“Damn,” Toby said, gaping at the pile before them.
They looked at the back end of the car.
“What the hell is it?” Adrian said, thinking; old, that’s what it is.
Toby moved forward and shoved a few boxes, causing a minor landslide and the sudden eruption of a nesting bird from somewhere inside. He leapt backwards and came back more cautiously, bending to read a chrome insignia.
“It’s a Studebaker.” He sounded dubious.
“What kind?”
“What do you mean, “What kind?”
“What model?”
“I dunno. There’s a tag. Says Lark VIII.” He pronounced the unfamiliar Roman Numerals ‘Vee-Eye Eye Eye.’
Excitement pushed Adrian forward to carve a path through the jumbled boxes of books, magazines and glass jars. He was like an explorer loose in the warehouse of all past garage sales. Adrian sneezed at the dust as he wormed himself inward toward the driver’s side. The window was streaked with grime and hard to see through in the dim light.
The shadowy interior showed a long bench seat covered with a faded blue seat cover. The steering wheel was immense by modern standards and the metal dashboard primitive and unsafe, with huge glass gauges and brushed aluminum trim.
“This is so old!” Toby stated in the awed tone of one for whom anything earlier than last year had antique value. “It could be worth something.”
“Could it?” Adrian asked, not at all interested. He backed out of the garage slowly, returning to the jungle of the back yard.
Toby stayed inside, still peering through the window. “It’s a three speed stick, Mr. B! And it’s got...” he paused, staring intently, “Only 53,211 miles on it.” He came up for air, saw Adrian missing and squeezed out on young legs and enthusiasm. “This is way great! I bet we could fix it up.”
Adrian stopped to look at him. Such a young face, unmarked by either years or senseless violence, ruined hopes or blind fears. Toby was everything Jesus Gallegos was not: enthusiastic, confident...alive. For Jesus life had been just another broken day. For Toby a beat up old car could be something to marvel at, a challenge to be met effortlessly.
Adrian looked at the bright eyes and felt old. “Go work on the yard,” he said. When the boy left, he walked slowly to the house and sat heavily in a new kitchen chair seeing nothing at all.
“But I know about cars,” Toby said again. “I’ve been in auto shop class for two years.”
“We’re not going to work on the car,” Adrian said. Again. Toby, with the persistence of a five-year-old managed to bring up the car every time he came in for lemonade or to use the bathroom. He used whatever excuse he could find. “You want to save this old board? How about this one?”
“Why not?” he finally asked in exasperation.
“Because—” Adrian paused. Because why? He was bored at work already, he had no hobbies, couldn’t do much until he got rid of this god damned crutch... so why not?
Toby saw the look in his eyes and grinned. “You’re gonna do it.”
“No I’m not. I don’t need a project car.”
“You’re gonna do it!” Toby started to dance around the tiny kitchen.
“Shut up,” Adrian said. But he picked up the phone and dialed.
“The car?” Mrs. Pocatello said.
“Yes, the one in the shed.”
“The Studebaker?”
“Yes,” said Adrian wondering. Does she have other sheds, with other cars?
“That was Henry’s,” she said in a cigarette smoky voice. “He’s dead, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. I’m sorry”
“It’s been there since, oh; I don’t know how long. Since, let’s see... Henry bought it from a man after the flood of sixty-five. We were living in Sheridan then and the car floated into the front of our house—”
“Floated?”
“It really was quite a flood. The car floated in, broke the porch and wound up in the living room. Henry was at work when the flood came—he worked at Gates and it was quite a surprise, I’ll tell you.”
“I’d imagine.”
“You just don’t expect a Studebaker in the parlor,” mused Mrs. Pocatello. “Why are you asking?”
Toby sat impatiently at the table, sipping a Coke. “What about the car?” he whispered fiercely.
“Shhh,” Adrian said.
“1think he moved to Montana.”
“What?”
Toby whispered more loudly, “What about the car?”
“Bozeman.”
Adrian gestured at Toby to be still and listened to the phone.
“Henry bought the car from him just before we moved and we drove it for years. Henry was always tinkering but he had trouble with asthma and couldn’t smoke any more. Since he couldn’t smoke he didn’t want to work on the car and we bought the house you’re in now and Henry just parked it in the shed. Is that the car you mean? The Studebaker?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He up and quit, just like that. Smoking, I mean. I never understood how he could do that, with me smoking like a chimney. Well, or working on the car, either. He had will power, my Henry. But he said it just wasn’t the same anymore, so he took up carpentry instead, because you couldn’t smoke around that anyway, you’d catch fire or burn down the house. It’s funny though.”
“What is?” Behind Adrian, Toby looked like he might vibrate through the floor. Patience wasn’t wasted on the young—they didn’t have any to waste.
“Henry quit smoking so easily, and I haven’t been able to stop, even after all these years. Now he’s gone.”
She sighed, her voice taking a surprising edge of dry humor. “But I’m still here, aren’t I? And still smoking. Why are you asking about the car?”
Adrian felt strangely hesitant, as if this was a water shed moment; which was ridiculous, it was just a car. “I’d like to buy it,” he said quietly.
Toby let out his breath with an audible whoosh now that the question had finally been asked.
Mrs. Pocatello remained silent for several seconds. Adrian regretted having asked. This was her link to her husband, after all. How could he be so callous?
“I won’t accept less than six hundred. Not one penny less.”
Toby, danced around the kitchen, threatening to topple the dishes. “This will be so cool. Just wait, Mr. B. It’ll be Rad!” He even held branches for Adrian when they returned to the shed and stared at the car.
There was a sinking feeling as they looked around. Toby stopped, quivering like a retriever at point.
“How do we move it?” he asked, frowning.
Perhaps when the car had arrived in the late sixties there had been a road or an alley, even a rutted path. Since then nature had attacked the yard with a vengeance. Three enormous lilac bushes surrounded the area like sentries. A fence, erected by a neighbor, barricaded the back and side. The shed itself had sagged to a degree that the doors would no longer open far enough to permit a car to exit, and the amount of junk all around would’ve daunted Hercules.
“Forget it, Toby,” Adrian said at last. “There’s no way to move this thing.”
“Sure there is.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.” Toby moved forward into the dim interior, only his voice drifting back. “You’ll think of something.”
“But I...” Adrian realized he’d been thinking about it the wrong way. Considered as an engineering problem, if an alley ran over there and if those power lines were high enough... the wall could be removed.
“Toby,” Adrian said. The boy reappeared carrying the ugliest lamp ever made.
“If you clear all this stuff out of here and you put it all back when we get the car out—”
“Yeah?”
“—I think I can get the car out.”
“Sure you can,” agreed Toby, still holding the lamp. Toby’s estimate of Adrian’s abilities was based on never having seen them.
“That’s why this is so coo
l. You do your part and I’ll do mine. We’re partners, just like Batman and Robin.”
Swell. Adrian thought; the dynamic duo: Toby and Mr. B.
The sky hung flat and dull gray, thick with cotton clouds. The temperature, arguing for snow, compromised for a chilly drizzle. April in Colorado. Adrian, in a thick sweater and thin jacket, supervised his teenage crew a short distance from the lopsided shed. Toby, inexplicably in shorts, bounced and hummed with undisguised glee, exhorting his posse to, “pull, you guys; pull!”
“Careful now,” Adrian directed. Four ropes, attached to ring bolts in the upper side of the shed, stretched tautly to four boys who leaned back, maintaining a strong tension.
The wall, never really straight, tottered for a moment, hesitated, and fell to the wet ground with a groan, displaying the side view of the car.
“We did it!” Toby yelled with teenage glee at having destroyed something. The boys erupted into small dances, smacked hands, strutting and hoots of victory.
Into this the voice of Adrian announced flatly, “We’re not done yet. Now we’ve got the hard part to do.”
The wall was down, the car exposed. Toby and crew attacked the pile of debris like demented ants, carting and hauling until the pile was outside in the rain, getting soggy for the first time in twenty years.
“What’s next?” Toby looked at Adrian like he was a magician. Take the wall down, how cool was that?
“Start it.” Adrian handed over a small set of keys.
“Start it,” Toby agreed with a wild eyed giggle. The tan door creaked open and the boy eased into the wide bench seal. He searched for a keyhole on the steering wheel.
“On the dash. next to the radio,” Adrian said.
Toby slipped the worn key into the slot and turned it, Nothing. He pumped the gas and tried again. He looked to the engineering wizard who’d gotten them this far, but received only a resigned look.
“Get the ropes guys. We’re gonna have to pull it.”
Moving the little car across the jungle of the back yard required the cutting of several bushes, the removal of a ten-foot section of fence and a lot of falling down in the cold wet mud. Also three large Domino’s pizzas, delivered while the car was stuck in the side yard.
The boys sprawled in Adrian’s living room, devouring the pizza. Though the body count was high in the small room, Adrian felt none of the closed in fear. It was odd, he thought, watching the high energy squirming all around him, these were the same kids as the Lords, just turned inside out. Adrian sipped a Coke and watched his crew, and thought a small nonspecific prayer for Jesus Gallegos. For all the Jesus Gallegos’s. wherever they were.
Eventually the Studebaker was shoved into the otherwise empty garage and the gang drifted away to more normal pursuits. each gratefully counting the thirty-dollar payment for a soggy mornings work.
“First rule about engineering,” Adrian said. He and Toby stood in the dark garage looking at the car in the light of a single dull light bulb. “You can do anything if you have enough money.”
Toby touched the cool metal of a fender. “What do we do next?”
“We buy tools.” Adrian considered the car and sighed. “A lot of tools.”
16 – Leon B. Shearing at Work
With an ease born of practice, ‘Leon B. Shearing’ steered the old van along the fence of the Ace Electric Company. “Fifth time,” he thought as the engine rumbled into silence, “and it becomes routine.”
He walked casually to the gate as if he belonged at an industrial sales warehouse at three in the morning. He reached into the pocket of the light weight blue jacket—so dark it was nearly black—and pulled out a key. He inserted it into the padlock and twisted. The lock opened.
This was so much better than the first two, he thought. Those times he’d brought a bolt cutler for the chain. There was no way you could look like you belonged carrying that thing. Cut the chain and everyone knew it was a robbery. He imagined the chaos. The police reports, the insurance, the paperwork. He’d been James Butler that time. The police had talked to him for an hour with no suspicion whatsoever.
This was better, It just required a little advance planning, easy for a smart fellow. Long before he showed up as a customer he’d made some fake ID’s and called a locksmith. “Lost my key,” he’d said to the guy. Showed him the employee card—Ace Electric. The guy made him a key on the spot. He paid $65 and waited three months before approaching the company.
He slid the chain from the gate and swung it open. He drove the van through, put the gate back, replaced the lock and drove to the warehouse. He parked at the loading dock—just another truck left overnight—and walked around to the front office. Fourth window from the rear of this old building was the bathroom. He slipped a little pry bar under the old wood and heard the tiny latch break. He pushed the window, jumped up and slid into the building.
It was dark, but that was all right, he’d been here before. Emmitt had given him a tour. He walked down the long corridor to the entry of the warehouse, glanced at the sign saying, Caution! This door alarmed after hours! and pulled it open. No alarm. He knew there wouldn’t be, as there were no wires anywhere near the door.
Let’s see, he mused. His order would be right over there, where Emmitt, bless his heart, had shown him. Six large cardboard boxes on a pallet sat waiting for a delivery that would never happen. He checked the invoice taped to a box. Yes; this was his.
He walked to the big sliding overhead door and pushed the button. The door whirred and groaned its slow rise. Before it was all the way open he was already sliding the boxes. They weren’t even heavy, which always surprised him. These incredibly expensive electronic circuits and one man could load them in a small van in less than two minutes.
But that was the whole idea wasn’t it?
Four-five-Six -he checked them off his list. There was still room in the van. He decided to shop. It would be better if the only items stolen weren’t an order connected to Leon B. Shearing. He spent a few minutes looking through the inventory shelves picking out boxes marked computer equipment.
By three-thirty he was done. He pressed the red button to lower the door and returned to the office bathroom. Shinnied out, closed the window and walked back to the van. No one would ever notice the broken latch. He recalled his first time, how every sound seemed too loud, how spooked he’d been. He never even used the motor for the door, releasing the manual latch to keep it quiet.
But that was then; he was a professional now, He relocked the gate when he was through and drove back to the Motel. He’d take a cab to the office tomorrow.
He figured he’d stay here in Schaumburg for about a week. The police would come to visit, he’d be appalled and co-operative, amazed and shocked. He was getting good at that. He’d get the call from Emmitt saying his order had been stolen, the dismay in the salesman’s voice, stammering. “We’ll get your order replaced, don’t you worry. It’ll only take a couple of weeks, a month maybe; these things aren’t easy to come by. I’ll call the factory today,” he’d promise.
But Leon B. Shearing, of the Trotter Sales Co, LLC, wouldn’t be able to wait. “The order is critical,” he’d insist. “If I can’t get those parts, I’m finished.” He’d demand his deposit back and a despondent Emmitt would agree, saying, “1understand. Leon. I understand.”
He smiled, thinking about it. That’s how it had gone before. It was how it would go again. He stopped at a red light on Pulaski and mused. Three more times, he thought, and it’s all over. Three more. Call it six hundred thousand, stolen and put into his bank account.
The light changed and he drove off, comfortable and relaxed. He left the van in the lot, waiting for the long drive back to Denver. He went to his room and lay down on the bed, fully dressed, too wired to sleep.
He pulled out a copy of Donald Westlake’s, “Trust Me On This” and read until dawn.
17 – Maggie Comes to Call
Maggie Powers, breaking her promise with breezy indiff
erence, stood in the doorway of Adrian’s office.
“Hi, there.” she sang and Adrian, started at the sound, swallowed his gum. He looked up from a large drawing to see a young woman with red hair, a cheery smile and a thick stack of literature held tightly against her chest.
“Are you Adrian Beck?”
“Yerg.” He swallowed and the mass moved down another quarter inch.
She settled her pile of paper on his worktable and pulled over a chair as Adrian struggled to work the gum down his esophagus. She held out a hand. Adrian gestured with his still bandaged right hand and she pulled hers back, completely unembarrassed.
“Who are you? And how did you get past Ruth?”
“I’m Maggie Powers, from Carlton Electric. We talked on the phone.” Seeing his look of non-comprehension, she hastened on. “You called about literature? I brought you some.”
Adrian looked at her slowly. Medium height, thin build, she wore a white blouse and a shortish black skirt over tan stockings. Her shoes were flat heeled black loafers. Her hair, thick and as red as a copper pot, was pulled backwards tightly against her temples.
“I asked you to mail the stuff,” Adrian said. At the best of times he wouldn’t want uninvited visitors, even shy ones. This woman, bursting in like a force of nature, was hardly shy.
“I know,” she said, looking falsely contrite. Her voice brightened immediately. “But when I heard where you were from I just had to see you.”
“Why?”
“Why am I here? Or why did I have to see you?”
“Both. Either. Wait, I don’t really care. Can you just leave the stuff on the table and go?” Adrian felt he’d strayed over the border into rudeness, but honestly didn’t care. He disliked her brash intrusion.
“Nope.” Her skin was bright against the blue of her eyes which looked at him with interest and the trace of a challenge. “You wanted information on Westerman controllers, right? I’ve brought...” she reached behind for the stack. “....a bunch of stuff from Westerman. What level system did you want?”
“Hey,” he said. Her attention returned to Adrian.
“Maggie,” she said. “Powers.”
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