The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man (23 page)

“I … Ma'am, I might as well tell you, I know that you were the one who sent Jimmy Growe the checks. What I don't understand is why you did it.”

“And this Mr. Growe attempted to cash these checks?” She responded with a forced casualness.

“Yes.”

“Is there a … can he go to jail for something like that?”

I stared at her, making her wait for a reply, and her eagerness showed itself just a little before she regained control. “Maybe,” I told her, but she had her satisfaction wrapped down tight and didn't share any of it with me.

“Well, I'm sorry I can't help you with any of this, Mr. McCann.”

I tilted my head. “You didn't know he'd cash them. You sent them for some other reason.”

“There is no point in this conversation. I'm sorry I can't help you.” She shut the door firmly, the brass knocker lending solid punctuation to the action.

Jake lifted his head when I got back in the cab of the truck, his soft ears swaying. His look seemed to say “what a dumb way to make a living.” I kissed him on the nose.

“I'm sorry that I can't earn enough lying on a blanket with you all day,” I told him. To a large degree, I meant it.

Much to Jake's disappointment, Jimmy wasn't home when I trooped in a few hours later, feeling defeated. I opened the refrigerator and scanned the nearly empty insides, reflecting on how much electricity I was using just to keep some mayonnaise cold.

Jimmy had continued Becky's initiative, picking up after the both of us. He'd even vacuumed the carpet. I had to admit I liked having him around. Me, Jake, Jimmy, and Alan—our own little dysfunctional family.

“Mrs. Blanchard clearly sent those checks to Jimmy. Did you see her expression? She was toying with you,”
Alan observed.

“She was not ‘toying' with me,” I retorted. “I agree, though—she's the one. I just can't for the life of me figure out why.”

I moodily picked through the stack of bills on the kitchen table. It was still all quiet on the repo front, and I had something like four bucks in my wallet. The sense of being in the middle of a famine was even affecting my body; my pants were fitting more loosely, as if I were dropping weight.

“Maybe we should go up to East Jordan and stake out Nathan Burby, see if he makes contact with the shovel guy,”
Alan suggested.

“Well, that would take gasoline, Alan. I need to preserve gasoline so that when I get a repo assignment I don't have to walk to it. I had Milt apply the money for the sunken Toyota to my outstanding debts to him.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“I don't know, Alan!” I exploded in frustration. I heaved myself off the couch and put on a jacket. Becky would feed me.

 

 

17

You and Me, Kermit

 

The Black Bear was like an easy chair in my mind: worn, comfortable, familiar. When I opened the door the shock made me blink. Becky had been busy.

She watched me approach her across the floor with apprehension seeping into her eyes, but when I glanced pointedly at the curtains, the new paint, and the hardwood flooring that had replaced the linoleum, she straightened a little, her jaw firming in resolve.

“Hi, Ruddy,” she greeted.

“What's all this?” I demanded.

“All what?”

“What are you doing? What's with all the artwork, and the curtains?”

“I told you I wanted to spruce the place up, use a warmer color palette.”

“But this looks ridiculous!” I railed. “Can you imagine what Dad would say about windows covered with—with lace?”

“Oh, Ruddy.”

“Come on. This is the Black Bear. Next thing I know, you'll want to get rid of Bob.”

She glanced over at the stuffed bear, then back at me, her eyes unreadable.

“Becky, no.”

She shook her head. “I'm not going to get rid of the bear.”

“But can't you see what you're doing? You're changing the, the…”

“Ambience,”
Alan suggested.

“The ambience of the place!”

“Exactly.” Her eyes glared at me through her smudged lenses.

“But don't you understand that the beauty of this place is that it never changes? You drive through Kalkaska and there's a McDonald's now, and a Burger King, and just when you think the whole place has lost its charm, there's the good old Black Bear Bar and Grille, thank God. Why, we've got people who've been coming here since we were little kids! What are they going to think when they see you're playing dollhouse?”

“Wow, what an asshole you can be,”
Alan noted.

Becky fixed me with the sort of unhappy, mournful expression she had mastered through a lifetime of practice. “What do you think, that nothing in life will ever change?”

“Just not the Black Bear,”
I told her forcefully.

She shook her head slightly, and I found her unwillingness to fight back infuriating. “It's that goddamn Kermit,” I stormed, attacking from another direction.

That got her. “What about him?” she murmured.

I gestured at her sweater, which was stylish and feminine. “He's got you all…” I groped for words.

“Hot,”
Alan suggested.
“Sexed up.”

“Jesus!” I snapped at him.

“Ruddy, don't you dare even think of going near him. If you do…” Becky warned.

I leaned forward almost eagerly, bearing down on her. When we were growing up my physical bulk so overwhelmed her frail frame I regularly bullied her just by staring her down, and I was doing it now. “Or you'll what?” I taunted.

She backed away from me. “I'll get an injunction and banish you from the Bear. I'll get the judge to say you can never come in here again.” She folded her arms.

I sat down on a bar stool as if sucker-punched. “Oh.”

“This has got nothing to do with him, Ruddy, except maybe that he's given us a way to make the money to buy some things.”

“Running numbers,” I muttered glumly.

“Using our nonswipe account to help another vendor,” she agreed.

“Would you really do that? Get a judge to have me banned from a place I've been coming to since I could crawl?”

“Would you really hit my boyfriend?”

“Your boyfriend?” I shouted.

“Hush,” Becky warned, glancing at our only customers—a couple of guys sitting in the corner. The flush on her cheeks looked less like embarrassment than sheer pleasure.
Becky McCann has a boyfriend
.

“So what else are you going to do around here? Put in a conveyor belt with sushi on it?” I inquired sullenly, not quite giving up.

Her gaze turned unreadable again. “You'll see,” she promised.

Jimmy came out of the men's room at that moment and stopped dead, looking as if I'd caught him in bed with another guest at the hotel. He was wearing an apron, the pockets stuffed with a notebook and some napkins. “You're a
waitress
?” I demanded.

Jimmy swallowed. “Becky said I shouldn't tell you until we saw how it went, but she gave me a job as a waiter. You know, serving food and drinks.”

“I know what a waiter
does,
Jimmy.” I tromped off and sat under Bob like a soldier determined to give his life to defend his bear. I moodily drank a Vernors ginger ale, occasionally holding my hand up to cover my mouth so I could talk to Alan.

“I'd say she pretty much handed you your balls in a paper bag,”
he observed.

“You just don't know. These changes would drive my father crazy.”

“A lot of friends of your father still come in here, do they?”

“All the time,” I affirmed.

“Any here now?”

I looked around. “No.”

“Last time you were here, big bunch of them come in?”

“Well, no.”

“Previous week? Two weeks? Even one of them show up?”

“You have a point here, Alan?”

“Just that maybe your sister should be allowed to make the changes she thinks will bring in more business. This sure isn't the kind of place I'd want to hang out in.”

“You are welcome to leave any time,” I told him frostily. I decided the soda wasn't working for me and switched to beer.

Night settled, and Jimmy left to go on a date. No one came in. By nine o'clock Becky and I had the place to ourselves. She busied herself installing a rack over the bar, from which she dangled shiny new wineglasses that hung upside down like bats. I guessed we would no longer be serving wine in old jelly jars. When she was finished, we stared at each other from across the room, each feeling the lack of business eloquently supported our respective positions.

Kermit showed up around closing time. “Kermit, over here!” I shouted at him. Becky, who'd been disapprovingly tracking my repeated trips to the keg machine like a school hall monitor, gave me a hard look.

“Ruddy…”
Alan said warningly. What was it with everybody?

Kermit came over and stood a little uneasily in front of me. “Sit,” I invited, kicking a chair out from the table. The action was meant to be smooth but instead the chair fell over. Becky stared at me and I shrugged.

Kermit righted the chair and eased down into it.

“You and me, Kermit.”

He swallowed.

“Tomorrow, we are going to go cook the literal goose of a certain Mr. Albert Einstein.”

Kermit stared at me.

“Einstein Croft,”
Alan hissed.

“I meant Einstein Croft. What did I say, Albert Einstein? That's pretty funny.” I noticed I was the only one laughing, and cleared my throat. “Anyway, come pick me up in the tow truck at seven
A.M.
in the morning. We're going to take the thing from his job. That work for you?”

He nodded. “Sure.”

“Okay. Okay, then.” I stood, formally shook his hand, nodded with dignity at my sister, and marched out into the frigid night air.

“Well I hope you're satisfied with yourself,”
Alan lectured as soon as he had me to himself.

“Satisfied, that's the word I've been looking for. I'm feeling perfectly satisfied, yes.”

“You're drunk. I hate it. I can't think straight.”

“Oh my God, are you telling me you're drunk, too?” I hooted. This struck me as so funny I had to sit down on my front steps, laughing until tears flowed out of my eyes. “Well, there goes my idea of making you designated driver.”

“You disgust me.”

“Oh, great! I have a voice in my head and he's disgusted!” I shouted out into the Kalkaska night.

“I was killed, Ruddy. We know who did it. We know where he works. Yet you've done nothing about it.”

“Yeah? And what, exactly, am I supposed to do?”

“We need to figure out why he did it. We need to find out who the man with the shovel is. We need to do something, Ruddy, instead of just sitting around all day reading mystery novels.”

“Maybe I don't care, did that ever occur to you, Alan? You got killed by two guys in the woods. Well I'm sorry, but that's not my fault. I never asked for this, for you to come into my head and start talking to me. You're a total stranger—why should I give a rip about you?”

“
You're an abuser. You abuse your sister and you abuse your own body. You're a
murderer.”

“Yeah? Well you're
drunk,
” I sneered. I stumbled into my house. The stack of bills on the table enraged me and I swiped them off onto the floor, kicking at them and mostly just hitting air. “Maybe I like it messy!” I yelled. I picked up a pillow off the couch and threw it across the room, where it landed on a kitchen chair and instantly looked like it belonged there, offering me no satisfaction whatsoever. That was the whole problem.

“I changed my mind!” I bellowed. “I am
not
satisfied!”

Jake eased off his blanket and padded over to me, concerned. He shoved his wet nose at my hand and gazed up at me loyally, ready to take a walk or do anything else that might make me happy. “You are the best dog in the world,” I assured him. I held his face in my hands and smiled into those sorrowful brown eyes. “The best dog. My best friend.”

I shambled into my bedroom and Jake followed me, a question in his eyes. “No, Jakey. In case I ever manage to get a woman in here I can't have you in the habit of lying in my bed. Want me to sleep on the floor with you? I will. Would you like that?”

His look indicated my offer wasn't good enough.

I didn't remember setting my alarm clock, but it woke me up at six
A.M.
I felt like I'd been beaten. I eased out of bed and went into the bathroom, looking sadly into the old, red eyes of Ruddy McCann. Life was not supposed to turn out like this.

Jimmy had picked up the scattered bills and placed them back on the table. It looked like he'd polished all the glasses in the cabinets, too. I didn't deserve a friend like him. I found some thousand-year-old beef taquitos in the freezer and heated them in the micro, eating them quickly, before Alan woke up and gave me a nutrition lecture.

I was experiencing the hangover of a lifetime. My head was oddly clear, but the rest of my body hurt as if I'd spent the day working out in a gym and then being beaten by a karate instructor. My stomach was tender with the same soreness I'd feel after the first day of crunches at football practice.

I sighed despondently. I was only a couple of years older than Deputy Timms, but he looked a lot younger, his chubby cheeks lending his face a childlike exuberance, like maybe a child with really ugly parents. When Katie compared the two of us, she probably thought of me as over-the-hill.