Mahoney's Camaro

by Michael Clark

  Mahoney turned. The man in the doorway reminded him of the rumpled salesmen and sales managers from his days at Terry Balkan, the ones who complained incessantly about the repairs that were required on the dealership’s fresh trade-ins. This must be the boss-man. He then noticed that the boss-man wasn’t looking at him; he was smiling at what must have been his Hot Rod. “That’s my old Deluxe coupe,” the man said, as he shimmied around his desk to his chair. “Built it up like one of those moonshine cars that the old NASCAR drivers cut their teeth on.”

  Mahoney remembered an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard that showed some of the old cars from the ’40s in action on the dirt roads of moonshine country. “What was in it?”

  “Cadillac V8. Pulled it out of a hearse from Bardal that got T-boned leaving the Elmwood Cemetery.” The boss-man pulled the picture down for a closer look. Mahoney saw the twinkle in his eye. “Had an Isky cam, dual Offenhauser intake with a couple of Strombergs on top.”

  “Sounds pretty fast.”

  “It was, for the time.” The man put the picture back on the wall.

  “Ever race it?”

  “Every weekend.”

  Mahoney looked around the office, hoping to see a trophy or a dragstrip picture from back in the day. “Where did you race?”

  The man smiled. “Wherever some smartass was dumb enough to open his mouth. Paid for my first house on Polson with that car.”

  The man kept smiling. Mahoney didn’t know if he was expecting a racing story in return, but he did his best. “Yeah, hoping to take my car out to Gimli one of these days.”

  “That’s sensible,” said the man. “Fewer tickets that way. Watcha got?”

  “Older Camaro. Three-fifty, thirty over, four-hundred crank.”

  “A stroker?”

  “Yep.”

  “So more like a three eighty-three now.”

  “More like it.”

  The man pointed at the keys in Mahoney’s hand. “I’m guessing those are for me?”

  Mahoney had almost forgotten about the Concord. “Oh, yeah, right. We picked it up the other day. From an estate.” He handed the keys and registration over. The boss-man had found his chair by then and reached for his glasses to read the documents. He smiled to himself before he looked at Mahoney.

  “Do you know what you’ve got here?”

  Mahoney had no idea. “Uh, what?”

  “A very rare bird. Probably an American car. Most of the Canadian ones didn’t get loaded up like that, especially a hatchback.”

  Mahoney remembered the car transporter. “I saw a bunch out back that just got delivered. Are they from the States too?”

  “Probably. My sales manager brings them in. Gotta be five years old to get across the line easy. A lot of ex-rentals, a few repos.”

  Mahoney nodded. “I’m guessing that Toro that came off the truck isn’t a repo.”

  “Toro?”

  “Yeah, one of the big ones. The really big ones. Mashed-in trunk lid.”

  “Then I hope we stole it from the auction. Nothing worse than paying for an empty space on a truck coming back from Minneapolis. Sometimes you fill it with the car that nobody wants.” The boss-man pointed towards the director of first impressions. “Let Lisa up front know who we’re paying for the tow. It’s Hook Me Up, right?”

  “Right.”

  Mahoney turned to leave. He heard the creak of the chair before he heard the voice. “And don’t forget the most important thing on race day.”

  “What’s that?”

  The boss-man smiled. “Keep the shiny side up and the rubber side down.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  June 24, 1985

  10:36 a.m.

  Peter Scrapneck was enjoying his Monday. Jerry Waller had just dropped off the weekend crack take. The second batch of coke had arrived from Minneapolis, stashed in the damaged trunk lid of a light green 1978 Oldsmobile Toronado XS. That is one ugly boat, Scrapneck thought, as one of his lot jockeys drove the car over to the open overhead door of the body shop. The replacement trunk lid was waiting to be installed, resting on a padded panel stand in the morning sun. The Toronado went for just eight hundred bucks at the American auction. With the replacement trunk lid, quickie paint, and the bill for the space on the transporter, the car would still net about $1,500 once it sold at a No Dicker–Sticker price of $2,995. Scrapneck checked his watch. The camera crew from CKND would be arriving shortly to record the latest commercial for Commonwealth’s used car department.

  Scrapneck loved TV ads. The cooperative advertising dollars he spent among the local TV stations for his new inventory was sizable enough that he got late-night commercials for the used cars thrown in at no charge. The time slots were anything but plum, though there were definitely enough insomniacs who needed wheels. The sales numbers had confirmed it for the last few months. The only caveat from the stations for the bonus spots was minimal production. That meant price signs painted by the most artistic of the lot boys, a portable camera unit that filmed the cars as they rolled past, and Peter Scrapneck on two fat lines of high-test cocaine.

  Scrapneck headed through the shop towards the men’s room for the coke bump. Dick Loeb was coming through the shop door as Scrapneck reached for the door handle. Loeb put a set of keys in his hand instead.

  “They just dropped off that in-house finance Concord. I left the paperwork on your desk.”

  Heather’s car. “Yeah, I’ll get one of the guys to check it over.”

  Loeb nodded and returned to the showroom. Scrapneck tossed the keys up and caught them in his other hand. Loeb must not have bothered to look at the paperwork closely. That could have started a new group of questions, questions that Scrapneck didn’t want to answer. He knew the Concord was a tight ride; he had personally picked it out for Heather six months ago and had the shop foreman go through it front to back. Her credit rating had been blown to smithereens when she was still using at Great-West Life. He called in a favour with the business office for the in-house financing, a favour that required a few grams of Waller’s utility-grade cocaine to swing. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever told Heather that he loved her. He had said it with the car. He tossed the keys to one of the lot boys. “Give it a quick clean,” said Scrapneck, as he headed for the men’s. “It’s part of the No Dicker this week.”

  June 24, 1985

  10:59 a.m.

  Dick Loeb looked at the sales numbers from the weekend that he had booked off from the dealership. Scrapneck had done an admirable job: 12 new cars delivered, three pending, and seven used cars off the lot. The six trade-ins hadn’t taken hard stretching to get, and three were new and low-mileage enough that they might be candidates for full reconditioning. He decided to stretch his legs, shimmying around the desk to the showroom floor. He smirked as he looked out the window at the front lot. The overhead streamers were dancing madly in the wind, just like Peter Scrapneck. Loeb’s sales manager was moving frantically around the No Dicker–Sticker deals of the week. Loeb had seen Scrapneck stuff at least five cars into a 60 second commercial, although he thought the commercials were as bad as the local-yokel American advertisement assault from WDAZ in Grand Forks. The Weivoda Carpet Girl’s voice was usually cause enough for Loeb to launch a slipper at the TV, if he happened to be home that night. As low-rent as they looked and sounded, Scrapneck’s commercials brought in the customers.

  The overhead speakers started to squawk. “Dick Loeb, call holding on line three. Dick Loeb, call holding on line three.” The canned music returned. Dick Loeb walked back to his office, closing the door behind him. He shimmied around the desk and parked himself comfortably in his chair before he answered. He had a feeling he knew who the call would be from. He picked up the handset, pressing the flashing button that connected the third line. “Commonwealth Motors, Dick Loeb speaking.”

  “What in tarnation are you up to out the
re, Dick Loeb?”

  Dick smiled, pausing a moment before he spoke again. “Can I ask who’s calling?”

  “You know darn well who’s calling.”

  Loeb couldn’t resist poking the bear, and it was a very big bear at that. “I’m sorry, sir, are you a customer at Commonwealth Motors? Was there a problem with your vehicle?”

  “Problem with my vehicle . . . problem with my vehicle? Yes, I’d say there’s a problem with my vehicle, except my vehicle doesn’t have whitewalls or power steering.”

  Loeb’s smile widened “Well, sir, if you don’t have a Jeep, AMC, or Renault product, I don’t know how I can help you. Oh wait, is this about a used car? I can direct you to our—”

  “THIS IS TED ROGERS FROM CANTEL!”

  Loeb was starting to look like a stand-in for the Grinch, running out of face to curl upwards. “Oh, hello, Ted, I’ve been reading about you a lot in the business section of The Winnipeg Sentinel. So, I guess you’re getting pretty excited about Canada Day, eh?”

  “I know what you’re up to, Loeb. And now we’re going to take care of it.” Loeb could hear the shuffling of chairs and people over the line. The next voice that spoke was cooler, calmer, and collected. “Mr. Loeb? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, and to whom am I speaking?”

  “Mr. Loeb, this is Lance Harzan speaking, legal counsel for Mr. Rogers and the Cantel wireless venture. We are calling today to discuss the acquisition of the rooftop leases through your various companies throughout Western Canada.”

  Loeb stated the obvious. “Acquisition? I don’t remember offering them for sale.”

  Ted Rogers had heard the exchange, saying something that Loeb couldn’t quite hear. It was obvious that he was anything but pleased. Harzan continued. “Mr. Loeb, as I’m sure you’re aware, this isn’t the first time we’ve encountered speculators such as yourself.”

  “Speculators? Maybe I just like the view.”

  Harzan paused for a moment, calming another meltdown in the background by the head of the new Canadian cellular phone network. “Mr. Loeb, as much as we applaud you for your business acumen, we both know that securing these sites and not building out a cellular network is something that your coffers cannot sustain.”

  “I wouldn’t bank on that,” Loeb said. He pulled out a file with notes from his earlier feasibility studies. “You’d be surprised at how much people pay for these Jeeps and what it costs to fix them when they break. And, boy, do they love to break.”

  “And what does that have to do with the cellular phone business, Mr. Loeb?”

  Loeb lost his smile and brought forth his sizable balls. “It means I’ve got a fucking boatload of cash coming in on a monthly basis to maintain those leases into the next millennium if I want to. Sure, you can probably find alternate sites, sites that will be seeing hefty increases to their lease rates, plus the purchase of all kinds of technical equipment to boost the signal to standards. And that signal has to be beyond acceptable, Mr. Harzan. If it isn’t, then Mr. Rogers might have to go back to fixing radios like his old man.”

  “Mr. Loeb, can I put you on hold for a moment?”

  “Certainly. Talk to Teddy Bear and see what he wants to do.” Loeb tried to push out his chair enough to put his legs up on his desk, the way he imagined a business tycoon would when he finally arrived at the point of his career known as The Upper Hand. After four attempts, he realized the space and his frame simply wouldn’t allow it.

  Harzan came back on the line. “Mr. Loeb?”

  “Yes?”

  “We would like to buy out the rooftop leases of your holding companies, effective immediately. I will forward the paperwork to you by overnight courier. You will have our offer in its entirety by 12 noon Winnipeg-time tomorrow.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Have a pleasant day, Mr. Loeb.”

  “You too, Mr. Harzan.”

  Loeb listened as the call disconnected. He leaned back in his chair as far as the confines of his office and frame would allow.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  June 24, 1985

  9:19 p.m.

  Steve Mahoney made a call to the Madame at The Chocolate Shop. The hostess promised to relay the message. That was at 5:30 p.m., shortly after Mahoney had got home. He’d been checking his answering machine for new messages every hour or so while organizing his tool bench in the garage. There was nothing from the Madame or from Diana. The garage door was open, the night air warm. Heather Price must have been asleep in the Hot Rod.

  The Monday night DJs on Winnipeg radio must have been afflicted with various degrees of heartbreak, with little in the way of garage-savvy music. Ugh, Corey Hart. Mahoney killed the radio on the bench, opting for whatever background noise he could find on an old Viking black-and-white TV that he had hung from the ceiling. He’d got the idea of hanging it from the rafters from a billiards hall, a handy thing to have during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Hockey had ended in May, and Blue Bombers football wouldn’t hit the regular season until July fourth. There was a lot of news on CBC’s 24 Hours about an Air India flight that had blown up over the Atlantic. Mahoney glanced up at the video of the space shuttle Discovery coasting in for a landing in California. He tuned in and out to an episode of The Nature of Things. It was something about whales mating in BC. He didn’t know what kind.

  A set of headlights shone into the driveway. They belonged to Rick Scheer’s Chevette. Mahoney noticed that he was still wearing his work shirt with the name ‘Rick’ embroidered on it, which probably meant one of two things: a raft of pre-delivery inspections on new inventory at Garden Gate or a very large job that needed finishing. Judging by his appearance, it was something very greasy and very broken. He had a six-pack of Extra Old Stock with him. Ouch! High-test! Mahoney figured that the job must have hurt, the reason for the dark-brown painkillers.

  Scheer plopped the six-pack on the bench without any pleasantries, cracked open the box, and used the edge of the tool bench to slap off the bottle cap. He pulled a third of the high-test back before he spoke. “Do me a favour, Steve-Oh.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t ever buy a front-wheel drive anything. Ever.”

  Mahoney fished into the box of beer. “Tough day at the office?”

  Scheer was just finishing his second pull of medicine. “Fucking Cadillac! Those new ones are fucking bullshit! A Caddy should never be a front-wheel drive. A Citation maybe, but a Caddy?”

  Mahoney nodded in agreement. He gave a second nod, in the direction of the Hot Rod. “They’ll never build shit this simple again.”

  “That’s for sure. So, are you going to introduce me to your girlfriend?”

  Mahoney looked at Scheer. “Well, sure I guess. She’s not here right now.”

  “Then who’s that in your car?”

  Mahoney stopped organizing his tools. Great. She wants to socialize. He didn’t have a bullshit speech ready for such instances. He decided to state something truthful before he turned around to face Heather. As he turned to say it, he realized that Scheer was already moving in her direction for an introduction. “Oh, Heather? She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my, uh—”

  “Neighbour,” said Heather. She extended her hand, but not so far past the seat that she thought Scheer’s hand would pass through hers. Scheer shook her hand without issue, exchanging stock pleasantries. He gave her the kind of smile that most guys give when they think they might have a shot. He nodded towards Mahoney. “I guess there’s nothing on TV tonight if you’re hanging out with this loser.”

  “Well, it is mating season for these whales they’re talking about.” She pointed up at Mahoney’s fuzzy black-and-white TV. “It could get interesting.”

  Mahoney was watching the conversation, trying to communicate with Heather in a way that he wasn’t sure if he could: his mind. Don’t do any of your freaky g
host shit, okay? You hear me? Don’t freak out Rickles. Just be nice. For Christ’s sake, just be nice.

  Heather leaned back in the seat. “So, it’s Rickles, right?”

  Mahoney leaned in. Don’t freak him out!

  Scheer moved in closer. “Yeah, that’s what they call me.”

  “So what kind of Cadillac made you look like that?”

  Mahoney exhaled a silent sigh of relief in his mind. Scheer went through the inner workings of the new Cadillac Fleetwood as Heather listened intently. She seemed to be enjoying the conversation, probably because it wasn’t a conversation about her demise, who did it, and what to do about it. The banter continued right up to 10:30 p.m., when Mahoney flipped the TV over to channel nine for the CKND news. There wasn’t much to raise an eyebrow on the local news broadcast: a few stabbings, a rooming-house fire on Broadway, and something about an overdose at a one-star Main Street hotel. The commercial break got Scheer’s attention.

  “Steve! Turn it up!”

  Mahoney reached up to the TV without looking. He realized why Scheer was so excited when the volume reached 70 percent. The ad was for Commonwealth Motors, and it was so frantic that it easily deserved a minute of your time. Mahoney took a sip of Hi-Test as Scheer smiled like a little kid as the announcer ramped up his pitch. Mahoney figured that the guy must have been on at least a gram to talk that fast, maybe a Wallbanger gram, considering that he had seen him there that morning while dropping off Heather’s old car. The three watched the pitch for the used car deals. They didn’t catch his actual name.