by Tim Dorsey
“Maybe we shouldn’t be so close to the window,” said Jim.
More spotlights came on from the squad cars, triangulating their target, Old Man Ortega’s place. A half-track arrived with federal and military agents. Then everybody sat and waited in suspense. A half hour passed. More headlights appeared at the end of the street. The agents turned with their guns. “Hold your fire!” Delivery trucks from Backgammon Pizza and Pizza Shack raced up the street, weaving between the officers and the Ortega house and pulling up in front of 837 Triggerfish, where college students were watching the drama unfold from lawn chairs.
The standoff resumed. A small bomb-squad robot on a remote-controlled dolly rolled up to the front door. It had cost the city three hundred thousand dollars and had a two-inch forged outer casing that could handle armor-piercing projectiles, extreme heat and radiation bombardment. The house’s front door opened, and a small Spanish man in his underwear cursed and kicked the robot over and slammed the door shut. The robot’s wheels spun in the air. They went to Plan B. Tear gas and battering rams. Old Man Ortega was dragged screaming from the house.
5
A LIGHT SPRINKLE FELL on south Tampa the next afternoon, which meant all the streets flooded. The stormsewer system wouldn’t work, but the city budget was strained and the money was needed to expand the mayor’s office and build another football stadium.
The water was knee deep on the west end of the pre-owned yard at Tampa Bay Motors. Salesmen used canoes until the parking lot fell below flood stage. Then they switched to golf carts and rode out to inspect the damage. Most of the cars wouldn’t start, carpets squished.
The top salesman at Tampa Bay Motors, Rocco Silvertone, opened the driver’s door of a white Suburban. Twenty gallons of water and three fish spilled out.
JIM DAVENPORT LOVED his Martha dearly, and he always wanted to do something big for her, show her how special she was. Martha had been talking about getting a Suburban for over a year—it was her dream vehicle. But there had never been the money.
All that had changed with the promotion to Florida. Jim decided it was time. It would be a surprise.
Jim drove out to Tampa Bay Motors, the largest used-car dealership on Florida’s west coast, a sprawling eighty acres on drained wetlands near the airport. Tampa Bay Motors sold everything from Yugos to BMWs and even the occasional Rolls. Everybody knew about Tampa Bay Motors. They were all over TV, ran big newspaper spreads and held a grand reopening the second Saturday of every month.
Jim saw the dealership ten blocks away. It seemed to go on forever, a sea of car roofs all the way to the bay. He figured white must have been a big color in recent model years.
Jim pulled into the lot, and a salesman zipped up in a golf cart. He greeted Jim with the warmth of twins separated at birth, shaking Jim’s hand with both of his.
“Rocco Silvertone,” said the salesman.
“Jim Davenport,” said Jim.
“What can I do you for today?”
Jim told him.
Rocco slapped Jim on the back. “Let’s take a ride.” They got in the golf cart. Rocco wanted Jim to know he was his best friend. He tried to feel out whether Jim went to church regularly or liked to talk pussy. He drove with one hand and showed Jim pictures in his wallet of someone else’s children.
They pulled up to a row of low-mileage Suburbans, and Jim picked out a white four-by-four with gold trim.
Rocco got the keys from the lock box and dangled them in front of Jim. “Shall we?”
They headed up Dale Mabry Highway, Rocco riding shotgun. Jim knew Rocco was riding shotgun because Rocco yelled “Shotgun!” as he got in the car. Jim liked the way the Suburban handled. He made a right at the first light and the windshield wipers went on.
“Did I do that?” said Jim.
“Must have hit it by accident.” Rocco reached over for the wiper control, but it wouldn’t turn off. He jiggled it a few times, and the wipers stopped.
“Is that a problem?” asked Jim.
“Absolutely not,” said Rocco.
“It looked like it was a problem. An electrical short or something.”
“That because it’s so advanced. It’s all controlled by computers”—Rocco pointed up—“and satellites. It’s very, very modern.” Rocco nodded and smiled.
Jim drove some more. He liked the Suburban. In fact, he liked it a lot. They stopped at another light and Jim turned to Rocco. “Say…”
Rocco had the glove compartment open and was working on something that was sparking and smoking. He popped the cover off the fuse panel and burned himself.
“Ouch!”
“What’s the matter?” asked Jim.
“Nothing.”
“I saw sparks. And smoke.”
“That’s the warning system,” said Rocco. “Added safety.”
“It looked like we were about to have a fire.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to look.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Remember the Pinto?”
“Yeah?”
“They never looked like they were about to have a fire.”
“So?”
“So then they’d suddenly burst into flames,” said Rocco. “If you have a family, believe me you want this feature.”
The wipers started again.
Rocco reached and jiggled the lever, and they stopped.
“I had a friend who owned a car like this,” said Jim. “It was in a flood.”
“Flood?” said Rocco, laughing heartily. “This is Florida. It’s flat. And we’re right on the bay; it all drains off. It’s impossible to have a flood here.”
“I don’t know…”
“Don’t worry. Rocco’s got you covered. Everything’s guaranteed. Bumper-to-bumper, five years or fifty thousand miles…”
Jim rode back to the showroom in the golf cart. He still wasn’t sure. But he knew how much Martha wanted it. He turned to Rocco.
“Okay, how much?”
“How much do you want to pay a month?”
“I don’t go by that,” said Jim. “I want to know the total price.”
“Oh, we can get you the total price.”
“Good.”
They smiled at each other. A pause.
“So?” said Jim.
“So how much do you want to pay a month?”
MARTHA WAS ON the porch swing with Nicole when a Suburban pulled into the driveway.
At first she thought it was someone lost, just turning around. Then Jim got out.
Martha couldn’t stop bouncing as she test-drove around the block eight times. She returned to the driveway and gave Jim another big hug.
“It’s great…” said Martha.
“But?”
“Well, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but I kept getting false warning lights.”
“I noticed that,” said Jim. “The windshield wipers activated twice on the test drive and again on the way home. But that’s okay, we’ve got a guarantee.”
“I just want to be safe driving the kids.”
“You’re absolutely right,” said Jim. “I’ll take it back and have them look at it.”
Then Martha went back to gushing. She was still at it when Gladys came over with a bottle of cabernet and a covered basket of panini.
“You got a new car!”
“A new used car,” said Jim.
“Same difference,” said Gladys. She ran over to it. Other neighbors arrived, and they slowly circled the vehicle like a crashed UFO. Then they got bored and left. Gladys went up on the porch with Jim and Martha.
“You made a great choice,” she said. “I saw a head-on between a Suburban and a Fiesta. The Suburban drove away. They hosed the people out of the Fiesta.”
6
TRAFFIC ON DALE MABRY HIGHWAY honked and scattered to avoid the gold Lincoln Navigator drifting in and out of its lane.
A Datsun blared its horn and accelerated past.
The Lincoln’s driver stuck his
head and middle finger out the window. “Suck my dick!”
He pulled his head back in the window. “No, not you,” he said in his cell-phone headset. He looked down at the map spread across the steering wheel and wandered into oncoming traffic.
A Tempo honked.
The driver’s head was back out the Lincoln’s window. “Hey ass-wipe! I’m working! Unlike you, I have a fuckin’ job!”
“No, I’m talking to some ass-wipe,” he said into his headset. “No, a different ass-wipe.”
The driver located his position on the map, which indicated he needed to take the next right. He saw the red light ahead and cut through a corner gas station without slowing. The Navigator had a bumper sticker: MANATEES BEND PROPS.
Lance Boyle was forty-nine years old and used Grecian Formula on his ponytail and beard. He decided his beer gut was hurting his chances with the babes, so he began wearing the Untucked Barber Shirt of Denial. The radio was on, two shock jocks reading the news tag-team.
“…And in Tampa, the well-known car dealer Honest Al was crushed to death…”
“He tipped a vending machine over on himself!”
“What a dumb-ass!”
Lance had also sold used cars once upon a time, but now he was in real estate. It began at 2 A.M. on a Wednesday when Lance was surfing drunk for Sex Court on the Playboy Channel and instead found an infomercial on how to triple your income and “move out of that one-bedroom apartment.” It had something to do with buying and selling houses. Lance looked around his one-bedroom apartment and called the toll-free number.
Lance didn’t remember ordering the Instant Wealth Kit when the mailman delivered it three days later. But he opened it anyway, Xeroxed it, and returned the original for a full refund.
That was five years ago, and Lance had since defined his own niche. Lance was the one in a thousand who actually made wealth with the Instant Wealth Kit. He would find a checkered neighborhood and buy all the properties he could on both sides of the same street. Then he’d rent them out and wait for the houses in between to go on the market. When he finally owned enough consecutive homes, he demolished them and erected upscale town houses.
Lance was all set to begin construction on his latest complex; he just needed a few more homes. This was nail-biting time. It became a race against the clock. While waiting for those last owners to sell, Lance’s tenants were busy destroying his rental houses like six-foot Formosan termites. If he completed the string of properties, it wouldn’t matter. They’d all be plowed under for the town houses. But if the straight flush couldn’t be assembled, Lance would have to sell off the rentals at a huge loss because of the Keith Moon wear and tear. Lance could have screened for better tenants, but the ones who were murder on the plumbing were also the best at running off home owners. Lance’s current project was supposed to make him a killing.
That’s how it looked on paper. The reality was something else. Turnover had hit a ceiling, and the acquisitions stalled. Meanwhile, his rentals crumbled. Lance decided to become a more active landlord.
The Lincoln pulled up to a red light. Lance waited for a break in traffic to make another right, but traffic was too heavy. Then Lance noticed all the cars had their lights on. “Oh, for the love of…!”
A funeral procession.
Lance used the idle time to pull a tiny metal nitroglycerin-pill tube from his pocket and snort some speed. He didn’t like the idea of doing speed, because he was a staunch supporter of the War on Drugs. But this was business, and right now he needed every advantage. The funeral procession was long and slow, and Lance began punching the steering wheel. “C’mon, all these people couldn’t have known this motherfucker!”
Lance finally honked and cut off one of the mourners and pulled into the procession. He turned on his headlights. There, he thought, now I don’t have to worry about any more red lights. He tooted up again and began humming as he sailed through three intersections, completely forgetting what address he was looking for, then remembering at the last second when he saw the street sign. He turned sharply onto Triggerfish Lane, barely missing a white Suburban.
Jim Davenport swerved to avoid a gold Lincoln Navigator as he turned out of Triggerfish Lane and headed across town to Tampa Bay Motors. He found Rocco Silvertone at the showroom water-cooler and explained his problem.
“Oh, sure, absolutely! We can take a look at that electrical system!” said Rocco. “Anything for my old friend Jim.”
Rocco walked Jim over to the service department and placed him in the care of three ex-cons wiping oil off their hands. Rocco then made his thumb and index finger into a gun and pointed it at Jim. “Call me if you need anything, big guy!” Then he left for the day.
Jim sat in the service waiting room an hour and a half, watching talking fungus on Ricki Lake and reading an US magazine article, “My Life Was a Living Hell!” by Gary Coleman.
One of the ex-cons stuck his head in the door. The car was ready. Jim thanked them and drove off the lot. No warning lights. He tested the wipers. Perfect.
He made a left turn. Someone honked. Jim looked around. Nobody. He made another left, and someone honked again. Jim realized he was the one honking. He looked down at the steering wheel to see where the horn was. His hands weren’t near it.
Jim made a honking U-turn and headed back to the dealership. He drove around behind the showroom and made a left into the service bay.
A mechanic came out wiping his hands on a towel. “You honked?”
“No I didn’t,” said Jim.
The mechanic stopped wiping and gave Jim a look.
“You did something when you were working on her, and now every time I make a left, the horn honks.”
“Couldn’t have. I wasn’t working anywhere near the horn.”
“All I know is it never did it before, I bring it in here, and now it does it all the time.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“I’m not saying you did it. I’m just telling you what the problem is.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to fix it.”
“I’ll have to fill out a work order.”
Sally Jessy came on in the waiting room. Jim picked up Popular Mechanics, learning how to build a two-man submarine with hydraulic claws. An hour passed. Someone on TV began whimpering.
The mechanic stuck his head in the door. “Ready.”
Jim walked up to the Suburban, opened the door and turned the wheel to the left. The horn honked.
“It’s still doing it.”
“Let me look at the work order.” The mechanic held up a yellow sheet of paper. “Says, ‘Fix horn.’” He reached through the open window and hit the horn. It honked.
“The horn works.”
“I know it works,” said Jim. “It goes off every time I make a left.”
The mechanic was silent.
“You didn’t fix it.”
“The work order says fix horn.”
“And?”
“The horn works.”
“But I want it to stop blowing every time I turn left.”
The mechanic pointed at the yellow paper. “I just go by what the work order says.”
“But you’re the one who wrote the work order. I told you what the problem was.”
“I don’t make the rules.”
“I want the horn fixed.”
“You want to talk to the manager?”
“I want to talk to the manager.”
“Hey, Charley!” the mechanic yelled into the service bay. “Guy out here wants to talk to you!”
“What about?” said Charley, emerging from the bay wiping his hands.
“Guy says his horn don’t work.”
“No, that’s not it—”
Charley reached in the car and hit the horn. It honked.
“Sounds fixed to me.”
“It goes off every time I make a left.”
“Want us to take a look at it?”
“I wanted you to look
at it the first time.”
Charley grabbed the yellow sheet of paper. “That’s not what the work order says.”
Jim bit his lip. He began speaking calmly and slowly. “The horn goes off every time I turn left, whether I hit the horn or not. I would like you to pick up tools and do repair activity so that every time I turn left, the horn does not make the horn sound in the future anymore.”
“You asking us to disconnect the horn? Afraid I can’t do that. Against the law.”
“No, I want it fixed.”
“It’s already fixed.”
“No it’s not.”
Charley reached in and hit the horn again. It honked.
“Ninety-six dollars.”
“Ninety-six dollars!”
“Standard fee. Fixing horn. Says here right in the book.”
“But it was never broken.”
Charley squinted at Jim. “Mister, you’ve been arguing with me for some time now that the horn wasn’t fixed. And now you tell me it was never broken to begin with. I think you’re trying to pull something.”
“I’m not trying to pull anything.”
“I want you to start getting out your money right now.”
“What about the warranty?”
“Doesn’t cover unnecessary work.”
“What!”
“Is there going to be trouble?”
“No, I don’t want any trouble.” Jim took out his checkbook.
“We don’t accept personal checks.”
JIM WALKED TO an ATM, came back, paid. He got in the car, put on his seat belt and turned on the radio.
Bang.
The passenger airbag went off.
Charley came out of the repair bay with a dipstick. “What was that bang?”
Jim pointed at the deployed bag. “I turned on the radio.”
“The airbag’s deployed.”
“I know.”
“You’re not allowed to drive like that.”
JIM DROVE HOME with his newly purchased and installed airbag. He was afraid to offend other drivers by honking at them, so each time Jim had to make a left turn, he drove an extra block and made a box of three rights instead. He got to Triggerfish Lane and pulled into the driveway.