Auto Biography

by Earl Swift

  Slap, Arney said. Like, with an open hand. Seriously.

  You’d be less likely to cut yourself, the doctor said. Do you think you could slap somebody and still get your point across?

  The answer, as demonstrated on dozens of occasions in the months that followed, was yes. Arney so perfected his technique that he could knock out an opponent with a single, terrible slap to the temple. He was charged with ten counts of assault after a 1988 barroom fracas in which he beat a man in the head with a billiard ball, judo-flipped the man’s girlfriend, and, per the doctor’s orders, slapped eight or nine other people to the floor with his open hand.* In a memorable showdown at an after-hours joint, Arney advised a belligerent bodybuilder that he planned to slap him not only out of lucid thought, but out of the flip-flops he wore. The man replied that he’d like to see Arney try. He woke up barefooted.

  Meanwhile, Arney came to feel so ravaged after weeks of chemo, so depleted and poisoned, that new or not, he abandoned the treatments. He got drunk and stayed that way for several weeks, until Bill Taliaferro came to see him, said he’d heard that Arney had quit the regimen. His old friend convinced him to go back to the hospital, where his oncologist urged him to take another treatment immediately. Arney replied that he didn’t think he could do it. Well, son, you have to, the doctor said. Because if you don’t, you’re going to die.

  Arney continued to waffle, until the doctor asked: Do you have a gun at home?

  No, Arney replied, which may or may not have been true.

  Because you do not want to die of Hodgkin’s disease, the doctor said. It is a grotesque death.

  Arney changed his mind.

  9

  ONE SATURDAY MORNING Arney telephones me to ask whether I’ll be stopping by Moyock Muscle. He adds that it might be worth my while because he’ll be there himself, “handling” an “interesting situation” involving a Navy SEAL who has called him a “fucking pussy.”

  For all his talk of being much changed from the olden days and the old Tommy Arney, he can’t let such a transgression go unaddressed, especially seeing as how this is his fifty-fifth birthday. “At first, I was going to let Skinhead deal with it and not get involved,” he tells me, “but then I got to thinking about it and I thought: No, I don’t think I like the idea of this guy calling me a fucking pussy. Not on my birthday.

  “I’m going to be the new Tommy Arney in dealing with him,” he adds, “but I’m going to incorporate some of the old Tommy Arney in those dealings.”

  I drive to Moyock Muscle.

  While we wait for the SEAL to arrive, Arney shares his side of what’s provoked the coming confrontation. The SEAL, a fellow named Rick, purchased an electric blue, metal-flake ’58 Chevy pickup from the lot. The sale was contingent on Arney’s getting the truck running, which he did. As a friendly gesture, he says, he further offered to replace the truck’s brakes and thermostat, and to pressure-test the radiator to ensure its integrity—all for the cost of parts; no labor.

  A day after the sale, Arney got a call from Slick, who told him that Rick’s check was no good: He’d written it for $8,645—the purchase price plus applicable taxes—in the little box, but for “one thousand six hundred forty-five” on the accompanying line. Arney called Rick. The SEAL apologized profusely, agreed to meet Slick to make it right, and did so with a new check. But then, Arney said, something odd happened: Rick called him back and said: We have a problem. Arney said, What, partner? And Rick said: You have nine thousand dollars of mine, and I don’t have a title.

  This was true enough. Arney was in the process of getting the title, either from the former owner or in duplicate from the state Department of Motor Vehicles. He didn’t expect it to be an issue. But this standard approach, which Arney had followed on scores of past occasions, didn’t suit Rick, who announced: If you don’t get me the title by tomorrow, I’m stopping payment on my check. Arney decided on the spot that he wanted nothing further to do with the guy. Fine, he said, stop payment, and he hung up on him.

  Rick went to the bank to cancel his second check, but found that unknown to Arney, Slick had already cashed it. He called Arney, who didn’t answer. He was able to reach Skinhead, but that didn’t satisfy him, so the navy commando left Arney a succession of increasingly aggressive voice mails. Arney has saved them, and plays them back for Skinhead, Painter Paul, and me. “You need to call me, brother,” Rick said in one. “We’ll take this thing to the next level,” he promised in another. Then, on that very morning, Arney’s birthday, he said he’d googled Arney’s name and had learned of his past tussles with authority, and that if he’d known what kind of man Arney was before he drove onto the lot, well, he’d never have done it. He concluded this monologue with “I guess you’re just a fucking pussy.”

  Arney looks both tickled and mystified. “He don’t have a fucking clue who he’s dealing with,” he says. “I have to help him understand.”

  On hearing this morning’s message, he called his son and told the twenty-nine-year-old Ryan he was “uncomfortable” being called a fucking pussy on his birthday, that he felt a meeting was in order. Krista overheard the conversation and implored Arney not to seek trouble. Please, she said, it’s your birthday. Don’t go to jail today.

  Arney is vague on what he said in reply, beyond reminding Krista that he’s the new Tommy Arney. For my benefit, he clarifies how the new differs from the old: “In the olden days, I would have told him to fuck himself on the telephone, and we would have met somewhere and I would have whipped his ass,” he says. “But I don’t do that anymore. If I do whip this motherfucker’s ass today, it’ll be his decision.”

  Skinhead, bent over some paperwork, says quietly, “You have to do what you have to do.”

  Arney nods. “In the olden days, Skin, I’d have kicked his fucking ass, wouldn’t I?”

  Skinhead, not looking up: “Absolutely.”

  “Without a moment’s hesitation, isn’t that right, Skinhead?”

  Skinhead: “That’s right.”

  “How far would he have gotten into calling me a pussy before I beat the fuck out of him?”

  Skinhead: “Oh, maybe to ‘puh—’ ”

  We’re laughing at this when Rick arrives. The SEAL is compact, muscular, serious. He’s with a pretty blonde. “What’s happening?” he asks. No friendliness.

  “I tried to talk to you reasonably,” Arney says, turning to face him. “I’ve tried to be a nice guy to you, and you’ve responded by calling me a fucking pussy. You’ve called me a fucking pussy on my birthday. I’m fifty-five years old today.”

  “When am I going to get my truck?” Rick asks.

  “Well, we’re trying to get it ready for you,” Arney says. “We’ve been trying.”

  “Forget it,” Rick spits. “I’m calling the police.” He and the blonde head for the door.

  “Come on back, and let’s talk,” Arney says.

  “I’m calling the police!” Rick hollers.

  “Well, go ahead and call the police. But the thing is, when the police get here, you won’t be able to talk to me. They won’t let you.” Rick keeps walking. “It appears to me,” Arney yells, “that I’m no longer the pussy.”

  Rick returns. He takes up a position three feet from Arney, arms at his side, every fiber twisted tight, ready for battle. If Arney is even remotely concerned that the man before him has been trained to dispatch the nation’s enemies with his bare hands, he doesn’t show it. He’s loose, relaxed. Contemplative. “I’m no pussy, my friend,” he says, his tone almost avuncular.

  “Yeah,” Rick whispers, the muscles of his neck hardened into ropes, “you are.”

  Arney smiles. “You think so?”

  The blonde intercedes. “Look,” she says, “just give us the merchandise for which we’ve paid, and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Let’s just talk about how we got to this point,” Arney says. He launches into a recounting of the entire transaction. When he gets to the part about Rick threatening to stop paymen
t on his check, Rick interjects that he couldn’t, because the check had been cashed. Arney says he didn’t know that was the case when he encouraged Rick to halt payment.

  “You’ve got nine thousand dollars of my money!” Rick exclaims.

  “No, I don’t,” Arney says. “I have $8,645. I don’t have nine thousand. You keep saying I have nine thousand, and I’ve never had nine thousand. You’re getting emotional.”

  Rick hands his sunglasses to the blonde and asks her to hold them.

  Arney removes his own reading glasses, folds them closed, and places them on the counter. His movements are preternaturally deliberate, which gives them an odd air of menace. I step away. The showdown has reached a fail-safe. Blows seem imminent, unavoidable; frankly, I’m surprised Arney hasn’t already launched a full frontal assault—I don’t know how he restrained himself when Rick insisted he was, indeed, a pussy.

  But the blonde throws an arm across the SEAL’s chest, and the movement carries the power of law; he makes no move. And Arney, seeing this, checks his own attack. “Fuck it,” Rick says. “We’ll have the truck towed out of here.”

  “If that’s what you want to do, fine,” Arney says. “Though we’re happy to do the work. It took until two days ago to get the master cylinder from California, to do the brakes.”

  “I don’t want to have anything more to do with you,” Rick says. He again makes for the door.

  “Call your wrecker, then!” Arney yells after him. He adds the name of a towing company that he says will respond quickly. Once the pair is outside, Arney turns to the crew. “Well,” he says, “I think I handled that just about fucking perfect.”

  Skinhead, who’s been studiously attending to paperwork throughout the faceoff, turns to Arney and nods. “You did good.”

  “Real good,” Painter Paul says.

  The boss grins. The new Tommy Arney has prevailed. “I didn’t want Ryan to be here today—I asked him not to come down,” he says. “But if he had been here, I think he would have been pretty fucking proud of me.”

  I mention that I figured a fight was sure to happen when Arney took off his glasses. Arney nods, smiles, savors the memory of the moment. “When he asked his wife to hold his glasses, I thought: Well, shit, I better put these motherfuckers aside, because this stupid motherfucker just might be crazy enough to throw a punch at me.

  “And then,” he says, “I would have had to whip his ass.”

  EXACTLY WHAT SPURRED the old Tommy Arney to step aside for the new is the subject of some debate among those who know him well, because his cancer, though it probably started the process, didn’t end it: The old Tommy Arney manifested himself on numerous occasions during and after his illness, mostly in the form of brutal slap-downs.

  Virginia Klemstine figures that his children were the impetus for his transformation. His behavior no longer went unnoticed by Ryan and Ashlee, who were growing up watchful and starved for his attention. Krista played a role, too—if he stood any chance of repairing his relationship with his wife, he’d have to adjust his lifestyle. His tangles with the law stood to land him in real trouble—as in prison—if they continued, because it was only through the near-miraculous work of Bill Taliaferro and his other lawyers that he hadn’t been labeled a habitual criminal and prosecuted accordingly.

  And another development might have played a role in the advent of the new Tommy Arney. After finishing the chemo he underwent radiation treatments, and as one might expect, they were not a by-the-book experience. He received a heavy dose five days a week for four weeks, at which point his radiologist told him that she was leaving on vacation; he needed a break from the daily bombardment, anyway, lest the radiation burn away too much healthy tissue. Come on, he told her, I want this over. I want to beat this thing. She insisted he needed time off. They’d resume the treatments in a month.

  Arney wasn’t content to wait. After the doctor left town, he showed up at the hospital at his usual time, and when the nurse told him he wasn’t scheduled for a session he told her that oh, the doctor was going to be so upset, because she’d been adamant that he stay true to the schedule in her absence. The bluff worked. When the doctor returned, she was mortified. She asked him what he’d been thinking.

  About killing the cancer, he said.

  Well, what you’ve done is destroy all the muscle and cartilage in your chest, she told him.

  Arney didn’t mind the news. “If I have no muscle there, and I have no cartilage there, I ain’t got no cancer there,” he reasoned. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m cured.”

  Sure enough, the cancer was gone. But with the cure came a distressing side effect that caused much dismay to a cowboy of prominence, that being that he was rendered impotent. His eyes were as hungry as ever, but his equipment seemed to be switched off.

  It came to pain him to be around women, especially the gorgeous, near-naked women with whom he’d surrounded himself. His years with new and eager partners every night? Over. Done. He found himself so shaken by this physical betrayal that he steered clear of women altogether. He went, he says, into hibernation.

  He took time to reflect, over the two years that the condition persisted, on why it was that he’d become such a horndog in the first place. He found what seemed a likely answer. When he’d been little—four, six, eight years old—he’d been his mother’s favorite. Fern had doted on him as much as she doted on anyone, excepting strangers at the bar. She’d treated him to far more love and attention than she gave her other kids. That might have been a low bar, but he hadn’t known it.

  The day she’d cut him from her life, that day in court in Rocky Mount, had left a wound that never healed, and since then he’d sought the love and attention of women as a substitute for that withheld by Fern. He’d been wild to please them, in hopes that they’d reciprocate with love affirming and sure, and when he didn’t find it with one, he’d move on to another. He sought to satisfy them in every way—sexually, financially, you name it. He bought them clothes, furniture, even cars. It wasn’t until years after the cancer that he recognized it had all been a waste.

  Bottom line: Whatever the cause, a mellowed Tommy Arney emerged from his cancer treatment, and in the time it took his hair to grow back and again cascade over his shoulders, he seemed to acquire a greater patience—a desire to better understand, rather than simply cripple, his fellow man. He counseled his friends and colleagues to follow his example. “Relax your mind,” he told them, so often that it became his de facto motto. “Life is beautiful.”

  The evolution was bumpy and studded with backslides, but by 1992, four years after he discovered the lump, the new Tommy Arney had replaced most of his predecessor. Evidence to support that assertion: Slick, who arrived at the Body Shop that November, says she has never seen Arney throw a punch—and she spends a significant share of each day with the boss, second only to Skinhead.

  More such evidence might be Slick herself, who was in a lot of trouble when she met the new Tommy Arney. Victoria Hammond was the proverbial farm girl who’d come to the city and succumbed to its dangers. Raised in rural Spotsylvania County, Virginia, she had taken up go-go dancing for one of Arney’s competitors after dropping out of an Atlanta fashion college and moving to Norfolk. She fell in love with an enlisted sailor she met while dancing. Their breakup pitched her into a personal abyss.

  She arrived at the Body Shop after the other club fired her. When she failed to show up for a shift a few days later, Arney called her into his office. The woman who sat before him was gorgeous—Slick had a lovely face, perfect teeth, flawless skin, and a body straight out of a comic book—but fidgety, unfocused, and haggard. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. He asked why she’d missed work, warning: “Don’t fucking lie to me.”

  She burst into tears and admitted that she was a prisoner to drink and drugs. He asked whether she wanted a better life. She said yes. He asked whether she wanted to quit cocaine. She said yes. He asked whether she had family in town. An aunt, she said
, in Virginia Beach. Get on the phone, he told her, and ask your aunt whether you can stay with her. Slick did so. Her aunt was willing to put her up.

  All right, Arney said, I’ll help you. But we’re going to do this my way: You will work for me seven days a week, sixteen hours a day. I will bank the money you earn in tips, and give you an allowance of twenty dollars per day. I will have you picked up from your aunt’s house every morning, and I’ll have you driven back there every night. You’ll go nowhere else. You’ll eat all your meals at the Body Shop. If I catch you drinking, I’ll fine you five hundred dollars. If you do drugs, you’re gone.

  This prescription, which bore more than a passing resemblance to Arney’s own apprenticeship under Jim O’Neil, lasted a year, during which Slick proved so ambitious and hardworking that the boss promoted her to bartender, then named her one of his managers. By the time he released the money he’d been setting aside, she had enough to buy a Cadillac, and he had a lieutenant whose loyalty was bulletproof. “I’d found someone who wanted to help me,” she tells me one evening while she’s tending bar. “I was saved.”

  The loyalty worked both ways. She was en route to see her family early Christmas morning, 1993, when she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed on Interstate 95 north of Richmond. Arney interrupted his own holiday with Krista and the kids, driving a wrecker 130 miles across Virginia to rescue her and her car.

  That same week, I walked into the Body Shop and met the man.

  FOUR MONTHS PAST that Christmas, Alan Wilson and Al Seely, inspecting the Chevy at Joe Scalco’s garage on Colley Avenue, decided to make what they recognized as an iffy investment. The wagon’s mechanical failings were minor but many. Its body was dented, gouged, and succumbing to rust. Its paint, unshielded from the sun during Mary Ricketts’s seven years of stewardship, was faded and cracking, and one quarter panel—the left, which Ricketts had crunched, then patched with a cheap repair—was mismatched, a slightly lighter shade of turquoise. The interior was ragged. Wilson judged it “a very questionable vehicle.”