Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course, page 13
part #2 of Truman Kicklighter Series
Ronnie took a look. A thin, paint-spattered man unfolded himself out of the right side of the truck, took a last deep puff off a cigarette, then tossed the butt onto the asphalt.
“Son of a bitch Wesley Coombs,” Ronnie said, disgusted. “I hate a goddamn litterbug.”
Wormy slouched down into a chair, his eyes half closed. “Wes Coombs. King of the Bogs,” he said, pronouncing the word to rhyme with “rogue.”
“Heeyy,” Ronnie said, his face brightening. He was still looking out the showroom window. “What have we here now? My next best girfriend, looks like to me.”
LeeAnn Pilker’s gold lame hot pants were so short and so tight, the matching gold leather boots so high-heeled, that she had to take quick, mincing half steps, dodging in and out of the traffic on U.S. 19. Each step sent the overflowing halter top bouncing, the curtain of ebony hair streaming down her back. Cars came to a halt, horns blared, there were whistles and shouts of approval.
“Wormy, you deal with Wes Coombs,” Ronnie said as he stepped out onto the lot to give LeeAnn an appropriate greeting.
“Nah, man,” Wormy said, “I gotta get some rest.” His speech was slurred, his jaw hanging open, his eyes closed all the way.
“What’d Doc give you?” Ronnie asked, looking down at Wormy, whose jaw had dropped completely down onto his chest. Wormy snored softly in reply.
The showroom door opened, the doorbell pealed, and Wes Coombs stood aside, holding the door, not necessarily a gesture of gallantry, more likely that he was completely frozen by the vision of LeeAnn Pilker and her surgically enhanced chest.
“Have you heard from Jeff yet?” LeeAnn asked, skipping the hellos. “He owes me some money.”
“Uh, no, but I do have some things I’d like to discuss with you in my office,” Ronnie said. He nodded curtly at Wesley Coombs, who stood stock-still in the doorway. “Coombs. Mr. Kicklighter here is helping us out now. He’ll take your payment.”
Ronnie put an arm around Truman’s shoulder and his lips close to Truman’s ear. “This son of a bitch is the original hard-luck story. He’s three weeks in arrears on an ‘86 Monte Carlo we sold him six weeks ago. Like Wormy said, he’s a bog. You know, bogus, always got a story. I need to have a word with this young lady here, but you stay out here, shake that money out of him.”
Before Truman could protest, Ronnie was leading the girl into his office. “I go on in five minutes,” LeeAnn was saying, trying to shake his hand off of her hip.
The door closed softly behind them. Truman became aware of a sour smell that emanated from Wesley Coombs. It was sweat, very old sweat that had dried and reactivated again. Truman went through the file and found Coombs’s payment card and tried to breathe through his mouth.
“I can’t pay nothin’ today,” Coombs said flatly. “That’s what I come to tell y’all.”
“Seventy-three dollars, and you’re three weeks behind,” Truman said. He did the math. “Two hundred nineteen dollars you owe.”
Coombs blinked. Even his eyelashes were coated with flakes of paint. “My dog’s been sick, man,” Coombs said. His voice was high, toneless. “Hadda pay two hundred dollars to the vet. Pizza man ran over the dog in the driveway. Dog was bad hurt. Next week, I got some money coming in. I’ll pay then.”
Truman got up and looked out the window at the truck Coombs had arrived in. The truck was still running, and the men in the front seat were downing what looked like quarts of malt liquor.
“Mr. Coombs, why don’t you ask your boss out there for an advance?” Truman said, trying to be polite. “Because Mr. Bondurant, he told me to make sure you pay up today. No excuses.”
Coombs shook his head and a fine mist of white paint flakes filled the sour air around him. “That’s my buddies, not my boss,” he said. “Bossman don’t give no advances.”
As if on cue, the painter behind the wheel gave three long blasts of the car horn.
“I gotta go,” Coombs said, edging toward the door.
“Hey, asshole.” Wormy was still slumped down in the chair and his words came out slowly, slurred but recognizable. Coombs stopped, stared at Weems.
Truman relaxed a little. Maybe Wormy could make this deadbeat see reason. He’d had little training in his time as a shakedown artist.
“What’s this shit about a sick dog?” Wormy was sitting forward now, his eyes hardened slits. The slackness in his face was gone.
“It’s true,” Coombs said uneasily. “That pizza guy took off when he seen what he done. And the vet wouldn’t let me have the dog back unless I paid first. Cash.”
“Fuck the dog,” Weems said. “You owe two hundred and nineteen dollars for that Monte Carlo.”
“That’s my kids’ dog,” Coombs whined. “He was hurting bad, howling, bleeding all over the place. The kids were screaming. What was I supposed to do?”
“Shoulda ordered another pizza, finished him off,” Wormy said. “Come on, Coombs, you know the drill here. Gimme fifty dollars now, come back here Monday with the rest.”
“I’m tellin’ you, I’m stone-cold broke,” Coombs said. Two thin rivulets of sweat beaded down his flat, paint-streaked face. The truck honked its horn again. Coombs bolted for the door. The truck was already moving as he jumped into the front seat.
“Now what?” Truman asked.
Weems slumped back into the chair. “Now you tell Ronnie you couldn’t get jackshit out of a scumbag like Wesley Coombs. He ain’t gonna like that. You work here, old-timer, you gotta pull your weight. You gotta know the customers. You gotta realize, we’re dealing with the bottom of the food chain here.”
Truman scanned Coombs’s index card. It didn’t look like he’d ever gone more than two weeks without being in arrears on his payments. There was a home phone number, an address, and a work phone on the card. “I could call his boss,” Truman suggested. “Tell him his employee has a bad debt he needs to settle up with us.”
“Forget it,” Wormy said. “He works for his brother-in-law.”
“Call his wife, ask if she could come in and make a payment?”
“It’s his girlfriend, and that number was disconnected last month,” Wormy said. He sighed. “Nut-cutting time. Call Eddie.”
The office door opened then, and LeeAnn Pilker and Ronnie emerged. LeeAnn’s face was pale, her smile forced. Ronnie had an arm draped around her shoulder, fingers resting lightly but possessively on her left breast. “I really gotta go,” LeeAnn said. “The manager docks my pay if the show starts late because of me.”
Ronnie gave her a wink, and squeezed her breast hard. She winced, but this time didn’t try to shake him off.
“You just tell that manager he better start treating you right, or he’ll be looking for a new star attraction,” Ronnie said. “Tell him Ronnie Bondurant knows people around this town. And Ronnie likes his friends to be treated right. You tell him that, okay, hon?”
“Okay,” she said, moving fast for the door.
“I’ll see you tonight, after the show,” he called to her. “Get us some dinner.”
When she was gone, Ronnie gave a loud war whoop. “How about that, friends and neighbors?” he said, perching on the edge of the desk where Truman was seated. “Is that a fine piece of grade-A pussy or what? And it’s mine, my friends. All mine.”
“I don’t like it,” Wormy said flatly. He cut his eyes over at Truman, reminding Ronnie that they weren’t alone.
“You don’t have to like it,” Ronnie said. “I’m still running this operation, last time I checked. And speaking of which, Pops, how’d you do with old Wesley? You didn’t take a check off him, I hope. That card should make it clear we don’t take none of Wesley Coombs’s bad paper.”
“Coombs gave him a load of bullshit, then ran off,” Wormy said. “Pops here didn’t get a dime off him.”
“That right?”
“Yes,” Truman said. He was steeling himself for the firing. It had been a good try, but maybe he wasn’t still the investigative reporter he thought he was. Maybe he’d lost his edge. At least he’d found out something about Jeff Cantrell’s girlfriend. Now he knew what she looked like, where she worked. It was a lead. It was better than nothing.
Ronnie was in an unusually good mood. Nothing, not even Wesley Coombs, was going to change that. He turned the dial of the Rolodex, plucked out a card, flipped it across the desk at Truman. “We’re done dicking around with that lowlife. That’s Eddie’s number. Does our repos. Call him. Tell him to come by and pick up the key to the Monte Carlo. Tell him Ronnie wants the car back on the lot tomorrow.”
“Better tell him about Wesley’s neighbors,” Wormy added. “That’s a snake nest over there, with all his brothers and half-brothers and cousins living there. Hell, even the girlfriend packs a shotgun, way Wesley tells it.”
“Eddie can take care of himself,” Ronnie said confidently. “Make the call, Pops.”
Chapter EIGHTEEN
The back bumper of the cream-colored Mercedes made a scraping sound as it came onto the Bondurant Motors lot. Its right rear looked like it had been attacked with a baseball bat, the brake and tail-lights shattered, the bumper hanging and actually dragging on the ground.
“Shit,” Ronnie said, watching as the driver parked and got out. “What now?”
The driver looked huge to Truman, with a braid hanging down his back. Part Indian, part black. He matched the description Ed Weingarten had given for this Hernando Boone character.
The doorbell jangled as Boone pushed his way into the showroom. Wormy gave a loopy smirk. “How,” he said, holding up the palm of his hand.
“Shut up, Weems,” Boone snarled. He clapped Ronnie on the shoulder. “My man. Had a little dustup. Need to talk to you in private.”
“Go on in,” Ronnie said. “We’ll be with you in a minute.”
When the office door closed behind Boone, Ronnie’s smooth facade faded. “Dammit, Wormy,” he whispered. “Shut your stupid mouth. Boone’s crazy. He’d just as soon kill you as look at you, anyhow. Eddie should be here any minute. Get that paperwork together on Coombs’s Monte Carlo. And straighten up your act before you go in there. Or I’ll kill you myself.”
He took a thick clip of folded-up bills from his pocket and counted out ten twenties, which he stuck in an envelope and handed to Truman. “Eddie likes to deal in cash,” he said.
Wormy yanked open the file cabinet drawer, tossing the files Truman had just straightened onto the floor. When he found the file for Wesley Coombs, he slammed the top drawer shut and opened the next one, creating the same kind of chaos until he found another folder with a stack of blank forms. He took one of the forms and began filling it out.
“What’s that?” Truman asked.
“Repossession papers, pick-up order, that kind of bullshit,” Wormy said, not looking up from his furious scribbling.
He finished the paperwork and opened a recessed cabinet in the wall, revealing a pegboard hung with dozens and dozens of sets of keys. When he’d found the one he wanted, he tossed it on top of the other papers. “Tell Eddie it’s all there,” he said. Then he went into Ronnie’s private office.
Truman decided to seize the moment.
He opened the filing cabinet drawer, conveniently next to the closed door of Ronnie’s office. If anybody came out, he could say he was straightening up the files. They sure as hell needed it now.
The voices inside the office were only barely audible. Truman edged closer to the door. Hernando Boone’s deep voice was unmistakable. “Son-of-a- bitch crackheads. While I was upstairs doing business, one of ‘em took a tire iron to my Mercedes. Good thing it wasn’t my Gator truck. Nobody messes with that. Time I got down there, they’d scattered. Didn’t even get a shot off. You seen what they did. The Mercedes is ruined. So I was thinking, Ronnie, my man, you being the collision specialist, we could have us an accident, me and you and one of your monkeys.”
Truman strained, but he couldn’t hear Ronnie’s answer. Monkeys? Accidents? Was this the scam Weingarten was investigating? He didn’t dare hang around the door any longer to find out.
He was hungry, and no wonder. It was after six and he’d skipped lunch. He remembered having seen a candy machine in the garage during one brief foray out there while Wormy and Ronnie were gone.
Truman opened the door leading out to the garage, being careful to pull it closed behind him. It was dark and stupefyingly hot. He felt around among the stacks of tires and tools until he came to the vending machine he’d remembered. Most of the slots were empty, but there were some bags of peanuts, two kinds of candy bars, and some ancient-looking snack cakes. He fed in three quarters—for a Baby Ruth, which had been a nickel not so long ago—and put his hand under the delivery slot so the candy wouldn’t make a noise when it fell out.
The candy bar disappeared in three bites.
Truman looked around the garage, saw the partially open back door and a flash of red paint.
He crept back into the showroom, satisfied himself that everything was still quiet, and walked quickly around to the back of the sales lot. The garage bay was surrounded with a high chain-link fence, and half a dozen cars were parked inside. One was a red Corvette.
Jackie’s red Corvette? Hard to tell from this distance. After all, he’d only seen her car once. He moved over to the fence, felt his heartbeat jump up like a startled rabbit. A jolt of sugar from the Baby Ruth? Or was it the old adrenaline rush he’d always felt on the trail of a juicy story?
He felt in his pocket for the pack of HavaTampas. Took one out and lit it, inhaling deeply. Cheap cigars, he reflected, were one luxury he’d never give up.
This Corvette looked a lot like the one Jackie had bought. But this one had heavy damage to the front and the rear. Hers had been a lemon, but the body had looked pretty good, he recalled. Damn his eyes and damn old age. He couldn’t see much from here. Have to go back inside and come out through the garage door. It was risky, going into the showroom again and past Ronnie’s office, but the cigar seemed to have calmed his nerves.
As he glided noiselessly through the showroom he was thankful he’d thought to wear sneakers this morning. Out into the garage, then through the back door, into the fenced-in area. Act casual, he told himself, inching toward the Corvette. You work here. Nothing wrong with familiarizing yourself with the inventory.
If Jackleen had seen a body in the back of the Corvette, if it had been Jeff Cantrell, there might still be traces of blood. He bent down and peered into the back window of the red ‘Vette. Some kind of black plastic sheeting was stretched out over the hatch area. He couldn’t see anything unless he moved that plastic aside.
Wait. He could hear voices from inside the showroom. Quickly, he walked over to the garage door, leaned wearily against the doorjamb, and took a long pull on the HavaTampa. Even that wasn’t enough to chase the jitters. His hands were shaking.
“Hey!” Wormy’s voice echoed loudly from inside the garage. “What the hell are you doing out here, Pops? Snooping around?”
Truman willed himself to be calm. It’s the dope, he told himself. He took the cigar and flicked the ashes on the ground.
“Just taking a smoke break, that’s all,” he said. “I didn’t think Ronnie would want me to smoke inside, so I came out here. That’s all right, isn’t it? I can hear if anybody pulls into the lot. I got great hearing for a man my age.”
“This here area is off-limits,” Wormy said, giving Truman a shove.
Truman stood where he was. “I said I was sorry,” he said. He had no intention of letting anybody lay hands on him, drugs or no drugs. He gave Wormy a long, level stare. Wormy’s eyes were glassy.
“Back in the office,” Wormy said.
Truman walked slowly and deliberately through the garage with Wormy at his heels. Ronnie’s office door was still closed.
Outside, a horn honked. A black pickup truck pulled onto the lot. “That’s Eddie,” Wormy said.
Eddie turned out to be young and black, probably not even twenty-five years old, Truman thought. He was big, over six feet, and built like an overgrown baby. Baggy black shorts hung down to his pudgy knees and the black T-shirt wasn’t quite long enough to meet the waistband of his pants, exposing a roll of flabby belly flesh. His hair was shaved close to his scalp, a gold hoop earring hung from his right earlobe, and wraparound mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes. He wore black leather gloves with the fingers cut out, and when he swaggered into the office of Bondurant Motors, he acknowledged Wormy with one word.
“Yo.”
“This is Pops,” Wormy said curtly. “He’ll fix you up with everything.” He turned and went back into Ronnie’s office.
“Dickhead,” Eddie said. He gave Truman a sheepish look. “Uh, sorry, man.”
“Not at all,” Truman said. He began gathering up the paperwork, car keys, and money. “I was thinking the same thing myself. He is a dickhead.”
“That’s the truth,” Eddie said. He took off the sunglasses and wiped them on the hem of his T-shirt. “Hey, man, where’s Jeff?”
Truman looked up. “You know Jeff?”
“Sure. Me and him hang together some. He likes to go with me on pickups sometimes. The nastier the better. So where’s he at? Partying with the ladies?”
Truman glanced at the office door, then lowered his voice. “According to Ronnie, Jeff quit. Ronnie says Jeff took a job over in Ft. Lauderdale.”
“No way,” Eddie said. “We were supposed to get together Friday night. Me and him and his girlfriend. She was gonna fix me up with some girl from that club over there.” He jerked his head in the direction of the Candy Store.
“His girlfriend. Is that LeeAnn?”
Eddie grinned. “You seen her, huh? Check out those hooters?”
“She came in a little while ago,” Truman said. “Trying to find out if Ronnie knew anything about where Jeff went. I guess Jeff didn’t tell her he was leaving town.”
