him move in a month or so ago, and I know it was over this way-” Lonnie pointed off in some vague direction past her head. “But for the life of me, darlin’, I can’t remember which building it was. Can you help me here?”
She eyed us cautiously. Lonnie’d warned me this might be dirty work, so I was in an old flannel shirt and jeans. Red stared at us a second, then decided we were too dumb to be anything but what we looked like.
“I’m not really supposed to give out that information,” she said.
“Aw, Joey ain’t gonna mind. He’s waiting for us right now. We’re gonna go fishing.”
Lonnie was as slick as Elvis’s pomade. Red didn’t have a chance. She pulled a computer printout off her desk and scanned the list.
“Okay, he’s down in C Building. Apartment nine.”
Lonnie grinned at her. She smiled back, hoping, I guess, that he wasn’t going to hit on her or anything.
“First we find his truck and block it in,” Lonnie explained back out in the cold wind, “then we knock on his door. See if he’ll give us the keys.”
“You think he might do that?”
“Sometimes they do. People usually know when they’re about to get repo’d. Hell, the finance companies give ‘em every chance they can. What the hell’s a finance company going to do with a bunch of repossessed cars? They don’t want vehicles; they want their money. Yeah,” Lonnie continued, spitting out the left side of his mouth, “he knows we’re coming.”
I climbed back in the cab of Lonnie’s truck and picked up the Xeroxed paperwork. Guy had an ’84 Ford Ranger, red, license number DTB 042. “So we just drive around, huh?”
“Yeah, I called the warehouse where the guy works. Today’s his day off. He ought to be here somewhere.”
We cruised the parking lot slowly. There was no red Ford pickup in front of C Building.
“Maybe the guy’s not here,” I said.
“Nah, he’s here. Sucker knows we’re after him. He’s got the truck hid somewhere.”
We drove on around. In the back of the complex, there was an area roped off for people to park boats and trailers, to keep them out of the way of the regular traffic. Behind that parking area, partially up on the grass, sat a red Ford Ranger backed in, nose out, so you couldn’t see the license plate.
“Boogie-woogie,” Lonnie sang. My heart started beating faster. Lonnie wheeled his three-quarter ton Chevy around the boats, then pulled up in front of the Ranger and parked T-bone style. The woods were behind the truck, us in front.
Lonnie hopped out on his side and went around to the back of the Ford.
“Got him,” he said. “Plates check out.”
I tried the door to the truck. “Locked.”
“Okay,” Lonnie instructed, “let’s go knock on the guy’s door.”
We trotted around the complex to C Building and up a flight. Lonnie turned to me, grinned, and knocked on the door three times.
We heard a shuffling inside, and the low drone of a television. But no answer to our knock. Lonnie pounded on the door again, this time a little harder.
“Mr. Richards, can we talk to you, sir?” he shouted.
There was only silence from inside, not even the television now.
“Mr. Richards,” Lonnie called, banging the door one last time.
“What do we do now?” I asked. Lonnie stood there a moment, glaring at the door.
“Guy wants to be an asshole, ’sokay by me. Let’s go get his truck.”
“You going to hot wire it?”
Lonnie grinned at me again. “You are new at this. Nobody hot wires cars, anymore, son. It’s too much trouble. Besides, you damage a repo’d car, you gotta pay for it. If I ain’t got a key what fits it, we’ll just call a wrecker.”
We walked back to the trucks. Lonnie reached under the seat and extracted a ring of keys as big around as a Frisbee. Then he pulled out a thin hacksaw blade with a notch cut in one end. I’d never seen anybody slim jim a car open before. I watched in admiration as Lonnie slipped the blade inside the door, past the rotting black-rubber seal, and swished it around for a couple of seconds. Then he seemed to latch on to something, pull just a hair, and I saw the door lock inside the cab of the Ranger pop up.
“Damn, man,” I said, “I’m impressed.”
Lonnie smiled. “Nothing to it. Beats punching a time clock.”
He climbed inside the truck and fiddled with the keys, trying to find the match for the Ranger’s ignition lock. I was beginning to think maybe this car repossessing stuff wasn’t too shabby a way to make a living … when I heard footsteps pounding up the asphalt behind us.
I turned just as this balding, unshaved guy in a T-shirt, belly hanging over his belt like a sack of flour, came chaining straight at us with an ax handle raised over his head. My eyes popped wide open as the guy let out a lunatic banshee scream.
“Lonnie!” I yelled. Lonnie glanced up just as Fatty brought down the ax handle on the hood of the Chevy. The three-quarter ton was built like a tank and beat all to hell anyway, so it’s not like it did any actual damage to it. But it pissed Lonnie off real bad.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Cut that out!”
I was away from the guy, both trucks between us. And I was determined to keep it that way. He was swinging his ax handle like a Louisville slugger, connecting with anything that got in his way. Lonnie hopped down from the Ranger and ran around in front of the guy, then stopped just beyond swinging range.
“Put it down, fella,” he warned. “We have to call the cops out here, you’re going to spend a weekend in jail.”
Fatty growled. I mean, really growled, like a dog or something, then raised the handle over his head and came straight at Lonnie like a bull.
Lonnie sidestepped him, ducked, and stuck out a leg. The guy caught the instep of Lonnie’s right foot with his right ankle and lost his footing. The ax handle flailed helplessly in midair before the guy completely lost his balance, slipped over a concrete curb, and wound up facedown in the dirt.
Lonnie was over him in a second, yanking the guy’s face up by a handful of hair. Then he jerked a small aerosol can out of his rear pocket and sprayed the guy’s face. Liberally. Next thing you know, the guy’s choking and heaving and blowing chunks all over the side of his pickup.
“Mace?” I asked, as Lonnie walked around to the front of the Chevy.
“That guy fuck up my truck?” he demanded. I stepped around front next to him.
“Looks like he dinged the hood a few times,” I commented. “Didn’t get the headlights, though. You going to swear out a warrant?”
Lonnie looked over at Fatty, who by now was up on all fours, gasping for breath, the worst of his convulsions passing.
“The hell with it,” Lonnie spat. “It’ll take too long for Metro to get here. I ain’t got the time. Let’s go.”
Lonnie tossed me the keys to the Chevy. I started the motor, then sat in the cab with the truck idling until Lonnie got the Ford running. Then I pulled out of his way and let him go first. I trailed him to make sure our newfound friend didn’t try anything else. As we turned left around one of the apartment buildings, I checked in the rearview mirror. Fatty was pulling himself up to his feet now, shaking, trying to get his balance back.
I felt sorry for the guy. If you’re a hot-shot land developer and you file bankruptcy owing the banks a couple hundred million, you get your picture in the paper. But fall behind on a two-hundred-a-month loan payment, then two goons come steal your truck and spray Mace all over you on your day off.
I began to wonder if I could get my job at the paper back.
2
Lonnie was giving me forty bucks a car on repo work, and we were getting in six to ten a week. So I was
