Dial H for Hitchcock (12 page)

B
akersfield is halfway to Fresno, the raisin capital of the world. Undoubtedly it is other things as well, but I can’t tell you what they are.

Those partial to the scenic route take Highway 1, which offers magnificent views of mountains on one side and crashing surf on the other. But I didn’t have time for that kind of nonsense.

Long-haul truckers and persons tracking lovelorn used-car salesmen take the inland route.

That would be the 5.

Within half an hour, my ears were starting to pop. That’s the other thing about the 5. It rises to an elevation of four thousand feet, then descends rapidly around the Tejon Pass. Every year there’s a horrible accident with big rigs careening out of control and smashing into Camrys and other small, defenseless cars. But that’s mostly in rainstorms.

Today the sun was shining brightly, not that I saw much of
it. For most of the trip I was trapped in between two trucks ferrying oranges. The worst part wasn’t the absence of light or air but the fact that I didn’t get to see any cows, always a highlight for city girls like myself. I managed to ditch the trucks at the juncture to the 99, which is the route the Joads took in
The Grapes of Wrath.
That humbled me. I stopped for trail mix at a roadside stand, and didn’t toss the date nuggets out the window like I usually do.

Thirty miles later, I exited near Cal State Bakersfield and headed toward Oak Street, which may well be the happiest place on earth.

Never in my life have I seen as many balloons, banners, streamers, garlands, tinsel, and American flags billowing proudly in the breeze. Then there were the inflatables: ducks, clowns, tigers, bears. Apparently nothing says buy a car like an inflatable teddy bear riding a Harley. And the signs, neatly lettered on poster board, scrawled on chalkboards, or spelled out on LED monitors:
FIRST TIME BUYERS OK! REPOSSESSIONS OK! BANKRUPTCY OK
! Who knew a trip to Bakersfield could make you feel so good about yourself? Next time he freaked out on me, I was bringing my accountant Mr. Keshigian here.

Anita Colby’s ex-boyfriend worked at All-America Auto, which was at the far end of the strip. It wasn’t the fanciest of them, that was for sure. The sales office was a plywood shack festooned with a
GOD BLESS AMERICA
banner.

Three guys in leather jackets were out front, drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups. They eyeballed me as I pulled into the lot, then engaged in a complex negotiation about who was going to get first crack at me. The one with the biggest gut must’ve won the coin toss because the other two hung back
deferentially as he sidled up to my car and pulled the dented driver’s side door open.

“That must’ve been some accident. Hope nobody was hurt,” he said.

I smiled. “The ER doctor assured me they grow back fifty percent of the time.”

He laughed nervously, then regained his composure.

“Lots of folks in the industry prize reliability, but I wouldn’t have put you in a car like this.” He shook his head. “You don’t belong in a granny car. I see you in something young and sexy.”

Flatterer.

“Hey!” He bugged his eyes out in feigned enthusiasm. “Do me a favor. We got this hot Mazda RX-8 in yesterday, and I’d love to see what you look like behind the wheel.” He took my arm and steered me over to a small white car with gleaming white spokes on the wheels. The windshield was plastered with stickers:
LOW MILEAGE, LUXURY, FULL POWER, ONE OWNER, SMART BUY, WE FINANCE
.

“Very nice,” I said noncommittally.

Noncommittal was not in this guy’s vocabulary.

“The Motorsport Concept,” he said, his voice trembling. “Leaner, meaner, and faster. That’s right, I’m talking turbo. High power at sky-high revs. This is one of the top-ranking vehicles in its class, the only one that offers four doors and four seats without compromising its low-profile style or sports car–like performance. Take a seat.” He whipped open the door.

I sat down and took a deep breath. Oh, that new car smell. It was so seductive. The smell of hope. The smell of optimism.
Somewhere in the distance I heard the Carpenters singing “We’ve Only Just Begun.”

“What do you think? Shall we give it a test drive?”

“Actually, I was hoping to talk to Jonathan,” I said. “A friend recommended I see him. Said he’d give me a good deal.”

He glanced back at his buddies. Their coffee finished, they were now munching on doughnuts.

“Jonathan,” he said with regret. “I’ll get him for you.”

He brought me over to a short and powerfully built guy with thick black hair, a mustache, and a five o’clock shadow that probably started just after breakfast. He looked like ninety-five percent of my cousins—the females as well as the males.

“Mr. Tucci,” he said. “This lady wants to see you. Don’t let it go to your head, man.”

So this was Jonathan Tucci.

Menacing? I hardly thought so. He was brushing crumbs off his leather jacket. But he’d written Anita the kind of letters that give a person nightmares. Said he loved her so much he couldn’t breathe. That he couldn’t live without her, and that he’d die before he saw her with another man. That if she wouldn’t come back, he’d throw himself off a building and take her with him.

Anita hadn’t gone to the police with the letters. She hadn’t gotten a restraining order. She’d saved them, wrapped up in a blue ribbon, like love letters.

Maybe she’d known how to read between the lines.

“What can I do for you?” Jonathan Tucci asked. “You looking for a trade-in? If you are, I gotta tell you, your car isn’t worth blue book, not with that kind of damage. What hap
pened, somebody ram into you? You let me at ’em.”

“That’s awfully kind of you,” I said. “But it was my fault. I was in kind of a hurry. Like I am today.”

“One thing people never ought to be when they’re buying a used car is in a hurry. But it’s too nice a day to argue. See anything that strikes you?”

I scanned the lot. There were a lot of shiny pick-ups. “I’m looking for something reliable.”

Jonathan smiled knowledgeably. “Bill tried to get you into something young and sexy, right? But I know from taking just one look at you that you don’t need a car to validate you. You’re a confident woman, and a confident woman needs a car that gets her from point A to point B, am I right or am I right?”

“You are right.”

“I see you in…let me think for a second. Yeah, right over here, all right, yup, this is it. No doubt in my mind. A Plymouth Sundance!”

“I kind of like this Corolla.”

He looked pained. “The Sundance has lower mileage and motorized seatbelts. It’s the better deal at sixty-five hundred bucks out the door. What do you think? Shall we give it a test drive?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve got to take it out of the lot, then you’ll get your shot.”

As we were buckling up, a police car pulled up on the opposite side of the street. I felt the blood rush to my face. But I had nothing to worry about. I wasn’t even officially a fugitive yet. My appointment with Collins and McQueen wasn’t until tomorrow morning. And I was innocent. More or less.

The cop got out of the car, slammed the door behind him, and leaned against his door, arms crossed. He seemed to be looking straight at me, but it was hard to tell because of his sunglasses. How did I know he was an enemy? He could well be a friend. A friend trying to protect me from my own worst impulses. Not to mention the obsessed and possibly unstable Jonathan Tucci. How did I know Jonathan Tucci didn’t have a police record? Maybe he was out on parole. Was I so stupid that I’d get into a Plymouth Sundance with a dangerous ex-con?

“Ready?” Jonathan Tucci asked, clicking the door locks.

A
s we pulled out of the driveway, I sent one last imploring look the cop’s way.

“Nice little residential area back here.” Jonathan turned the corner. “Nice empty streets. You can put on some speed in a minute, see what it’s like. Just don’t crash into a wall or anything. I never checked on your insurance.”

I wasn’t the one with the death wish.

It was a modest neighborhood, mostly small, faded one-story houses with chain-link fences protecting the occasional snarling dog and rusted lawn chair. A couple of teenage boys rolled past us on skateboards, brushing their long hair to the side in unison.

“One more block and I’ll pull over,” Jonathan said. “By the way, I never did ask who sent you.”

Might as well cut to the chase. “Anita Colby.”

He turned his head. “Anita?”

Before I could respond, he looked in the rearview mirror, then sped up.

“What is it?” I turned around. There was a dark car with tinted windows coming up behind us.

“Nothing. Just this idiot tailgating me. Get a life!” he shouted out the window.

“I hate when people do that.”

“No shit.”

I looked in the passenger side mirror. Objects may be closer than they appeared, but this guy was practically on top of us. Jonathan hit the gas. The other guy did the same, coming close, then even closer. I felt a sudden jolt as the shoulder belt cut into my neck.

“Damn it!” Jonathan accelerated again, then swung a sharp left into the alley.

“What?” I asked.

“Didn’t you feel that?”

“Of course I felt that.” I grabbed for the door as we sped over a pothole. “What’s happening?”

“We’re being followed is what’s happening!”

“What does he want?” I was trying to stay calm.

Jonathan maneuvered past recycling bins and trash cans, wrenching the wheel back and forth like this was Nascar. “You tell me.”

“How am I supposed to know?”

He drove right over a clump of dead palm fronds somebody had dumped in the middle of the road. “You see what kind of suspension this car has? Best in class.”

I clutched my seatbelt. If I bounced any higher, I was going to go through the roof.

“Figures it’s trash day today,” Jonathan muttered. “Better pray the truck doesn’t come at us or we’re goners. Oh, screw it. Hold on.”

The other guy was still hot on our tail as we took a sharp right out of the alley and careened down a wide street, past a school with a bunch of kids playing four square on the yard.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a yellow bus start to pull away from the curb.

“Watch out!” I cried.

Jonathan veered to the left, passing the bus, then spun the wheel to the right. “I think we lost him,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “So you into the same shit as Anita, or what?”

But we hadn’t lost him. He’d sideswiped the bus and was bearing down on us again.

“What shit exactly would that be?” I asked, my neck snapping forward as we flew over a speed bump. My purse toppled to the floor, and a thick wad of bills tumbled out.

Jonathan glanced at the money, then up at me. “Don’t kid a kidder.”

There was a dead-end street coming up on the right. Jonathan peered into the rearview mirror again and after hesitating a split second, turned down it, giving the car so much gas I thought we were going to crash into the freshly painted ranch house coming straight at us at eighty miles per hour.

“What are you doing?” I screamed.

At the last minute he slammed on the brakes. I lurched forward, then back, then forward again, hitting my head on the windshield. Apparently, this year and make of Sundance didn’t have airbags.

“You okay?” He turned off the engine.

“I’m fine, no thanks to you.” I rubbed my forehead. “But we’re trapped. There’s no way out.”

“That’s the idea. Look behind you.” I wheeled around in my seat just in time to see the dark car idle for a minute at the other end of the cul de sac, then drive away.

I turned back around, incredulous. “How’d you know he’d do that?”

“Experience. Don’t you think you should pick up your money?”

I unhooked my seatbelt, and bent down to retrieve the wad of bills. Jonathan watched me put it back in my purse.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said.

“I came here to buy a car.”

“Maybe. I think you came here to talk about Anita and me. Does she know about your visit?”

He was a better actor than used car salesman. But maybe he wasn’t acting. Still, how could he not know Anita was dead? It had made the
L.A. Times.
But this was Kern County. They had their own paper. “I don’t think so. No.”

“Listen,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “I gotta be up front with you. I can’t help. I’m sorry. I’m on the straight and narrow these days. Best thing for you to do is get out while you can. Make a clean break. An exit plan. That’s what Anita did. When things got really bad, she was going to go to Gloria. You know her?”

I shook my head.

“Anita’s sister. Lives here in town. Works at Hello Kitty. Gloria’s great. Anyway, you’ve probably got somebody like Gloria in your life. Somebody you can trust. That’s who you need to go to.”

A tall man in an undershirt came out of the freshly painted ranch house. I thought pink was a poor choice, but this is America. He was carrying a baseball bat. His wife stood in the doorway, a phone in her hands.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked us. “If not, I strongly suggest you get the fuck off my lawn.”

Jonathan started up the car and we drove back to the lot in silence. Instead of pulling up to the front, though, he stopped the car in the alley around the back. “Wait here. I have something for you.” He disappeared inside.

Five minutes passed.

I’d barely had a chance to think these last few days. This was my chance. But it’s hard to think on demand.

Okay.

I was looking for somebody who wanted Anita dead. I was also looking for somebody with the brains and resources to orchestrate a pretty complicated setup. I didn’t know about his brains, but Jonathan Tucci was stuck in a dead-end job. If he’d had any resources, he’d surely have left All-America Auto a long time ago.

Which didn’t necessarily mean he was one of the good guys.

I heard the crunching of tires on gravel. It was Jonathan driving my Camry, which now had Arizona plates where the California plates used to be.

I gathered up my things and got out of the Sundance.

“You’re gonna need your money,” he said, handing me my keys. “These plates should help, at least for a while. I put the old ones in the trunk.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

“I gotta get back now,” he said. “Maybe I can still make my quota for the week. It’s tough because we don’t have the inventory of some of the other dealers around here. Oh, well. A person does what a person can do.”

I looked up. The sun was setting behind an old fence covered with layer upon layer of peeling paint. It reminded me of a laundry disaster I’d once had. It had been another long day. I was tired of thinking. I was ready to fall into bed.

“You have a place to stay?” he asked.

“I thought I’d try down the street.” There were half a dozen dingy-looking motels, but I was going to the Marriott. Just for tonight. They had room service and I wanted a steak and HBO and a soft bed with cool, crisp sheets.

Jonathan shook his head. “Even if you plan on paying cash, you’re going to have to leave a credit card. You don’t want to leave a credit card, do you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Get back on the 99 heading toward Fresno. Get off at the next exit. Go to the E-Z Nights. Big sign. You can’t miss it. I know the guy that works there. Jason. Tell him Jonny sent you. You say you’re paying cash, that’ll be good enough for him.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re a friend of Anita’s,” he said. “And pretty naïve, no offense. I don’t think you get who you’re dealing with. You want to make sure these people don’t find you, and, if they do, that they don’t recognize you.”

Jonathan Tucci was helpful, but not very reassuring.

He reached out and touched my shoulder. “I never did ask you your name.” But before I could answer, he said, “Never mind. It’s better I don’t know. Good luck.”

I smiled.

“You remind me of Anita,” he said, regret in his voice. “Just a little.”

“Sounds like that’s a compliment,” I said.

“Yeah. I loved her. But it was a long time ago.”

I nodded, then got into my Camry and drove away.