Repo Madness: A Novel

  “I’m so sorry, Ruddy.”

  “Yeah, well, unemployed beats being in jail,” I responded somewhat pointedly.

  Tom’s mouth became an unhappy line. “Look, Ruddy, your prescription is way more than six months old. I can’t legally fill it.”

  “But if Schaumburg calls and you tell him I haven’t been taking my meds, he says he’ll violate me, and I’ll have to do the rest of my probation behind bars.”

  Tom spread his hands. “I don’t know what I can do.”

  “Well,” I reasoned, “when Schaumburg calls you can say, ‘Yes, Ruddy was just in here recently to pick up his meds.’ That’s not a lie, it is why I’m here.”

  “What if he asks if you’ve been taking your medications?”

  “You tell him the truth. You don’t know. Hell, Tom, how would you know if anybody was taking their medications, really?”

  “You’re asking me to lie to a doctor. I could lose my license.”

  “He wants to put me in jail! Just for not taking some antipsychotic medication! Is that fair?”

  “Why haven’t you been taking them?” Tom asked curiously.

  I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell him I was trying not to suppress Alan’s chances of coming back, because that would sound like I did need the meds. “I don’t like their effect,” I finally replied evasively.

  “Ruddy … I’m sorry,” Tom said mournfully. “If Schaumburg asks, I’m going to have to tell him the truth. That’s just how it is.”

  * * *

  We held Milt’s memorial service at the funeral parlor owned by Katie’s mother, Marget. Katie begged off attending, saying she had to work, but I knew the real reason for her absence was that she did not want to risk having Marget try to talk to her. I didn’t press the issue. Katie knew how much Milt meant to me, and I knew what Marget had done to Katie.

  I saw her, though, Marget, standing silently in the back of the room. Her white-blond hair, thin and straight, could not have been more different from Katie’s curly reddish-brown locks, though they shared the same electric-blue eyes. Marget stared at me in a way I knew meant she was going to try to engage me in conversation, which I dreaded.

  I met Kermit’s brother, Walt, for the first time. Walt looked a little like Milt, with pale skin and a lean body. Kermit was short and squat, the kind of guy coaches always thought would be tough to tackle but weren’t. Where Kermit’s darker skin color came from, I did not know. Both men both spoke about their uncle, praising him for his generosity and kindness, and I thought about how good a friend Milt had been to me, splitting the repo fee from the bank fifty-fifty, though it was his truck and his lot and his reputation that we operated on. His wife, Trisha, sat in the front row and sort of sagged against a man I later learned was her brother.

  When friends were invited to talk, I stood and told everyone that Milt was the only person who would give me a job when I got out of prison. That he cared about me and if we had a slow period, he would advance me some pay so I didn’t starve. Milt would have been disappointed at the way his big tough repo man’s voice cracked, the way tears wet my cheeks, and how I had trouble finishing what I started out to say. Milt’s kindness and fatherly concern for me had propped me up when I was in danger of going into a dark spiral of my own.

  And the money helped, too. Being a bouncer didn’t pay well or often—Becky gave me some of the proceeds when she was in the black, but it wasn’t as if I had a regular salary. I didn’t mention the part about bar bouncer not being a lucrative profession, though I guess a few people might have inferred that from the way I dressed. Nor did I speculate what I was going to do now, since I apparently was no longer a repo man. What I did say is that everyone was welcome to head over to Kalkaska for a wake in Milt’s honor at the Black Bear.

  Kermit came up to me to thank me for my words. As always with Kermit, there was an awkwardness between us, even under these circumstances. I told him how sorry I was, stumbled a little through the words untimely, premature accident, not sure what you’re supposed to say to the nephew of a man who likely took his own life.

  “Well, not premature,” Kermit murmured sadly. “Uncle Milt had cancer. It had recently metabolized to his liver.”

  “I had no idea,” I replied, shocked.

  “He wanted it kept a secret.”

  I looked involuntarily at the casket, oddly hurt Milt hadn’t confided in me about his illness. Kermit followed my gaze. “Is that why it’s closed?” I asked him.

  I instantly regretted asking such a unfeeling question. Kermit shook his head. “No. Actually, he was impounded. The lid is down because he’s not in there.”

  “Impounded?” I responded, baffled.

  “Yeah. We thought the sheriff wasn’t going to be investigatory, so we scheduled this as soon as possible. By the time we found out the law wanted to look into things, the onens were routed.” He saw me go blank at the unfamiliar word. “It’s a Jewish thing, it means family of the dead. Uncle Milt’s relatives. They’re all here. But they don’t know that my uncle … isn’t.”

  “That’s got to be really hard, Kermit,” I said inadequately.

  I wanted to say more, but Kermit was looking over my shoulder. “I think she wants to talk to you,” he said, withdrawing politely as I turned and saw Marget coming at me. I froze in place, steeling myself. “Hello, Marget,” I said in a tone softened to suit the circumstances.

  “Hello, Ruddy. How is my daughter?”

  “Katie’s doing well. She started a new job as a receptionist in a real estate office. Same one that Alan worked in. And she took the test, the one to get her license to sell property. We haven’t yet heard if she passed.”

  Marget’s eyes fluttered a little. Marget was still married to Alan when he died. “I didn’t know that,” she replied quietly. “Well. How are the wedding plans going?”

  “Fine,” I said. They weren’t fine, actually, but Katie wouldn’t want me talking about that with anyone, especially her mother.

  “Have you sent invitations?”

  “Not yet.”

  She nodded. Her eyes wanted to ask me if she would be receiving one, but I knew she dreaded the answer.

  “Well, I should get to the Black Bear,” I said formally. “Free drinks, I imagine we’ll be busy. Thank you for the way you took care of Milt.”

  “Ruddy. Can you talk to her? She won’t return my phone calls.”

  “She doesn’t want to speak to you.”

  “She’s my daughter,” Marget said in quiet anguish.

  “Marget. You murdered her father.”

  She blinked at my words. She was the type of person who could look at you with warm sympathy, but I always knew there was something much tougher in there, and I could see it in her icy expression now. “There was an investigation. There were no charges. The D.A. said there was no evidence,” she hissed.

  “That doesn’t change what happened.”

  My soon-to-be mother-in-law glared at me. “I would think that you of all people would understand.”

  “No. It’s not the same. What I did was an accident, Marget.”

  “It is the same. I had nothing to do with what happened to Alan. They did it.”

  I regarded her outraged expression, waiting for the guilt to seep into it, but it didn’t happen. Apparently, she had herself convinced of the truth of her words.

  “I guess Katie doesn’t see it that way, Marget. And I have to be honest: Neither do I.”

  “Well, here’s the way I see it,” she spat in icy fury. “My daughter needs me. When Alan died—”

  “When Alan was murdered,” I interrupted rudely.

  She gave me a look of utter contempt. “When that happened, I was there for her, and I’ve always been there for her. Then you come along with your lies, an ex-con loser who steals cars from people, and you think you can take her away from me? You think I am going to let you do that? You know nothing about her. You’re no good for her. You’re no good for anybody.”

 
* * *

  I came up with several pointed, devastating things to say to Katie’s mother once I was back in my truck. The conversation haunted me on the drive back because it peeled back the covers from my own insecurities. I really wasn’t good enough for a woman like Katie, probably, but who would be? And lately, it seemed, I really did know nothing about her—I was having more and more trouble understanding some of the things she was saying. Clearly, I was doing a few things wrong, but I wasn’t sure what.

  I followed a caravan of cars to Kalkaska and hustled into the warmth of the Black Bear, where Jimmy had been standing guard over a mostly empty business. The mourners crammed up to the bar and things flipped pretty quickly into a party. Becky caught my eye and held up two fingers—the Bear would cover two drinks for everyone. I stood behind the bar and made mental note of everyone’s tab.

  I’d like to think Milt would have wanted this: a big gathering, people laughing and talking. In reality, though, I had trouble picturing him anywhere but behind his desk. He hadn’t been in the Black Bear since my sister put in booths and a new kitchen and soft lights. All kinds of people came to the Bear now, not just guys who wanted to argue about snowmobiles or chain saws. Maybe that’s why Milt stayed away—the place had lost its charm.

  “Hey, Kermit, that was nice, what you said at your uncle’s service,” I told my brother-in-law. He regarded me warily, maybe looking for an insult. “No, I mean it,” I insisted.

  “Thanks.”

  “You think Milt would be glad the funeral ended in a party?” I gestured around the room at all the people.

  Kermit gave it some thought, frowning. “I think he would be embracive, yeah.”

  “Embracive.” I nodded. “Okay, sure.”

  “He may not have been the most conversable convivialist, but he would have enjoyed the festivities.”

  “I don’t know, Kermit. Sometimes it’s like your words come out of a sausage factory.”

  He blinked. “Sorry?”

  “When I repo a car, I say, ‘I’m here to repo your car.’ I don’t say, ‘My … My inhabitance on your property is with the cause to, uh, reappropriate the collateral on your defaulted financial instrument.’”

  He was back to eyeing me like I was the schoolyard bully getting ready to beat him up for winning the spelling bee, when I had really been trying to just have a little fun with him. Why did it seem that we were always at odds with each other? I might not have been friendly toward him when he started dating my sister, but that’s because I didn’t think he was good enough for her. And while I still held that view, it had more to do with my love for her than with my opinion of him. That was okay, wasn’t it?

  This was the sort of thing I used to be able to talk to Alan about.

  I switched gears. “Hey, do you know any mediums? Like, local people? I’m thinking it is a lot like those psychics you used to be in business with.”

  “Media?” he pondered, his frown deepening. “No, a medium and a psychic are two different things. Media talk to dead people.”

  Was the plural of medium really media in this context? How the hell should I know?

  “I know what a medium does, Kermit,” I replied a bit peevishly.

  He told me he didn’t know any media. That’s what he said; I’m not endorsing his use of the term.

  I glanced at the clock—it was getting late—and lowered my head to my phone. Katie often had to put in evening hours at the real estate office, but she should have arrived by now. Thanks to autocorrect, I wrote: Are you com get over? Coming!

  At that point the Wolfingers, Claude and Wilma, blew into the place like human typhoons. “We won a trip to Hawaii!” Wilma screamed, in a tone and volume of voice normally reserved for people who are being actively murdered.

  Claude and Wilma were both sixty-two years old and it seems as if they’d been married a lot longer than that. When Wilma shrieked out her megaphone-level announcement, a baby in the corner started crying. Most people, though, shouted something like, “Yay!” even though we were thinking, Oh no!

  You don’t just win a trip to Hawaii. Not if you live in Kalkaska.

  Claude raised what seemed to be a postcard over his head, waving it around like a winning lotto ticket. Everyone congratulated him despite the lack of plausibility. Claude’s hands always look like he’s been down at the jail, being fingerprinted—he’s a mechanic at the local garage. White hairs sprout out of his nose and his spotted arms, and his head is mostly bald. His wife, Wilma, is part Native American, with beautiful dark skin, nearly black eyes, and a temper that flashes lightning quick. She has fifty pounds on her husband and is an inch taller than his five-foot-eight—we always say he’s fighting out of his weight class.

  “Ruddy!” Claude bellowed when he saw me. “We’re going to Hawaii! All expenses paid!”

  “That’s great, Claude,” I said as sincerely as I could.

  “Drinks are on me!” he cried overenthusiastically. Everyone yelled, “Yay!” again.

  “Actually, the first two are on the house,” I corrected him.

  “Even better!” he enthused. “This is the best day of our lives!”

  I decided not to explain that the free drinks were due to Milt’s passing. I turned and tracked Jimmy eyeing me and remembered he was in some sort of trouble. We nodded at each other, but things were too busy to chat.

  Whether Milt would have enjoyed the conversable conviviality or not, the free drinks and the single round I let Claude put on his tab propelled the bar into a full-out celebration.

  “In Hawaii, they don’t have consonants, just vowels,” Claude lectured a bleary-eyed group of revelers. “And aloha means everything: hello, good-bye, love, peace, eat, drink, lawn mower, doesn’t matter: You just say aloha.”

  A lot of people frowned as they considered this, but no one challenged him.

  “Honey, let me dance the hula for you,” Wilma cooed at her husband. They were being amazingly noncombative with each other—I guess winning a trip to Hawaii can really smooth out the rough spots in a relationship.

  Wilma put Claude in a chair in the center of the room and spooled up “Hotel California” on the jukebox, which I guess was as close as we could come to Hawaiian music. Everyone was laughing and cheering, but we all fell silent when Wilma started to move in a smooth, flowing, and frankly erotic fashion, her hips swaying, her hands carving the air like elegant birds. What the hell? No one had ever seen her do such a thing, or suspected she was capable of it. She was graceful and beautiful, and we were all entranced.

  The dance ended with Wilma climbing on the chair and crashing with her husband to the ground. Then they made out on the floor until Claude needed to breathe. “Last call!” I shouted.

  I checked my phone. No response from my fiancée.

  By the time we’d broomed everyone out the door, it was just Jimmy and me. I locked the place and poured us a couple of short beers, and we sat underneath the bear—a taxidermied black bear that stood in the corner, its lips in a snarl, arms raised, looking fierce and ready to attack. I had nicknamed the bear Bob and thought he was kind of cute. He was the reason my father gave the bar its name. Legend had it Dad had shot the thing, but Becky claimed she was with him when he bought it at a garage sale.

  As I get older, I learn more and more that memory is a tricky thing and that Becky’s is wrong.

  “Okay, so?” I prodded.

  Jimmy swept his black hair out of his eyes and looked at his hands as if he were holding cards in them. “Yeah. I have a problem. With Alice.”

  “Alice. Alice Blanchard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she asking for child support? Because if she is, you know you need to pay it.”

  “No, she still won’t take any money for Vicki.”

  Jimmy had recently found out he had a daughter, Vicki, now ten years old, by a woman he hadn’t known was pregnant when they’d stopped dating. Alice Blanchard was married to a big shot banker in Traverse City now and had a nice life a
nd was altogether hostile to Jimmy, but she allowed my friend to see his biological daughter.

  “So she won’t take money.… Wait, is Alice threatening to cut off your visitation? Because that’s not right either.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “No, that’s not it.”

  I was impatient with the guessing game. “I know she hates you, Jimmy. What’s she doing now?”

  Jimmy looked pained. “It’s like this, Ruddy. I sort of started having sex with her again.”

  I stared at him. “I did not see that one coming,” I confessed.

  “We didn’t mean to. We just couldn’t help it.”

  “Sure, that makes sense.”

  “So I need your help.”

  “You need my help? How can I help? With what?”

  “Alice thinks her husband suspects something.”

  “Wow, Jimmy.” I shook my head. “This is a big mess.”

  “Tell me about it,” he responded moodily. “And it gets worse. He told her one time that if she ever cheated on him, he would kill her.”

  “Right, well, a lot of people say things like that.”

  “No, Alice says he means it.” Jimmy gave me a soulful look. “She’s really, really scared.”

  5

  Why Would You Believe Something Like That?

  My dog, Jake, stirred in his bed when I walked in the front door, giving me a mournful look with his basset eyes. His mottled body—brown and black and white—was coiled and ready for inaction, his flabby stomach as pink as a baby’s butt.

  “You know, for a lot of dogs, when their master comes home, that’s a really big deal. They jump around, bark, lick. Or, you know, move a single muscle.”

  He sighed with disgust at the behavior of those other dogs. I went over to him and knelt to stroke his soft ears. “Hey, Jake. You get a lot done today?” He leaned into my massage. “Did Katie take you out?”

  He shot me a coldly disapproving look at the word out.

  “Okay, you and me, outside, leg up, in five minutes. Prepare yourself mentally.”