The Gate (13 page)

———

After he dropped out of college, for the next several months Ben hung around the dealership, did some odd jobs, worked a little in the wash bay, and drove the parts truck. In those days Ben was running with a wild crew. They drank too much and did a little dope, and his life was skidding in a downward spiral. On Friday nights I gave him a little extra cash to wash down the shop floors. It was kind of a stupid-proof job. You'd just wet the floor down with a hose, sprinkle an industrial-size box of Tide all over, and scrub the grease and oil stains with a firm-bristle shop broom. Then you'd rinse it down, turn the shop fans on, and you were done. Alone it took him about four hours, but it could be a little boring, so sometimes he'd invite a friend to help and then pay him something under the table.

One night he'd asked Brian to help him, and that kid was trouble. He'd played high school football with Ben, and it was the high-water mark of his life. He was forever saying things like, “Remember the game against East when you threw me that touchdown pass in the last five minutes of the last quarter?” Of course Ben remembered. It was like Ben's whole football career was on a tape in his head, and it didn't take much from Brian to get him to hit
PLAY
. I just didn't think it was what he needed, especially in light of the accident.

Brian worked part-time at the convenience store, mostly, I think, so he could sneak beer out the back door, and otherwise he hung out at the pool hall. Brian got the bright idea that they could get the keys to the Dodge Power Wagon we used for plowing and go mud running. For some reason it sounded like a good idea to Ben too, probably because they'd been drinking beers while they washed the floors, and around quarter to ten the two of them were headed out to the swamp. After about three hours of “Ya-hoos” and “Watch this!” they caromed off a tree
and ended up buried in mud halfway up the doors, and that's when Ben called me.

I was mad because he called and woke up my family, I was mad because he took the truck without asking, but mostly I was mad because I felt like Ben's life was self-destructing on my watch, and I didn't know what to do about it.

I ragged on him on the phone for a while, and then, like always, I fixed it. I sent Earl's Towing out to get the two of them and the truck. I let it sit for the weekend, and then on Monday I called him into my office for a little talk.

“Look, Ben,” I said. “I don't really care about the stupid Power Wagon, but I do care about you. If it were up to me, you'd go back to college. If money is a problem, I can help—really, I'm glad to help. Call it a loan. You can pay me back whenever. Never, for all I care.”

“I appreciate that, bro,” Ben said. “But the only reason to go to college was football, and that's done now. Maybe someday I'll be ready for that, but not now, not for a long time.”

“Well, you've got to do something,” I said. “You can't just hang around with Brian and get wasted on weekends.”

“I know,” he said, “and I've been thinking about that too. I think I want to work here with you and Gary.” He said that Tom Dykstra was going to quit and go into the insurance business with his brother, and he'd like to take his job. Tom sold new cars, mostly VWs.

When Ben asked, what could I say? If Ben wanted to sell cars, how could I say no? I owed him. When I talked to Al and Gary about it, they said, “Of course, he's family, and he'd be a great fit.”

Ben took to selling cars like he took to football. He was a natural. Six months later he was our top salesman, and he and Al were two sides of the same coin. They both lived full tilt. Run and gun. Work hard, play hard.

“The kid's got moxie,” Al said, “and he's cool under pressure. I
think maybe we need to give him a shot at taking Gordy's place in used cars.”

Gordy had been our used car manager, and although Al liked him, he and I never got along. I always felt like he had his hand in my pocket. It seemed to me like he was wholesaling off some of the cream, but we were making money, so Al was happy. Even so, it didn't feel right to me. Then one day Gordy had Cal Weelers from Cal's Fine Cars and Fred Keenan from Keenan Car Company going in a bidding war on a Buick convertible, and when Keenan lost he wasn't too happy with Gordy.

He came in my office and said, “Rooster”—Fred always called me Rooster because I dressed a little flashy in those days—“I thought you ought to know that Gordy's getting a fifty under the table every time he wholesales a car. I've paid it plenty, but I never felt good about it, it's always kind of stuck in my craw, so now I'm telling you.” Then he leaned over, spit a wad of chewing tobacco into my wastebasket, and said, “Yes sir, that's a fact!”

Fred was a lot of things, but he'd always been straight with me. I thanked him for coming clean, and when he left I called Cal, and he confirmed what Fred had said.

I walked over to the used car lot, called Gordy out on it, and fired him right there on the spot.

“Listen, kid,” he said, “it's part of the business, everybody does it, and besides, I don't work for you, I work for Al.”

“I don't care if everybody does it,” I said. “We don't do it, and if you don't get off this lot right now, I'm going to throw you off.”

For a minute we stared at each other like two bull moose ready to square off, but then Gordy backed down. He left in a huff and called Al when he got home, but Al backed my play.

For the next few months I was busier than I wanted to be, trying to cover for Gordy being gone. I was doing the ordering, checking the deals, appraising the trades, and trying to buy a few cars at the auction, and little things started falling through the cracks. One day Al came in my office and said, “Look, I get it,
you wanted to fire Gordy, but we need somebody going to the auction.” That's when he told me to give Ben a shot at it.

“He's awful young,” I said.

“Not any younger than you were when I started bringing you there,” he said.

So, reluctantly, I started taking Ben with me when I went on Fridays, and he picked it up pretty fast. The car auction is every auction you've ever seen, on steroids. It's sixteen lanes of cars all being bid on at the same time, with crowds of people yelling, nodding, winking, talking, and eating. It's nothing short of organized pandemonium.

Outside there are four or five hundred cars, each with a run number and the mileage printed on a card hanging from the mirror. For example, if the card said “82K, D-17,” that meant it had 82 thousand miles on it and would be the seventeenth car to run through lane D.

The dealers get there a couple hours before the auction opens to look over the inventory and write down the numbers of the cars they want to bid on. Afterward they stand around and trade stories. It's kind of fun in the summer, but along about February it can be brutal. You go out, brush off the ones you're interested in, and hope the snow and ice doesn't hide something. It's a rite of passage. Every one of us has been hurt a time or two, but you learn what to look for. Ordinarily it's kind of a good ol' boys' club, and the old-timers will take advantage of a new face, but a couple of them took to Ben right away, and within a few weeks he was in.

You've got to be registered as a dealer to get in the place. It's not open to the public. Everyone is required to wear a badge with your name and the dealership's name on it, and anyone who's wearing a badge can bid.

Once I brought my daughter Tara to one, and when the auctioneer nodded at her, she politely nodded back. Back and forth it went. He nodded and she nodded until he slammed the gavel
down and yelled, “Sold to the young lady in the blue coat—is she with you, Sky?”

I said, “She is,” and then I told her not to nod at anyone but me for the rest of the day.

I never had that problem with Ben. He knew what he wanted to buy and what he was willing to pay, and he usually left the auction with what he wanted. Some guys just have a knack for it, and Ben was one of them.

———

The last time Ben and I went to the auction was when I got my Outback. I used to go more often, partly to be with Ben and partly to keep an eye on him, but lately I'd been too busy. Besides, sometimes I'm better off not knowing. I know full well the dark side of humanity, but rarely is it on display in such proportion as it is at a car auction. You might think there would be a kind of honor among thieves, so to speak, but you'd be wrong.

A few years ago on a cold January morning, Ben and I were walking the back lot at the auction prior to the sale to see if there was something we wanted to bid on. I spotted an older Subaru wagon that I thought might be a good car for Kate to drive to college. It had some miles on it but otherwise looked to be in good shape. I got in the driver's seat and tried to start it, but it had a dead battery. I said to Ben that if we could get a jump, I'd like to take the car for a test drive.

“No need,” he said. “It's junk.”

“How do you know it's junk?” I said. “You haven't even heard it run.”

“Don't need to,” he said. “It's got bad valves.”

“And how do you know that?” I asked.

“Look, bro,” he said. “Let me take you to school. Come on, follow me.” He turned and walked inside where Jim Fisher from Quality Cars was standing. We exchanged greetings and made a little small talk. I used to wholesale Jim some cars when I was more involved in the dealership.

Then Ben said, “Say, Jim, if you saw an older Subaru out on the lot with 125K on it and the battery was dead, what would you think?”

“I'd think it had bad valves,” he said.

“Me too,” Ben said. “Me too. Cold valves are quiet valves.” Then he and Jim laughed. Later he explained to me that the guy selling it intentionally left the key on when he parked it to run the battery down so you couldn't pre-drive it and warm it up.

“You're just too trusting, Sky,” he said. “Remember that Baptist preacher with the 220D?”

“I remember,” I said.

“Well, if you can't trust a Baptist preacher, what makes you think you can trust a bunch of used car dealers?”

Back in the day, this Baptist preacher came in and wanted to buy a used Audi we had on the lot, and he had this old 220 Mercedes diesel he wanted to trade in with 106 thousand miles on it. We went back and forth on price a little, but eventually we put a deal together taking the 220 in on trade. It had a few dings and a chip in the windshield, and it was barefoot, which is to say the tires were bald, but it ran great, so we sent it out to be cleaned and painted and serviced and put it on the lot. A couple weeks later a guy named Charlie came in and wanted to buy it really cheap, so we sold it to him “as is,” which is to say with no warranty.

We didn't hear from him again for a couple of months, but then one day Charlie came marching in my office all red-faced with his attorney in tow, demanding his money back. He called me a cheat and a liar and threatened to sue.

I got up, closed the door to my office, and said, “Calm down, Charlie. Why don't you just tell me what this is all about?”

He jaw-jacked me a while, and then he said that the 220 was burning some oil, and when he took it over to German Auto Werks they recognized the car. They checked their service records and said that it had 206 thousand miles on it, not 106. He then said he called the Baptist preacher and he confirmed it.

“Hold on a minute, Charlie,” I said. “Let me check the file.” When I checked, I had an odometer affidavit signed by the good pastor, and it clearly said 106,042 miles on it.

“Well, somebody's lying,” Charlie said, “and I want my money back! And I expect to be reimbursed for what German Auto Werks charged me too.”

“And you'll get it,” I said. “But first you've got to help me nail that lying Baptist, okay?”

He looked at his attorney, and after he gave him the nod, Charlie said, “Sounds like fun to me,” and the game was on. I hooked up a tape recorder to my phone and had Charlie call the preacher again to confirm that the 220 really had two hundred thousand on it when he traded it in. He must have smelled that something was fishy, so he was reluctant at first, but Charlie kept after him, God bless him, and finally he got him to say it. Then I grabbed the phone and said, “I've got you now, preacher! Either you bring me a check for what I just paid ol' Charlie here, or I'm going to call Channel 4 tomorrow and expose you for what you are.” Then I hung up, feeling quite proud of myself.

The next day I got a phone call from the preacher's attorney informing me that they would not be bringing us a check, and in fact they were suing us for slander.

“Sue all you want,” I said, “but I've got your client on tape.”

“Yes, well, that may never make it into court,” he said. “And even if it does, it'll be a while. We're prepared to drag this out for a long, long time, and meanwhile I've asked the judge to put a gag order on this. You won't be able to say a word to the media, and with the recent litigation involving Cascade Cadillac, who do you think is going to look bad when it gets out that you, a car dealer, and my client, a well-respected Baptist minister, are going to court over an odometer dispute? If I were you, I'd check with your attorney before you do anything stupid.” And then he hung up.

I was so mad I could spit. Immediately I called Dirk Hathorne of Hathorne, Hathorne, and DeJong.

“I want this Bible thumper's head on a plate,” I said. “The bloodier the better. I want him to hurt.”

“Hold on,” said Dirk. “You better explain what you're talking about.” When I did he said, “His attorney is right. You can't ignore a gag order, and I know this guy, he's good, he'll drag it out for a year or two, and meanwhile it'll cost you guys a lot of business.”

“I don't care what it costs,” I said. “I want to brand that sucker. I don't want his money, I want his reputation.”