The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man (25 page)

Only one obstacle lay in my path: the security guard, who had stepped out of his booth and stood in the center of the narrow driveway, a bit hunched over, his arms out to his sides as if getting ready to give me a giant hug.

I suddenly remembered that when he played defensive end for East Jordan High School he was like an open valve; all it took was a little head feint, like
this,
and he was groping at the empty air. I sailed past him untouched.

I turned on the road and saw that Kermit was still driving away as if pursued by the hounds of hell. I ran after him, my legs moving up and down in easy cadence. Maybe it was the sunshine getting to me, but I felt better at that moment than I had felt in a long time. I was almost disappointed when Kermit pulled over; my legs wanted to keep going, run to the gym, lift weights, learn Pilates.

I was barely winded and full of endorphins. Kermit regarded my approach like the accused waiting for the judge to pass sentence. “So Kermit, at what point did you decide to leave me alone at the factory?” I asked, flexing my knees.

“Uh…,” he responded as eloquently as he could manage.

“Let me drive. You wait until I get up to fifty-five miles per hour, and then jump out,” I told him pleasantly. He nodded, swallowing.

“That was just crazy. Those men would have caught you before you could have gotten that truck hooked up,”
Alan fretted.

“Kermit, the voice in my head wants me to take you out in the woods and eat your liver,” I said. Kermit's eyes bulged.

“For God's sake, Ruddy, he's going to think I'm a lunatic,”
Alan complained.

I called Milt and told him we had to go writ of replevin on Einstein Croft. “I'll serve the summons, though, Milt,” I said. I'd at least get fifty bucks for throwing some papers at Einstein's face.

“And where do we stand with Jimmy?” Milt asked.

“You know, Milt, your focus on collecting money isn't nearly as much fun as lending money,” I chided. When he didn't give me so much as a dry chuckle I cleared my throat. “Why don't you hold on to fifty bucks out of what I have coming from picking up the Explorer this morning,” I suggested.

“You sure that's a good idea?”

“It's Jimmy, Milt,” I said simply.

Between the sunshine and the way the oxygen was coursing through my leg muscles my mood remained nearly euphoric, and I opened the door to the Black Bear for Kermit as if he and I were old friends. Becky gave us a bleak look, waving some papers at us. “Kermit, what are these?”

Becky held three notices in her hand, the type that bank computers issue when you've overoptimized your checking account. Kermit read them, his brow furrowed, while Becky looked over his shoulder at me and shrugged.

“These are customer inquiries. What it is, is the customers are disputatious on the nonswipe charge.”

Becky and I looked at him blankly. “English, please,” I requested.

“See, the psychics are telling the customers that the charge will be the Black Bear Bar and Grille, but the cardholders forget sometimes, so when they see the charge, they don't know what it is, and they're like, ‘Black Bear in Kalkaska? But I'm in Omaha or some dumb place,' so they dispute it with the credit card company. So the bank sends us this notice.”

“Wouldn't the psychics know in advance which customers will forget?” I asked cleverly. Both Becky and Alan groaned.

“They should,” Kermit agreed.

“What do we do?” Becky asked him.

“The thing is, you have to protect the integration of the nonswipe account. So we don't even challenge it. We credit the customer back the full amount. Our thirteen percent plus the psychic's eighty-seven percent. Take the eighty-seven percent out of today's receipts from the psychic line. How much did we get today?”

I found myself irritated over the “we,” but didn't say anything.

“We received two thousand two hundred,” Becky stated. I turned a fond gaze upon her and her ability to manage numbers like that.

“Okay, and these are for a total of six-twenty, so we're fine,” Kermit pronounced with such confidence I instantly felt apprehensive. “We get any more of these, handle them the same way.”

It was on my mind to advise Kermit that he was to ask, not tell, Becky what to do, but I knew Alan would chide me later for always busting the guy's chops, so I bit my lip.

Becky invited me to step out the back door into the alley, and I followed her, curious. I blinked at a fresh wall of cinder blocks. “What's this?”

Becky looked flushed with excitement. “I've never laid bricks or blocks or anything before. See how level it is?”

Okay, well, if it made my sister happy to build a wall in the alley, what did I care? There was still plenty of room for cars to get around. “It's nice,” I offered.

“It
is
level,”
Alan agreed.

She laughed. “Well, it's not for
decoration
. Come here, look.” She took my arm and pulled me around the wall. It was actually a three-sided corral, with the trash Dumpster sitting in the middle of it.

I immediately spotted what she had done wrong, and wondered how to tell her about it. “You made a little house for the Dumpster,” I said, stalling.

“No, it's … the county requires it. I told you we had to build one.”

“But Becky…” I sighed. “The open part should be facing the back door, not away from it. See? Not only is it more of a trip to walk around with a bag of trash, but when the truck comes, it's one way.” I pointed up the alley, gesturing how when the truck approached it would be facing the closed part of the corral.

“It's one way but the truck has to back up to get to the Dumpster.”

“Oh.” I nodded thoughtfully, hoping to appear to be, well, full of thought. When I glanced at her, she was wearing a neutral expression that somehow looked familiar.

We went back inside.
“Your sister is pretty nice not to point out how stupid you sounded,”
Alan advised.

I went to sit by Bob the Bear and Jimmy came over to take my order, just like it was a real restaurant. “You want to hear the special?” he asked.

“The
what
?” I blurted, laughing. I sensed Becky's eyes on me like gun turrets and choked it back. “Yeah, sure, what is the special?”

The special was plank whitefish. “Do you eat the plank, or the fish?” I joked. Jimmy shrugged uncomfortably—what the heck was wrong with everyone, how come I was the only person with a sense of humor?

“What is it with everybody?” I muttered to Alan.

“They know you're a little irrational on the subject of the Black Bear. Maybe they're afraid of your reaction,”
Alan suggested.

“I do not need to be psychoanalyzed by a voice living in my head.”

“Who better?”
Alan retorted.

The whitefish came and Becky and Kermit watched me eat like parents sending their first child off to kindergarten. I gave them a thumbs-up and they heaved visible sighs of relief.

“You don't need that much salt,”
Alan observed, so I put a little more on.
“Aren't you going to eat your vegetable?”

“It's broccoli. Nobody eats broccoli,” I informed him.

“You have got to eat vegetables!”

“I did, I ate the fries,” I responded indignantly. I realized a woman I didn't know was sitting alone at a table and watching me talk to myself over the top of her
Cosmo
magazine. I gave her a cheery nod and she dove back behind the cover.

Claude came in and sat down with me and ordered a chicken burrito as if we had been serving them for a hundred years. “Hey, Claude, there's this weird thing in the sky, you seen it?”

He gave me a blank look.

“Real bright? Heat coming off of it? Been up there all day, very strange.”

“You mean the sun?” he asked.

“Oh, is that what it is? Been so long since it's been out, I didn't recognize it,” I chortled.

Claude looked absolutely bewildered. Jimmy slid a plate down in front of Claude and asked him if he wanted pico de gallo. No one seemed to think it was an unusual conversation. “Jimmy, Janelle been in?” Claude asked.

Jimmy's look darkened. “Janelle?” His tone was so sharp I blinked in surprise.

Claude didn't seem to catch it. “Yeah, it's like she's avoiding me or something.” He gave us a one-of-the-boys look. “I don't understand her. You know we've never even done it? Closest I got is second base. Women,” he snorted. “Can't live with 'em, can't return 'em for a full refund.”

Jimmy's face turned red. “What the heck is wrong with you, Claude? You and Wilma have been together my whole life. She loves you, man. You got history together. Are you crazy? Janelle? You know what I would give to have the kind of thing you and Wilma got?” His mouth worked inarticulately for a moment, while Claude just stared at him in astonishment. I don't think any of us had ever seen Jimmy this angry before.

Finally he extended an accusing finger. “You are making the biggest mistake I've ever seen, Claude. You think Janelle isn't going to dump you the second someone closer to her age comes along?”

Claude clearly didn't appreciate the “closer to her age” part. He opened his mouth.

“Aw, heck with it. I'll get you some guacamole with jalapeño garnish,” Jimmy stormed, turning on his heel.

Claude and I stared at each other as if unsure of what had just happened.

“Uh-oh, Ruddy, look who just came in,”
Alan said.

It was disconcerting to think that Alan could keep track of things within my vision that I wasn't focused on. I glanced up to see what he was talking about.

A Charlevoix County sheriff's deputy had stepped inside the Black Bear during Jimmy's lecture. I recognized him as one of the officers who had been out with us the day we dug up Alan's body. He was staring at me, a smirk on his face. When he was sure he had my attention, he crooked his finger. Gulping, I got up from the table, following the deputy outside. A gray band of clouds drifted in front of the sun as I climbed inside his patrol car.

Time for my polygraph.

 

 

19

A Funeral for a Friend

 

Strickland left me sitting in the tiny lobby of the sheriff's department for half an hour in what was probably some psychological, “I'll show you who's boss” type of manipulation. I decided I could
not
be intimidated, though my leg bounced nervously and I gave a start every single time the back door opened. Alan had plenty of one-way advice, to which I felt incapable of responding due to the presence of the desk sergeant sitting four feet from me.
“See if you can find out about this Franklin Wexler,”
he instructed, clearly forgetting who was driving my body. I was not going to bring up
any
names—providing the sheriff with information he didn't already have just seemed to get me in more trouble.

Finally Barry Strickland was standing there, crooking his finger in what apparently was a departmentally approved gesture. He led me to a small, windowless room with a mirror on one wall.

“Well this place could not be more bleak,”
Alan huffed as I was seated in a wooden chair.
“Could they not spare a single painting on the wall?”

I tried to imagine a person actually believing that an interrogation room should be
cheerful
.

I guess I always thought that a polygraph machine was a device that somehow measured brain waves, but what those little jumping needles represented was something much more mundane: pulse, breathing, perspiration, and blood pressure. The examiner who told me to call him Justin looked exactly like Bill Gates. “This doesn't hurt, doesn't do any damage of any kind. I'll ask you a series of establishing questions, and then I have a list of questions here that the sheriff has supplied. He's already shown you these questions, is that correct?” Justin asked in sort of a nerdy drone.

“Yes,” I answered, swallowing. One of them,
Do you know who killed Alan Lottner,
was making me sweat already. I didn't want to tell Strickland about Burby and Wexler because I didn't want to tell him about Alan dwelling in my head.

Alan sensed my nervousness.
“Don't worry, I'm here with you,”
he murmured. I didn't have any way to inform him that his being here with me was why I was worried.

“First question then. Is your name Ruddick J. McCann?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good!”
Alan praised.

Justin was frowning. “Mr. McCann, are you feeling well today?”

“Yes,” I answered formally.

Justin shook his head. “No, that wasn't a control question, I'm just asking. Are you currently taking any medication?” He picked up the form I'd filled out a few minutes ago, confirming my answer as I said it.

“No.”

Justin pursed his lips. “Let's try another one. Are you a resident of Kalkaska?”

“Yes.”

Justin cocked his head, considering.

“Something's not right,”
Alan observed.

“Let's try this. I will ask you a question, and I want you to deliberately lie. This is called a ‘directed question,' okay?”

“Got it.”

“Mr. McCann, are you a resident of East Jordan?”

“Yes.”

Justin's eyes widened in surprise. He looked up at me. “And you're not, right?”

“Pardon?”

“You list your address as Kalkaska. You're not from East Jordan.”

“No. I mean, yes, I'm from Kalkaska.”

Justin nodded. “Excuse me for a moment.” He stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.