Wreckers' Key (30 page)

My body was resting on top of that pile of sheet-metal hoods and fenders. I ran my hands over my head, feeling the tender spot on the right side just above my ear. Luckily, I didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere except on the palm of my right hand. As I held it up to examine the wound, Old Ben spoke up.

“That looks nasty. Better come inside and clean that up.” He offered me his hand.

I took it. I don’t think I could have risen to my feet without it.

After following his flashlight through the mounds of discarded wheels and tires, I discovered that inside was the interior of an ancient Airstream trailer parked in the back of the lot up against a cinder-block wall. The trailer was also the origin of the opera; by the time we entered, the volume made the music almost painful. Ben crossed to a boom box on a bunk and pushed a button, stopping the tape in mid-aria. After all that noise, the silence dropped on us with a tangible weight like the atmosphere in an elevator speeding to the ninetieth floor. I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath.

“Not a fan, huh?”

I shook my head. He chuckled.

“That was Kathleen Battle. I can’t never remember the names of the songs but damn, that lady sings like an angel. I like to play it loud so I can’t hear the traffic out on the highway.”

At that volume, he wouldn’t hear it if the frigging space shuttle landed in his yard.

He led me to the sink, telling me to hold my hand under a stream of cold running water in the tiny kitchenette while he rummaged around in the head. I held on to the counter to keep the floor from swirling me off my feet. He emerged in a few minutes with a shoe box and placed it on the Formica settee table. The trailer reminded me of a boat with the compact galley and built-in furnishings, but the entire interior was covered with a film of combined grease and tobacco residue. I was certain that a sponge on any surface in the place would have come away brown. Other than that, and the overflowing ashtray on the table, the interior was fairly neat, the bunk made and the dishes upended in a dish rack.

He told me to sit on the Naugahyde bench. He sat on the other side of the table. Soon my hand was wrapped in clean gauze.

“Wanna tell me what happened out there?” Old Ben swiped a thick wooden match on the side of the box and held the flame to the bent cigarette in his mouth.

“I was hoping you could tell me. You were supposed to be expecting me.”

“Why the hell would you think that?”

“Your grandson, Ben. He told me this morning he was going to call you to ask you to work on my Jeep. He didn’t call?”

“Nope, I ain’t heard from Ben since we ate lunch on my birthday.”

“I’ve been having trouble with my Jeep and Ben told me to bring it to you. He said he was going to call. Tell you to expect me.”

“Ah hell, he musta got busy and forgot,” the old man said. “He does that. Don’t matter.” He dragged so deep on his cigarette, I thought he was going to be spitting strands of tobacco out of his mouth.

I touched the tender knot on the side of my head. “So what the hell happened out there? Who knocked me out?”
 

“What are you talking about?”

“There was a man out there. Dressed all in black. He chased me and I screamed, then he hit me with something. Next thing I remember is you poking me with your shotgun.”

“I heard your screaming. Took me a bit to find you after you quit. I didn’t see no one else. I figured you’d tried to climb up that sheet metal and took a bad fall. Sometimes the shadows play tricks on ya in this yard.”
 

“He was real. No doubt about it. You must have scared him off when you showed up. I guess there’s no point in calling 911 if you don’t even believe me, though.”

“What would some fella be doing in here?”

“Maybe he followed me in off the street. I was out there ringing that bell and announcing to half the neighborhood I was here. And your neighbors aren’t exactly winning property beautification awards.”

When the old man smiled I could see the yellow of his tooth enamel; deep in the crevices, his teeth were dark brown. I wondered if it was just stain from years of smoking or if they were rotted.

“Sometimes women git scared. Think they see things in the shadows. I think you fell and hit yer head.”

 
“Shadows, hell. I know what I saw whether you believe it or not.”

“I can see why young Ben’s always been so taken with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got spunk. Baker men have always admired women with spunk.”

“Ben and I were friends as kids. Nothing more.”

“You know better than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“My grandson followed you around like a puppy. I wasn’t around much, but I was out there often enough to see that. And there ain’t no human alive who deserves the kind of love a dog gives. That day you gave him that nickname? That day he just about wanted to die. He hitchhiked out here to stay with me. Told me he was running away from home. Wouldn’t tell me what happened, but from that day his own daddy called him Glub and the boy was never quite the same.”

“It wasn’t meant to be mean,” I said, knowing that I wasn’t being entirely truthful.

“And one more time I’ll tell you—you know better than that. The boy never would tell me the whole story. He was in some kind of raft race or something? Why was it so goddamn important?”

I didn’t know the answer to that. But he was right—I had known better.

“We were just kids,” I said, starting to try to make an excuse. But really, there was no excuse. And the worst of it was that I hadn’t really felt bad at the time. It was only later that night at his house—and now, now that he was a handsome, successful man—that I felt really bad for the way we’d all teased him. Now that I wanted him to like me. “Ben got teased a lot when he was a kid.”

“
You
were supposed to be his friend.”

“I know. Now, I do. I can tell you the story behind the name. They used to hold this race every winter. It was called the New River Raft Race. Clubs or businesses or individuals could build their own rafts and we’d race down the river. The people on the banks of the river would cheer and throw water balloons at the racers. The folks on the rafts would splash each other. It was lots of fun, goofy fun. One year when we were in ninth grade, all the kids in our neighborhood decided to build our own rafts to compete in the race. My friend Molly and I built one together. My two brothers built one. And Ben built one all by himself.”

Old Ben snorted. “That was Benny. The other kids never cut him a break.”

“Because it’s a lot easier to do certain stuff if you’ve got two people, our rafts were built better. Ben’s raft sank. But not before we splashed him, threw water balloons at him, and someone on shore nailed him with a fire hose.”
 

“Nice bunch.”

“It was all supposed to be in good fun. We were all splashed and hit by water balloons. But we all didn’t have our rafts sink under us. We all laughed when he sank. We thought he’d be laughing, too. I was the one who called out ‘Glub, glub, glub.’ ”

“That boy never could take folks laughing at him. It happened too often.”

“Well, Ben swam to shore and I guess he walked home. There was a cookout and party afterward, but he didn’t show. I asked somebody, I don’t even remember who, if they had seen ‘Glub, glub, glub’ around. It got a good laugh and the name kinda stuck. I didn’t see him until the next Monday at school and everybody had started calling him Glub. It was just a stupid kid thing. I can’t believe he even still remembers it.”

“Why not? Folks like you keep reminding him of it every time you call him that name. He’s a man now but that kid, the social outcast, is still in there.”

“All kinds of kids have nicknames in high school.”
 

“But they’re not all connected to something the kid sees as a humiliation.”

“I didn’t realize he felt that way about it. That makes it an even bigger deal, I guess, that he was able to rise above all that childhood teasing and make his life into the success it has become.”

“I never seen anybody work as hard as that boy.”

“It shows. It really does. And the amazing thing is the way he makes it look effortless. He looks like this relaxed boat bum, but when you see his boat, the work shows. Now that he’s put all that kid stuff behind him, he should feel very proud of himself.”

“Ben? Nah. It does something to a kid to grow up with parents like that. He’s been told he’s a piece of shit so many times, it don’t matter what he looks like. Best thing his momma ever did was to die and leave him money to buy that boat.”

“The
Hawkeye
's a beauty, that’s for sure. I know he’s proud of her.”

The old man shook his head. “You are something else.”
 

“What do you mean?”

He didn’t say anything for a while as he lit another of his unfiltered cigarettes and dragged the smoke deep into his lungs, his head turned away from me. “So why was it Ben told you to come out here?”

I’d almost forgotten the reason I was there. “My Jeep. It’s parked out front. It’s been stalling, not wanting to start. It’s a 1972, and Ben said you were great with the older engines that don’t have all the computerized stuff in them.”

“I’d be happy to take a look. Is your head okay? Can you drive?”

“I’m fine,” I said, knowing that I was making a habit of telling half-truths to this man.

He told me how to find my way to an alley that ran behind the lot. He said he would open the gate to a concrete pad where he had a garage with his tools and lights and everything he would need. Half an hour later, Old Ben straightened up from where he’d been leaning under Lightnin’s hood and wiped his hands on a red cloth rag.

“Somehow, you got a shop rag or some kinda cloth stuck in your intake manifold. The valves been chewing and burning it up, but it been causing your loss of compression and the black smoke you been seeing. You had any work done on this machine lately?”

“No, not for several months.”

“Hmm. That is odd. It ain’t like you could pick this up driving on the street.”

I thought about my Jeep parked for over an hour in the dark parking lot behind the Downtowner. “Are you saying someone tampered with it?”

“Sure looks that way to me.”

XXVII

The sight of B.J.’s El Camino in front of the Larsens’ place was a pleasant surprise when I parked my Jeep in the driveway just after eleven. My head hurt and I was tired, but not too tired for a little naked wrestling with my Samoan friend. Mr. Magic Fingers had a way of making all my hurts go away.

I made enough noise closing the gate that I expected my dog to come running, but there was no sign of her. I imagined she was taking advantage of those magic fingers at this very minute. When I got to the end of the walkway alongside the big house and stepped out into the open yard, I could see two people sitting on the bench in front of my cottage. The smaller of the two got up as soon as I started across the lawn and ran toward me, my dog at her heels.

“Seychelle,” Molly said, the alarm apparent in the way she said my name. “Thank God you’re home.” She linked her arm in mine and pressed her head against my shoulder as we walked over to where B.J. sat. “We’ve been sitting here for hours, worried sick that maybe something had happened to you, too.” She hugged me as though I had been gone for weeks.

She was talking so fast, I was having difficulty keeping up with her.

When Molly took a breath, B.J. said, “I really wish you would get a cell phone. At times like this, it’s hard not knowing if you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? What’s going on?”

B.J. stood. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “We’ll talk in there.”

I unlocked my front door and led the way inside. When we were all settled in the living room, B.J. explained that he had been over at Molly’s earlier that evening when they had decided to turn on the TV and watch the evening news. They had seen the report on Quentin’s death, and B.J. recognized the name. Although he wasn’t sure it was anything other than the drug-related killing that had been reported, the news of it made him uneasy.

Then he turned to Molly and said, “Now tell her exactly what you saw.”

“It was a little after eight. B.J. had just left. We’d been studying for almost four hours, and I just wanted to climb into bed, read a novel, and relax. I was in my nightgown when I remembered that I hadn’t checked the mail. I stepped out onto the porch and I heard what sounded like a cry down the street. When I looked toward the Sparkses’ house, I saw Arlen leading Catalina by the elbow out to his car. She was struggling, trying to get away from him. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it was obvious she was arguing with him. He opened the back door and practically shoved her in. He was being so rough! In her condition!”

“Did they leave? What about his wife?”

“Well, that’s just it. I started running over there when I saw what was happening, but he jumped into the front seat, backed out of the driveway burning rubber, and took off down the street. I could see Mrs. Sparks sitting slumped in the corner of the front seat.”

“He shouldn’t be moving her.”

“I know! That’s just it. I ran down the street after them, but I was barefoot and in my nightie. I couldn’t catch them. I saw Catalina’s face looking at me through the back window when they drove under the streetlight, though. She looked terrified. He’s gone completely off the deep end.”

I stood up and began pacing the room. “Shit, I should have done something. I probably could have stopped this. At least, I should have warned her.”

B.J. said, “What are you talking about?”

I told them about my tow up to River Bend and the conversation I’d had with Charlie, the yard foreman. “I think Arlen must have been at the center of the R and D that Motowave was doing with GPS.”

“From what I read on the Internet,” B.J. said, “they’ve developed systems that will spoof or send simulated GPS signals in addition to jamming. When the GPS receiver is working, it locks on to four or five satellites at a time. These spoofers fool the receiver into locking on to them instead of one of the satellites, and they’ve developed the tables to determine how far off and in what direction the GPS unit will deliver an inaccurate fix.”