,” I offered.

“It is level,” Alan agreed.

She laughed. “Well, it’s not for decoration. Come here, look.” She took my arm and pulled me around the wall. It was actually a three-sided corral, with the trash Dumpster sitting in the middle of it.

I immediately spotted what she had done wrong, and wondered how to tell her about it. “You made a little house for the Dumpster,” I said, stalling.

“No, it’s . . . the county requires it. I told you we had to build one.”

“But Becky . . .” I sighed. “The open part should be facing the back door, not away from it. See? Not only is it more of a trip to walk around with a bag of trash, but when the truck comes, it’s one way.” I pointed up the alley, gesturing how when the truck approached it would be facing the closed part of the corral.

“It’s one way but the truck has to back up to get to the Dumpster.”

“Oh.” I nodded thoughtfully, hoping to appear to be, well, full of thought. When I glanced at her, she was wearing a neutral expression that somehow looked familiar.

We went back inside. “Your sister is pretty nice not to point out how stupid you sounded,” Alan advised.

I went to sit by Bob the Bear and Jimmy came over to take my order, just like it was a real restaurant. “You want to hear the special?” he asked.

“The what?” I blurted, laughing. I sensed Becky’s eyes on me like gun turrets and choked it back. “Yeah, sure, what is the special?”

The special was plank whitefish. “Do you eat the plank, or the fish?” I joked. Jimmy shrugged uncomfortably—what the heck was wrong with everyone, how come I was the only person with a sense of humor?

“What is it with everybody?” I muttered to Alan.

“They know you’re a little irrational on the subject of the Black Bear. Maybe they’re afraid of your reaction,” Alan suggested.

“I do not need to be psychoanalyzed by a voice living in my head.”

“Who better?” Alan retorted.

The whitefish came and Becky and Kermit watched me eat like parents sending their first child off to kindergarten. I gave them a thumbs-up and they heaved visible sighs of relief.

“You don’t need that much salt,” Alan observed, so I put a little more on. “Aren’t you going to eat your vegetable?”

“It’s broccoli. Nobody eats broccoli,” I informed him.

“You have got to eat vegetables!”

“I did, I ate the fries,” I responded indignantly. I realized a woman I didn’t know was sitting alone at a table and watching me talk to myself over the top of her Cosmo magazine. I gave her a cheery nod and she dove back behind the cover.

Claude came in and sat down with me and ordered a chicken burrito as if we had been serving them for a hundred years. “Hey, Claude, there’s this weird thing in the sky, you seen it?”

He gave me a blank look.

“Real bright? Heat coming off of it? Been up there all day, very strange.”

“You mean the sun?” he asked.

“Oh, is that what it is? Been so long since it’s been out, I didn’t recognize it,” I chortled.

Claude looked absolutely bewildered. Jimmy slid a plate down in front of Claude and asked him if he wanted pico de gallo. No one seemed to think it was an unusual conversation. “Jimmy, Janelle been in?” Claude asked.

Jimmy’s look darkened. “Janelle?” His tone was so sharp I blinked in surprise.

Claude didn’t seem to catch it. “Yeah, it’s like she’s avoiding me or something.” He gave us a one-of-the-boys look. “I don’t understand her. You know we’ve never even done it? Closest I got is second base. Women,” he snorted. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t return ’em for a full refund.”

Jimmy’s face turned red. “What the heck is wrong with you, Claude? You and Wilma have been together my whole life. She loves you, man. You got history together. Are you crazy? Janelle? You know what I would give to have the kind of thing you and Wilma got?” His mouth worked inarticulately for a moment, while Claude just stared at him in astonishment. I don’t think any of us had ever seen Jimmy this angry before.

Finally he extended an accusing finger. “You are making the biggest mistake I’ve ever seen, Claude. You think Janelle isn’t going to dump you the second someone closer to her age comes along?”

Claude clearly didn’t appreciate the “closer to her age” part. He opened his mouth.

“Aw, heck with it. I’ll get you some guacamole with jalapeño garnish,” Jimmy stormed, turning on his heel.

Claude and I stared at each other as if unsure of what had just happened.

“Uh-oh, Ruddy, look who just came in,” Alan said.

It was disconcerting to think that Alan could keep track of things within my vision that I wasn’t focused on.

I glanced up to see what he was talking about.

A Charlevoix County sheriff’s deputy had stepped inside the Black Bear during Jimmy’s lecture. I recognized him as one of the officers who had been out with us the day we dug up Alan’s body. He was staring at me, a smirk on his face. When he was sure he had my attention, he crooked his finger. Gulping, I got up from the table, following the deputy outside. A gray band of clouds drifted in front of the sun as I climbed inside his patrol car.

Time for my polygraph.

NEXT: Chapters 19-20

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