Linwood Barclay - Bad Guys

“Nice, huh?” the woman said, noticing that we were both admiring the same car. “The Virtue is such a cute car. It’s perfect for my daughter.”

Hmmm. It might be perfect for mine, too, if the price was right.

The guy in the ill-fitting suit kicked the car’s tires, coughed again, took another sip, and shot me a look as I made a closer inspection of the car’s interior. I looked at the dash, the layout of the gauges, which were placed in the center of the dash and angled toward the driver. There were several buttons I couldn’t figure out the purpose of, then realized they controlled the CD player. A CD player!

I found Lawrence and asked him for the auction list. “What’s a Virtue?” I asked. “I think I’ve seen some ads.”

“One of the big Japanese companies makes it. It’s one of those hybrid cars.”

“A who?”

“A hybrid. Has like two engines. A gas one and an electric one. The electric one keeps the gas one from working so hard. When you’re stopped at a light, electric motor kicks in so you don’t have to waste gas; light changes, you hit the accelerator, gas motor kicks in. Like that. Great gas mileage, hardly pollutes the environment.”

“Okay,” I said, remembering what I’d read about hybrids in the paper’s weekly automotive section. “Is this the one, the electric engine is always recharging its own batteries?”

“Yeah, and it’s got a lot of them. They got one of those here?”

“I guess it belonged to a drug dealer who was environmentally conscious,” I said. “There’s a little good in everybody.”

“Yeah. Wasn’t Hitler nice to his dog?”

“Come and have a look at it.”

Lawrence followed me over. “Looks in pretty good shape,” he said. He opened the door, checked the odometer. “Not all that many miles on it. And I hear they have a pretty good reliability record.”

“And the suggested opening bid,” I said, finding the car again on the list and holding my thumb there for future reference, “is kind of reasonable.” I slipped in behind the wheel. “I like it,” I said.

I checked out everything. The size of the glove box, the map pockets on the door, more storage pockets on the back of the seats, the interior trunk release, the sunroof buttons. “Seems pretty well equipped. And you know what else I like?”

“Tell me,” said Lawrence. “What else do you like?”

“The statement it makes. Says you care about the planet, that you want to do your part to preserve the ecosystem.”

“Yeah,” said Lawrence. “Chicks love that.”

“Some might.”

“So, you gonna bid on it?”

I was nervous. I’m always this way when I consider spending a lot of money. I get short of breath and my mouth goes dry.

“I think maybe it’s worth a shot.” I paused. “You know what? Let me give Sarah a quick call.” I dug my cell phone out of my jacket and called her at her desk at The Metropolitan .

“City,” she said.

“Me. I’m at the auction. I think maybe I found us a car.”

“Uh-oh.”

“No, just listen. It’s perfect. Good on gas, perfect for Angie commuting to school, an excellent repair record according to Lawrence.”

“Is it a convertible?” Sarah sounded tentatively hopeful.

“No, it’s not a convertible.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“You’re something else, you know that?”

“I didn’t say it had to be a convertible, I was just asking. What color is it?”

“Silver,” I said.

“I’m not crazy about silver, but I can live with it. What kind of money?”

I told her the minimum bid was $8,000, and I could almost feel her intake of breath. “Listen, you said that was sort of in the ballpark of what we could manage. If I have to go way over, then I’ll just walk away.”

“You promise.”

“I promise.”

“And don’t do something dumb like pull on your ear. They have all these signals. You could end up buying it and not even know it.”

“I’m not in a Dick Van Dyke episode,” I told her. “I just have to- Oh shit.”

“What?”

“I didn’t bring my checkbook. I figured there was no way I’d buy anything. No, wait, Lawrence said he could buy it for me, I could pay him back after. That way-”

“Don’t fucking take my picture, man!”

I whirled around. Stan Wannaker was being shoved up against a Ford Explorer by the short guy with the bad cough and the Barbie keys. “Call you back,” I said, and slipped the phone back into my jacket.

“Fuck you!” Stan shouted back, the two cameras hanging down on his chest suddenly flinging about like enormous necklaces.

“Give me your film!” the man demanded.

“Fuck you!” Stan said again. He’d dealt with bad guys all over the world, in countries a lot scarier than this one, and he wasn’t about to surrender his film to some short asshole with a bad attitude in an ill-fitting suit.

“I wasn’t even taking your picture,” Stan told the man. “I was just doing an overall shot. Take a pill or something.”

The short guy was in Stan’s face now, as best he could, being about six inches shorter. He set his bottle of juice on the hood of the Explorer so he could poke a stubby finger into Stan’s chest. “You gonna hand over-” and he coughed “-that film?”

Stan backed up an inch to avoid any incoming phlegm. “Listen, dickwad, I’m here for The Metropolitan and if you want my film you better call our fucking lawyers and take it up with them. And if you touch me with that finger again, I’m gonna snap it the fuck off.”

The short guy was a bomb about to go off. His face went flush red, his shoulders tensed, and even Stan, as fearless as he’d been a moment earlier, looked like he was getting ready to move sideways in a hurry if he had to.

But then Stan’s attacker began to notice that he was getting a lot of attention. People had stopped looking at cars and boats and motorcycles and turned their heads in the direction of the commotion, not sure whether to intercede, watch, or move on. The guy glanced around, his lips pressed firmly together, breathing in and out in short bursts through his flat, wide nose. He gave Stan a final shove up against the SUV and strode off in the direction of the paddock exit.

“You okay?” I said once I’d reached Stan.

He was unruffled, just checking his cameras for any damage. “Fucking little Nazi,” he said. “Thought I was at an Afghan checkpoint there for a minute.”

“He was crazy,” I said. “I thought he was going to explode there for a second.”

“A suicide bomber without the dynamite,” Stan said flippantly. “Anyway, good thing he decided to take a hike.” He smiled, nodding his head toward the crowd. “Too many witnesses around. I’ll have to watch myself in dark alleys for a while.”

Once I was sure Stan was fine, I rejoined Lawrence.

“Let’s bid on the Virtue,” I said. “But I don’t want to go over eight-five. Eight-six, maybe. But that’s it. Maybe eight-nine.” I’d started sweating again.

Lawrence said, “You’re grace under pressure, aren’t you?”

The older woman who’d been eyeing the Virtue the same time I was bailed out at $8,800. And I managed to go through the bidding process without tugging my ear or nodding my head in such a way as to end up with a $100,000 yacht by mistake.

There was some paperwork to deal with, forms to fill out, and then the car was ours. And not just any car. But a fuel-conserving, environment-saving, socially responsible automobile. And yet, I had a feeling, once I got home with it, I was going to be made to feel like Charlie Brown after he came back with the spindly Christmas tree.

Actually, it wasn’t quite mine yet. Lawrence wrote the check, and once I’d repaid him by the end of the day, he’d transfer the ownership to me.