“Brought you some more biscuits. And some jelly. Aren’t you going to say ‘I told you so’?”

  He took a sip of coffee. “I told you so. Where’s the car now?”

  “Ollie helped me push it into a gas station,” Jackie said. And then her words came out in a torrent. “I couldn’t help it. That car and me were meant to be. A red Corvette, Mr. K. And I got a great price on it. You should have seen me driving around, guys looking at me, women giving me the evil eye ‘cause I looked so hot. Until it started making a funny noise and it stopped dead where it was.”

  “A Corvette?” Truman dropped his newspaper on the floor. “I thought you told me you were going to look at a Gremlin. A six-hundred-dollar AMC Gremlin. What happened?”

  She told him everything. About how hot and smelly the bus had been, and how the salesman, Jeff Cantrell, made her such a good offer, and how they’d financed it right there, and how they didn’t even do a credit check because they were in the business of helping people buy cars.

  “Ollie said maybe it was something simple that went wrong, like a spark plug or something,” she said.

  “He wouldn’t know a spark plug from a bathtub plug,” Truman said ungraciously. “Have you got a contract, or anything like that?”

  “In my purse. In the kitchen,” Jackie said.

  “Better let me take a look,” he said.

  He perched his reading glasses on the end of his nose. The print on the contract was tiny and faint, a carbon of a carbon. He’d been thinking about going to the VisionMart to get some new prescription glasses. He had a coupon—$14.99, including the eye exam.

  As he read, Truman frowned. And sighed. Jackie kept busy with the hostel students, who were shoveling down pancakes and hash browns as fast as she could bring them out, but every few minutes she came by and stood next to his shoulder, anxiously watching his expression.

  “Well?” she said when she could stand it no longer.

  “These people ought to be run out of town,” Truman said, flinging the contract aside like a soiled napkin. “Goddamn con artists.”

  “What?” Jackie said. “What’s wrong? You haven’t even seen the car yet. Wait till you see my ‘Vette, Mr. K. It’s cherry. Jeff said so. You can even ask Ollie. I was gonna see if you’d give me a ride out there after breakfast, to pick it up. Maybe the battery just needs charging. That happens sometimes, right?”

  “Sometimes,” Truman said. “If the car even has a battery.”

  “Jeff’s a good guy,” Jackie protested. “A lot of people, they see a black chick getting off a bus, they wouldn’t give them the time of day. But Jeff was real polite and nice. And Mr. Bondurant doesn’t let just anybody drive that Corvette. Don’t be so negative, Mr. K. Just because they run a used-car lot doesn’t mean they’re dishonest. That’s a stereotype, you know.

  “Here comes Ollie now,” Jackie said, looking toward the door from the lobby. “Ask him, he’ll tell you it’s a good car.”

  The college kids were sniggering to each other as the dwarf with the thinning, uncombed hair trudged through the dining room toward them. He still wore the baggy, tar-stained orange shorts from the night before, but today’s shirt was an acid-green tank top that exposed his pale, hairless chest.

  Ollie collapsed into the empty chair at Truman’s table. “You’re buying me breakfast,” he told Jackie. “After last night, you owe me at least that much.”

  “I’ll buy you breakfast,” Truman said. “I’ve seen the contract for that car of hers. She’s been cleaned out, my friend.”

  Ollie rubbed his eyes. “Maybe it’s just a spark plug.”

  Jackie turned his coffee cup over and filled it up. “Mr. K thinks I’ve been ripped off. But he doesn’t know Jeff like I do. He let me write a check for the down payment, because the bank was already closed and I couldn’t get cash. And after we’d done all the paperwork, he was real excited for me. He says he loves to put beautiful women in beautiful cars. He was going to take me to dinner, but he couldn’t leave because Mr. Bondurant and his assistant manager are out of town and Jeff is acting sales manager. Does that sound like a crook to you?”

  “It’s a great car when it’s running,” Ollie said, helping himself to a biscuit. “She let me drive it.”

  “You don’t have a driver’s license,” Truman said. “You’re both crazy.”

  “Cherry,” Jackie repeated. “That’s what Jeff called it.”

  “Does cherry translate to rip-off?” Truman asked. He could tell Jackie didn’t like hearing the truth, but it couldn’t be helped.

  He didn’t know anything in particular about this Bondurant Motors outfit, but buy-here, pay-here lots were as big a scourge in Florida as cockroaches and hurricanes.

  The way it worked was like this: The used-car lot would sell you a car, a piece of crap, probably, and at a price that was two or three times what it was worth. They didn’t run credit checks because they didn’t need to. They milked you for as much down payment as they could, then they set up an “easy payment plan” biweekly or even weekly, sometimes, at indecent interest rates.

  And if you missed even one payment, legally they could come after your car, keep any payments you’d made, and even charge you wildly inflated towing and storage fees. The next day, the same lot could sell the same car all over again.

  It was a beautiful system, if you owned the car lot.

  Like most of the other scams that flourished like mildew in Florida’s tropical splendor, the easy-pay lots catered to people without any other options. Poor people. Immigrants. People with no credit, bad credit, minimum-pay wage earners.

  Every year the Florida legislature promised to change the laws that allowed the easy-pay lots to exist. Every year, the car dealers’ lobbyists reminded lawmakers that poor people don’t make campaign contributions.

  “That paper you signed obligates you to pay $77.10 a week for three years,” Truman said. “That’s 156 payments. You’re paying twenty percent interest, Jackie, and $12,027.60.”

  “Is that legal?” Ollie asked. “That ain’t legal, is it?”

  “Florida doesn’t have any usury laws,” Truman said. “It’s a wonderful state, my friend.”

  Jackie was sitting down now, too, looking even glummer than when she’d started the morning.

  “For that you could get a new car,” Truman said. “A good one.”

  “Not a ‘Vette,” Jackie protested. “See, that’s how much you know about cars, Mr. K. You’re out of touch, no offense. And that car is the prettiest thing I’ve ever owned. I don’t care what it costs. It’s worth every cent.”

  “If you miss a payment, it’s history,” Truman said. “So’s your investment, your equity in the car.”

  “I’m not gonna miss a payment,” Jackie said heatedly. “I’m a hard worker, Mr. K. I’ve wanted a car like that my whole life. Nobody’s going to take it away. It’s mine. And as soon as I get it fixed, you’ll see how fine it is.”

  Truman knew he had pushed her too far. It was time to back off a little and try some tact. He didn’t want to see her cheated. Nellie always did say you caught more flies with honey than vinegar.

  “You are a hard worker,” he soothed. “You’re smart and decent and good-hearted. If anybody deserves something good, it’s you, Jackie. Would you mind if an old friend made a suggestion?”

  “What kind of suggestion?” she asked. She knew Mr. K was trying to look out for her, but she was an adult, wasn’t she? And she knew what she was getting into, didn’t she?

  “You’ve got a cousin who’s a mechanic, right?”

  “My cousin’s husband,” Jackie said reluctantly. “Milton.”

  “Let this Milton take a look at the car. See what the problem is, and if there’s anything else wrong. He can tell you if you got a good deal or not. If the car’s as good as you say, I’ll shut up.”

  “What if Milton says it’s a good car? Then will you believe me?”

  “Absolutely,” Truman said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  Chapter FIVE

  Milton Tuten was a man of very few words. He towed the Corvette into one of the bays at the garage where he worked, and while Jackie watched, he opened the hood and peered inside, like a scholar studying some ancient writings. He put it up on the hydraulic lift and walked around underneath it, peering up at its underbelly with a flashlight and muttering under his breath.

  When he was done, he wiped his hands on a rag and put the greasy rag in his back pocket, giving Jackie a look of utter disbelief. “You telling me somebody got you to pay nine thousand dollars for this thing?”

  Jackie nodded glumly. She didn’t dare tell him what Truman had said about the car’s true cost. Milton would tell his wife, Sonya, and she would tell her mother, Jackie’s aunt Louise, and it’d get back to her mother, and Jackie would never hear the end of it. Not until the day she died.

  “Something wrong with my car?” She was already regretting asking Milton for his advice. She felt defensive and protective toward the ‘Vette, like it was her own child or something, and folks were telling her it had buckteeth and knock-knees and no telling what else.

  He walked around and opened the driver’s-side door, peering in at the dashboard. “Odometer’s been messed with. Sixty thousand miles. Hah! More like two hundred sixty thousand.”

  She felt a little twist in her belly. “Low mileage in a car like this, that’s rare,” she could hear Jeff telling her about the doctor’s wife.

  “It’s still a good car though, right?” she said pleadingly. “Maybe you could work on it. I could pay you a little bit now, and some more when something goes wrong.”

  “What’s wrong with this car you and me can’t fix,” Milton said grimly. “This here car’s been wrecked. Totaled out. Maybe more than once, all the welding seams under there. Frame’s all bent to hell.”

  He put his big, greasy hand on the hood of the nice, shiny car and Jackie shuddered involuntarily.

  “This T-top rattles like my grandma’s dentures. You didn’t notice that when you drove it?”

  She’d asked Jeff about that noise.

  “That’s just the way it goes with these ‘Vettes,” Jeff had said reassuringly. “What you call an idiosyncrasy. Just do what I do.”

  “What’s that?”

  He flipped the radio volume knob up three turns.

  “See,” he’d shouted. “Now you don’t notice the rattle at all.”

  Milton reached in the car again and with his stubby outstretched index finger, he jiggled the steering wheel like a loose tooth. “How about this steering wheel? It’s fixing to come off of this steering column.”

  “Tilt steering?” She was quoting Jeff Cantrell again.

  “Nah, man,” Milton said, slamming the door shut, walking away, leaving her standing there with her baby diagnosed as a terminal case. “That car salesman seen you coming, Jackie. He picked you clean.”

  Funny. She hadn’t noticed the water stains on the roof liner before. Or the cracked vinyl on the dashboard, or the way the passenger-side window wouldn’t close all the way because the rubber gaskets had rotted out.

  Now, not even the complimentary wild-cherry car deodorizer, the one that said “Bondurant Motors,” could hide the smell of rot. She turned the key in the ignition and stalled the car. Three times. She took a deep breath and started the car, listened to the belching motor, and turned the stinky red car in the direction of Bondurant Motors and Jeff Cantrell. She’d see about this piece of crap. Yes, sir.

  Jeff Cantrell had a couple of live ones. A young Mexican couple. They were gesturing and yammering in nonstop Spanish over the powder-blue 1979 Cadillac Eldorado he’d pulled into the slot vacated by the red Corvette.

  Ronnie had taught him all the Spanish he needed to clinch a sale.

  “Trabajo, “Jeff said loudly. “Ustedes trabajo?”

  “Si,” said the wife. She had a long braid hanging down her back and was doing most of the talking and gesturing. She jabbed the senor in the side.

  He reached in the pocket of his faded jeans and offered Jeff a creased and wrinkled pay slip. The pay slip said his name was Joaquim Morales. It was issued by the Hernando County Public Works Department. They’d driven all the way down here to St. Pete just to look at cars.

  Perfect. Ronnie loved to sell cars to greaseballs. “If they can’t habla, they can’t bitch about nothing,” he said. Even more than greaseballs, he loved to sell cars to guys with government jobs.

  It was impossible to fire anybody who worked for the city or the county or the state, according to Ronnie Bondurant. And if the greaseball got slow on payments, all Ronnie had to do was make a call to a supervisor, threaten to show up to collect his money, and the greaseball would be there on Friday with the dinero in hand. Cash money.

  “Cuanto?” Mrs. Joaquim was saying. Her husband was already sitting behind the steering wheel of the El-Dog. That’s what they called Eldorados here on the lot—El-Dogs. Ronnie bragged that he’d sold every pre-1980 El-Dog in Pinellas County, hell, make it Central Florida, at least once.

  “Ven aca,” Jeff said, pointing across the lot toward the little concrete-block sales lot. It was as hot as blue blazes out here. Now he’d get them in the air-conditioning and get the money. He felt great. Sunday afternoon and here he already had four burning gas. Wait till Ronnie got back in town.

  They were under the red-and-yellow-striped aluminum awning that stretched over the driveway in front of the office when Jeff heard the familiar sound of a Corvette in need of shocks, struts, a lube job, and probably a whole new engine mount. The red ‘Vette came hurtling toward him, not slowing down, coming right at him and Mr. and Mrs. Morales, must have been thirty miles an hour. Suddenly, before they were sidewalk sandwiches, the driver slammed on the brakes. Rubber squealed. Mrs. Morales screamed.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Jeff hollered. The brakes on that ‘Vette were shot. He could have been killed.

  “Madre de Dios” Mrs. Morales was making the sign of the cross over her ample bosom.

  The cute black waitress, Jackleen something, shot out of the ‘Vette before the engine had quit knocking.

  “Hey, you,” she said, running up to him, getting right up in his face. “This car’s been wrecked. The frame is bent. It’s a piece of shit. I want my money back.”

  With each sentence she spoke, she jabbed a long fingernail into his chest.

  “Hey, now,” Jeff said, flashing his dimples. “Good to see you, Jackleen. Just let me slip into the office, finish up with Mr. and Mrs. Morales here and I’ll be right with you.”

  “No way, you son of a bitch,” Jackie said. “I’m going into the office with you right this minute and you’re going to give me back the money I gave you yesterday and take back this crapmobile you sold me.”

  He took a step away from the jabbing fingernail and the shrill demands. He’d have to get this chick calmed down and shut up in a hurry.

  Too late. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Moraleses shuffling in the direction of the battered Toyota they’d driven up in.

  Jeff could feel the sale slipping away and he did something he rarely did, because he was an even- tempered, happy-go-lucky kind of guy. He got mad. Really pissed off.

  Jackie saw what was going on. “That’s right,” she called after the Mexicans. “Run for your life. This son of a bitch is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg.”

  “You have fucked me over bad, lady,” Jeff said through clenched teeth. “Who do you think you are, coming on my lot, chasing off my customers? You got a problem, you come in here and we handle it. You don’t come in here and fuck up my sales.”

  “Problem?” she shouted, hands on her hips. “Yeah, I got a problem. Like that ‘Vette’s been totaled. My mechanic looked it over. He says the frame’s cracked and the odometer’s been turned back and the steering wheel could fall off the first time I take a hard left.”

  Jeff shrugged. His dimples were gone now and he’d set his face in stone, the way he’d seen Ronnie and Wormy do when they were getting hassled by a customer.

  “‘All sales final,’” Jeff said. “‘All merchandise sold as is.’” He pointed to the words painted on the glass door of the sales office. “It says so right there. Says so on your contract, too. Your payment is due next Saturday. Feel free to drop it in the mail. Long as it’s here by Saturday.”

  He straightened his shoulders and pulled his shirt away from his back. He turned his back on her.

  “I’m not giving you another cent,” Jackie said, running after him. “I’m getting a lawyer. I’ll sue you people.”

  Jeff stopped dead and wheeled around to face her. She was going to be a pain in the ass now, he realized.

  And it was a shame. Here he’d been looking forward to seeing Jackleen again, seeing her every Saturday, marking off the payments, maybe having some drinks and some harmless recreational sex. He’d never screwed a black chick before.

  “You’re not getting nothing back,” he said with eerie calm. “And believe me, Jackleen, you don’t want to fuck with Bondurant Motors. And you definitely do not want to fuck with Ronald Xavier Bondurant.”

  Chapter SIX

  Truman decided to skip his Sunday afternoon walk. The heat in his room made him drowsy, but trying to nap on his narrow iron bed, drenched in perspiration, made him feel like he was being mummified. The only really cool place in the hotel was probably the big walk-in refrigerator in the kitchen. He decided to settle for the lobby.

  Jackie was just coming in as he settled into the wicker armchair nearest the door. Her tear-streaked face and slumped shoulders confirmed his suspicions about her “new” car.

  “Bad news, huh, kid?” he asked.

  She leaned against the door frame and fanned herself. “Grandmama said if it looks too good to be true, it probably is,” she said.

  “Funny. My grandma said that, too,” Truman said. “You want something cold to drink before you tell me about it? I’m buying.”

  Jackie gave him the key to the kitchen, strictly against the restaurant manager’s rules. Truman found a plastic gallon jug of iced tea in the refrigerator, got some glasses, and filled a bus tray with ice from the ice machine. When he got back to the lobby, Ollie was there, too, trying to cheer her up.

 

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