of equipment owned by Central Coast Pharmaceuticals for use on my sales route. And that it’s my sworn obligation to return it to them in exactly the shape I received it, aside from routine wear and tear.” He turned back to the potatoes. “There must be some kind of mistake.”
“Yeah, and you made it eighty-seven times,” the potatoes said. “Parked in front of a hydrant at the corner of Anacapa and Cruzon.”
Gus pulled the laptop across the counter and stared at the screen.
“That’s where that coffee place is,” he said. “But I never park on the street when I go there. Why would I when there’s a huge lot right down the street?”
“Because you hate cold coffee,” Shawn said. “And when you’ve got to drive it all the way back to the office, every second of cooling counts.”
Gus turned to him, realization, then rage, boiling up inside him. “You did this!”
“Only because I care about your health,” Shawn said. “Once a cup of coffee drops below a hundred fifty degrees, all sorts of bacteria start growing in there. I couldn’t take a chance on giving you food poisoning.”
Gus pointed at the screen. “You parked there an average of twenty-seven minutes each time.”
“Do you think I just pulled that hundred-fifty-degree number out of the air? I was consulting with top coffee professionals.”
“You were flirting with the waitress!”
“Yes, but…” Shawn stopped. “You know, I’ve got no way of justifying that one.”
Gus turned back to the potatoes, his voice trembling. “I need my car. Please.”
“Six thousand dollars. Cash only.”
Gus glanced hopefully into the wallet in case multiple thousands of dollars had spontaneously appeared there. Inside he found the crumpled two-dollar bill he hadn’t been able to spend, since most cashiers had never seen one before and refused to accept it as real money, and a certificate that would have gotten him a free Frogurt Plus with only four more purchases if the store hadn’t gone out of business a year ago.
Gus turned to Shawn. “Do something!”
“Like what?”
“Like something you’d do if it was your car!”
“I really don’t think this is the right time to upgrade the sound system.”
“Shawn!”
Shawn gave Gus a reassuring pat on the shoulder, then stepped in front of him. He looked at the potato- shaped man behind the counter-and he saw. Saw the way he pinched the burning ash out of his cigarette before dropping the butt into the ashtray. Saw the calluses on his hand, permanently blackened by dirt. Saw the fading red scar around his wrist.
Shawn doubled over, clutching his forehead. Then straightened like a marionette wielded by a stroke victim. “I’m hearing something,” he moaned. “It’s a voice from beyond… and it’s singing to me.” As if controlled by a force from above, Shawn’s right arm drifted up, and his hand unfurled, leveling an accusing finger at the man behind the counter. “Singing to you.”
“I don’t want anyone singing to-”
“‘Gonna use my arms, gonna use my legs, gonna use my fingers, gonna use my toes,’” he moaned. “‘Gonna use my, my imagination.’”
“You’re gonna use your feet to get the hell out of my office, you know what’s good for you,” the potatoes said.
“Wait a minute,” Shawn said. “That’s the wrong song. They’re sending me a new one.”
“Maybe they could just send the six thousand dollars instead,” Gus said.
Shawn arms flailed around his head. “‘Such a drag to want something sometimes. One thing leads to another I know.’”
“What the hell is that?” the potatoes growled.
“Sounds like the Pretenders’ greatest hits,” Gus said.
Shawn jerked again. “That’s still the wrong song. They’re trying to tell me something, but they can’t find the right melody.”
“Maybe they should look at the back of the CD box,” Gus said.
“Yeah, like the Forces Beyond don’t have an iPod,” Shawn said, then reared back, as if hit by a psychic sound wave. “I hear it… They’re singing to me. Listen.”
Intrigued against his will, the potatoes leaned across the counter. “I don’t hear anything.”
Shawn sang unsurely, as if a voice beyond was dictating to him. “‘I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh. What hijacked my world that night. To a place in the world we’ve been cast out of.’” He broke off and turned to Gus. “Little help here.”
“What?”
“I need backup!”
“And I need my car.”
“Just sing, damn it.”
“Fine. ‘Oh oh oh oh oh.’”
“‘Now we’re back in the fight. We’re back on the train,’” Shawn sang. Then he froze. He turned to the potatoes. “‘We’re back on the chain gang.’”
The man behind the counter stared at him angrily. “Concert’s over, punk. Get out of here.”
“The song doesn’t lie,” Shawn said. “You were on a chain gang. Which means you were convicted of a class-A felony in Arizona, the only state with an active chain gang program.”
Gus didn’t stop to wonder how Shawn had figured it out. He stepped up to the counter. “And now you’re working for a city-approved garage, which means you must have given them a fake name to pass the background check.”
“As the official psychic to the Santa Barbara Police Department, I have an obligation to turn you in,” Shawn said. “But you’ve been so kind to us, I hate to see you fired, maybe jailed for perjury. If only I’d never come here today, I never would have found out.”
“The only reason we came here is to get my car,” Gus said. “If we had it back, it’d be like we were never here at all.”
“It’s a big yard, must be thousands of cars here,” Shawn said. “No one’s going to notice if one blue Echo is missing.”
The potatoes thought that over. “It is a big yard, and there are thousands of cars here,” he agreed. “No one’s going to notice if one blue Echo has a couple of bodies in the trunk.”
“Good, then we’re-” Gus said, then broke off. “Bodies?”
The potatoes moved so fast they barely realized he was reaching under the counter before the barrel of the shotgun was leveled at them.
“Got a song for this, pretty boy?” the potatoes said.
Shawn and Gus dived below the counter as flame erupted from the shotgun and a rain of pellets tore holes in the corrugated wall.
“Okay, this is not how I planned things,” Shawn said.
“I’m certainly glad to hear that.”
“All he had to do was give you back your car,” Shawn said. “It wasn’t like it was his car. Hell, it isn’t even like it’s your car, technically.”
“It’s still my responsibility!”
“Exactly. Your responsibility, not his. So why is he trying to kill us? Because there’s something going on here. Something he’s willing to kill to cover up.”
Shawn was right-they had stumbled onto some major criminal enterprise. That was the only explanation for the potatoes’ behavior. As a detective, Gus knew he should care about this. He should be working through the clues, piecing together the puzzle, unmasking the mystery.
“I don’t hear any singing!” the potatoes said, slapping two more shells into the gun.
On the other hand, what good would solving one more mystery do for Gus if he was dead? “So let him cover it up. We’ll pretend we don’t know anything about his massive criminal conspiracy if he lets us live.”
“Think he’ll buy it?”
