feet over to LeBay's house and buy that car out from under his son? A touch Machiavellian, you might say, but Michael Cunningham's mind was more than a little devious. His specialty was military history.
'I saw that car - and I felt such an attraction to it . . . I can't explain it very well even to myself. But . . . '
He trailed off, those grey eyes looking dreamily ahead.
'But I saw I could make her better,' he said.
'Fix it up, you mean?'
'Yeah . . . well, no. That's too impersonal. You fix tables, chairs, stuff like that. The lawnmower when it won't start. And ordinary cars.'
Maybe he saw my eyebrows go up. He laughed, anyway - a little defensive laugh.
'Yeah, I know how that sounds,' he said. 'I don't even like to say it, because I know how it sounds. But you're a friend, Dennis. And that means a minimum of bullshit. I don't think she's any ordinary car. I don't know why I think that . . . but I do.'
I opened my mouth to say something I might later have regretted, something about trying to keep things in perspective or maybe even about avoiding obsessive behaviour. But just then we swung around the corner and onto LeBay's street.
Arnie pulled air into his lungs in a harsh, hurt gasp.
There was a rectangle of grass on LeBay's lawn that was even yellower, balder, and uglier than the rest of his lawn. Near one end of that patch there was a diseased-looking oil-spill that had sunk into the ground and killed everything that had once grown there. That rectangular piece of ground was so fucking gross I almost believe that if you looked at it for too long you'd go blind.
It was where the '58 Plymouth had been standing yesterday.
The ground was still there but the Plymouth was' gone.
'Arnie,' I said as I swung my car in to the kerb, 'take it easy. Don't go off half-cocked, for Christ's sake.'
He paid not a bit of attention. I doubt if he had even heard me. His face had gone pale. The blemishes covering it stood out in purplish, glaring relief. He had the passenger door of my Duster open and was lunging out of the car even before it had stopped moving.
'Arnie - '
'It's my father,' he said in anger and dismay. 'I smell that bastard all over this.'
And he was gone, running across the lawn to LeBay's door.
I got out and hurried after him, thinking that this crazy shit was never going to end. I could hardly believe I had just heard Arnie Cunningham call Michael a bastard.
Arnie was raising his fist to hammer on the door when it opened. There stood Roland D. LeBay himself. Today he was wearing a shirt over his back brace. He looked at Arnie's furious face with a benignly avaricious smile.
'Hello, son,' he said.
'Where is she?' Arnie raged. 'We had a deal! Dammit we had a deal! I've got a receipt!'
'Simmer down,' LeBay said. He saw me, standing on the bottom step with my hands shoved down in my pockets. 'What's wrong with your friend, son?'
'The car's gone,' I said. 'That's what's wrong with him.'
'Who bought it?' Arnie shouted. I'd never seen him so mad. If he had had a gun right then, I believe he would have put it to LeBay's temple. I was fascinated in spite of myself. It was as if a rabbit had suddenly turned carnivore. God help me, I even wondered fleetingly if he might not have a brain tumour.
'Who bought it?' LeBay repeated mildly. 'Why nobody has yet', son. But you got a lien on her. I backed her into the garage, that's all. I put on the spare and changed the oil.' He preened and then offered us both an absurdly magnanimous smile.
'You're a real sport,' I said.
Arnie stared at him uncertainly, then turned his head creakily to took at the closed door of the modest one-car garage that was attached to the house by a breezeway. The breezeway, like everything else around LeBay's place, had seen better days.
'Besides, I didn't want to leave her out once you'd laid some money down on her,' he said. 'I've had some trouble with one or two of the folks on this street. One night some kid threw a rock at my car. Oh yeah, I got some neighbours straight out of the old AB.'