Joe Gores - 32 Cadillacs

“What’s going on?” the guy Stan had called Andy asked.

“No idea,” Stan said. He turned to the other bread truck guy. “Wally?”

“That man was in the car,” Wally said, in great excitement, “when we got here.”

“He’s still in the car,” Andy said, and rapped on the glass in the driver’s door, calling to Ken, “Hey! What’s the story?”

He found a key that popped over, and the engine purred. Ken looked over at the right-door mirror to back up and push the bread truck out of the way, when he saw a heavy-laden pickup pull into the driveway behind the van, filling the driveway and blocking the sidewalk as well. A handsome blond guy in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt that said Work Is for People Who Don’t Surf got out and strolled curiously forward.

“What’s the story here?” he asked.

“No idea, Doug,” Stan said.

This was getting confusing. All these people to keep straight. Could he push both the van and the pickup? He had to try, get on out of here. He shifted into reverse — and watched a green and white taxi pull up to the curb, parking crosswise just behind the pickup. A feisty little woman in a man’s cloth cap got out of the cab and joined the crowd beside the Cadillac.

“What’s happening?”

“No idea, Mom,” said Stan. “Dortmunder, do you...”

The other guy who had been in the Cadillac just shook his head. Ken considered the chain-link fence. No: the metal pipe supports were embedded in concrete. Get the elephant mad, he might pick up the Cadillac and shake it ’til Ken fell out.

The feisty little cab-driving woman went into the house. Andy leaned close to the glass separating him from Ken.

“We’re gonna put a potato in the exhaust!” he yelled. “We’re gonna monoxide you!”

Ken was feeling very put-upon, very confused. For the first time, he studied this mob around the Cadillac. They just didn’t look right. Could he have made a mistake? But the car was right: make, model, and color. The M.D. plate was right. He’d picked it up in front of a mitt-camp, for God sake! There was even a tambourine on the backseat.

Still, something was wrong. Tambourine or no tambourine, these people just weren’t Gypsies. As the woman cabdriver came out of the house carrying a big baking potato in her hand, Ken cracked the window beside him just far enough to talk. He announced through the crack, “Ngyou’re gno Gnipthy!”

Andy reared back: “What?”

“ Gnone of gnyou are Gnipthyth!”

“He’s a foreigner,” Stan decided. “He doesn’t talk English.”

Ken glared at him. “Ngyou makin funna me?”

“What is that he talks?” Stan’s mom asked, holding the potato. “Polish?”

“Could be Lithuanian,” the elephant rumbled doubtfully.

Dortmunder turned to stare at him. “Lithu an ian!”

“I had a Lithuanian cellmate ice,” the elephant explained. “He talked like—”

Ken had had enough. Pounding the steering wheel, “Ah’m thpeaking Englith!” he cried through the open slit of the window.

Which did no good. Dortmunder said to the elephant, “Tiny, tell him it’s our car, then. Talk to him in Lithuanian.”

Tiny. That figured. He said, “ I don’t speak Lith—”

“Ikth’s gnot your car!” Ken yelled. “Ikth’s gha bankth’s car!”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Andy said. “I understood that.”

Dortmunder turned his frown toward Andy: “You did?”

“He said, ‘It’s the bank’s car.’ ”

“He did?”

“Fuckin’ right!” Ken yelled.

Stan’s mom pointed the potato at him. “ That was English,” she said accusingly.

“He’s a repoman,” Stan said.

“Ah’m a hawk !” Ken boasted.

“Yeah, a carhawk,” Stan said.

Wally said, “Stan? What’s going on?”

Stan explained, “He’s a guy repossesses your car if you don’t keep up the payments.” Turning to Andy, he said, “You stole a stolen car. This guy wants it for the bank.”

Ken nodded fiercely enough to whack his forehead against the window. “Yeah! Nghe bank!”

“Oh!” Andy spread his hands, grinning at the repoman. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Ken peered mistrustfully at him.

“No, really, fella,” Andy said, leaning close to the window, “no problem. Take it. We’re done with it, anyway.”

Handing Doug the potato, Stan’s mom said, “I’ll move my cab.”

Handing Stan the potato, Doug said, “I’ll move my pickup.”

Handing Wally the potato, Stan said, “I’ll move the van.”

Wally pocketed the potato and smiled at Ken as if he’d never seen a repoman before.

Ken, with deep suspicion, watched all the other vehicles get moved out of his way. Everybody smiled and nodded at him. The other woman and the mean-looking old man came down off the porch. The woman smiled and did that thing like lighting a cigarette off an old one again.

The mean-looking guy said, “Kill him.”

They all turned toward him at once. “Huh?”

The old guy waved his arms. “Drag him out through the crack in the window. Bury him in the backyard in a manila envelope. He knows about us .”

“He knows what about us?” asked Dortmunder reasonably.

Everybody nodded and turned back to Ken, still all smiles. The mean-looking old guy lapsed into moody silence.

Ken lowered his window another fraction of an inch and said, “Ngyou dough wanna arngue?”

Andy grinned amiably at him. “Argue with a fluent guy like you? I wouldn’t dare. Have a happy. Drive it in good health.” Then he leaned closer, more confidentially, to say, “Listen; the brake’s a little soft.”

The other vehicles were all out of the way now, but people kept milling around back there. The van driver returned from moving his van to lean down by Ken’s window and say, “You heading back to the city? What you do, take the Palisades. Forget the Tappan Zee.”

Ken couldn’t stand it. Trying hopelessly to regain some sense of control over his own destiny, he stared around, grabbed the tambourine out of the backseat, and shoved it into the van driver’s hand.

“Here,” he said, “this ain’t ghu bank’s.” For some reason, it was probably the clearest sentence of his life.

The blond guy stood down by the sidewalk and gestured for Ken to back it up, so he could guide him out to the street. Ken put the Cadillac in reverse again, and the woman from the porch came over to say, “You want a glass of water before you go?”

“Gno!” Ken screamed. “Gno! Jus lemme outta gnere!”

They did, too. Three or four of them gave him useful hand signals while he backed out to the street, and eight of the nine stood in the street to wave goodbye; a thing that has never happened to a carhawk before. Only the old guy glared after him with hate-filled eyes. Only the old guy knew how to act.

Ken had his Cadillac, but as he drove away, he just didn’t feel very happy about it. Much of the fun had gone out of the transaction. There were right ways and wrong ways to do things. A repoman took a car, the people driving it resisted . That was the way it had always been, that was the way it would always be.

But not with these cheesecakes.

Halfway back to the city, however, the Toyota behind him on the towbar, Ken brightened. First Gyppo blood for him, right? He turned on the radio and started to drum his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music. He’d finally figured out what was wrong with those screwy people who’d just given him the Caddy without any argument.

They were crooks; and you just couldn’t trust crooks. Crooks never did what was right and proper. Only the old guy who’d wanted to kill him had it right.