The Midnight Dog of the Repo Man (2 page)

Kenny didn't say anything, so I got him and his buddy each a mug of beer. Becky sat down then, sort of collapsing in her seat in a way that suggested she was starting to relax around the situation.

“You really think you would have shot me?” I asked Kenny. “I bought you ice cream at the DQ that one time.”

He pulled his mask off then. His face was as I remembered—full-on classic pale Irish, with blue eyes and hair that matched the red freckles scattered across his face. “Tell you the truth, they aren't even loaded,” he admitted.

“For God's sake, Kenny!” the taller one shouted, furious.

Kenny shrugged at his partner. “He knows who I am, Mark.” Kenny took a long pull at his beer, sighing in satisfaction.

“It's just unprofessional,” Mark complained. “Once you let them know the guns aren't loaded, they don't feel as threatened.”

He had a good point. “You guys do this very often?” I inquired.

“Casinos, banks, like that,” Mark affirmed as he sat down. “Maybe armored cars. Art museums.”

“You mind not putting your gun on the bar?” I asked him.

“Oh. Sorry.” He slid the shotgun onto the floor.

“So, banks?” I prodded.

“Well, not yet. That's the plan, though,” Mark confided. “Tired of being broke all the time.”

“Get a little cash and move someplace warmer,” Kenny expounded. “Like maybe Grand Rapids.”

Cora waved her glass and I obligingly went to fill it. The phone rang and Becky automatically reached for it. Mark jerked his head around to glare at her.

“I know it's a robbery and everything, but she's kind of been expecting the call,” I apologized. “Okay if she take it?”

“Let it go, Mark,” Kenny suggested.

“Yeah, what the hell,” Mark decided. He pulled off his own mask. At some point someone had misadvised him that he'd look good if he coaxed his brown sideburns to come to a point less than an inch from his lips, and a smudge of beard clung to the dimple under the center of his lower lip like moss on a rock. Otherwise he looked like anybody: short brown hair, brown eyes.

“This is actually our first real robbery. We drove by the liquor store, but it was closed for a funeral,” Kenny confided.

“That probably doesn't count,” I agreed.

“Then we saw you were still open and thought,
Perfect
.”

“And believe me, we're flattered you choose the Black Bear Bar. Still, even with unloaded guns, you could go to prison for this. You absolutely do not want to do that.”

Kenny's eyes widened. “That's right; I heard you went to prison!”

Mark regarded me curiously. “You did? What for?”

I gave him the kind of stare I'd mastered while a guest of the state of Michigan down in Jackson, and his eyes flitted away. “Whatever, sorry,” he muttered, gulping his beer.

“Anyway,” I continued, “don't take this the wrong way, but I'm thinking maybe this life of crime doesn't really suit you two.”

“I almost crapped my pants before we came in here,” Kenny acknowledged.

“Easy for you to say,” Mark sneered at me, getting a little of his attitude on because he'd felt his toughness being challenged. “You've got a good job.”

“Good job,” I repeated evenly. I looked around the all-but-empty place. “Hey, Becky,” I called.

“Hang on a moment, please,” I heard Becky say into the phone. “Yes, Ruddy?”

“How much did you pay me last week?”

“Last week? I couldn't pay you. We didn't make enough.”

“What about my tips?”

“Um … tips for a bouncer?”

“Okay, so how much did you pay me last
month
?”

“Ruddy …”

“How much for all of May, Becky?”

“We usually do pretty well in July and I'll pay you then,” she said in a quiet voice.

“Okay, thanks.” I was still looking at Mark. His eyes said he got it, and they warmed a little in silent sympathy.

“Ruddy, could I have another wine?” Stasia asked.

They both lived within walking distance of the Black Bear, so I gave them each another generous pour, finishing out the bottle. Their faces were flushed. “This is pretty exciting,” Stasia confided to me.

“The redhead is adorable,” Cora agreed in a whisper.

“I think you're having Stockholm syndrome,” I replied. Off their blank stares I returned to the bar. “Mark what?” I queried.

“Mark Stevens,” the tall one replied, holding out his hand. We shook. His hands were roughed by outdoor work.

“You going to be able to pay for the beers?” I asked.

They glanced at each other, embarrassed. “Could we maybe put it on our tab?” Kenny asked.

“I'll cover it, Ruddy,” Cora sang out.

The robbers grinned their gratitude at their two benefactors, who both smiled back. Who needed computer dating when there was the good old Black Bear?

“Stevens,” I mused. “You any relation to a guy named Gary Stevens?”

“Cousin,” Mark grunted.

“You know where I can find him?” I asked eagerly.

Mark curiously assessed my reaction. “Why?”

“Because last November some fool at the bank approved a loan on a brand-new Ford F-450 four-by-four with snowplow package and your cousin never made a single payment, that's why. I've been looking for him all winter. Seems like he shows up at people's houses the morning after a huge snowfall, gets twenty bucks to do a quick scrape on their driveways, plows them out, and then vanishes. No idea where he's living, no idea where he's got the truck.”

“Oh, he's out in California,” Mark informed me.

My shoulders slumped. The bank wanted their truck really badly—the OSB (Outstanding Balance) on it was more than seventy grand.

“Is that what you do? Repo man?” Kenny asked curiously.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “This bar thing is just so I can meet glamourous people.”

“Whoa. That's awesome.”

“I have to pinch myself every day.”

“Ever had a gun pointed at you?” he pressed.

I gave him a look and he blanched, glancing at his own shotgun. “Oh yeah. Sorry.”

“I know where the truck is, I'll bet,” Mark offered.

“Hey! She wants your phone number!” Stasia called out with a hoot. Cora hushed her and Stasia collapsed in giggles.

“Which one they talking about?” Kenny wanted to know.

“Not you,” Mark said.

“Mark. Focus. You know where the truck is?” I demanded.

Mark regarded my intensity. “My grandfather's place, got a pole barn. Pretty much where the whole family stores stuff.”

I reached out and took his hand in mine, like we were shaking on a deal. “Mark. I'm getting a bonus for this repo. Tell me where the truck is and I'll split it with you—a thousand for me, a thousand for you. Ten times what you guys were going to make for being Bonnie and Clyde tonight.”

“So you got any dance music on the jukebox?” Kenny wanted to know. He saluted Cora with his beer glass and she raised her pinot grigio in response.

“I don't know if I can do that. He's my cousin,” Mark whined. “We've been close since we were kids. Could you make it fifteen hundred?”

“How about a thousand dollars, another round of beers when we get back, and I won't report your robbery attempt to the sheriff,” I counteroffered.

“A thousand dollars,” Mark mused.

“Let's go over and sit with the girls,” Kenny suggested.

“No,” I said. “Let's go repossess a truck.”

*****

M
ARK AND
K
ENNY SAT
in the front seat of the tow truck on the trip to the Stevens family pole barn, chattering excitedly because they were going on a repo and then back to the Black Bear to hook up with Stasia and Cora, who I guess had decided to join the gang. Mark was the sort of direction giver who said things like, “I think you should have turned back there,” which was sorely testing my patience.

I don't really do “patience.”

“What
you
should have done was told
me
to turn back there,” I corrected irritably as I made my second U-turn of the evening.

“Sorry. It's dark,” Mark apologized, as if I couldn't see that my truck's headlights were barely capable of cutting through the thick, black night. The road surface was a glowing strip of white dirt lined on either shoulder by dark trees like soldiers standing silent sentry. The Stevens property was apparently at the far end of a bottomless void.

“Did you know there's kind of a rust hole in your floorboard, here?” Kenny asked me, jabbing at it with the toe of his boot.

My boss had purchased the vehicle from a tow company in Detroit, where the salt eats out car bodies like zombies going after cheerleaders. (I've been watching a lot of horror movies lately.) When the thing runs, the rusty body sort of shakes, as if it is breathing. “Yeah, lets the exhaust in better like that,” I informed Kenny.

“Maybe we should go with you every repo,” Mark speculated. “You know, we could help out. Be your backup. Like, someone tries something, and then bam! Kenny and I step out with our shotguns, like, ‘go ahead, make my day. You're terminated.'”

“Oh? You guys bring your weapons?” I asked innocently.

Kenny and Mark exchanged stricken looks. “Kenny, what the hell!” Mark accused.

“Well, you don't have yours, either,” Kenny responded defensively.

“What do you guys do when you're not terrorizing Kalkaska?” I asked idly.

“Carpenters. Cabinetry. Woodwork. Pick up rocks,” Kenny responded.

“Pick up rocks?” I repeated.

“That happened
one time,
” Mark snapped, as if insulted.

“We just finished repairing a dock in Ironton,” Kenny continued. He and Mark exchanged dark looks and I picked up on it.

“What happened with that job?”

“We didn't get paid, is what,” Mark confided bitterly. “Thirty-five hundred bucks, and the guy stiffed us because he said we did sloppy work.”

“That dock is
perfect,
” Kenny interjected. “You could deliver a baby on it. You could
eat
off it.”

“Probably not in that order, though,” I observed.

“Montgomery comes down and says, like, ‘The boards are unevenly spaced.' I showed him with a ruler, and he just said, ‘I'm not payin'. We worked two weeks on that thing.”

“Wait,
Gabriel
Montgomery?” I interjected.

“Yeah. Piece of work that guy is,” Mark muttered.

“You guys are sort of the coincidence twins, aren't you?” I said.

“Yes, we are,” Kenny agreed.

Mark nodded, then frowned. “Wait, what?”

“Since you two are my backup gunslingers, I'm going to let you in on a little inside information. Open the glove box, there.”

Kenny agreeably punched the button and the door to the box dropped open. “See what's in there?” I asked him.

“Uh, burger wrappers. Candy wrappers.”

“Not that.”

“Yahh!” Kenny screamed.

I nearly drove into the ditch, wrestling the sagging truck back from the brink with a frantic twist of the wheel. “
What?
” I shouted.

“There's a rubber snake in there!” Kenny yelled while Mark disgustedly shoved him away.

“Get off of my lap,” Mark snapped.

“Okay, so it's a snake,” I retorted. “You almost got us killed, yelling like that.”

“Why do you have a rubber snake?” Kenny demanded.

“What? Why does anyone have a rubber snake?” I snapped, a little peeved.

Mark and Kenny regarded each other, unsure. “Good point,” Mark conceded.

I reached past them and snagged the folder out from under what were really just a couple of paper wrappers, in my opinion. It wasn't as if I had a ton of them in there. Who doesn't shove a burger wrapper in the glove box every once in a while? “See? Check out this folder.”

“ ‘Gabriel Montgomery,'” Mark read off the file.

“That's the coincidence I'm talking about. Montgomery's nearly four payments past due on his Cadillac CTS, and the bank has had it with his excuses. As soon as he gets back up north from wherever he's been wintering, I'm going to head out and take it from him.”

“That's so sweet.” Mark grinned.

“Sort of strange that you guys are involved with two repos in a row. Maybe you
are
cut out for this job,” I suggested.

“Beats picking up rocks,” Kenny agreed.

“Would you let that go? Jesus,” Mark seethed.

“I'd love to see his expression when you steal his car. Like, ‘Wait a minute, he's towing my car!'” Kenny said.

“Sure beats what happened with him this morning.
Hasta la vista,
baby, we've got your Cadillac. Who's rich now?” Mark sang in agreement.

“Wait, this morning?” I interjected.

“Drag it down and dump it, drive right off his dock, right over the
perfectly spaced boards
and into the water. Then dynamite the whole deal. Boom! Say good-bye to your Cadillac, butt face,” Kenny enthused, holding his hand up for a high five with his partner.

“I don't get the dynamite,” Mark objected.

“Mark. Focus. You guys saw Montgomery this morning?” I pressed.

“Yeah, that's how we started this perfect day. Knocked on his door and he opens it and just laughs at us when we handed him a duplicate invoice,” Mark answered.

“That invoice was made by my sister on a
computer,
” Kenny complained.

“Then he points a gun at us. A gun! What kind of person …” Mark trailed off as he made an unfortunate connection.

“So he's back in town,” I mused.

“Yeah, but just for a day, he said. He's leaving tomorrow for Europe or someplace,” Kenny said.