the van, and got out. He wore no coat.
“Mr. Tucker,” he said by way of greeting.
“Mr. Mahoney,” I countered, showing off my originality.
“I need you to follow someone,” he said.
I looked up at Mahoney, who stands a good ten inches taller than me.
“Who?”
“Me.”
“Well,” I said, “suppose I follow you into the house. You don’t have a coat on.”
He looked surprised, but walked up the steps and waited for me to unlock the door. I thanked the powers of good for the invention of the radiator (I told you this was an old house) and took off five or six layers of clothing to look more like myself and less like the Michelin Man.
Mahoney took a long sip from his jumbo coffee cup while I put water on the stove to make my favorite cold-weather companion, fat-free hot chocolate (French Vanilla). I know, it’s hard to have confidence in a grown man who drinks something called “Swiss Miss,” but trust me, I’m macho as all get-out.
“Okay, I give up. How come I have to follow you, and where am I following you to?” Warren came in, intimidated by the large guest, but curious. Mahoney, without thinking, put down a hand for the dog to sniff, and within seconds was, as usual, Warren’s best friend. He scratched behind Warren’s ridiculously long ears.”
Somebody’s sabotaging my work,” he said with a straight face.
Warren and I stared at him. “Your work?” I finally said. “You fix rental cars that break down on the highway. How can somebody sabotage your work?”
We walked into my office, which is right near the kitchen, an unfortunate coincidence that has helped make me the man I am today—the one who carries around an extra ten or fifteen pounds. I sat in the big swivel chair in front of my desk, and Mahoney paced next to what I laughingly refer to as the “client’s chair,” an old dining room chair we don’t have room for anywhere else in the house.
“For the past three weeks, after I’m finished with a repair, someone has been tampering with the cars so that the repair is undone. They’re making it look like I didn’t do the work, and they’re screwing up my batting average.” Mahoney believes that the number of cars he repairs, and how well the job is done, appears in a box score in the newspaper every morning. He is determined to be the best at what he does, and thinks the rest of the world is hanging breathlessly on each repair he performs. It’s how he got to be the way he is, which is worth being.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I don’t understand the process. You get a call from your company that a renter’s car has broken down. Is the customer there when you arrive?”
“No,” Mahoney shook his head. “Usually, somebody at the company drives out with a replacement car, picks the renter up, then flags the original rental car so I can see it. Most often, there’s a rental agency near where the car has broken down, or at least nearer than I am, so the replacement car has arrived, and the customer has left, before I get there.”
The teapot began to whistle, so I got up and we moved back into the kitchen. I took the hot chocolate box out of the cabinet after I turned off the water, and started to create a 40-calorie drink that would take my mind off how drafty and cold the house gets no matter what you do. I noticed that Mahoney didn’t make a withering crack about the hot chocolate, which was not an encouraging sign.
“So how does the car get back after you repair it? You drive up in the van and fix the car. You can’t drive both the van and the car back.”
“That’s right,” Mahoney said as I stirred my drink. Exhausted after the long trip from my office, I sat at the kitchen table instead of going back inside. Besides, once I spilled the hot chocolate, I could mop it up much easier in the kitchen. You have to plan ahead. “I call the office when I’m done, and they send out a car with two guys in it. One of them drives the car back. If the car needs a part I don’t have, I call a tow truck, and they tow it away.”
I thought about that as Warren walked to Mahoney for another pat, and got it. “Do you stay with the car until the