and used car lots. And a video store called The Caravan.
The Nova turned right off of 59 and went around back of the video place. The store was tucked neatly between an outdoor motor sales and a garage that had a sign that said it specialized in foreign cars and transmission work. It was seven-thirty sharp.
We drove on past a ways, then Jim Bob turned around and we pulled off an annex road and found a little truck stop and had breakfast. When that was finished, we went to a used car lot that was cater – corner and across the highway from The Caravan and walked around the lot looking at cars and kicking tires and keeping a sideways view on the video store. A plump salesman with white hair slicked back, wearing a plaid sports coat, maroon tie, lime green slacks and white shoes, tried to tell us why a used car was ten times better than a new one.
Jim Bob had him show us all the cars on the highway side of the lot, and we looked at them real slow and asked technical questions and took turns sitting behind the wheel of each and every one of them. The salesman’s smile had almost fallen down his throat and he was beginning to look a little woozy from the heat. His cheap plaid sports coat had wells of sweat under the arms and there was a ring of it around his neck and a splotch under the knot of his tie.
“Confidentially, Horace,” Jim Bob said, having latched onto the man’s name, “I don’t think I could buy a car I hadn’t driven.”
“Course not,” said Horace.
“We’d like to test-drive a few of these babies. See how they respond. We’ll start with this Skylark, if that’s all right.”
“By all means,” Horace said producing a monogrammed, green hanky and wiping his face. “We here at Horace Williams’s Motors aim to please. That’s our motto, and we live by it.”
“And it’s a good motto,” Jim Bob said. “A business that don’t care about its customers is no business at all. That’s what I always say, don’t I?”
“Yes,” I said, “you always say that.”
“I’ll get the keys,” Horace said.
We drove the air-conditioned Skylark around a bit, going by the video store now and then, never getting too far away from it.
We swapped that car for a red ‘68 Chevy, with air-conditioning, and drove it around, this time actually crossing over to the video store and driving back between the outdoor motor place and going around back. We saw the Nova parked there next to a gray Vette.
Jim Bob turned us around and we went back to the used car dealer. After about five cars, Horace didn’t look nearly so ready to please. He even told us he thought old Ramblers were pretty good cars, and how if he had one, he might hang onto it.
“Guess you’re right,” Jim Bob said. “But we’ll be back tomorrow to look at the rest of them. I think if you’d had that Skylark in metal flake blue we’d have had a deal.”
There was a filling station almost directly across from The Caravan, and that was our next stop. Jim Bob shook hands with the owner of the station. He knew him from the day before.
“This is Phil,” Jim Bob said introducing the station owner to me. He didn’t bother to give my name to Phil. “New man, Phil. I’m supposed to break him in today.”
“Well, I don’t envy you men any,” Phil said. “Hot work sitting out there in a car.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Jim Bob said, and gave him a smile.
“Come on,” he said to me. “Let’s get to work.”
The car was parked next to a telephone booth and it was pointing in the direction of the video store. We got in it and I said, “Exactly what is our work, Jim Bob?”
“Highway Department. We’re supposed to count how many tractor-trailer trucks come by here in a given hour.”
“Any reason?”
“Road damage. Gives some clue to the wear and tear on the road. Big trucks like that are hard on the concrete. You count about three hours a day, for a few y, for a days, and you can get some kind of idea as to what kind of beating the highway’s taking. You can average that out and make plans for when to have the road repaired. That way you don’t wait until it’s in awful shape and there’s craters out there big enough to lose a Volkswagen in, though it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if all them foreign sonofabitches fell off in a hole. I think you should buy American.”
“Where did you learn all that, Jim Bob?”
“I made it up yesterday.”
We stayed there a couple of hours, and it got bloody hot. I felt as if my brain was boiling and about to run out my ears. Jim Bob told some jokes that weren’t any good and we sang “The Great Speckled Bird” together. We weren’t half-bad. We did every television theme song we knew and we even hummed some hymns.
Finally I didn’t want to sing anymore. Jim Bob got a magazine out of the backseat and read it and eyeballed the video store over it from time to time. It was one of those hog-raising magazines. I wondered if it had an article on ear mites too.
The Caravan did a brisk trade. People went in and out all day, renting and perhaps buying videos. A couple of times I wondered if maybe someone had gone in there to buy a snuff film, but ruled that out. That was too easy. Those things would be sold to special people in special places, for big money.
And maybe not. Maybe if the right person had the money, they could get it across the counter. One Porky’s, a Bugs Bunny Cartoon, and oh yeah, your latest snuff film.
Jim Bob gave me the magazine. I thumbed through it. There were some good photographs of hogs.
“Here’s one I bet you don’t know,” Jim Bob said, and he began to hum the theme to “Secret Agent Man.”
“Secret Agent Man, and shut up.”
About eleven-fifteen the Nova came around the corner with the Mex driving and Freddy on the front passenger side.
“Lunchtime,” Jim Bob said, and started the Rambler. We followed them to the Pizza Hut and cruised on by.
“Creatures of habit,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jim Bob said. “Let’s go down here and get a burger and see if we can pick them back up at the store. I have a feeling they keep a pretty regular schedule. Man, how would you like to eat pizza every day?”
“Thing that gets me,” I said, “is they’re so normal acting. They go to work and eat pizza, and murder women. Do you think they’ll do it again?”
“I think they’ll do it until we put a stop to it. If they’d done it only once, that would be enough for me. I’d as soon the law come down on them, but since they, won’t, it’s up to me and Russel.”
We got a greasy burger and a Coke and took our time. When we were finished, we went back to the station and bought a couple of Cokes from the machine inside and sat out in the Rambler, our home away from home, and sipped them. My Coke turned hot before I was halfway finished with it, and I opened the door and poured it out. I got bored enough to actually count the tractor- trailer trucks that went by; Jim Bob’s theory had come to make a certain type of sense to me. It was that hot.
About three I opened the door and threw up my hot Coke. Jim Bob went in the station and bought me some peanut butter crackers and a Sprite. “Here,” he said, “this will go well with an upset stomach.”
I doubted it, but I nibbled on a cracker and sipped the Sprite. I began to envy Russel at home in the air- conditioning. Nothing to do but watch monster movies and look at girly magazines and read about ear mites.
“It’s the glamour that keeps me in this kind of work,” Jim Bob said. “Good hours and scenery. Chance to meet fascinating people, and of course there’s the retirement plan.”
At four o’clock, the Nova came out from behind The Caravan. The Mexican was the only one on board. Jim Bob cranked up the Rambler and we found a lull in traffic and drove on across to the video store parking lot.
“Just the Mex has seen us, so you go in and have a look around. Get the lay of the land. This may be where we do it.”
“Here?”
“It’s either here or the house,” Jim Bob said. “If the Mex comes back, I’ll start honking my horn like I’m out here waiting on you and I’m impatient. Note the back door, anything like that.”
