Craig Smith - Cold Rain

‘You sure it wasn’t this exact same car?’ I asked him.

For a moment, the kid stared at me in disbelief, then he looked at the car again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It was a long time ago.’

We talked a little more, and I found out he was planning on getting married. The fiancee was looking at a used sport utility vehicle at another dealership, but the car was for him, and he wanted a sports car.

I worked him without much enthusiasm, and he bounced in and out three different times. He wanted that car about as much as he wanted one more summer evening with Deb, but when his fiancee came by for a look it was all over. She wasn’t letting him buy that car on a dare!

All the same he came back one last time, the fiancee sitting in their car with her arms crossed. It was the last hour of a three-day sale, and the kid just wanted to look at the Z one more time.

Sometimes you have to wear people down. A good manager knows that, and he’s patient, but sometimes people need a new face before they can make a decision. I saw Larry the Liar in the bullpen. Milt was pacing and kicking tires and smoking. Larry had his eye on the fiancee. The only thing she needed was to feel good.

Milt was too smart to send the wrong salesperson in, though. There wasn’t any lie on earth going to make that girl feel good about buying Deb’s Z.

That left Tubs. Milt told me later he didn’t think there was a chance in hell to make the sale, but he had to give it a shot before he turned the lights off and we all went home.

I made the T.O. by introducing Tubs as my dad.

Tubs was worn down from three days of it. I think he had sold six or seven cars every day, and he looked like it. He was running on empty. Tubs could turn on a pretty good smile when he bothered, but at ten o’clock at night with the last customer at the fairgrounds getting ready to make his getaway, Tubs didn’t shake hands, and his smile was about as friendly as a piece of rusty barbwire.

‘You going to buy this car or look at it, son?’ That was all he said. Not even a pleased-to-meet-you.

The kid pulled his eyes off his last memory of freedom and tipped his head toward the fiancee. ‘She don’t like it.’

Tubs shook his head in disgust and turned away. ‘If a man’s wife doesn’t like a car, he better not like it either!’

Tubs actually got a couple of steps away before the kid said, ‘She ain’t my wife.’ Tubs stopped and looked at him as if he hadn’t heard right. ‘She’s my fiancee,’ the kid explained.

‘ Fiancee?’ Tubs sounded surprised.

The kid nodded his head in perfect misery. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’re not married to that woman?’ Tubs stepped in closer to the kid.

The kid grinned. ‘No, sir. Not yet.’

Now he got inside the kid’s space, lowering his voice as if passing a great truth along: ‘Let me tell you something, son. I don’t want you to quote me on this, Lord help me if you do, but if you let a woman push you around before you marry her, you ain’t got a chance in hell after!’

That kid gave Tubs a hard look, but it wasn’t half as hard as Tubs’s glare. I thought the kid might pop him, but what he did was, he said, ‘To hell with it.

I’m buying the son of a bitch!’

Milt asked Tubs later that night over a beer that Tubs never touched how he got that kid to go full pop on a beat-to-hell Z. ‘That one,’ Tubs answered with a sly grin, ‘was my Be a Man Close, because you either are or you aren’t.’

The first blast of the shotgun sounded from within the house, taking me back to the present.

I looked up at Roger Beery. He was distracted by the sound but it wasn’t possible to come out of my chair.

He had his finger on the trigger, and the weapon was pointed between Molly and me. I was ten feet away. Molly’s position, seated in a deep chair like my own, put her nearly fifteen feet from Roger. There was no possibility of fighting him and no chance for any of us, Roger included, once Buddy returned.

I searched my failing imagination for a way to distract Roger, but what I needed was a miracle, Tubs-style.

Not his Gun in the Face Close, either. I didn’t care to feel righteous in my grave. I needed to make Roger Beery understand that they had come out to the farm that evening together, but Buddy planned on going home alone. It was that simple, if only I could make him see it.

How would Tubs have handled it? I considered the matter for a moment, my thoughts interrupted by the second blast from the four-ten just outside the house.

Wade had somehow managed to elude Buddy’s first shot. I wasn’t so confident he had escaped the second.

I gave myself forty-five-to-sixty seconds. Tubs had closed that kid in about twenty. The difference was the young man was primed to make a choice. I glanced at Roger, who was staring at Molly. Roger had his mind on something else altogether.

‘You understand Buddy is going to kill you here tonight?’

I said this with a degree of calm and insight one uses when stating the obvious.

Roger’s sneer had a certain amusement about it.

‘Why would he do that, Dave?’

‘That’s easy,’ I said, handing him my car salesman’s grin. ‘He marries your widow, and the two of them live happily ever after with your money.’

‘You don’t know anything. Do you know that? You don’t have a clue!’

‘You’re a very intelligent young man, Roger.’

‘I’m a genius, Dave! And you’re a moron.’ He rocked his head back toward the TV, where the picture showed Molly straddling Buddy on the couch. ‘You didn’t have a clue, did you?’

‘Tell me something,’ I said. ‘When you watch that, is it Molly or Buddy that you want?’

Two muffled shots came from close to the barn.

There was enough time between them for the first to be a takedown, the second to finish it. Wade had gotten as far as the barn. That bought us another full minute.

I glanced toward Molly. She still had tears in her eyes, but she knew I was working Roger. Her muscles had the look of coiled steel.

‘I guess you read my novel a little better than I thought.’

‘Buddy read it?’

‘Every word.’

‘He wanted to know how to work you.’

‘You don’t know what’s going on, Dave. You don’t understand anything.’

‘I know we’re looking at a triple homicide inside the house tonight. Only question is who’s man enough to walk away, you or Buddy.’

‘Nobody’s going to get killed. Buddy told you what were going to do.’

‘Tonight is about Buddy and Denise tying up loose ends, Roger. As long as you’re around, they’ve got a prison sentence hanging over their heads. As soon as they kill you, they can move on. If you don’t see that, I don’t give you more than two or three minutes to live.’

I heard the kitchen door open.

‘You’ve got the twelve-gauge,’ I told him. ‘As long as you’re holding it, he won’t try anything. But you can kiss your ass goodbye the minute you put that gun down.’

Buddy called from the hallway. ‘Son of a bitch got away!’

Roger looked at me uncertainly.

‘To him, you’re just another sucker he can take advantage of. But you can turn the tables on him…and even keep Denise. The beauty is no cop in the world is going to look at you for this. They’ll think Buddy was out here alone. You walk out clean, just like he will if you give him the chance.’

Buddy came into the room. ‘What was he talking about, Roger?’

Before Roger could answer, I said, ‘I was telling your friend here how easy it was to kick your ass the other night.’

Buddy laughed. ‘Plenty easy when you’re holding a gun!’

‘You’re the expert on that.’