Switcheroo

by Robert Lewis Clark

  “Uh, that would be Andrew Chandler. Did you need anything else?” She was friendly, but I barely noticed. I was too busy trying to think why my mother’s cadaverous boyfriend would have me followed.

  “No, that’s all I needed, I’ll get these notes sent in pronto.”

  I gently placed the receiver back in its cradle, puzzled about Chandler having me tailed. To me, he seems already so close to death, I can’t imagine what his ambitions might be in the world of the living. I will have to figure it out later since it is time to earn some real money; the kind of money that will pay mortgage payments and utility bills. Tammy’s case was interesting, even fascinating, but I was starting to doubt that it would end in a pay-off for me.

  On the way out of the bank’s cavernous glass lobby, I stepped onto their antique scale near the ATM’s. This scale is there to make all the yuppies spend their lunch money more prudently.

  Two Hundred and twelve.

  “Would it kill you to do a sit-up every now and then, Rust?” I mutter to myself as I head out the revolving door. The day ahead inspecting trailer homes and eating at convenience stores would not bring down that 212 number. It’s hard to lose weight when your health club is Seven-Eleven.

  Chapter 23

  After a day of chasing accounts for mortgage companies I was ready for a cold one and some Monday night football. I wondered what Wendy was doing, maybe she would go to Union Jack’s with me and we could throw some darts. I knew now that it had been a mistake to buy a car with a hard top. True, the LeBaron had been ugly, slow and mechanically unsound but it had been a good convertible cruiser, good for an evening like this. I was driving down the streets of residential Knoxville, the twilight glowing through the autumn trees and the foothills of Appalachia in the distance. Unfortunately, I was on my way to Drew Chandler’s house, not out on a romantic drive. I had to know why he had hired someone to follow me.

  I pulled up to his house, which was too small to have a circular front drive, but it did anyway. Part of west Knoxville’s Lyon’s Bend community, it is a semi-snobbish neighborhood where your occupation, automobile and even your furniture still mattered. I had to drive past my old house, now my first ex-wife’s house, which gave me a sinking feeling.

  I would say most residents here do not have butlers. Probably the reason Chandler employed one was in case he suddenly grabbed his chest and dropped dead, someone would be there to call the paramedics or the meat wagon, if it was too late. I rang the bell. I admired the mahogany front door with its leaded glass and beautiful brass hardware while I waited. That door knob must have cost more than I make in a week.

  Drew Chandler answered the door himself, telling me that it was his butler’s night off. He invited me in and I followed him to his library. Seeing his boney frame this close to Halloween I was reminded of Vincent Price. He offered me a drink. I asked for decaf. He returned with the coffee and a small glass of something for himself. Probably port, but it looked like blood in the amber glow of the library.

  We made small talk. Had he seen mother lately? How was their ‘friendship’? I was not really paying attention to his answers until he changed the subject to the real reason for my call.

  “You remember our last conversation about teleportation and ORNL and so forth? I decided to hire an agency to look into the matter. I received an update today saying that the agent was attacked and he had to be treated for a broken arm and sprained knee. I was shocked. I think your little investigation is getting dangerous. These people may be serious criminals.” He looked at me, raising one eyebrow and swirling his drink slowly.

  “I feel very badly about that. This past week, I have been followed by more that one party, shot at and attacked by a large dog. I am a bit jumpy and I over-reacted today when I realized Agent Smithey was tailing me. I thought he meant to hurt me.”

  “You assaulted that man?” Drew gasped, pretending surprise. I think he knew or at least suspected I was the culprit. He was a gentleman and did not want to make accusations.

  “I’m afraid so. I think a known drug dealer is in possession of the other truck and he has his people looking for my client’s truck. I thought the agent was one of these rednecks… I mean ruffians,” I said, draining the rest of my top-notch coffee. “Why have me followed?”

  “He must have picked up your trail since you are investigating this matter yourself. I never dreamed anyone would get hurt,” he fretted. “I have always had an interest in the science of teleportation and I was curious to see if your case had any legitimacy.

  “You see, I always wanted to do something positive with engineering, for mankind. Instead I spent my working years perfecting the nuclear bomb. I was not really a part of the original invention and, in spite of its awesome destructive power; ‘the bomb’ did not inspire me. I was fascinated by ‘The Fly’ and later ‘Star Trek’. Could teleportation really work on people? I always thought that it was possible. Some technologies we have right now could be considered teleportation. The telephone turns your voice into waves of electricity and reproduces it at the other end of the line. Does this count as teleportation? Can something disappear and reappear instantly in another place? You know Einstein said nothing could travel faster than light. If this discovery is now loose in the marketplace then whoever owns those trucks has a huge scientific discovery in their possession. The benefits to man kind as well as the commercial uses are unlimited,” he said, gazing past me, dreaming of the possibilities.

  “I have seen this thing work on these trucks and I can assure you it is legit. But, some unsavory types are after this invention. There are many ways teleportation could make crime easier, especially smuggling.”

  Chapter 24

  Anderson County was my destination this morning. I could do my inspections and work on trying to find that barbeque restaurant that contained Tammy McHenry’s miraculous pickup truck. Tuesday is usually the busiest day in the field investigation business. This is because on Monday, mortgage company collectors come to work and discover that customers who had sincerely promised to wire the money on Friday, did not do so. These broken promises are what generates emails to LISA and then to me. Reach out and touch someone, the mortgage company is saying. Make these people pay. Get in their business. Find out why they cannot pay. Is it loss of a job, divorce, death in the family, illness? Or just irresponsibility? Maybe substance abuse? These are popular reasons for skipping mortgage payments. These were the things I needed to know for my reports, my bread and butter. If Tammy’s case turned into anything, it would be gravy, or icing on the cake. With my luck, it would probably be gravy on the cake.

  With this in mind, I did most of my calls first. I took digital pictures, filled out condition reports, and talked to several delinquent residents. When I got to a stopping point, I pulled a cheap cigar from the zip-lock bag in the Crown Vic’s consol. The bag had a scrap of damp paper-towel in it: a poor man’s humidor. I raised the electric window for a moment while I lit the smoke and the turned up the radio.

  If you want to know about food, ask an expert. I headed back to Oakridge and eventually made it to the 70’s looking building where The Oakridger, Anderson County’s primary newspaper, had its offices.

  I went into the cavernous reception area and asked politely if I could talk to the food editor. One moment, I was told. I waited until I was instructed to go up a spiral staircase to the second floor. There I was met by the food editor, James Inskip.

  Mr. Inskip had a gray Abe Lincoln style beard. That was all he had in common with Honest Abe. Inskip weighed at least three fifty and his center of gravity was around his pear- shaped middle. I was vague about why I wanted to know where to find the best barbeque in Anderson County. I implied that I might need some catering for a large gathering.

  He sat back in his chair, eyes looking upward, scratching his beard in thought. The slack jowly skin around his mouth turned up a little, my line of conversation had struck one of his favorite chords. Finally he spoke. He had a deep Santa Claus
voice.

  “There are so many good ones it’s hard to say,” he said, still deep in thought. “Do you lean toward spicy sauce or sweet?”

  “It is all in the sauce, isn’t it?” I agreed. “I was thinking of a big place that could serve a lot of people. Not a little mom and pop hole-in-the-wall place, although I like those, too.”

  “Oh, I like the small places as well, but they are always failing their health department inspections. Barbeque is fun to eat, but its preparation is pretty darn greasy,” he thought some more. His face lit up.

  “You know if you want a large party catered, you should try the Fruit of the Loom factory.”

  “Huh?”

  “I know it sounds odd, but the Fruit of the Loom factory has its own cafeteria and they have some of the best food around, including delicious real pit barbeque,” he made this statement as though he was answering final Jeopardy. He crossed his arms, satisfied and waited for a reply.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” I was thinking that could be the place, a large building that smelled strongly of barbeque.

  “Anyone can eat there. They take cash as well as employee debit cards,” he said, looking at his watch. “They are making lunch for the second shift now, we could go over there are try it. What do you say?”

  “Okay,” I said with a shrug.

  I have my own addictions and I was not going to stand between this man and his.

  class=Section7> There are so many towns in a great country as big as ours that eventually people run short of good names. Names like Charleston, Savannah and New York were already taken by the time East Tennessee was settled. That is how we ended with names like Wartburg and Harriman. Newcomers to our area are sometimes hesitant to visit a place called Wartburg. And Harriman is a little scary, too. They wonder why it is named ‘Hairy Man’ and exactly who is this Hairy Man and what does he want? Actually the locals pronounce it “hair-mun.” Nothing to fear. No actual scary hairy man in Harriman.

  We were headed toward Wartburg and the Fruit of the Loom factory with its reportedly delicious barbeque. When we had left The Oakridger’s office, I had been pleased that my new Crown Vic held up nicely under the immense weight of my passenger, James Inskip. Don’t get me wrong, the Ford’s springs did give a bit, but once I hopped in, it did not seem that the car was riding any lower on one side than the other. The way, let’s say, a Miata would with a normal person on one side and an obese food critic on the other.

  The neighborhood was called Milltown. Just outside Oliver Springs, it was a nicely laid-out group of houses that had been, when they were constructed, identical. These squared-off row houses framed a central quad with a softball field and soccer field. Each of the homes had been renovated several times since the area’s development around the mill in the 1920’s. Two good schools had been built nearby and it was close to Oakridge, property values had skyrocketed. Ironically, no actual mill workers lived in Milltown anymore, because a mill job did not pay enough to handle a mortgage on these now-desirable homes. The neighborhood now was made up of engineers from Oakridge, soccer moms and all manner of trendy professionals. Dinks, yuppies and weekend warriors.

  I saw ladies jogging, people walking dogs, parents pushing kids in strollers and people throwing Frisbees to leaping Labradors. Don’t these people have day jobs? I realized then that James Inskip, the loquacious, oversized food critic, had been talking like crazy and I hadn’t heard a word.

  “….Until the 1990's when I thought their barbeque sauce had a bit much vinegar in it for my taste. So I didn’t go back for years. They have had a number of different managers since then, but I like this new guy. Stanley something, they call him Slink, for some reason. Slink has whipped the place back into shape and got the vinegar situation under control. Now their sauce recipe is delicious.” My mind raced at the mention of Slink. This was a break, I could feel it.

  Skirting the quad, I followed Inskip’s fat finger pointing toward a drive at the back of the neighborhood. I turned and we headed toward a dark brick building that was about the length of two football fields. The sign said ‘Fruit of the Loom, O/S Plant’, so I pulled into the nearly full parking lot and waited for James to hoist himself out of the Crown Vic. I considered giving him a hand but a vision of myself at the chiropractor stopped me. I figured he’d be okay, he does this everyday, right? He managed to power himself to a standing position, with knees slightly bent, and we headed toward the factory building, looking like Jake and The Fat Man. I followed James toward the back of the building, walking along a landscaped sidewalk. We could hear the hum of the machines inside the yarn mill as we walked.

  The dark brick walls of the factory loomed over us on the right. I could see a smaller metal structure attached to the back of the factory’s hulking main building.

  “That’s the cafeteria?” I asked. I sensed I might be reaching a mile stone in my journey to find this truck. Tammy had described a metal building with no windows and a high ceiling; here it was.

  “Yep, can’t you smell it?” James said. I could smell it. This was a beautiful-smelling autumn day. The air was cool with a hint of burning leaves and fireplace smoke, but beyond that, getting stronger as we approached was the smoky, rich scent of excellent barbeque. Inskip had a look on his face like a bachelor party drunk approaching the door of the Mouse’s Ear Club. I thought I heard him smacking his lips. That gave me the willies.

  Well, really, this whole factory scene gave me the willies. It’s a place where I’ll bet many folks work for twenty or thirty years and don’t ever earn much more than minimum wage. But still, at the least bit of labor trouble, this whole factory would be move to Mexico in a heartbeat.

  This sad thought was replaced by thoughts of yummy-ness as the smell of good cooking grew closer. A good meal was coming and if that was the worst thing that happened, oh well. My mind did not stop with thoughts of food. That delicious smoky smell was the smell of teleportation! It was the smell I had noticed in Grandma Tuttle’s barn. I started thinking about a huge commission for finding this truck and helping Tammy sell its secrets. My active imagination started spending this imaginary money and before long I was debt free, driving that new Jag convertible and...

  “Well, come on in, we’re here.”

  James opened the door.

  I snapped out of my financial wet dream and followed him into the factory cafeteria.

  We passed row after row of institutional style folding tables as we made our way to the back of the long lunch line.

  In here the hum of the mill gave way the echoing roar of lunch room chatter. It was amplified by the tile floor and the thirty-foot-high metal ceiling. The scene made me flash back to high school where the tables were packed with kids, cheerleaders and football players. My biggest challenge back then to throw a fork just right so that it would stick in the dropped ceiling of the lunchroom. Memories, some good and some not-so-good, surfaced and then had to be stuffed quickly back down, like dirty laundry in an overflowing hamper.

  Now we were sliding our trays down the stainless steel rails toward the front of the line. After ringing up James’ food the cashier looked past me to the next customer. She had assumed that James’ three plates of food and three desserts were for both of us. I got her attention and forked over the cash for my barbeque pork plate, sweet tea and slice of lemon meringue pie.

  Like a Tennessee River barge moving into a small lock, James Inskip slid slowly into a metal-frame, plastic lunchroom chair. The chair flexed but did not break, impressive. I sat down across from him.

  Pausing only to swallow, James managed to continue talking as he chewed.

  “...Back to your catering situation... You should consider serving this potato salad; it will taste even better after it sits twenty-four hours. The ingredients have time to comingle and the flavor of the onions and what-not permeate the potatoes. Delicious!” He used a piece of Texas toast to push a bit of beans and potato salad out of his beard and into his mouth. It is a credit to how grea
t the food was that this did not kill my appetite.

  “Well, I will seriously consider the potato salad,” My eyes scanned the room for anyone who could be Stanley ‘Slink’ Bailey. “What about the manager here? They call him Slick or something?”

  “Slink, actually, from his football career with the Bobcats. I’m sure he’s around somewhere, probably in back.” James gestured toward the kitchen with his fork. “When we’re done I’ll introduce you.”

  This didn’t take as long as you might think since I was hungry and my new friend was a human vacuum cleaner. Having put away enough food to sustain a third world village for a day, he dabbed has chin with a brown paper napkin as if it was fine linen.

  “Let’s go say hi to Slink.”

  Waddling by, he waved to the smiling ladies in the serving line and they admitted him to the kitchen as if he were culinary royalty. No one even noticed me since I was walking behind James. I was obscured, like the moon in a fatty lunar eclipse.

  We entered the kitchen through two swinging stainless steel doors. On huge prep tables, workers got pans of barbeque and various sides ready for the steam tables out front. The smell of greens with onion and bacon, corn, fried okra and other dishes blended with the barbeque aroma into something that must have smelled like heaven to James.

  “There’s Slink, uh. Right there,” James stammered and waved. “Hi, Slink. This fellow wants to meet you and talk about having some catering done.”

  “Okay, come on back,” Slink hollered over banging pots and the hum of overhead vents.

  When Inskip and I started to walk between the tables to the rear area where Slink was, we found James would not fit between the prep tables. There was not enough space. A narrow opening and way too much of James. The height of the tables caught him where he was the widest.

  “You go on ahead and I’ll wait for you out front. I’m gonna go say hi to the ladies and check some of the side dishes I didn’t have room for on my tray the first time around.”