Repo Madness: A Novel

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said, putting into words what his expression was already saying.

  He headed over to the booth to give our customers their wine, and I pensively watched him go, his tread heavy and burdened. “That’s the thing about relationships, isn’t it? You want them, but then when you’re in the middle of them, they can really mess with your mind,” I said aloud.

  “Spoken like a true romantic,” Alan scoffed.

  Becky heard me talking—she was plating a shrimp quesadilla for the Wolfingers. Her look was wary—she knew all about Alan, but as far as she was aware, the voice in my head had gone away a long time ago.

  “Just praising the female brain,” I told her.

  She stopped on her way to serve the food. “You’ve got four messages from a Dr. Schaumburg. Who’s he?”

  “Sheryl was in some sort of skiing accident, I don’t know what. He’s my new temporary hard-assed doctor from hell.”

  “Well”—she gave me a searching smile—“he wants you to call him. He was pretty emphatic.”

  “I will, first thing in the morning,” I promised.

  “Are you in trouble, Ruddy?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  She gave me a small sister-to-brother smile. “Oh,” she said, remembering something, “and Kermit wants to talk to you. He said he’d come by, so stick around for a while?”

  “Sure.”

  “She looks good!” Alan praised. “I like her new hair color. That gray skirt fits her perfectly. Is that necklace new? Kermit give it to her?”

  “Yeah, she’s looking very nice,” I agreed shortly, irritated because he’d noticed things about my own sister that I hadn’t.

  Jimmy rejoined me. I watched him fool around with a rubber stopper and a pump that sucked the air out of the wine bottle, keeping the contents fresh, somehow. Until Kermit showed up, we never cared if there was any air in or out of our wine bottles—we just screwed the cap back on and let the stuff rot. Next Jimmy went to Kermit’s computer system and tapped in the order, which was somehow superior to writing it on a piece of paper. The computer also held our work schedules, which I ignored. “Jimmy. I have a question for you. About … You know Katie is moving out, right? She’s renting a place in East Jordan by where she works.”

  “Yeah, Ruddy, Becky told me.” He gave me a searching look. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, no, I’m fine. It’s just that she said she needs some time to think. What does that mean? Got any ideas?”

  “What do you mean, what does it mean? She needs time alone,” Alan answered peevishly.

  I blinked once, hard, to send a signal that I needed him to shut up.

  “Well, look,” Jimmy replied uncomfortably, “Katie, I mean, she never has talked to me about it or nothing.”

  “Right. I’m talking women in general, here. Which you seem to know more about.”

  “Okay. Um, did you apologize?” he asked.

  “For what?”

  “For what?” Jimmy repeated, looking a little amused. “For, you know, everything.”

  “I have no idea what you’re saying to me.”

  “She didn’t move out for no reason. You’re not listening to her.”

  “I do too listen!” I snapped, agitated.

  “Okay, sure,” Jimmy agreed soothingly. “Except she probably has been hinting at stuff you missed.”

  “She did say something about not wanting to spend every night at the Bear,” I admitted.

  Jimmy brightened. “Right! So apologize for that. And, like, anything else you can think of. That usually works.”

  “I’m not going to sit here and listen to the two of you talk about my adult daughter like she’s some sort of child to be manipulated with parenting skills.”

  “Anyone who wants to leave can leave,” I stated.

  Jimmy nodded. “Sure,” he agreed.

  “So say I’m sorry? That’s it?”

  “Yeah, and, you know. Change, maybe?”

  “Change,” I repeated. “Change into what?”

  “How about someone who doesn’t agree to beat people up for money?”

  “I don’t know, but I think women like it when men try to change for them,” Jimmy explained.

  “Ruddy! Come over and help us celebrate!” Claude shouted.

  “Okay. Apologize. Change. Got it.” I thanked Jimmy for his advice and went over to tell Claude to stop yelling. I settled down into a chair, noting Claude’s ebullience and Wilma’s darker expression.

  “Everything okay, Wilma?” I asked cautiously.

  “I wanted pineapple,” she told me.

  “Huh?”

  “She wanted pineapple on the quesadilla,” Claude translated. “But I told her we’re not eating any of that canned crap. Next time I sink my choppers into a slice of pineapple, it’s going to be straight off the bush, served to me by a woman in a grass skirt, in a glass full of rum and maraschino cherries,” Claude declared.

  “Which come out of bottles,” Alan remarked superciliously. I squeezed my eyes shut again.

  “I wanted the pineapple in honor of Hawaii,” Wilma pouted.

  “Let me show you our ticket to Paradise, Ruddy,” Claude said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small plastic case.

  “Do you want me to get you a couple slices from the bar?” I asked her.

  “No,” Claude flared. “We don’t want any damn canned pineapple!”

  “I can have some if I want,” Wilma stormed back.

  “Then you might as well not even bother packing your bags for Hawaii, because you’re ruining it!” Claude bellowed.

  Wilma picked up her beer glass and threw what remained into her husband’s face. Blinking, Claude wiped his cheeks with a napkin.

  “Get you another beer, Wilma?” I asked.

  “Thank you, Ruddy.”

  I fetched two fresh beers and put some pineapple slices and cherries on a small plate. Jimmy tapped the order into the computer. My phone buzzed, and I checked it—Katie couldn’t, or maybe wouldn’t, make it to the Bear tonight. “Okay,” I replied. Then, at Alan’s urging, I texted her that I understood but would miss her—though it felt like I didn’t understand anything.

  I returned to the Wolfinger table—as usual, the tempest had flared and passed as quickly as a single bolt of lightning. I sat back down, and Claude reached out with thick fingers and snared a pineapple ring, popping it into his mouth.

  “Take a look, Ruddy,” he said proudly.

  “I don’t get how they can throw beer at each other and then pretend nothing’s happened,” Alan marveled.

  The plastic case he handed me contained a postcard announcing that the lucky recipient, identified as “occupant,” had won one of the following:

  A sample pak of hair products!

  Deluxe mixing bowls!

  A brand-new set of steak knives!

  A factory fresh Jeep Laredo!

  A glamorous HAWAII VACATION for two!

  A toll-free number invited “occupant” to “Call NOW to claim your prize!”

  “Claude,” I asked cautiously. “How do you know you won the Hawaii vacation?”

  “Because I called them!” he replied triumphantly.

  “I called them,” Wilma corrected.

  “We called them,” Claude amended.

  “It was me,” Wilma insisted angrily. “Why are you trying to take the credit?”

  “The postcard was addressed to me!” Claude barked back. “By law, you aren’t even allowed to call!”

  “Hey!” I said. They both looked at me, blinking. “What did the people say when you called?”

  Claude started to answer, but I gave him a look indicating that he’d better let Wilma talk.

  “They looked up the number on their computer. It was so suspenseful, Ruddy, I couldn’t even stand up. And then they said we won the trip to Hawaii!”

  “Aloha, oy vey!” Claude shouted.

  “Okay, it’s just aloha, and quit yellin
g or Becky’s going to make you leave,” I said. I sat back in my chair, still holding the plastic-encased postcard.

  “We’re going to swim with dolphins,” Wilma told me.

  “Dolphins! We’re going to swim with whales,” Claude boasted. “With … with octopuses, and stingrays!”

  “I’ve never had a real vacation before, Ruddy. Not one on an airplane, where you go places and see things,” Wilma breathed, her eyes glowing. “Not in my whole life. Our honeymoon, we stayed with Claude’s parents.”

  “It was our own place over the garage,” Claude explained defensively. “It wasn’t like we were in the same room with them.”

  I noticed Kermit had come into the Bear and was chatting with Becky. “You guys mind if I show this to Kermit for a minute?”

  They glanced uneasily at each other. I could see that parting with their postcard was like sending a child to the first day of kindergarten, but they finally nodded. I went over and handed the plastic case to Kermit. “Hey, you ever seen anything like this?” I asked him.

  He glanced at it. “Oh yeah. It’s a one-in-five drop.”

  “Say what?”

  “See, it’s legit, sort of. You get the postcard and you call in, and they try to sell you something, and you’re hoping that if you agree to buy, it will provide confluence for them to give you a better prize, and then they tell you what you won.”

  Alan snickered, and I knew it had to do with the word confluence. I clenched my fists to hide my irritation.

  “All right, but the Wolfingers won the trip to Hawaii.”

  “Sure. Almost everyone wins that one.”

  “What? You’re kidding.”

  “Yeah, I mean, like one out of a billion wins the car, and they do give out some steak knives and the other crap. Like I say, it’s completely legal. But pretty much everyone gets the Hawaii vacation.”

  “How can that be?”

  “See, it’s a Hawaiian vacation. So if you get over there, sure, there’s a hotel room with your name on it. Probably has a view of a Walmart. But you got to buy your airplane tickets, pay for your meals. Like that.”

  Alan groaned.

  “How do you know stuff like this, Kermit?”

  “It used to be how I conducted my fiscals before I came up here,” he explained.

  I moodily stared over at the Wolfingers, who were gaily laughing, happier than I’d ever seen them.

  “We can’t let this happen,” Alan murmured to me. “You heard Wilma. She’s never even been on an airplane. This is the biggest deal of their whole lives. It will crush them, Ruddy.”

  I was thinking the exact same thing, but I had no idea how I was going to prevent the catastrophe from unfolding.

  “Hey, Ruddy, good job on Zoppi. Blanchard says we get all his business from now on,” Kermit advised.

  “That’s really great!” I enthused. I meant it, but I also felt a tinge of sadness that I was discussing repo biz with Kermit and not Milt.

  “Plus, I got something pretty important to show you,” Kermit told me.

  “Okay, in a minute,” I replied distractedly. I started to return to the Wolfinger table but then turned back to Kermit. “Can you find out who is behind this? The people running the operation, I mean.”

  Kermit nodded. “Yeah, I can probably do that.”

  “Thanks, Kermit.”

  “He’s actually got a lot of good qualities,” Alan mentioned helpfully.

  “Then stop laughing at how he expresses himself,” I growled back, my teeth clenched and my voice soft, so no one would see me talking to myself.

  Alan went quietly contemplative.

  I handed Claude the plastic case, which he accepted as if I were handing him back a newborn baby. “Wilma, when you talked to the prize people, did you buy anything from them?”

  “No,” she said happily. “That’s how I knew they were legit.”

  “They even gave us a credit card!” Claude interjected. Wilma frowned at him. “Tell him, honey,” he urged, probably hoping to evade another beer facial.

  “We got a new credit card with a five-hundred-dollar limit!” she announced. “They said we could use it on the trip!”

  “In fact,” Claude rushed in. “We get all kindsa free stuff from the travel club!”

  “I wanted to be the one to tell about the travel club,” Wilma complained. I put my hand on her beer mug, just in case she felt compelled to fling.

  “Travel club,” Alan said disgustedly.

  “So you joined a club of some kind? How much did that cost?” I asked.

  “No, it’s not like that. You pay a couple hundred dollars, but you get discounts worth thousands,” Claude explained.

  I nodded, sitting back. “And let me guess … they let you put your membership on your new credit card?”

  Wilma nodded, and she and Claude started laughing, so happy they couldn’t contain it.

  “Okay, well … aloha,” I told them.

  “Aloha!” they chorused together, clinking glasses.

  I went back over to Kermit. “All right,” I said, “what’s so important that you need to show me?”

  10

  This Is Not Necessarily What It Looks Like

  Becky followed her husband and me out the back door of the Black Bear, both of them looking oddly conspiratorial, as if planning to hit me on the head and stuff my body into the Dumpster. “What is it?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Just look,” Becky suggested.

  It was cold in the alley, the harsh glare from the naked overhead bulb lighting up the fog from our breaths. It hadn’t been plowed in a while, so the snow on the dirt driveway was rutted and packed hard. The light also illuminated a gleaming tow truck with KRAMER RECOVERY painted on its side. I gaped at it.

  “New truck,” Alan said dismissively.

  I looked back at my sister and my brother-in-law. “Really?”

  Kermit and Becky nodded at me, beaming, their arms across each other’s shoulders like parents watching their child unwrap Christmas presents.

  I approached the new truck reverentially. It was the sort of vehicle a repo man dreams about. A T bar pivoted off the back—I could sit in the cab, flip a switch, and send the T bar out and under a parallel-parked car, locking the rear wheels and pulling the unit out of the tightest spot imaginable. A front winch matched the one in the back, black coils of steel gleaming like a parade sergeant’s boots. Inside the cab, the seats were not spilling stuffing, and there was no hole in the floor. The radio looked like it worked, even.

  “Only thirty thousand miles,” Kermit noted. “Got it out of Flint. A one-man operation, decided to pack it in.”

  “Probably came down with Repo Madness.” I nodded.

  Becky went back inside while Kermit and I played with all the levers and knobs. “I’m going to be invincible in this thing,” I predicted. Sending that boom crabbing sideways was more fun than I’d had in a long time. I picked up the Dumpster with it, grinning.

  “Can we go now?” Alan demanded in a bitchy voice. He would have spent all day looking at tennis sweaters, probably, but put something of real value in front of him, and he was as petulant as a bored child.

  “And wait, there’s something else.” Kermit showed me a little black box under the dash, in front of where my left knee would be. A black wire with a single silver pin connector attached to the metal box, which had a dusky red switch on one side.

  “Self-destruct device?” I guessed.

  “It’s a GPS transmitter, so that I can track wherever you are at all times. And that switch? You flip it, and it sends a signal to all my mobile devices—my home phone even rings. So if you get into trouble, like, a hostage syndrome, you just hit that switch, and I’ll know you need help.”

  “Huh,” I said. I gently tugged on the connector, and it pulled right out of the socket.

  “Why’d you do that?” Kermit asked, wounded.

  “I don’t want you knowing where I am at all times, Kermit.”

 
“But what if you need my help?”

  “Well, in that unlikely event, I’ll plug it back in, flip the switch, and you can come rescue me.” Kermit didn’t appear particularly happy with the plan. “It’s how I work. Nothing against you.”

  “Okay.”

  “In fact, I think I sort of do need your help on something. You know this deal with Claude and Wilma? The drop?”

  “One-in-five drop,” Alan corrected me.

  “One-in-five drop,” Kermit corrected me.

  “Yes, yes,” I agreed impatiently. “What do you think it would cost to pay for their tickets? For them to fly to Hawaii, I mean.”

  “From Traverse City? I don’t know, more than a grand apiece, I guess.”

  “Ah. Well … okay. I’m going to see what I can scrape together.”

  Kermit regarded me with surprise. “You want to underwire their fare for them?”

  I could buy the tickets and still retain some of Blanchard’s fee—if I collected everything from his gambling buddies. But there was a big difference between five grand and the funds I would have left. I thought about how much better it would be to use that money to take Katie on vacation or buy her something or just have a few bucks in the bank. “Yes,” I decided firmly. “I don’t want them to know about it, but yes, I want to buy their tickets.”

  “You’re … That’s pretty cool,” Kermit told me. Oddly, he reached his hand out, and I shook it.

  “So, look into what it would take. You’re good at stuff like that,” I told him. “I’m not.”

  “There are travel aggregators,” he replied.

  “Sure,” I agreed.

  “So, can I ask you a question? Something you’re good at?” he queried somewhat pensively.

  “Fire away,” I said, waiting for Alan to come up with a list of things I was good at, like forgetting to bathe, which was a false accusation anyway.

  “It’s about my uncle,” Kermit continued.

  I gazed back somberly. “Okay.”

  “The investigation about Milt? Well, there’s some kind of delay with the autopsy. The coroner who would normally execute it is out of town, and the next person in line had a death in her family. So it hasn’t happened yet.”