The Red Scream (32 page)

As they walked back across the lot, Molly continued to slap at mosquitoes and scratch her bites. She had one particularly vexing one puffing up behind her left knee. As they passed the dead dog, she averted her head and held her breath, hoping they’d get around to burying him before long. It was getting hotter by the second.

Back at the office, she smiled and gave the man her card, asked him to call her if he heard of a 1972 Mustang.

As she drove the few blocks to A-One Auto Parts, Molly thought about how to approach this one. It would probably be best, and quickest, to identify herself as a journalist right away. But she would have to play it by ear.

She pulled into the gravel and dirt parking area next to the sign
for A-One Auto Parts. There were no police cars here now. A big sign said “
NO DUMPING. ORDER OF HEALTH DEPARTMENT
. $1000
FINE
,” and another said “
BRING YOUR OWN TOOLS
.” Louie did have a remarkable memory. Eleven years later and he still remembered that sign.

She walked through the opening in the Cyclone fence and climbed the cracked cement steps. At the top loomed a garagelike prefab structure. Behind it stretched acres and acres of junk-strewn fields filled with old cars, rusted radiators, hubcaps, crumpled license plates, black hoses, pipes, plastic bits, broken glass, and heaps of rotting tires. It looked like a place where nothing had been moved in decades. And the mosquitoes were everywhere. They’d already located her ankles and had worked up to her knees. She leaned down to slap and scratch. First chance she got she’d stop at a drugstore for some spray, if she survived that long.

When she looked around and didn’t see anyone, she approached the garage, thinking the office must be inside. As she neared the door, she saw at the side of the building three large mounds on the ground. They were surrounded by swarms of buzzing flies. She backed up a few steps and covered her nose with her hand. The three dead dogs lay stretched out on their sides. Clouds of black flies almost obscured the bloody pulps where their heads had been. Judging from the bodies, two of the dogs had been tan and white pit bulls, and the third, a dark-bodied German shepherd. Someone did not like junkyard dogs.

When she looked up from the bodies, she saw a huge black man—tall and burly with gray hair and a toothpick hanging out of his mouth—standing in the door. In spite of the heat, he wore a black Windbreaker and heavy black pants. She looked to see if he was missing a hand, but both were stuck in his pockets.

“Howdy,” the man said with a scowl. It sounded more like a curse than a greeting.

Molly’s immediate impression was that this was a man who would never fall for a lie, so she decided to play it as straight as she could in the circumstances. “Howdy.” She glanced over at the dead dogs. “Hear you had a little trouble.”

“Lots of trouble, I ever find out who did that to my dogs.” His voice was low and menacing. “Where’d you hear about it?”

“Man over at All Okay said he saw police cars here this morning.”

“What’s it to you?” he said, looking hard at her.

“I hate to see that happen to a good dog,” she said, watching his face. “Are you Calvin?”

He paused, then said, “Yup.”

“My name is Molly Cates. I’m a writer for
Lone Star Monthly
magazine and I’m looking for a car.”

“What you mean?”

“I’m looking for a particular car—a 1972 Mustang hardtop, blue.”

He took a step back and lowered his head but not before Molly caught the astonishment on his face. He couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d asked for a Rolls-Royce in mint condition.

Finally he looked up and managed a smile around the toothpick. “You pulling my chain,” he said.

“No. Why would I? Do you have any old Mustangs like that?”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t look like a cop. So you must of just talked with them.”

“Cops? No. Why?”

“Because a car just like that got stole offa the lot last night.”

She was half expecting it, but when it came she felt a jolt of surprise nonetheless: what had been a routine inquiry was now in earnest. She took a step closer to him. “Could you describe the car that was stolen last night?”

“Maybe you should talk to the cops, lady. I already told them.”

“I’ll probably want to do that, but first I’d like to hear it from you.”

Calvin leaned against the doorjamb and looked off into the distance over her head. “Just what you said—Mustang, ’72 model, blue. Someone drug it off in the middle of the night. Cut a section outta the fence, kilt my dogs, and made off with it.”

“What else can you tell me about the car?” she asked.

“Engine was long gone, so I don’t know about that, but it was notchback.”

“What about the color?”

“Like I said, blue.”

“What shade of blue?” she asked. “Light? Dark? Bright?”

He shook his head. “Bright, I guess.”

“Was it the original paint job, do you know?”

“No. Course it weren’t. Mustangs never come in that color. It been repainted.”

“Do you know what the original color was underneath?”

He reached up with his right hand and took the toothpick out of his mouth. “Now how should I know that, lady? Car been on the lot years and years without anyone, including me, paying it no mind. Then it gets drug off in the middle of the night and next day you show up asking about it. I don’t give a fuck about the car. My dogs got kilt.” He jabbed the toothpick in their direction. “If I’d been here I woulda called ’em off and let the fuckers take it. Piece of junk. Weren’t worth it.”

Molly glanced down at the corpses. “I’m real sorry about the dogs.” She paused to let that sink in before making her request. “What records have you got on the car?”

“Nothing. Anything that goes back more than two–three years we got no records on. I explained it to the cops. It ain’t expected in this business.”

“What about photographs or inventory records?” She glanced around the lot at the heaps of junk with a sinking heart. “Don’t you take inventory from time to time?”

He shook his head.

“How do you know what you have here without any records?” she asked.

He took his index finger and tapped it against his temple for an answer.

“So there’s not even a scrap of paper to prove that this car actually existed—an inventory or sales slip from when you sold parts of it off—anything that might mention it?”

“Nope.”

“Did you work here eleven years ago, Mr.—?”

“Calvin. Yes. But if you’re gonna ask me do I remember buying this car, no. I been in this business thirty years, off and on, and I bought a lot of cars.”

Molly smelled a dead end coming unless she could make something happen here. She reached in her shoulder bag and pulled out a photo of Louie, the one she had taken in the hall of the Hays County courthouse. She held it out to him. “Does this face ring a bell with you?”

Calvin glanced at it, shook his head, and leaned back against the garage. His expression was bored.

Molly kept holding the photo out. “He’s a small man, white, about thirty-five at the time. Skinny. Lots of tattoos on his arms. As you can see, dark hair, thin, combed back. Small eyes set close together. Long jaw. What you can’t see in this picture is he’s got lots of teeth, more than he should have. Moves kind of quick and jerky.”

The man’s face remained blank. “Sound like half the crackers come in here,” he said.

Molly sighed. “Well, could I see where the car was, please?” she asked, unable to think of any other course of action, but not ready to give up on it yet.

Without a word he turned and disappeared inside the office. Then he returned in a few seconds. “Turned on the telephone machine. We got to make this quick.”

He started walking along a gravel path leading away from the entrance. As he walked, he pulled his arms out of his pockets and Molly felt her pulse throb with excitement when she saw that the left hand was missing at the wrist. He turned his head quick to see if she was looking at it. “Viet-fucking-Nam,” he said. “Souvenir.”

Molly slapped at her itching ankles and asked, “What else was stolen last night?”

“Nothing I can figure, but we don’t keep real good track here, not computerized like some of the newer places.”

They walked in silence through row after row of mutilated cars. Many of them had the same characteristic circular hole in the windshield above the steering wheel. Molly resolved to be more consistent about wearing her seat belt.

Calvin stopped in a row of especially old and decrepit shells that had once been cars. Molly spotted the place where the car had been even before he pointed at it with his toothpick. The grass was dead and there were indents in the damp earth where the axles must have rested.

“Right here,” he said, moving his lips to make the toothpick point at it. “Why you so interested in this?”

Molly walked around the outline on the ground, staring down. “A man who’s in prison, on death row, says this car could prove he’s innocent.”

The man’s nostrils flared. He threw his head back and laughed up
at the sky. When he was finished he looked back at Molly, tears in his eyes. “And you believe that shit?”

“I don’t know yet. I need to find the car first.” She walked over to an old green Dodge that was right beside the empty space where the Mustang had been. It was that wonderful vintage of car that had the softly curved fenders. She rested her hand on the curve as she squatted down to look underneath it. The metal was so hot she jerked her hand away.

She walked around to where the back of the Mustang would have been and looked down at a pile of some rusty metal scraps. “How do you suppose they got the car out?” she asked. “It wasn’t drivable, was it?”

Calvin shrugged his massive shoulders. “Probably drove a truck through where they cut the fence and towed it right out.”

“Did it still have tires?” Molly asked, still studying the pile of metal scraps.

“Don’t think so. They could of put some on.”

She leaned over to look closer at a piece of rusted pipe in the pile. About a foot and a half long. She thought she saw some spots of color—bright blue color. Kneeling, she reached out for it. Yes, there were indeed some splatters of bright blue. Just as she was picking it up, Calvin cried out, “Watch it, lady! You got yourself in a mess of fire ants.”

The second before he finished the warning, Molly felt the first fiery stings on the tops of her feet. She dropped the pipe, leapt to her feet with a shriek, and took some quick steps back to get away from the mound. Then she stamped her feet and bent over and frantically brushed at the small red ants on her legs and feet. Some of them transferred to her hands and stung her fingers. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Ow. Damn.” She grabbed the hem of her skirt and used it to swipe at them. “God, I hate them.”

“Me too.” Calvin’s face was screwed up in distaste. He had backed up several feet to safety and his arms were crossed protectively over his chest.

She stood and held her skirt up and shook it in case there were some on the fabric. Then she ran her hands up and down the full length of her legs several times.

When she finally looked over at Calvin, he was watching with what she suspected might have been a suppressed smile, but she
wasn’t sure. “Mean fuckers,” he said laconically. “Put me in mind of the Viet Cong.”

Molly finally calmed herself down, though her feet kept making little involuntary steps and she scanned the ground constantly. Her feet and ankles felt badly burned; she knew from experience the bites would feel worse tonight.

“Let me see that thing you was picking up,” Calvin said, using his toothpick to point at the pipe she’d dropped.

Molly darted in quickly, picked it up, and shook it. Then she examined it. On the coarse rusted surface were some brilliant blue paint splatters that looked as if they came from a spray painter. She ran her fingers over the roughness of the rusty metal, feeling how much smoother the droplets of paint were. Silently, she handed it to Calvin.

He studied it, turning it around, and said, “That’s the color. Same as the car. This here’s the tailpipe. Must of broken off when they moved it.” He touched the jagged, rusty end with his thumb. “Or could of just rusted off before that.”

“Didn’t the police look around here?” she asked.

“Nah. They just took down what I told them and looked at the hole in the fence and give me the evil eye—you know, how they look at you when you got a record.”

Molly looked around the ground, under the car on the other side of the empty space, and in the vicinity. But she saw nothing else with bright blue paint. This tailpipe seemed to be all that was left behind—precious little proof that such a car ever existed, but she was starting to believe it.

She reached out her hand for the pipe and he gave it back to her. “Calvin,” she said, “you have any other old Mustangs on the lot?”

“No,” he said. “Only a ’87 ragtop, come in last week.”

Molly took a last look at the space where the blue Mustang had been and sighed. “Is there anyone else working here who could confirm the existence of this car?”

He reached up and took the toothpick out of his mouth. “You don’t believe me?”

“Yes, I do believe you, but I need someone else to say the same thing.”

“No one else. Just me and that’s why I got to get back to the office,” Calvin said, his voice hostile again. “Got to take care of
them dogs and cover the phone and customers and every other damn thing like some one-man band.”

He started walking. Molly fell into step beside him. When they got back to the office, she thanked him and left him a card with her number on it—just in case something came up.

Back in her rental car, she wrapped the sharp end of the pipe in the
New York Times
business section, which she never read, and stuck it in her big bag diagonally so only a few inches stuck out.

Twenty minutes later Molly had found the intersection of Mansfield Highway and Loop 20. From there she could have located the place she was seeking by the stench. “Sam’s Body Shop—Painting Our Specialty—Lowest Prices,” the sign said, but the sign, which was several yards in front of the building, seemed to be the only thing that hadn’t been damaged by fire. The blackened brick facade had crumbled around the gaping holes where the front window and door had once been. Pools of standing water around the base of the walls were black with ash and cinders. A smoky haze still hung in the air.