T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

"What did you lift, Penny?"

"Scout's honor, nothing," she said. "Pete tipped me a hundred on a hundred, got the taxi both ways, everything. Had some nurse hanging around, watched me coming and going. Made me nervous. Why would I steal from him?"

"What did you make of the nurse?"

Penny shook her head, pulled the coat tighter around her chin. "Looked like she'd seen it all."

"Explain that."

"It's just a look. We understood each other, you know what I'm saying? I wondered why she wasn't doing him for two hundred and no travel. It's hard work, though, a guy who's eighty-something."

"You know Victor?"

"Everybody knows Victor. I stay away from him. Always have."

"Why's that?"

"Look what happened to Angel."

"What did happen to Angel?"

"Gone for two weeks? No word to anyone? Nothing good, I can tell you that much."

"You see anything else interesting?"

"Possibly."

McMichael gave her another twenty.

"Actually, I saw Angel the last night she was on the street. Day after New Year's. Thursday. Angel was there on Broadway, down from the Grant about a block. Car pulls up and Angel gets in."

"Tell me about that car."

"One of those big SUVs that all look the same. The color of wine. Red wine."

"What time?"

"About midnight."

"Get a look at the driver?"

"No. Wrong angle, too dark. But the SUV had Pete Braga Ford plates on it- brand-new. Went down Broadway toward Harbor Drive with Angel inside. That's gotta be worth something."

"See you in church," he said.

"Remember not to stare."

She snatched another bill and disappeared into the alley behind the lot.

Victor was hosing off a new Explorer when McMichael walked across the lot of Pete Braga Ford the next morning. McMichael waved and Victor looked at him while the water bounced off a door and onto his boots. He turned off the hose and stood there with the posture of a kid sizing up a questionable adult.

McMichael, dressed in his funeral and wedding suit, had brought a bag of doughnuts. "Hello, Victor!"

"McMichael."

"Beautiful day."

Victor looked up.

"Doughnut? I got chocolate and maple bars."

"Maybe both?"

Victor dropped the hose and McMichael gave him two doughnuts, then helped himself to a chocolate. "I got milk, too."

"That would be good."

"I was wondering if you could tell me about Jimmy Thigpen and you guys going to Mexico."

"Jimmy went to jail. So now it's just two of us."

"Who's the other guy?"

Victor frowned and shrugged. Tentatively, he picked some frosting off the maple bar, then took a big bite. Then a bite of the chocolate one.

McMichael continued to fish: "So, you guys load up one of those big transport trailers and truck down the new cars for leather?"

Victor nodded. "Once a week, or something like that."

"Where do you take them?"

"The upholstery place. I can't remember the name, but Mason knows where it is."

McMichael offered him some milk. Victor set his maple bar on a dry swatch of concrete. Then he locked the carton between his doughnut arm and his stomach and went to work on it with his free hand.

"So it's just you and Mason now."

"Yeah. These cartons are hard to get sometimes."

"I like the plastic bottles better," said McMichael. "But these were all they had at Seven-Eleven. Hey, you know Mason? Now, does he work here at the dealership with you, or does he have another job, like Jimmy did?"

The carton popped open and some milk spilled onto his hand. Victor licked it off, raising his eyebrows at the taste. "Mace works down in Imperial Beach for the police. He's got a gun like Jimmy's."

"Oh, right- Mace is an Imperial Beach cop."

"Yeah."

"That's interesting, Victor."

"I guess."

McMichael finished off the doughnut and opened his milk. "How did you meet Jimmy?"

Victor traded the milk for the maple bar, spent a lot of time picking at the frosting. "I don't know."

"He told me it was to do with Angel."

"Yeah."

"Why don't you tell me about her, too?"

"I gotta wash the cars."

"Finish your breakfast. I'll rinse."

McMichael took up the hose and sprayed the suds off the vehicle. He worked his way around, then back to Victor.

"You missed a spot," said Victor. He smiled and pointed and McMichael sprayed again.

"Angel was your friend," said McMichael.

"I had some dates with her."

"And Jimmy caught you."

"Yeah. The first time I didn't know it was illegal. The second time I forgot. The third time he took me to jail and Dad had to come get me out."

McMichael turned off the hose. "How'd that go?"

"Dad was real mad," said Victor. "Jimmy apologized but said he had to do his job."

"Angel was your dad's friend, right? You met her at his house?"

"Yeah. Then I saw her around. She was always downtown. In the Gaslamp sometimes."

"So it was kind of like you and your dad had the same girlfriend?"

"We did," said Victor. "Then she moved."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"Then how do you know she moved?"

"I know she's been gone a long time. That's what I meant."

"When was the last time you saw her, Victor?"

He frowned and took another bite. "Either… a month or a week. A week is…"

"That's seven days."

"Yeah, it would be a week, then. Or maybe more than that. I talked to her down on Grape Street I think it was. I just said hello and asked how she was doing, that's all. Dad and Jimmy and everybody told me to leave her alone. I think she was scared of me. I didn't mean to scare her."

"Did you hurt her?"

Victor finished off the doughnut and wiped his fingers on his pants. "No. I wouldn't do that."

"Did you two ever kiss or touch or have sex?"

Victor colored and looked up at the Pete Braga Ford sign. "No. Every time I talked to her she'd call the cops. The more I tried to explain the more afraid she'd get."

"Explain what, Victor?"

He looked down, then at the Ford. "Just that I… you know."

"No, what?"

"I just… come on, you know what I mean."

"Tell me."

"I liked her. Okay?"

Blushing deeply, Victor pushed the rest of his maple bar into his mouth, then pulled up a stool and went to work on the roof of the car with a chamois.

"You ever drive, Victor?" asked McMichael. "Just borrow a vehicle, maybe, go for a spin, bring it back later?"

Victor didn't look back at him. His jaws worked and he finally swallowed. "I don't have a license."

"All these new cars, be nice to drive one."

"I don't want to talk anymore. I just want to do my job."

McMichael found the general manager in his office, dressed in black, laughing it up with one of the saleswomen. He was an amiable man named Charley Farrell, who shooed out his employee and shut the door when McMichael introduced himself. He expressed grief at the death of his boss and offered to help however he could.

The dealership was "going gangbusters," according to Farrell: unit sales up- they were now eighth biggest volume dealer in the nation. Profit up also. Pete Braga Ford has top-dealer status with Detroit, he told McMichael, which means you can get the units you want when you want them, and you get fewer dogs. They'd tested the certified, pre-owned market with some success.

"The new 'Birds are still moving fast, but our markup isn't twenty grand like it used to be. And vans," he said, "solid. The new Windstar is tearing up Japan, too."

Farrell said morale was good, but on-the-floor turnover was as high as ever. "You know salesmen," he said. "They come and go. But management is solid here. We've all been with Pete for at least fifteen, twenty years. I started here on the floor in nineteen seventy. I was thirty-three, wrecked marriage, had a boy with health problems. My firewood and hauling business was going under- got sued when a tree fell into a house and my insurance wouldn't cover. Pete picked me up, put me to work. Or like the bookkeeper, she's been here forty-five years. Solid."