Switcheroo (6 page)

Chapter
9

Sunday. Four forty eight a.m. and
I rolled into the house and hit the sack, stopping only to remove my contacts
and brush my teeth.  Sleep was instantaneous and merciful.  I had one of those
really great dreams, where something really wild is happening but it’s okay
because you know it’s a dream. So you’re thinking ‘I gotta tell somebody about
this in the morning.’  Unfortunately, I remembered no details when I awoke.

I began to reflect on the previous
night’s events, which also seemed like a dream.  The trucks really did switch.
Now what was I gonna do. I had no real plan to find the missing truck and about
twenty field calls to do for LISA starting Monday.  I needed to work today.  It
was noon. Too late to get an early start, oh well.

By two o’clock I had eaten a
turkey sandwich at home, had three cups of Starbucks, and cleaned up to head
out.  Again, the weather was in the mid-sixties and seemed warmer in the bright
sun.  Top down in the LeBaron, my destination was Fast Eddie’s Auto Mart.

I passed about half a dozen used
car lots on Chapman Highway before I pulled into Eddie’s.  On the north part of
Chapman you were never far from a pawn shop, a liquor store, a cheeseburger
joint, a used furniture store and any number of auto dealers who would let you
make weekly payments on a sled with no warranty and a sketchy title history.

Eddie’s system was simple.  Let
the bank lend the money on the front line.  A high interest finance company
handled the second line. Anything in Eddie’s back row you could finance on
weekly payments to Eddie himself.  All payments were due by noon Saturday or
‘you walk to church on Sunday’ per the sign in Eddie’s office.  Eddie reminded
every customer of this when he had them sign their loan papers.  I had handled
a few of his front line cars and some of his floor plan financing when I was at
the bank.  He was a jovial guy, a true salesman.  He never met a stranger and
he had carved out a good living. Eddie’s lot was one of the oldest on this
strip.

His office was an old mobile home
with a stick-built addition and a large covered porch.  Several people were on
the lot looking at cars, with salespeople in tow. A salesman greeted me,
looking past me at my Chrysler. Sizing up my trade in, I guess. I knew he was
figuring it would need to be put in the back row if they acquired it. I didn’t
need long to size this guy up. In need of some bridge work, hair too long,
belly too big and pants too short. He took a business card from his frayed
oxford shirt pocket.

“Is Eddie in?” I asked.

“Be here in about an hour, but he
won’t stay.  He’s headed to Gatlinburg for the evening.”

“I’ll be right back then.” I
walked back to the LeBaron.  I drove to Auto Zone and bought a Haynes manual on
Ford Ranger pick ups. By learning everything that was normal for these trucks,
maybe I could find out what made these particular trucks special.

Eddie had not changed much.  He
was a little thinner, more gray at the temples, but he was just as animated. 
He had a Muppet quality about him.  When he spoke and moved, you expected Frank
Oz to jump out from behind him at any second. He sat behind a desk cluttered
with post-its, credit applications, deals and trade magazines. Stacks of deal packets
were on the credenza behind him. A few had fallen over and were partially
covering his computer keyboard.

After we reacquainted ourselves, I
got down to the business at hand.

“A client of mine bought two Ford
Ranger pick ups from you recently. I needed…”

“Now Rust, none of my cars are
warrantied. In fact, I get ‘em to sign at least three papers saying so,” Eddie
said defensively

He misunderstood me. Most people
do.

“Look, Eddie, it’s nothing like
that. There’s no legal action against you.  I am trying to find out where these
trucks came from, who owned them previously?  One was recently stolen,” I said.

“You think the previous owner
stole it?” He relaxed now he saw this visit was not about him.

“I don’t really suspect anybody. 
I’m really just looking for a starting place.”

“Who is the client?”

“Tammy McHenry,”

“Really, she is a hot little
thing, I remember.” Eddie leered.

Well, I could tell him how hot.

“Yeah, can you pull this deal and
see where these trucks came from?”

Eddie went to a file cabinet and
brought back two files, “These trucks were part of a deal I made at the auction
out West.  I bought ten trucks coming off lease from Vanguard Leasing.  You
could call them to verify. Don’t know who was driving them before. You’re gonna
have to get your starting place elsewhere.”

“One quick favor, Eddie, can I use
your credit bureau account to pull a credit check on a dead-beat dad?” I asked.

“Yeah, but you need to buy your
next car from me, you hear. Getting close to that time, too,” he said; nodding
out the window toward my sled.

With this, Eddie shook my hand and
left.  I was alone in his office.  I pulled a chair up to his computer and
started typing Georgie Parker’s name into the credit bureau software. I would
soon see if I could get Tammy’s friend Kim some child support.

What my two new clients lacked in
ability to pay, they were making up for in intrigue. Especially Tammy.  I
better start doing some sit ups again.  She had stayed thin with the Virginia
Slims diet.  Cheap cigars didn’t seem to be helping my gut.

Never give anyone you do not fully
trust your date of birth.  Did you know that with your correct address, date of
birth and name, anyone can pull your credit report, view public records and
also send black balloons when you turn forty?

I printed out a credit bureau
report on Georgie using his date of birth and his mom’s home address.  There
were a few recent inquiries and a new address reported in Macon, Georgia. So, Georgie went to Georgia.  That fit neatly.

At seven Sunday evening, I was at
Tammy’s Grandmother’s house again.  We sat in the simply furnished den, me on
an orange velvet chair, Tammy on the old area rug that was on the worn hardwood
floor.  She was folding laundry while Hannah watched TV.  I folded a few things
absently while we talked, trying to be helpful. I put down a kitchen towel and
picked up the next item, skimpy lace panties.  I blushed, throwing them back in
the basket.  Tammy laughed.

“You know, Grandma Tuttle should
not wear those. Act her age, you know?” I laughed. “What is this thing?” I
said, holding up a strange baby garment. It was like a t-shirt with a snapping
flap at the bottom.

“It’s a onesie.  It makes changing
diapers easy and kinda helps keep diapers in place. Keeps ‘em from leaking. 
It’s top and bottom underwear for babies.” Now she knew the extent of my diaper
experience.

“You know,” I said “A larger
version of these could be used to prevent a problem that has plagued plumbers
for years.  A prominently visible butt crack.”

Tammy laughed as she nodded in agreement.
She did appreciate some of my humor.

We had discussed some of our plans
tonight. I reviewed what we were going to do one more time.

“Ok, so tonight we put a note in
the car saying we will meet them at the mall tomorrow night.  I’ll follow you
out there and we’ll leave my car at McDonald’s, next to the mall.  I climb into
the bed of the truck and hide under a blanket. Then you leave the truck in the
parking lot at Oakridge mall just like they asked.  Then, you walk back to
McDonald’s and appear to leave in my car. If no one is following you pull back
around Sears Auto Center and watch the truck from there. If anyone follows you,
drive to the Oakridge Police station.  I will wait for whoever comes for the
truck.”  This was to be the macho part where I surprise and apprehend the bad
guy and get him to take me to the other truck.

“I like it, but I don’t like
taking the truck out there. I mean, there is a chance they could take it from
us and I’d have nothing. Can’t we just ride around the mall and look for
suspicious characters?”  Tammy said, from behind her basket piled high with
folded clothes.

“We could, but I don’t think we
could catch anybody that way,” I said. “These notes are pretty non-threatening.
I think we are dealing with amateurs.”

We talked about it a little more
and agreed to go ahead with taking the truck out there.  After Hannah went to
bed, I walked out to the truck with Tammy.  She showed me the note that had
teleported in yesterday, instructing her to be at the Oakridge Mall with the truck
at eight p.m. Pretty much the same drivel about further action and efforts to
locate her where-abouts.

Today the damaged black Ranger was
in the garage.  To make Tammy smile, I wrote ‘wash me’ on the side of it in the
thin dust.  Tomorrow the blue truck would be here.  The forty-five minute drive
to Oakridge would be easier in the undamaged truck.

I was hoping for a repeat of
Saturday night, but Tammy gave me a brief hug and seemed ready for me to
leave.  Taking the hint, I told her I would see her after work tomorrow. 
Walking to the car, I glanced at the porch swing. My thoughts drifted a bit and
the next thing I knew I was home in my own driveway. It’s funny how your
subconscious can drive like that.

Chapter
10

Monday seemed to fly by.  I already
had five calls done for LISA and was back to the Arcade Building by four.  I
made a detour on the way to my office and ducked into Willie Crandle’s office. 
Willie was an attorney with whom I had made friends since I moved into my Mom’s
office building three years ago.  Willie had a general practice, but made most
of his living handling a variety of legal matters for the blue-bloods of Knoxville.  I always thought it was because of my mother that Willie tolerated me. He did
this so well I thought we were friends.  I had tested this friendship before by
offering his two secretaries some part-time work. Willie didn’t seem to mind as
long as the ladies finished his work first.

I went into the high ceilinged
office with its old plaster and mahogany and sat down by Wendy Forsyth, the
better looking of the two legal aids. I walked past Willie’s office manager,
Thelma, who was a protective, motherly type who didn’t seem to care for me or
anyone else that I could tell.  Thelma was dependable and the customers were
accustomed to her abrupt manner. Some seemed to enjoy complaining to Willie
about her. Sort of a standing joke.  Willie always defended her. Thelma had
been a fixture of the office for years, almost like the desks or filing
cabinets.

I gave Thelma a cordial head nod
and hello. She had the body of fire hydrant and the personality of a battle
axe. She gave me a look that would sour milk and said “Mr. Stover.” Her tone
conveyed a judgment passed. This was as good as it got with Thelma.

Wendy had on a wool sweater and
matching skirt and I couldn’t help looking at her legs as she stood up to say
hi.

After we exchanged pleasantries I
got to the reason for my call.

“Look, Wendy,” I said softly,
“I’ve got a horribly busy week and I need help keeping up with my reports and
paperwork. I was hoping you could help me out.”  I told her I would pay twenty
dollars a report for every report she could turn out this week.  She could take
the stuff home at night and email it to LISA for me in the morning.  I had paid
her fifteen dollars last time, I hoped she remembered this.

“Rust, I’ll do it for ten each,
but I need a favor, too.  I’ve been meaning to call you.  I’ve got a legal
workshop to go to this weekend in Gatlinburg, sort of a retreat.  Husbands and
wives are being invited and there will be a party afterwards. I really just
don’t want to go up there alone. Will you go with me?”

She looked at me with her dark
brown eyes, no pupil was visible.  I had been to the theater with her and
dinner a few times, the last time a few months ago, but no serious love
connection.  She was a divorcé with a kid in middle school.  When you’re my age
and single most potential dates are divorcés.  I would be scared to try seeing
a girl over thirty that no one had thought to marry yet.  She would most likely
be ugly, psychotic, into scrap-booking or in a convent.  Anyway, Wendy was
pretty, with a generous figure.

“What about Briana?” Briana is her
daughter.

“Staying with her Grandma,” she
smiled.

“OK, I guess. When do we leave?”

“Saturday at eleven. Swing by and
pick me up,” she said, touching my hand. “Thank you so much.”

I left her the memory card from
the digital camera and my chicken-scratched notes for the reports from that
day.  I left quickly, followed by the watchful gaze of Thelma, the office Nazi.

I called Tammy at her Grandma’s to
make sure we were on for tonight.  I was to pick her up around seven. The truck
was gassed up and ready.  There was an answering machine message from Officer
Billingsworth from KPD.

“Mr. Stover, I need you to come
downtown and make a statement to one of the detectives about this thug you
stuck in the trunk of his own car.  Come by at 9:00 tomorrow morning, good
day.”  Billingsworth’s voice was deep, like James Earl Jones only there was a
gangster rap accent to it.

I got out my checkbook, wrote out
November’s pointless rent payment and mailed it to my mother’s real estate
office. I wrote a check for eighty dollars to Wendy and left it on my desk for
her to get in the morning. I would not see her since I would be at the police
station making my statement.

The Knoxville Police Department is
near downtown, close to a rough neighborhood.  This is good, since a lot of
city police patrol calls are made in East Knoxville.

I met Billingsworth at the office
and he introduced me to Detective Stratton, who would take my statement. 
Stratton knew I had been on the force, but we had not worked together. So he
did not hate me.

Stratton was sort of a Big Bopper
looking guy, without the booming singing voice. He sat down with a pen and
recorder and asked about the events leading up to Cedric Litton’s imprisonment
in his own trunk. When he was almost done he looked over his cheater glasses at
me and said, “You know, Mr. Stover, I thought the gun in the video footage
looked pretty shiny. The .22 we recovered was cheap gunmetal. Did that dude
have more than one gun?”

I looked him in the eye and said,
“That was the only one I saw.”

“I see, you didn’t take anything
else off him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’
about,” Playing dumb, not hard for me. We shook hands and I left. I didn’t know
why I wanted the nickel-plated piece at the time, but it ended up at the bottom
of the Tennessee River later that week when my conscience caught up with me.
For now, it was in the glove box of the LeBaron with my police special
revolver.

I hopped into the Chrysler and
headed to Straw Plains to pick up my little waitress. Oh, sorry, server.

Tammy was her usual cute self when
I got there.  Grandma Tuttle was putting Hannah to bed so we headed to the garage. 
The truck had not been used for a while, it wouldn’t start.

I pushed it out of the garage and
jumped it off with the cables I kept in the LeBaron.  Watching Tammy lean
forward under the hood made me want a jump of another kind. No time. We had an
eight o’clock appointment.

I followed in the LeBaron as Tammy
drove the Ranger out onto the highway. It had been a long time since I had been
to Oakridge.

The nuclear epicenter of the world
in the time leading up to World War II had changed.  Now the government housing
had all been sold to regular folk. There was nuclear power and research, but no
more bombs were being built.

Tammy took the back way up Clinton Highway and then left on Emory Road.  This was okay with me; it made a nice country
drive.  Now we turned right and followed the river past a landing where
sculling teams rowed by day. Twilight was shimmering on Melton Hill Lake.

She turned left onto Illinois Avenue and pulled into McDonalds. I left the LeBaron and hopped into the small
truck bed. I curled up tightly and hid under the piece of canvas I had
brought.  Riding to the Mall in the dark under the canvas felt a little silly. 
Things men do.  I was turning into a macho asshole, but I couldn’t see myself
telling the cops about these two trucks that trade places.  Have you ever seen
‘The Fly?’  No one believes the doctor. He eventually goes insane, turns into
fly and is eaten by a spider. So I took matters into my own hands like an
idiot.

Tammy slammed the truck door and
whispered she would see me soon.  I had given her my cell phone. She was
supposed to walk back by the trail through the woods behind the Mall and wait
at the McDonalds on Illinois Avenue for me to meet her, and to call 911 if she
was attacked.  I considered telling her a cheeseburger might do her some good
while she waited.

I waited quite awhile, about
twenty minutes. Then I heard footsteps approaching. The footsteps stopped. I
froze.  Someone pulled the locked door handle of the Ranger, and it snapped
back with a loud clack.  That was all I needed to hear.  I sprang up to a
kneeling position in the truck bed and drew my revolver. I was aiming at a
fellow in a windbreaker with round glasses.  He had the look of a muscular John
Denver with straw blonde hair sticking out from under a black ball cap.  He
would have made a very nerdy biker with those glasses and it made me think of
what Red, a.k.a. Billy, had told me at Orby’s.  This may be the man the killed
Tammy’s husband. He froze for just a moment when I told him to.

If you are mugged or held at gun
point for some reason and you turn and run as fast as you can, there is a one
in five chance you will get away without being shot.  Even if you get shot,
then there is only a one in twenty chance the wound will be fatal. Most people
are bad shots; others don’t have the guts to shoot at all.  I fell into the
second category.

Mr. Glasses ran across the mall
parking lot toward a group of cars.  I jumped out of the truck bed, stumbled a
bit and was right after him.   He won the foot race to a small pick up truck
and took off, tires squealing. Not fast enough. OU812 would have been a more
interesting license plate, but the generic plate he had was fine with me.  I
kept repeating the number all the way back to the Ford Ranger and wrote his tag
number on the pad in my wallet.  I drove to McDonalds.

Tammy was drinking a milk shake at
McD’s when I got there.  Her cheeks sank nicely when she sucked on the straw
causing my knees to weaken slightly. I was glad I had done ten push ups this
morning.

After I told her what had happened
I explained all I had to do was run this license plate to find our man in the
glasses.  She seemed pretty pleased and she was relieved I had not lost the
truck.  I told her ‘zero mistakes’ was my specialty.  She didn’t know me, so
what was the harm?

When we got back to Straw Plains
and the truck was safely locked in the garage we said good night.  I did get
quick good night kiss for my good work.  This went a long way toward making up
for the fact that I would probably never see any money from this case.