Way Past Dead

“Sure, I planned to stop by on the way home. This’ll give me a good excuse.”

I gave Mary a hug like her uncle would give her, then waved goodbye to her father and stepped out the door into the parking lot. Gallatin Road this time of night is more than just a little creepy, with the eerie orange of the street lamps casting long, foreboding shadows. The Earl Scheib Body Shop across the street was empty and desolate, with shiny, jet-black windows and rust-red brick. I worried about Mary and her family being alone in the restaurant. Last year, the entire night shift of a Taco Bell in a little town just northeast of here was wiped out in a robbery that turned into a massacre. People are so damned crazy these days. I once interviewed an inmate at the Tennessee State Prison, a hard-core lifer, who told me he was afraid of the people coming up through the crime ranks these days.

I pulled onto Gallatin Road with the sack full of leftovers on the floorboard next to me. Traffic had thinned and I had one of my few rare times of hitting the lights correctly. I made it up to the Inglewood Theatre in a couple of minutes, then turned left, curved around, and pulled up to Lonnie’s chain-link fence gate. I braked the car and tooted the horn a couple of times, then got out and stood by the fence. I’d learned my lesson the hard way about surprising Shadow, so stood politely back until I was sure she recognized me.

Her huge paws barely fit through the spaces in the chain link as she stood on her hind legs and nuzzled me through the wire. I held the bag up to the fence; she got a whiff of it and her long, bushy tail went into overdrive.

“Yes, baby,” I cooed at her. Damn dog always did that to me, makes me sound like an idiot. “Look what I got.…”

I opened the gate and eased through, then secured it back. Shadow was on my shoulders, her great wet snout rubbing streaks across my face. Usually, I’d have thought something like that was gross, but with her it never bothered me. I’m just glad she wasn’t trying to rip my throat out.

From behind the trailer, maybe thirty feet away, Lonnie stepped out and cleared his throat.

“Well,” he called, “you gonna give it to her or what?”

I motioned for her to sit. She settled back on her haunches, jaws already dripping at the thought. I pulled the greasy meat out of the bag, wadded it into a ball, and held it out in front of her.

“Speak,” I said. This low, throaty growl came out of her. I shook my head back and forth, needling her. “Speak, Shadow.”

“You keep teasing her like that, she’s liable to tear your arm off at the shoulder.”

“C’mon, baby, speak to me!”

She let loose with a rumbling that came from way down inside her, then erupted in a fearful bark that would’ve sent lesser men than me under the bed if I hadn’t known her. I flicked my wrist, and this wad the size of a tennis ball sailed through the air in a slow arc. Shadow became airborne and I had to jump out of the way.

The meat disappeared before all four paws were back on the ground. I leaned down and rubbed my hands in her fur, smearing the juice all over her in what I hoped she’d think was an extra treat.

Lonnie wiped his hands on a pink shop rag. “I’m about finished back here. Let’s go get a beer.”

In the dim light, I could see grease streaks across his face and up his arms. “What’ve you been working on?”

“I got an engine I’m rebuilding now, trying to make a few extra bucks. Six-cylinder out of a ’68 Mustang. You remember Jack Stevens?”

We stepped onto the deck. Lonnie opened the front door of the trailer, sending a glaze of yellow light over the front of the junkyard.

“Stevens?” I asked as we walked inside. “Can’t say I do.”

“Used to work part-time for me skip-tracing, back when I was still doing a lot of that. Started working the same time you did, more or less.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway,” Lonnie said, opening the refrigerator door and pulling out a couple of cold brews, “guy gets the hots for an old Mustang, so he finds a ’68 coupe for sale down in Spring Hill. Goes down, takes a look at it, gets crazy, writes a check. Doesn’t take it to a mechanic or anything.”

He popped the tops on the cans, handed one to me, then chuckled. “Dumb ass. Freaking car’s burning a quart of oil every three days. Throw-out bearing squeals like a baby rolling around in a box of broken glass. Jesus …”

“What he’d do that for?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Shit for brains, I guess. I made him a deal, said I’d do the rebuild for parts plus two hundred.”

“Some people got more money than brains,” I said, raising the can. The beer tingled all the way down. Delicious.

“Yeah, well, this dude ain’t got much o’ either.”

“Speaking of shit for brains,” I said, plopping down on the couch and spreading my feet out across the coffee table, “have I got a story to tell you.”

By the time I finished the chronicle of Bubba Ray’s assault and my subsequent visit to Phil Anderson’s house, we’d polished off most of the beer. Lonnie shook his head in amazement, sniggering at the thought of the incompetent attacker.

“Guy can’t even sit in a wheelchair without screwing it up,” he said.

“Yeah. Says he’s going to whip my ass. Like he’s some kind of mean mother.”

“Well,” Lonnie said, popping up out of his torn, grease-covered easy chair, “this guy must be a pussy if he couldn’t whip your sorry ass.”

“What a minute!” I said to his back.

“Wait nothing,” he said from the kitchen. I heard the sound of a beer can being opened. “Want another?”

“No, I got to go home. The upshot of this whole business with Bubba Ray is that Phil Anderson says he’s messengering over a check tomorrow morning, which means I can pay you back.”

I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my checkbook. I filled in $500.00 on the amount line, signed it, then handed it to him as he came back in with a fresh beer.

“Check with me tomorrow afternoon before you deposit it, okay? On the off chance that Phil Anderson doesn’t come through.”

Lonnie grinned and shook his head. “Why don’t you just postdate the damn thing and mail it to me?”

“Just take the check. I gotta go. I need some shut-eye.”

Lonnie sat up quickly. “Hey, before you go.” He set his beer down on the coffee table, then disappeared down the dark hallway that led to the two bedrooms. Lonnie used one for an office, I knew, and one for the occasional times when he spent the night here.

He returned in a few seconds with a clipboard in his hand. “Listen, I know you’re temporarily flush. Or at least you will be if your check comes tomorrow. How’d you like to make a few extra bucks, anyway?”

“I don’t know. What’ve you got?”

He held out the clipboard. “You know I lost the bank and my repo work has gone down the toilet. Well, I got a new client today.”

I handed the clipboard back to him without looking at it. “Aw, no, Lonnie. I’ll have to take a pass on that one. I’m too frazzled to repo cars right now.”

“C’mon, Harry, it’ll be fun! Take your mind off your other problems. Besides, these ain’t just regular cars. Take a look.”

I took back the clipboard and tried to focus in the dim light. Several low-quality faxes were attached to the clipboard, with a logo and heading at the top of the first sheet that read LUXURY LEASING OF NASHVILLE.

“Whoa, what’ve we got here?” I asked.

“Yeah, cool, huh? These ain’t no Ford Fiestas we gotta pick up here, bud. These are government-inspected, USDA prime.”

There were several pages of listings: Mercedes, Jags, Saabs, Alfas. “C’mon,” I said. “Who buys a car like this and then skips out on the payments?”

Lonnie grimaced. “What planet are you from, bozo? Any fool can lease a car. It’s making those five-