For Stan this was like caging a wild bird. Stan was an auto mechanic. The best, he thought-a thought shared by a growing number of customers. Word had it that Stan Lacki was an excellent technician, honest, and as caring for the customer’s car as he was for his own.
Business at that station was booming. And the steady increase could be laid directly at the door of Stan Lacki.
Putting Stan on night duty was like hiring Michelangelo to paint a house. It made no use of a great talent.
A car full of teenagers pulled up to a pump. The driver staggered out of the car-a rusted-out bag of nuts and bolts. It took several tries for him to get the pump into his gas tank. Stan watched the procedure. If this was the best any of the males in that car could do, the girls in the car were going to be pretty safe tonight.
Finally, after spilling a little less than a gallon, the inept one managed to get the pump turned off and the nozzle replaced in the notch.
The tab was $7.57. The driver, a kid of maybe seventeen, pushed a twenty-dollar bill through the slot. As he lurched off, some of the change slipped through his fingers onto the ground. He didn’t stop to pick it up, but continued on his uneven way back to the car as if traversing a giant slalom.
But that driver! There was a probable fatality in his future. And, more than likely, he would take his friends with him.
Rough on him. He’d dreamed of having a son, playing with him, watching him grow, adored by his mother. Stan would have the boy up to his elbows in axle grease. His mother wouldn’t like that. But she’d put up with it. Because Stan was making their boy into another Stan Lacki. And the world needed all of those it could get.
Or maybe the firstborn would have been a girl. That would have been all right, too. Stan could have waited for his little man. Meanwhile, he could have watched with love as their girl grew up to be a beauty like Claire.
His eyes began to tear. He wiped them dry as another car pulled in. He waited to see which pump it would stop at. But the car pulled up to the garage. The driver, a young woman, got out of the car and approached his booth.
She was twenty-some. She wore a red beret over long, straight blonde hair. Her outfit was a camouflage jacket over a very short denim skirt. Black mesh stockings did not quite reach her skirt. In contrast to all this, her face was soft and innocent-looking. As she neared his cubicle, Stan could see that her skin was almost alabaster white and she wore decidedly too much lipstick.
The round hole in the cashier’s window tended to measure the customer. Most people were too tall to speak directly into the hole; they stooped. This customer stood on tiptoe, but did not speak up as the majority did. That made it difficult for Stan to hear her. He leaned forward and turned his head slightly.
“Mister, I got trouble with my car.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s leaking.”
Stan twisted to look at the car. From this distance and angle it was difficult to get a good view. But he could see a small, dark puddle forming under the front of the car.
“I guess you’re right. Your car seems to have a leak okay … maybe an oil leak.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Probably. But not till tomorrow. I gotta stay in here.”
Her face pinched together. She looked on the verge of tears. “Please, mister,” she begged. “I gotta get to the other side of town. It’s late. I’m afraid I’m gonna get stuck on the freeway. And then what?”
The leak would take its toll. The car would cough. Lights on the dashboard would warn to stop for repair. She would pull over to the shoulder. Someone else would pull over. A good Samaritan … or a beast? Stan well knew the odds favored deep trouble. And this little lady would be found assaulted-or dead.
Still, this was his cocoon. He was safe-or as safe as the crazies out there would let him be. As long as he didn’t open the door. As long as he stayed inside. As long as a robber would settle for money.
He’d never thought of it this way before. The few times he’d drawn the night shift, he’d never really adverted to the protection this enclosure provided. But he’d never been in exactly this predicament.
“Please, mister,” she pleaded. “I’d offer you a lot of money, but I only got a few bucks. You can have it all if you’ll help me.” She dug out her wallet and fingered through it. She held a handful of dollar bills up to the window. “Eight dollars,” she said, “and some change.”
He looked at her-and saw Claire.
But she might be in some other kind of fix. He would want whoever she asked for help to give it. “Okay. Let’s take a look at it.” And he left his cocoon.
They walked together to her car. It was a ’90 Mercury Grand Marquis, a big, heavy sucker. She was right about one thing: It had a leak.
The garage had three bays. Two of them had hoists; both held cars that needed repair. Both cars had come in before Stan’s regular shift ended. He had put them on the hoists so he could work on them first thing tomorrow.
So he didn’t have an empty hoist. No problem; he’d use the hydraulic floor jack.
“Maybe you can plug the leak?” she said hopefully.
“Yeah,” he said, “stick a cork in it.”
“Yeah.” She was agreeable.
“You’ll have to pull it in there,” he said, gesturing toward the empty bay.
“Okay.” She got into the car and drove forward slowly, as he stood at the far wall, motioning her on in. Finally, he signaled for her to stop. She got out of the car and stood to one side as he grabbed the jack, placed it carefully under the car’s front end, adjusted it, and pumped the car well off the floor.
She watched as he kicked the creeper from its place against the wall. He lay on his back on the creeper and kicked his way under the car from the front. He located the leak immediately, just as she grasped the handle in the base of the jack and turned it counterclockwise. The jack collapsed along with the full weight of the huge car.
Stan made no sound. He was dead.
She took a small jar of oil from her jacket pocket. She poured the oil onto the base of the jack handle. Then she checked to make sure the car was free of the jack. It was-barely.
She got in the car, started the engine and put it in reverse. But Stan’s body on the creeper was wedged against the underside. She gunned the engine, and in a moment the car almost exploded out of the bay, leaving what was left of Stan Lacki in a mangled heap. She drove two blocks away, where she was picked up. The Mercury was left abandoned, slowly dripping oil.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The phone sounded. She picked it up on the second ring. “Yes?”
“Miss Lennon?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Claire … Claire McNern.”
Lennon squinted at the clock on her nightstand. Five A.M. “It’s five in the morning, Claire.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. I just got a call from the station manager. Something’s happened to Stan.”
Lennon tried to shake off her drowsiness.
