Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course (7 page)

“You bet your ass I got a problem,” Jackie said. “This salesman of yours, Jeff. Sold me a lemon. A red Corvette. I took it to my mechanic and he says it’s been totaled out. The frame is bent, the odometer has been messed with. That’s against the law in Florida, mister.” Emboldened, she stepped up to Ronnie Bondurant and thumped him on the chest. “And it leaks transmission fluid.”

She pointed to the front of the lot, at the spot where the red Corvette had been parked only two days earlier. “Bet it leaked fluid all over this lot, too. Bet the police find it when they come over here to put all y’all’s asses in jail.”

Ronnie swatted her hand away, but Jackie kept talking.

“I came over here yesterday to tell Jeff I wanted my money back. He tells me no. Then he threatens me. This morning my car is gone. You think I’m stupid? I know he stole it. And I can prove it. Now I want to know what you’re gonna do about it.”

“Jeff here sold you a bad car?” Ronnie looked amazed. He was shorter than the others, at least three inches shorter than Jackie, and she was five six, but somehow, with his barrel chest, thick neck, and broad shoulders, he looked bigger than life. He had thick, curly dark hair, an uptilted, slightly feminine nose, and lips nearly hidden by a bushy black mustache.

“Jeff,” Ronnie said, turning to his salesman. “Is any of this true? Did you steal this lady’s car?”

“Hey, man,” Jeff said, turning from Ronnie to Wormy, then back to Ronnie. “She’s nuts. That car was cherry. She gets it stolen and wants to blame me? No way!”

“I can prove he stole it,” Jackie said hotly.

“I know that car,” Ronnie said. “And Jeff is right. That was choice merchandise. As for the car’s condition, if you’ll look on your sales contract, you’ll see that we sell all cars on an ‘as is’ basis. If it had a problem with the transmission, that is something we were not aware of. We just sell the cars, miss, we don’t take their life histories.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said. He’d heard Ronnie use that one a million times.

“Tell you what,” Ronnie said, winking at Jackie. “You bring the car back here today, same condition you bought it in, I’m going to make an exception to company policy and buy it back. We can’t have unhappy customers, now can we?”

He glanced from Jackie to Jeff to Wormy, an impromptu opinion poll.

“Suits me,” Jeff said, shrugging.

“I don’t HAVE the car,” Jackie said, her teeth clenched tightly. “It was stolen last night. By him.”

“Stolen?” Ronnie said, like he was hearing it for the first time. “That’s a rotten shame. Damn shame the crime problem we got in this town. No police protection. And with all the taxes we pay, too.”

Ronnie shook his head, saddened at the sudden upswing in crime in the quiet retirement town. “Least you got insurance—right? Hey,” he said, brightening. “You get that insurance check, come back here, I’ll personally fix you up with the sweetest deal ever. I got a ‘86 Toyota Tercel. Loaded.”

Jackie was fighting back tears. She’d been flim-flammed good.

“You people ripped me off,” she shouted. “This place is a damn nest of thieves. And I’m gonna prove it. The cops are gonna get after you. And I’m getting a lawyer and I’m calling the State Department of Motor Vehicles and reporting you for messing with odometers. And I’ve got a friend, he’s a reporter. He’s gonna blow this thing wide open.”

Ronnie’s eyes took on the hooded look of a reptile about to strike. He reached in his pocket and brought out the ledger page he’d taken out of the files when Wormy had informed him about the trouble on the lot. Jackie’s name was at the top of the page, and there were spaces marked off in weekly increments.

“We don’t have to steal cars, young lady. We run a reputable business. You bring around all the police you want. But if you start making unsubstantiated charges against me, I’m going to make you regret it. Now this here’s your payment book,” he said softly, letting her get a good look. “And this here column is the day your payment is due. This Friday. You got until then to come up with what you owe on the Corvette. Because on Friday, we’re going to want our money. And if we don’t get our money, and if you no longer have the car, we’re gonna be very, very unhappy with you.” As he tucked the ledger page back into the breast pocket of his banana-colored sports coat, Jackleen got a brief but convincing look at an ugly black pistol nestled in a holster at his waist.

“He had a gun, Mr. K,” Jackie repeated. She was too mad to get back on that bus, not when she’d sworn off bus riding forever just two days ago. So she’d walked to a convenience store across the street, picked a quarter out of her dwindling supply of tip money, and called to ask Truman to come pick her up.

Now they were sitting in Truman’s car. Jackie pointed out the sales office for Bondurant Motors.

“They’re inside that office,” she said, near tears. “Jeff and that Ronnie Bondurant and some other guy who works there. I know they stole my car. Stole it, and they’re gonna sell it again. I’ll bet all those cars over there are stolen.”

“Maybe so,” Truman agreed. “But if they’re like most of these car lots, they don’t have to resort to common auto theft. The law lets them rip folks off with huge interest rates and sales contracts that mean people will be paying for junky cars like your Corvette for years after they quit running. I still can’t figure out why they’d steal your car back. It doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s a crock of horseshit, is what it is,” Ollie said, leaning forward from the backseat. He had insisted on coming along to rescue Jackie. “And I don’t think we should let these guys get away with it, stealing from an honest, hardworking girl like Jackie.”

“She says the man has a gun,” Truman said. “You want to argue with a pistol-packing used-car dealer, be my guest.”

“So we just let them get away with it?” Jackie asked, not believing what she was hearing. “And I go back to that stinking bus?”

Truman rubbed the bridge of his nose. When it was hot like this, his glasses rubbed a raw spot on it. “Did you call that cop who left his card? Tell him about the can of transmission fluid we found?”

“He was gone,” Jackie said. “Won’t be back till tomorrow morning. By that time they’ll have my car painted purple and sold to two or three more people.”

“No they won’t,” Truman said. “Anyway, you can’t just go busting back in there, accusing them of stealing the car. Let the police handle it.”

“Like they did today?” she said. “How come that cop didn’t find the can of transmission fluid? Or the tire tracks? All they do is take reports and then throw them away.”

“Tell you what,” Truman offered. “Tomorrow, you call that cop back. In the meantime, I’ll make some phone calls. Find out what I can about this Ronnie Bondurant. I used to know somebody in the state attorney’s office. I think they’ve got a consumer affairs complaint division, something like that.”

“Red tape,” Jackie muttered.

“Bureaucrats,” Ollie agreed.

“It’s the best I can do,” Truman said. “This is a police matter. Can we go now?”

Jeff Cantrell sat very still. Maybe, he thought, he was having an out-of-body experience. He’d done enough drugs in his time, had the ticket stubs from a couple of LSD trips.

Ronnie Bondurant was right up in his face, not screaming, but whispering.

“You left a can of transmission fluid? Right there? Can this be true?”

He slapped Jeff hard with the flat of his hand, the big ring tearing at the flesh on Jeff’s cheek.

“Did you know this, Wormy?” Ronnie asked, turning to look at his sales manager, who was perched casually on the edge of a chair, rather enjoying the spectacle of Jeffy boy’s humiliation.

“Shit, no,” Wormy said. “Even a retard can steal a car without leaving a track. I thought he was smarter than a retard.”

“Tracks leading all the way back to Bondurant Motors,” Ronnie said, his hot, wine-soaked breath making Jeff’s eyes sting. “That black chick puts it all together for the cops, they start looking at our operation, what do you think that means for Ronnie Bondurant? Huh?”

“I didn’t mean … Jeff, said, gulping, searching for words. “To leave the can … Wormy came back and honked the horn. I was afraid somebody would catch us … I forgot to take the can.”

“You forgot,” Ronnie said, nodding. With his left hand, he slapped the other side of Jeff’s face, catching him on the jaw with such force that Jeff fell off the chair.

“Ronnie? Where y’at, dude?” The voice came from the outer office.

Wormy stood up, and with the brass-capped toe of his ostrich-skin cowboy boot, kicked Jeff squarely in the crotch. “Get up,” Wormy said. “That’s Boone. We got business.”

Somehow, oozing blood from both sides of his face, Jeff managed to stumble out of the inner office and collapse on his desk chair. He would have run, but he knew already it was no use. People having out-of- body experiences never escaped.

Hernando Boone was used to turning heads, had been since his linebacker days at the University of Florida. Half black, half Miccosukee Indian, he kept his kinky dark hair in a plait, strung with colored beads, that hung down his back. The Gator press guide had put him at six three, 240. It was really more like six two, 275. He had high, broad cheekbones and long, droopy earlobes and no facial hair to speak of. His eyes drooped at the corners and were the same flat black color as a water moccasin’s. The fact that he’d been expelled his sophomore year, for selling steroids to his Gator teammates, had never turned him against the U. of F. His truck, a jacked-up Chevy, was Gator blue, with Gator orange stripes down the side and a strutting Wally Gator decal on the driver’s-side door.

The truck was fine for some things, but Hernando had been thinking about getting something a little sportier, something the ladies would like. Ronnie Bondurant had mentioned something about a nice Corvette, low mileage, in the wrapper.

Hernando parked his truck well away from the shitty-looking heaps Ronnie sold to the greasers and losers he usually did business with.

He saw the bleeding kid come crawling out of Ronnie’s office, but so what? Ronnie Bondurant didn’t take shit off people. Bondurant told him that himself. When he walked into Ronnie’s office, he plopped a bulging brown paper sack down onto the desk.

“Grade-A prime,” Hernando said, pulling out a two-inch-thick porterhouse steak. “These suckers are the same ones they’re selling for thirty-five dollars apiece over there at Bern’s in Tampa. Same exact steaks.”

“And you’re selling them for what?” Ronnie asked. He put down a sheet of paper he was reading and picked up the steak. He opened a corner of the plastic wrap and sniffed delicately.

“That there is part of my Beefeater’s Special,” Hernando said. “You get two porterhouses, four rib eyes, ten pounds of ground round, and a four-pound chuck roast, fifty-nine ninety-five, wrapped and delivered right to your door.”

“That’s good?” Wormy asked. The only time he ventured into a grocery store was to pick up beer or the occasional sack of fried pork rinds. The rest of the time, Wormy ate out.

“You shittin’ me, man?” Hernando asked. “For home delivery? We’re talking close to a hundred and twenty dollars’ worth of Grade-A beef, man. You don’t gotta leave the house. All you gotta do is answer the phone when my girls give you a call, tell you about the week’s specials.”

“It’s a sweet deal,” Ronnie told Wormy. “Especially on account of Hernando here has a brother works at the Publix central distribution warehouse over in Lakeland. This meat here never even got to fall off a truck. Beautiful, huh?”

Hernando smiled modestly. “I got overhead, you know. My brother, he likes living large. Then I got the rent on the boiler room, my phone girls, my drivers, gas, trucks. Like that. You’re lucky, Ronnie, not to be in telemarketing. With telemarketing, you wouldn’t believe the shit people try to pull.”

“I could believe,” Ronnie said sadly.

“No shit,” Hernando continued. “Today, I caught a guy, he orders three hundred dollars’ worth of T-bones and sirloins, my Beefeater Deluxe package, and puts it on an American Express gold card. Right away, I’m suspicious. ‘Cause the delivery address is some apartment over on the double deuces at 22nd Street and 22nd Avenue. I get over there, it’s some little woolhead from Ethiopia, someplace like that. Right off the boat. Him and some of his tribesmen, they been Dumpster diving for credit card carbons. Six of ‘em living in two rooms.”

“And they tried that shit on you?” Ronnie laughed. He looked over at Wormy, who was eyeing the steaks hungrily. It had been a long day and he still had to finish with that fuck-up Jeff Cantrell before they could lock up and go get dinner.

“It’s taken care of now,” Hernando said. “I took care of it right there. Can’t have some woolhead cock-suckers runnin’ around telling people they ripped off Hernando Boone. Giving the brothers ideas.”

“You beat ‘em up pretty bad, huh?” Wormy asked approvingly.

Ronnie had warned him not to mess with Boone, and he had taken the advice to heart. All those steroids had obviously turned what little brains the dude had into tapioca. He was big and mean and ugly. Ronnie as much as said he already regretted mentioning the Corvette to Boone while they were partying at the strip club where they’d met. Wormy could tell Ronnie was afraid of Boone, afraid he’d get pissed off and come after him. That’s how crazy Hernando Boone was. He even scared Ronnie Bondurant.