Victor was hosing off a new Explorer when McMichael walked across the lot of Pete Braga Ford the next morning. McMichael waved and Victor looked at him while the water bounced off a door and onto his boots. He turned off the hose and stood there with the posture of a kid sizing up a questionable adult.
McMichael, dressed in his funeral and wedding suit, had brought a bag of doughnuts. "Hello, Victor!"
"McMichael."
"Beautiful day."
Victor looked up.
"Doughnut? I got chocolate and maple bars."
"Maybe both?"
Victor dropped the hose and McMichael gave him two doughnuts, then helped himself to a chocolate. "I got milk, too."
"That would be good."
"I was wondering if you could tell me about Jimmy Thigpen and you guys going to Mexico."
"Jimmy went to jail. So now it's just two of us."
"Who's the other guy?"
Victor frowned and shrugged. Tentatively, he picked some frosting off the maple bar, then took a big bite. Then a bite of the chocolate one.
McMichael continued to fish: "So, you guys load up one of those big transport trailers and truck down the new cars for leather?"
Victor nodded. "Once a week, or something like that."
"Where do you take them?"
"The upholstery place. I can't remember the name, but Mason knows where it is."
McMichael offered him some milk. Victor set his maple bar on a dry swatch of concrete. Then he locked the carton between his doughnut arm and his stomach and went to work on it with his free hand.
"So it's just you and Mason now."
"Yeah. These cartons are hard to get sometimes."
"I like the plastic bottles better," said McMichael. "But these were all they had at Seven-Eleven. Hey, you know Mason? Now, does he work here at the dealership with you, or does he have another job, like Jimmy did?"
The carton popped open and some milk spilled onto his hand. Victor licked it off, raising his eyebrows at the taste. "Mace works down in Imperial Beach for the police. He's got a gun like Jimmy's."
"Oh, right- Mace is an Imperial Beach cop."
"Yeah."
"That's interesting, Victor."
"I guess."
McMichael finished off the doughnut and opened his milk. "How did you meet Jimmy?"
Victor traded the milk for the maple bar, spent a lot of time picking at the frosting. "I don't know."
"He told me it was to do with Angel."
"Yeah."
"Why don't you tell me about her, too?"
"I gotta wash the cars."
"Finish your breakfast. I'll rinse."
McMichael took up the hose and sprayed the suds off the vehicle. He worked his way around, then back to Victor.
"You missed a spot," said Victor. He smiled and pointed and McMichael sprayed again.
"Angel was your friend," said McMichael.
"I had some dates with her."
"And Jimmy caught you."
"Yeah. The first time I didn't know it was illegal. The second time I forgot. The third time he took me to jail and Dad had to come get me out."
McMichael turned off the hose. "How'd that go?"
"Dad was real mad," said Victor. "Jimmy apologized but said he had to do his job."
"Angel was your dad's friend, right? You met her at his house?"
"Yeah. Then I saw her around. She was always downtown. In the Gaslamp sometimes."
"So it was kind of like you and your dad had the same girlfriend?"
"We did," said Victor. "Then she moved."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Then how do you know she moved?"
"I know she's been gone a long time. That's what I meant."
"When was the last time you saw her, Victor?"
He frowned and took another bite. "Either… a month or a week. A week is…"
"That's seven days."
"Yeah, it would be a week, then. Or maybe more than that. I talked to her down on Grape Street I think it was. I just said hello and asked how she was doing, that's all. Dad and Jimmy and everybody told me to leave her alone. I think she was scared of me. I didn't mean to scare her."
"Did you hurt her?"
Victor finished off the doughnut and wiped his fingers on his pants. "No. I wouldn't do that."
"Did you two ever kiss or touch or have sex?"
Victor colored and looked up at the Pete Braga Ford sign. "No. Every time I talked to her she'd call the cops. The more I tried to explain the more afraid she'd get."
"Explain what, Victor?"
He looked down, then at the Ford. "Just that I… you know."
"No, what?"
"I just… come on, you know what I mean."
"Tell me."
"I liked her. Okay?"
Blushing deeply, Victor pushed the rest of his maple bar into his mouth, then pulled up a stool and went to work on the roof of the car with a chamois.
"You ever drive, Victor?" asked McMichael. "Just borrow a vehicle, maybe, go for a spin, bring it back later?"
Victor didn't look back at him. His jaws worked and he finally swallowed. "I don't have a license."
"All these new cars, be nice to drive one."
"I don't want to talk anymore. I just want to do my job."
McMichael found the general manager in his office, dressed in black, laughing it up with one of the saleswomen. He was an amiable man named Charley Farrell, who shooed out his employee and shut the door when McMichael introduced himself. He expressed grief at the death of his boss and offered to help however he could.
The dealership was "going gangbusters," according to Farrell: unit sales up- they were now eighth biggest volume dealer in the nation. Profit up also. Pete Braga Ford has top-dealer status with Detroit, he told McMichael, which means you can get the units you want when you want them, and you get fewer dogs. They'd tested the certified, pre-owned market with some success.
"The new 'Birds are still moving fast, but our markup isn't twenty grand like it used to be. And vans," he said, "solid. The new Windstar is tearing up Japan, too."
Farrell said morale was good, but on-the-floor turnover was as high as ever. "You know salesmen," he said. "They come and go. But management is solid here. We've all been with Pete for at least fifteen, twenty years. I started here on the floor in nineteen seventy. I was thirty-three, wrecked marriage, had a boy with health problems. My firewood and hauling business was going under- got sued when a tree fell into a house and my insurance wouldn't cover. Pete picked me up, put me to work. Or like the bookkeeper, she's been here forty-five years. Solid."
McMichael asked what some of the standing disagreements were, but Farrell said there weren't any. Fishing, McMichael asked if everyone agreed on the direction of the dealership.
Farrell laughed. "Around here you either agreed with Pete or you walked. His granddaughter, Patricia, had some ideas about this place a few years back and wham- he shut her down. With Pete, you couldn't have a better friend or a worse enemy. Right now, we're still in shock. Pat's been down here talking to us, telling us things will go on like they were before. You can pass a franchise down to your children or grandchildren, long as Detroit approves it. I really don't know how it'll shake down. I think I'll hang it up next year. I'm sixty-six. I'm ready."
He told McMichael that the upholstery runs to Mexico were being handled by the same company that always handled them- Auto Leather International. He tapped his computer keyboard and printed a phone number and address for Mason Axelgaard, Vice President. The prefix and P.O. box were Imperial Beach. McMichael folded the sheet and put it in his pocket.
"We have seven cars going down tonight, and six coming back," he said.
"Mace will be here then, what?"
"Around seven, every Wednesday." Farrell pursed his lips, tapped his desktop with a pen. "Jimmy Thigpen used to work for him. I guess you know Jimmy."
"We all know Jimmy."
"Bad thing. You had to like him. I got the impression he needed the extra money. To be working with the cars, I mean."
"How come they take Victor down for that?"
"I think just to be nice. Victor likes it. Pete never minded. You know, he's supposed to wash the cars, but he only gets a few done and the windows are usually pretty streaked."
McMichael gave the GM one of his business cards. "Can I ask you a favor?"
"Sure," said Charley Farrell.
"Tell me if you guys sold a wine-colored SUV recently. And if so, to whom."
"Escape, Explorer, Expedition or Excursion?"
"Any and all."
"We move a lot of SUVs these days. Give me a day, will you?"
The flagship for Pete Braga's burial at sea was a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot motor yacht owned and named by Garland Hansen's failing beach products company, Shred! McMichael wondered if using the boat was a promotional stunt arranged by Garland – getting a little exposure during this time of anguish and grief.
McMichael and Hector stood near the Tuna Harbor dock and watched the mourners board. There were reporters and cameras set up near the bottom of the ramp. McMichael recognized the local TV reporter, and one of the Union-Tribune guys who covered the cop house.
"You weren't hoping for an invitation, were you?" asked Hector, fingering McMichael's suit coat.
"Not really."
"Just paying respects?"
"That's all."
"Or maybe Rainwater likes you in basic black."
"You're annoying, Hector. Is that how you get all those confessions?"
Paz smiled. "Just looking out for my partner. You still hot for her?"
"The other night we got together. I like her."
Hector said nothing for a while. "She tell you about getting shot?"
"No. We tried to keep it light."
"Hard to get heavy when you're ripping someone's clothes off."
"True. We talked about Pete a lot. No, she wasn't doing him."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Unless she flat-out lied."
"Naw, she wouldn't do that."
"Hector, what do you have on her?"
He shrugged. "I didn't trust her that night and I still don't. Maybe she didn't conk him, but I think she had something to do with it. She doesn't sit right with me, Tom."
McMichael tried to revisit his old suspicions of her, but he couldn't. When he thought of Sally Rainwater he thought of beauty and brains and enough guts to try to save the old man's life. Thought of her tongue going down his back.
"Hey," said Hector, "there's Patricia. Umm-hmm."
Patricia came down the boarding ramp, arm in arm with Garland. She was wearing a trim black skirt and jacket, and a veiled hat. McMichael could tell by the cant of her head that she saw him, but that was all. Garland 's hair was bright white in the winter sun. Victor shuffled along behind her. His suit pants were too big at the waist so he had to keep hoisting them up. He examined his zipper. Next to him was a stocky balding man with a mustache and cool sunglasses.
"One of Pete's guys on the TJ runs is an Imperial Beach cop," said McMichael. "I think that's him with Victor."
Hector was quiet while Victor and possibly Mason Axelgaard stepped aboard. "Doesn't sound right. Two cops and a sixty-three-year-old boy, running cars back and forth to TJ. How much money did Jimmy say he made?"
"He didn't. Just said Pete overpaid him. Roundabout thanks for watching out for Victor."
"Why use cops for a trucker's job?"
"Jimmy said Pete wanted some security for his cars."
"Cops shouldn't moonlight," said Hector.
"Maybe they ought to pay us more."
"Pay what it's worth, at least. You risk your life for these citizens, and they try to lowball you. They're lowballing themselves, but they don't realize it. Maybe we should ask Malcolm Case for a raise, since he employs us."
"I felt like kicking his ass."
"I felt like stealing his wife."
"Remember she can't cook," said McMichael.
"Except I don't think she wants to be stolen," said Hector. "A guy like that, though? He'll step in it someday. You'll see. I wonder if he watches his wife's movies."
McMichael watched as Assistant Chiefs Jerry Bland and Ed Almanza arrived together in dark suits and sunglasses. Barbara Givens walked between them.
Then Henry Grothke Jr., walking slightly ahead of his wheelchaired father, who was pushed by a black man heavy with muscles.
"I did some work on Junior," said Hector. "Couldn't nail anything. Clean with the bar, no complaints. No record with us. But he's got no wife, either. Never has, and he's fifty-two years old. I asked around with some of my fag friends but they didn't know anything about him. It bugs me that he lost those letters."
"It bugs me, too," said McMichael. He watched Patricia and Garland disappear into the crowd. "Maybe Patricia knows something."
A while later, Shred! eased off her moorings and started out across the harbor. Half a dozen ancillary ships followed respectfully in her wake, five heavily filled with mourners, one bristling with cameras and mikes and windswept reporters.