We passed the F350's, F250's and the F150's. Explorers, Edges, and Fiestas. Then a nice array of imported trades. Finally the Rose Garden.
“These will be at the auto auction this weekend if we don’t sell ‘em by Thursday.” He gestured toward the back row of pitiful rides.
“How about that Black VW? Does it run?”
“Sure. Let me get a battery charger.”
“It’s got a dead battery?”
“I’m just assuming here,” he came back and gave the car a token crank. Sure enough, dead as a duck in Dallas.
Bernie began hooking the red battery charger up to the black Volkswagen sedan.
“You know, I don’t recognize the model,” I wondered.
“They call it a Tarjetta,” Bernie said falling into the driver’s seat and cranking the V-dub.
“Like a Jetta?”
“Sort of. It’s a Mexican model. Tarjetta.”
“Sounds exotic.”
“It is, Tarjetta means cardboard in Spanish,” Bernie said over the whining engine.
“That doesn’t inspire confidence,” I said, loudly. “The belts squeal.”
“We prefer the term ‘sing’. Anyway, that’s why it’s here in the back row. Nineteen fifty takes it and the singing fan belt is no extra charge.” He spoke with effort, through his hangover.
“It’s got no radio.”
“Good thing the belt sings,” He quipped.
I began writing him a check before he even finished laughing.
Chapter 35
Fifty jobs worked, times my fee; less what I paid Wendy to type up the reports would get the old check book going again.
I made it to Friday. I had been on the road for nearly three days straight photographing and documenting mobile homes, some vacant and some occupied by delinquent borrowers. This got me out of hot water with LISA and into some green. I tried mending things with Wendy by means of some flowers delivered, along with a check, and was able to get her to type and email the reports.
Joel Axeman from LISA had me on the phone, praising me for a change.
“It’s like when you first started working for me three years ago. These reports and pictures are great and the turn around time was awesome. Way to catch up. Good thing, I was ready to can you, honestly,” Axeman said enthusiastically.
“Thanks, Joel, I guess,” I mumbled. I was in a pile on the futon in my home office. My blood was polluted with bad quick shop coffee, trucker vitamins and pastries with questionable expiration dates. There were bags on the bags under my eyes and my gut was in a twisted knot of beef jerky and heat lamp corn dogs. Staring at a windshield for three days and fourteen hundred miles had done it. My mind was toast and my body felt like partially hydrogenated oil.
“I figure you’ve probably been distracted by some chick or some delinquent alimony or something, right?”
“No, actually I have a rash that won’t go away,” I was anxious to get him off the phone. It worked.
“Little too much info there, Rust. I gotta call holding. I’ll send some more work Monday.”
The Tarjetta had run like a singing top all week. I was waiting to see if it would be wrecked, burned, stolen or otherwise made unusable before I had a radio installed in it. I had been listening to my armband head phone radio that I bought to wear years ago, for jogging. It had never been used until this week. Listening to a lot of public radio and horrible local sports shows had cleared my head. I was making a plan for next week, but I needed help.
I called on the one person who was perfect to help me, even though he probably despised me.
“Really I think I’ve been entirely too nice to you, considering you broke my arm,” Fred Smithey said.
I wanted to make one more run at getting Tammy’s magical Ford Rangers back to her. In case it didn’t work out, I wanted to make sure my business was taken care of while I was gone.
“It’s only for a week and it’ll be easy. You’ll make money while you’re on vacation.” I was trying to get him excited about the opportunity. It was like trying to make accounting sound interesting.
“I didn’t mean to break your arm. I thought you were trying to kill me and even then I was only trying to scare you away,” I was pleading.
“Can you get me tickets to the Alabama/ Tennessee game?” He asked. I was making headway.
“I might be able to, yes,” I said, thinking this would be a hard one to do without spending big money.
“And can I stay at your house?”
“Okay.” Weird old dude staying in my house? No problem. Fred was mostly harmless.
“And can you get some Viagra for me and the wife?”
“Are you serious?” I was shocked because Fred seemed like the quiet sensible type you would not expect to even have a penis, much less try to use it on a woman.
“You broke my arm. I am considering what you ask. These are my requests. Call me back if you can come through,” Fred hung up.
He was sounding more like the Sultan of Swing than a sultan in a sling. When a guy like me has to pander to the likes of Fred Smithey it is a good time to hit the road. Even Bandit looked at me like I was a worn-out screw-head.
I let Bandit out into the back yard, checked to make sure he had water, stuck a pen in my shirt pocket and left.
Thirty minutes later I was in Oakridge, at Sound Emporium, a low rent version of Buy-It’s car audio section.
Oakridge didn’t have any national chains when it came to car stereos and I was in a hurry. The Hispanic salesman took my keys and agreed to fill the hole in the dash with radio / CD player and add some better speakers for $199 plus tax. I took my briefcase and CD wallet from the car and called a cab to take me to Oakridge National Labs.
The cab let me out in the line of cars to go through security. They searched my case. I thought one of the guards was eyeing my Led Zeppelin sampler, but he left it in the briefcase. I was given a visitor’s badge and began to walk in the direction of Randal Kendrick’s office building. A nice security officer offered to let me a ride on a government golf cart. It was still warm in the afternoon in late October, so I jumped on the rear bench seat to save some calories.
I entered Kendrick’s building and stood waiting for the receptionist to notice me. This took a long time since she was of the fair persuasion. Finally, she sensed a presence.
“Mr. Stover to see Randall Kendrick,” I said confidently.
“Do you have an appointment?” She chirped.
“No, I’m sorry. It couldn’t wait. Can you tell him it’s about Darin Mosley?” I knew the name of his dead security officer would get his attention and it should induce him to talk to me.
The nice lady spoke into her headset telephone and then said, “He can see you.” She handed me a second visitor’s badge with further clearance.
“I am almost sure that I have nothing to say to you.” Randall Kendrick barely looked up from his reports as he spoke. His suit and graying temples with his cheater magnifying glasses down on his nose all spelled control, but his right hand shook slightly.
“You were much nicer last time,” I feigned surprise.
“The last time I saw you I was suffering from an unfortunate overdose of Prozac and bourbon. Today I am feeling much better, or was, until you got here. Please leave or say something and then leave. If you have to talk, make it quick.”
“The boy that made those trucks switch, I need him.”
See if that is quick enough.
“I won’t give you that information and if I did, it wouldn’t help. His mother is a ball- busting iron maiden, very protective of her son. She has a restraining order against Oakridge National Labs and its personnel. Says I caused her son to have a nervous breakdown. You throw one chair and it’s like you’re branded as an asshole for life after that...”
“I have to talk to him. I am missing both trucks now and my client wishes to get them back. I am dedicated. I would like to save us both time by not having to go to the police about your relati
onship with Darin Mosley and his crimes.” I raised an eyebrow and waited.
“You can’t prove anything and you know it.”
“You’re right, but I am a good story teller and the embarrassment of an inquiry right now could be the last nail in your career’s coffin.”
“You are a pain in the ass, Stover,” Kendrick’s upper lip was sweating now. He looked at me the way one looks at a turd in a hot tub. He scratched out a note on a legal pad. “I hope this woman eats your lunch. Get out before I call security.” He broke his gaze from mine and became fascinated with his computer screen. I could see his internet browser was logged into LandsEnd.com.
“Try more bourbon and Prozac and I think you’ll be fine.”
I picked up the note. The name Sally Madison Mt. Gideon, Ohio was written on it.
A cab took me back to downtown Oakridge and left me at Sound Emporium where I picked up the VW. This Mexican German car now had a killer Japanese CD player in it. To complete the cultural melt down of this V-Dub I popped in my Zeppelin CD.
I ate a bean burrito and drank a coke on the way back to Knoxville. I cranked the stereo up and then cranked the manual sunroof open to release any of the burrito’s after effects.
Chapter 36
Morning. A small leather bag. Toiletries. A clean shirt and khakis. A Rand McNally and a thermos of coffee. A nervous border collie. These are the things that I piled into the Tarjetta for my pilgrimage to Mt. Gideon, Ohio.
Why would anyone want to go to Mt. Gideon, you may ask? Well, if you are searching for a mad boy scientist who holds the key to everything Einstein couldn’t finish, evidently Mt. Gideon is the place to look.
I didn’t want to go. I had tried calling Sally Madison, several times. But she hung up, cussed me, hung up some more, before I could even say a word.
“You’re not talking to my boy!” She screamed at me on my final attempt.
“How do you know that’s what I want?” Amazed I was allowed to speak.
“Everybody who calls from an 865 area code wants to talk to my boy.” Slam, she hung up.
This was a long, boring drive. I stared at the windshield. The radio helped. The hum of the road eventually knocked the dog out. He lay on the passenger seat, his head on crossed paws, eyes wide shut.
Small mountains then bigger mountains lead to the flats of Lexington and the counterpane of bluegrass. The rhythmic bump of the VW’s bald tires on the highway expansion joints was about lull me to sleep just like Bandit.
Right then I saw a brown sign denoting a Kentucky State Park. The adrenaline from the belly-wracking laughter kept me going the rest of the way to my destination. The sign read “Big Bone Lick State Park.”
It was a typical three-bedroom ranch, seventies-style, on a typical tree-lined street, in a typical central southern Ohio town. It had typical foundation landscaping. It had three small portal windows in a diagonal on its Brady Bunch-looking front door. The hedges were mostly holly with some other shiny-leafed shrub mixed in. This worried me since I recently had my neck slashed in a fall into a nasty hedge. Time to suck it up anyway. This typical house was my last lead in what had been a very atypical investigation.
As I approached William Madison’s family home, the hedge stared at me in a menacing way that only a nasty hedge can. I touched the jumbo band-aid on my neck nervously and continued forward down a narrow walk darkened by mold and lichens, to all appearances undaunted, though my position in this caper had been badly weakened. It began as a crazy way to try and get a chick half my age into bed (the way all good cases start) and blossomed into something real that could have been a major money maker. Now both trucks were gone. No more traces or leads to follow. This last ditch effort was my only hope to find any connection to the missing trucks. Other than that, this was just a typical house.
You could have called them Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, but there were three of them. The brothers Madison. The Midwest’s answer to Larry, Daryl and Daryl? The one with the ridiculous mustache that nearly grew to meet his chops did most of the talking. Said his name was Ned. He invited me through the bagged-out screened door and the orange wooden door with its three portals. I followed him to the kitchen where he asked me to sit down at an old scratched table where the three of them were playing cards.
Ned offered to deal me in.
“We’re just playing for pretzels because pay day ain’t until next Friday.”
“True dat,” said the second brother.
“Yeah,” the third in agreed.
I shook my head. “Thanks for the invite but I need to speak to your brother, the scientist.”
Ned and his brothers snickered a bit when I said the word scientist.
“Something funny?”
“True dat.”
“Yeah.”
“We always wanted him to invent something really useful, like a beer that makes you feel drunk for a month or a cigarette that never burns out,” Said Ned. The two other bothers grunted and nodded.
“I see.”
“Well, yeah. My brother ain’t much of a scientist anymore. We call him Granny because he is obsessed with knitting. Momma wouldn’t want you talking to him anyway because he is soft in the head. Stays in his room all day knittin’ and mumblin’. Momma likes it because we get to spend his government disability check. He don’t want anything but yarn, and it turns out yarn is pretty cheap.”
“Besides he ain’t here to talk to even if we’d let ya,” Ned raised his eyebrows and smirked as he ate one of his poker chips.
“If he’s so unstable, why’s he been allowed to go missing?”
“I think it’s really Mom’s fault,” Ned frowned, leaned back and scratched himself a little. “She forgot to get him some more yarn at the fabric store and he just walked out while we were all wasted. Mom took the Caprice to go look for him, plus we were out of Little Kings,” he said, and looked at me seriously. The remaining brothers snickered.
“What are Little Kings?”
“Cream ale, you idiot. Beer. God, what are you, a fag?” Ned laughed. Then they all laughed. Guess I’m not as smart as I thought I was.
“Can I at least see his room?”
“Okay. Hope you like pot holders,” they all died laughing at this.
The troubled scientist William Madison was a very prolific knitter. He had twelve cardboard boxes overflowing with knitted pot holders. Except for the boxes, the room was orderly. Still the overall impression was one of clutter since it was only a ten by ten room with shit load of yarn in it.
I was turning to head for the door when a fist grabbed a handful of my shirt. The hand jerked down and I was face to face with Momma Madison.
“You’re that idiot who keeps calling about my boy!” Her breath almost melted my nose with its combined sour garlic, cigarette and beer stink. You noticed it, the way you notice when someone dropped a cinderblock on your little toe.
“I just want to speak to your boy for a few minutes.”
“Get the hell outta here!” Her words were slurred and she whacked me in the nuts with a cardboard suitcase full of Little Kings Cream Ale. This furthered my dislike for cream ale. She began dragging me toward the front door by my ear.
“You gotta get lost, because we gotta go look for the boy. Just came back here first so the beer wouldn’t get warm.”
“True dat.”
“Yeah.”
She led me out the screen door and with a final push sent me tumbling down the steps. The overgrown grass padded my fall. I looked back as she closed the door and saw that she was barely over five foot tall. Close up she seemed a lot bigger.
It was easy to get up and limp to the car without the weight of my dignity and manhood to slow me down. I started the Tarjetta and drove off, leaning forward towards the steering wheel a little. The dog looked at me as though to say in a Bill Clinton voice “I feel your pain.”
More bad luck, a flat tire at the edge of downtown. Here the road widened to four lanes and I pulled onto the shou
lder. I began soaking my oxford with sweat as I jacked up the Tarjetta. The sun was starting to set and the occasional car or semi whooshing by was a major distraction.
I looked the flat over - five framing nails, straight in. This was not bad luck; this was a present from Mrs. Madison. I wrestled the donut spare into place and was ready to put the lug nuts back on. No lug nuts. I looked under the car and then went behind the car to check the trunk which I had left open. Absent- mindedness was starting to set in, along with fatigue and the pounding ache in my nads due to Mrs. Madison smashing them with a case of beer.
I was startled by the presence of a man standing behind the car. He was young, with messy hair, and wearing a parka over a faded golf shirt and loose cargo pants. He had on blue socks and no shoes. I looked around; he had not come in a vehicle. I looked into my car. Bandit was looking out the back window and wagging his tail. So much for the furry alarm, but this guy was obviously harmless.
“Hi.”
“Hello,” he stood with his hands in his pockets.
“Can I help you?”
“I was just taking a break. No shoes, you know. My feet are tired,” he said, looking down at his wiggling toes.
“And why didn’t you put on your shoes?”
“Well, I don’t normally go out. I don’t own any shoes right now. I haven’t needed them.”
“I thought you might be wearing Nike’s new clear sandals.”
“Ha, that’s a good one,” the laugh lacked enthusiasm. “Is that a Tarjetta?”
“Yep,” I was distracted. I was scanning the ground for the misplaced lug nuts.
“I didn’t think they made those any more.”
“They don’t. This one is used. It ran hot going up mountains in Jellico and it has really cheap tires, as you can see.”
I lifted up the loose wheel with its flat tire and set it in the small trunk.
“Yeah. Those bias-ply tires aren’t worth a darn. But did you know that if you were in you vehicle and it was struck by lightning, bias-ply tires are the best insulators? No steel belts, you see. You’d almost surely survive. The steel belts they build into quality tires can conduct electricity and make lightning ground out and electrocute anyone in the car,” he rocked on his sock feet as he spoke, keeping his hands deep in his pockets, though it was not cold out.
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