Way Past Dead

hundred-a-month lease payments that’s a bear.”

“I don’t know, Lonnie. It sounds like fun, but I just-”

“I’ll even save the best for you. Check the last page.”

I flipped through the pages until I came to the last one, which only had three cars listed. My jaw dropped, and I looked back up at him.

“Lonnie, I’ve never even driven a-”

Suddenly my heart jumped in my chest. I squinted hard and looked back down at the page.

“Rolls-Royce …” I whispered.

There, among the cars that Lonnie had contracted to repossess because their owners had failed to meet their just and legal obligations in terms of repaying a contractually binding financial agreement and instrument of debt, was a 1990 Rolls-Royce Corniche III, Tennessee vanity-license-plate number TRUSNOI.

And below that, the owner’s name: F. M. Ford.

“What’s the matter?” Lonnie asked.

I stared up at him, trying to figure out just how much I should be shocked. “You had a chance to look at these?”

He shook his head. “Fax just came in this afternoon. I had time to glance over it, that’s all.”

I held the clipboard up to him and pointed. “That one. That guy’s Rebecca Gibson’s manager.”

He took it from me, then stared at the listing for a second. “No shit?”

“He’s a big-time music manager. Real hotshot.”

“I don’t care how hot his shot is,” Lonnie said, letting the clipboard drop to his side. “He’s three months behind on his lease payments, and I got to repossess his car.”

I scratched the side of my head, a habit that I’d been indulging in a lot lately. “How’d you get this gig?”

“Scotty Boles put in a good word for me. He knows I’ve got the equipment to snatch those kinds of cars without damaging them. You don’t just set a hook on a damn Mercedes and tug it off.”

“Yeah, obviously,” I said, distracted. “Of course.”

“What’s eating you?” he asked.

I shook my head and sat back down on the couch. “This is too weird. Just too weird. How does a guy who’s one of the most powerful artist managers on the Row wind up having his Rolls picked up?”

“You’d be amazed at some of the cars I’ve repossessed,” Lonnie said. “People live in mansions, then get their wheels yanked out from under ’em. Who knows?”

“It doesn’t make any sense. Just doesn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Harry. You want me to call the office tomorrow and make sure they didn’t make a mistake?”

I turned back to him. “No,” I said with a little more force than I intended. “Don’t do that. But you can do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“Hold off on this one, will you?”

He shrugged. “Well, sure, I can do that. There’s three other pages full I can grab first. But you know, I’ve got to get it eventually.”

“Just give me a couple of days, that’s all. Something stinks here. I’d like to see if I can find out what it is without Ford knowing I’m out there digging in his garbage.”

“You know,” Lonnie said, “if this guy Ford stuck to driving Fords instead of Rolls-Royces, he might not be in this shape now.”

I stood back up. “Lonnie, you’re a good ol’ boy. I don’t care what anybody else says about you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he sputtered.

I opened the door of the trailer and stepped through. “Nothing pal, I didn’t pay any attention to those rumors about you and that goat.”

I shut the door just as his empty beer can sailed through the air and slammed metallically into the glass. Something told me that sleep tonight wasn’t going to come as easily as I’d hoped.

The squeaking and swaying of the metal staircase up to my attic apartment almost woke me up enough to realize I was home. I unlocked my door, staggered in, and barely recognized the place. Not that anything had happened; it just felt like a year since I’d been there.

First things first: no messages on the answering machine, no interesting mail. I stripped off my clothes and got into the shower, letting the hot water rip over me so hard it left red streaks. I dried off, a little more alert now.

Why, I asked myself, hasn’t Marsha called? Even though I didn’t have any notion of what to say to her, I wanted to hear her voice. If it was just for five seconds, that was fine. I only wanted to know she was okay.

Then it occurred to me that the phone works both ways. I made a cup of Sleepytime tea, threw in a slug of brandy for good measure, and settled back into bed. It was almost eleven-thirty when I took a chance and punched in her number.

The number chirped six times before she came on the line.

“Yes,” she said abruptly. Her voice was sharp, tight.

“Hey,” I said. “How are you?”

“Have you seen the news?” she demanded.

“No, I’ve been working all eve-”

“Turn on Nightline,” she snapped. Then the click of a cellular phone being disconnected.

I sat there dumbfounded for a second before panic set in. What in heaven’s name could have happened that would-No matter, put the phone up and turn the damn television on.

The TV took a few seconds to warm up, but the sound came through quickly. A rerun of The Cosby Show was just ending, which meant there’d be at least three minutes of commercials before anything important happened.

As the color sharpened and the picture came into focus, a middle-aged white lady with a pained expression on her face began speaking earnestly into the camera.

“Painful bloating. Stomach upset. It got so bad I finally went to my doctor.” Then she smiled. “Thank God, it was only gas. My doctor recommended Mylanta.…”

“Christ Almighty, lady!” I yelled. “You go to the doctor to find out you need to fart?”

I forced myself to shut up, then remembered that Mrs. Hawkins couldn’t hear me anyway. To hell with it; I hit the mute button.

Finally the pitches were over and the Nightline logo appeared. I hit the mute button just as the theme music started, then slugged down the last of the tea and brandy as they went through the preliminaries.

“Siege in Music City,” the narrator said. Then Ted Koppel’s face appeared.

“What began as a bizarre, almost comical situation in Nashville, Tennessee, took a darker turn today as the founder of a fundamentalist religious sect that calls itself the Pentecostal Evangelical Enochians demanded that the body of his wife be turned over to cult members within forty-eight hours. If the corpse-which is now being held for a legally required autopsy in the Nashville morgue-is not released, cult founder Woodrow Tyberious Hogg has sworn that he will invoke what he calls the Enochian Apocalypse. Local officials interpret the Enochian Apocalypse this way: Heavily armed cult followers-who at present are surrounding the Nashville morgue-will begin their assault to retrieve the body of Evangeline Lee Hogg on Sunday morning, one full week after the siege began. In a moment we’ll speak with the mayor and chief of police in Nashville and a Vanderbilt University professor who’s an expert on cult behavior. But first, a little background from Nightline correspondent Dave Maresh.”

I pulled the covers up to my neck and settled into the pillow, my eyes wide-open, my neck muscles tensed. All I could think of was Marsha sitting with all those other people huddled in the darkness around Dr. Henry’s little battery-powered pocket TV.