Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course (5 page)

“Problem?” she shouted, hands on her hips. “Yeah, I got a problem. Like that ‘Vette’s been totaled. My mechanic looked it over. He says the frame’s cracked and the odometer’s been turned back and the steering wheel could fall off the first time I take a hard left.”

Jeff shrugged. His dimples were gone now and he’d set his face in stone, the way he’d seen Ronnie and Wormy do when they were getting hassled by a customer.

“‘All sales final,’” Jeff said. “‘All merchandise sold as is.’” He pointed to the words painted on the glass door of the sales office. “It says so right there. Says so on your contract, too. Your payment is due next Saturday. Feel free to drop it in the mail. Long as it’s here by Saturday.”

He straightened his shoulders and pulled his shirt away from his back. He turned his back on her.

“I’m not giving you another cent,” Jackie said, running after him. “I’m getting a lawyer. I’ll sue you people.”

Jeff stopped dead and wheeled around to face her. She was going to be a pain in the ass now, he realized.

And it was a shame. Here he’d been looking forward to seeing Jackleen again, seeing her every Saturday, marking off the payments, maybe having some drinks and some harmless recreational sex. He’d never screwed a black chick before.

“You’re not getting nothing back,” he said with eerie calm. “And believe me, Jackleen, you don’t want to fuck with Bondurant Motors. And you definitely do not want to fuck with Ronald Xavier Bondurant.”

Truman decided to skip his Sunday afternoon walk. The heat in his room made him drowsy, but trying to nap on his narrow iron bed, drenched in perspiration, made him feel like he was being mummified. The only really cool place in the hotel was probably the big walk-in refrigerator in the kitchen. He decided to settle for the lobby.

Jackie was just coming in as he settled into the wicker armchair nearest the door. Her tear-streaked face and slumped shoulders confirmed his suspicions about her “new” car.

“Bad news, huh, kid?” he asked.

She leaned against the door frame and fanned herself. “Grandmama said if it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” she said.

“Funny. My grandma said that, too,” Truman said. “You want something cold to drink before you tell me about it? I’m buying.”

Jackie gave him the key to the kitchen, strictly against the restaurant manager’s rules. Truman found a plastic gallon jug of iced tea in the refrigerator, got some glasses, and filled a bus tray with ice from the ice machine. When he got back to the lobby, Ollie was there, too, trying to cheer her up.

“Come on,” he was saying. “Let’s play gin rummy. I’ll let you win this time.”

When Ollie saw Truman with the iced tea, he began to feel guilty.

“I’ve got a six-pack of Rolling Rock in my room,” he began, “I guess I could spare a couple, but…”

“Go get it,” Truman said. “This is no time for tea.”

Jackie went into the dining room and got a heavy chair to keep the front door propped open wider, and Truman remembered having seen somebody lug an old circulating fan into the coatroom near the reception desk. He angled it in front of the door, and pushed the three wicker armchairs into a circle around the fan.

It was about as quiet as a Boeing 707 and as effective as a screen door in a submarine. Truman opened his beer and took a long drink, holding the cold green bottle against his forehead. “How the hell did anybody ever live in this damned swamp before air-conditioning?” he said.

“Thought you said everything in the old days was better,” Jackie answered. She’d taken off her shoes and her bare feet were propped up on the big, peeling, rattan coffee table.

“Everything, except we didn’t have air-conditioning,” Truman said.

“My ‘Vette has air-conditioning,” Jackie told them sadly. “It’s the only thing that works on that vehicle.”

She looked over at Truman. “You were right. The transmission is all messed up. That’s why it quit running last night. Milton had to put a whole quart of transmission fluid in it just so I could drive it back here. That car’s been wrecked, too. Milton said it’s no good. You were right about that Jeff being a crook, too. He won’t take the car back, and he won’t give me my money back.”

“I wish I had been wrong,” Truman said. “Did that Jeff fella give you any satisfaction at all? Sometimes if you squawk loud enough, these people will offer to buy the car back. They’ll charge you a little more than you paid, but at least they’ll take it off your hands.”

“He told me to get lost,” Jackie said bitterly. “He told me I better not mess with Bondurant Motors.”

“TK, why don’t you go down there and get the goods on these crooks?” Ollie asked. He’d wrapped his own beer bottle in a brown paper sack. Liquor was strictly forbidden in the lobby or other public areas of the hotel, and unlike Truman and Jackie, he usually went strictly by the rules. If Sonya Hoffmayer caught him with a beer she’d go screaming to the management, and they might kick him out.

“What goods?” Truman asked.

“You know,” Ollie said. “Write an expose on this used-car racket.”

Ever since the year before, when Truman had uncovered a Texas televangelist’s plans to turn the Fountain of Youth into high-priced Christian condos, Ollie had been urging Truman to write exposes of everything from the high markup on magazines to the true nature of professional wrestling.

“I’m retired,” Truman reminded Ollie.

“Yeah, but that guy at the newspaper loved that story you did about the kids shooting the pigeons in Williams Park. And how about that story about that mailman who was spending all afternoon drinking beer down at the pool hall instead of delivering the mail?”

Truman had done some minor freelancing for the
St. Petersburg Times
and had handled a couple of local stories for one of his old buddies in the Associated Press bureau over in Tampa. The one he’d run before his retirement. It was penny-ante stuff.

“Hey!” Jackie said, sitting up. “Maybe you could go over there to Bondurant Motors and tell them you’re a reporter. Like that Answer Man on TV. Like a consumer advocate or something. Maybe they’d do right if you got after them.”

Truman took a swig of his own beer. “I’ll go down there with you tomorrow, Jackie. Not as a reporter. As a friend. These places take advantage of a woman by herself. Maybe if an old geezer like me starts raising hell, they’ll see things differently.”

“Maybe,” Jackie said.

The big gray Lincoln sailed into the parking lot at Bondurant Motors at precisely six P.M.

Wormy Weems, assistant sales manager, was behind the wheel. Wormy was tall and skinny, with deeply tanned skin and a perpetual squint from being out in the sun on the car lot all day. Ronnie didn’t like him to wear sunglasses on the lot because he said people liked to see a salesman’s eyes. See if they could trust him.

Ronald Xavier Bondurant, president of Bondurant Motors, was dozing in the soft leather front seat of the car. It had been an eight-hour drive from Atlanta. Four days of nonstop partying packed into forty-eight hours. That Ronnie, Wormy reflected. What a party guy. He’d never met anybody who could stay on the go like Ronnie Bondurant. They were good partners, Wormy and Ronnie. Wormy was good at details. Ronnie was an idea man. Ronnie was the straight man, Wormy fed him the goofy lines. They were the Martin and Lewis of the Tampa Bay used-car industry, a two-man Rat Pack.

When the Lincoln glided to a stop, Ronnie must have sensed they were home. He woke up, yawned, stretched, peered out the window at the lot, taking inventory, checking the action.

The cars gleamed in the late afternoon sun, and overhead, the 1957 pink Caddie mounted on a motorized rod on the roof of the lot spinned and dipped; an eye-catching symbol, Ronnie thought with satisfaction. The grass strip near the curb had been mowed and the sprinklers were spitting water on the pretty swath of green. No cigarette butts or beer cans in his flowerbeds, either. Ronnie liked a clean lot. And something else. Cantrell had moved the cars around. The big powder-blue Eldorado was in the hot spot near the street.

“Jeffy boy has been busy,” Ronnie said, nodding his head in approval. “The kid might work out.”

“Might,” Wormy said, noncommittal.

Ronnie got out of the Lincoln and left the unpacking to Wormy.

Jeff Cantrell met him at the door to the office.

“Ronnie!” he said, flashing the trademark dimples. “How was ‘Hotlanta’?”

“Not bad,” Ronnie said. “How many?”

“Three on the street,” Jeff said proudly. “And I got a Mexican couple hot to trot for the El-Dog. They’ll be back Friday, Ronnie, you wait and see.”

“You couldn’t close on the El-Dog?” Ronnie’s right eyelid twitched. Once. Twice. “A couple of spics got money in hand for a clean Caddy and you couldn’t close the deal?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Jeff started to explain.

Wormy pushed open the glass office door with his bony hip because both arms were full of suitcases. “Hey, Ronnie,” he announced, dropping the bags to the floor. “The red
^‘
Vette is gone.”

“That’s right,” Jeff said, grinning. “I moved it yesterday morning. Nine thousand. Not bad, huh?”

Ronnie’s eyelid was twitching violently. “How do you mean, moved it? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I bet the stupid jerk sold it,” Wormy said, sneering. “You sold it, didn’t you?”

“Hell, yeah,” Jeff said. “For nine thousand. The blue book on it is seven. Not bad, huh?”

Ronnie sighed. His eyelid went still, dropping shut. It did that sometimes, when he was tired or tense. He slapped Jeff hard across the chops, open-handed.

The kid reeled backward, grasping at his face. Shocked.

No more dimples, Wormy noticed with satisfaction.

“Where’s the ‘Vette?” Wormy said, grabbing Jeff’s arm.

“Enough,” Ronnie said.

He tilted his head a little and gave Jeff a sad, knowing smile. “You didn’t know about the monkeys, did you, Jeff?”

Jeff Cantrell shook his head dumbly, wondering whether Ronnie Bondurant was drunk or stoned or just plain crazy.

“It’s a side business.” Ronnie Bondurant set Jeff down in the chair in his private office and sent Wormy back out to the Lincoln to bring in the cooler.

“I was just thinking, on the way back here today. We should let Jeff in on this deal, ‘cause he’s all right. You like to make money, don’t you, Jeff?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. “Sure.”

“You did a good thing, hustling cars over the weekend, to prove to me that you can handle business. That was a good thing,” Ronnie said. “But now, selling the red ‘Vette, especially without consulting me—that was a bad thing.”

Wormy came into the office and put the cooler down on the floor by Ronnie’s chair. Ronnie reached in, took out two peach-flavored wine coolers and handed them to Wormy, who unscrewed the caps and wiped the ice water off the sides of the bottles. He handed one to Ronnie and kept one for himself.

“We gotta get that ‘Vette back,” Wormy said. “I’m supposed to take it to the adjuster tomorrow afternoon, Ronnie. And Joe says he’s real backed up already.”

“Jeff’s gonna go get the ‘Vette back tonight,” Ronnie said. “As soon as I tell him how this thing plays out.”

Wormy scowled and sipped at his wine cooler.

“It works like this,” Ronnie said. “I buy a Corvette, out of an ad in the paper or one of those Auto Trader magazines they sell at the 7-11. Always a Corvette. You know why?”

Jeff sensed this was a test. “‘Cause you like Corvettes?”

“No, asshole,” Wormy broke in. “Corvettes got an all-fiberglass body. No metal at all.”

“Anyway,” Ronnie continued, “I got some guys, they do side jobs for me. Wormy here, he came up with calling them monkeys. Monkeys, get it? ‘Cause they do what they’re told and they don’t ask any questions.”

“Sure,” Jeff said. He didn’t have the slightest idea what Ronnie was talking about. He was beginning to wish he’d never quit that bartending job.

“I fix the monkeys up with junker cars, some old piece of shit Ford or Chevy. And I buy an insurance policy on the junker. Collision only. You getting my drift?” Ronnie asked.

“Collision,” Jeff said dully.

“Right. Then we have ourselves an accident.”

“Between the monkeys and me driving the ‘Vette,” Wormy said, unable to stay quiet. “Only we don’t even have to really have accidents no more. Not since Ronnie found Joe.”

“That Joe. Guy’s an artist with an air knife,” Ronnie said. “Give Joe an hour, he can carve up a Corvette like a Thanksgiving turkey. Door panels, grill, hood, whatever you want. Once he’s carved up the ‘Vette, he gives me an estimate, tells me how much it’s gonna take to fix what he just did. Then the monkey calls his insurance agent. Tells him the bad news. He’s been in an accident, and he’s bashed up some guy’s Corvette.”

“Soon as the claim’s filed, I take a spin over to the claims adjuster,” Wormy said. “We just love those drive-up claims windows, man. They’re the best thing since the quarter-pounder. Guy comes out, looks at the car, looks at Joe’s estimate, maybe takes a picture or two, goes back inside and types out a check for ten thousand.”