Chapter 23

It was Friday morning, and I kinda had an idea why I was heading back downtown to visit Jeff L. and Sakol’s office again. Yesterday’s visit with them hadn’t turned out very well and when I left, I knew they were upset with me. Even though I didn’t have anything new to tell them, I still wanted to see if I could patch up our disagreement. We had all been friends for a long time and the last thing I wanted to do was harm our friendship beyond repair.

The same facts were still there: I didn’t know what I was looking for, I just knew I was frustrated. All I was coming up with were loose ends, lots of loose ends and a ton of questions. I hoped if I kept pulling on the various ends, or kept looking for more ends, maybe I’d find one of them attached to something important. There was a slight possibility that just maybe, something would start to make sense. And having the two of them upset with me was not going to help provide me with any answers from them.

When I checked at the detective’s office, I discovered I’d struck out as they were out of the office on a call. On a whim I decided to wander over and check out Slim’s car in the impound lot. A few days before, Sakol had given me a special permit which allowed me access into the yard. My thought was if Sakol or Jeff L. didn’t want me to go snooping in the yard, why give me the pass? At least, that was the logic I was using.

Since I had no idea where they might have stored the car in the huge yard, I decided the best plan was to check in at the operations shack by the front gate and ask. There was a tall chain link fence surrounding the shack with lethal looking barbed wire circling the top and somewhere from the back of the structure I could hear the deep baying of what sounded like several large dogs.

The ramshackle shed was a sad-looking affair, with the roof listing a little to one side and several cracked or missing windows in front. Someone had replaced the missing glass with pieces of raw plywood that were now silvered, delaminating and checked from age and weather. The little shanty presented a sad sight indeed.

I pushed open the filthy gray door, which at some point was probably painted white, but was now covered with so much grime and grit I didn’t think it would be possible for paint to stick to the door ever again.

When I opened the door, I could see a floor that was grubby and covered with dust and dried mud. I spotted dust bunnies lurking in the corners of the little room along with the thick coating of mud. The heavily gouged old counter was even worse than the floor, if that was possible, so I stood there being very careful not to touch anything.

Covering one complete wall were pictures from old calendars and magazines. The pictures consisted of nudes and semi-nude women; most of them of ladies of improbable sizes and caught in impossible poses.

One of the things I’ve noticed of late is many of the young lasses who grace the pages of men’s magazines are now young enough to play the role of my daughter, or God forbid, a granddaughter. I’m sorry, but I find it difficult for children to stimulate me. If something lucky should happen to befall me, and I was to take one of those lovelies to bed, what would we talk about afterwards? Let’s face facts, at my age, IT only works when IT wants. That seems to equal around one time per episode. After that, all I have left is talk! What common interests would a lassie barely out of her teens have with an old fart like me? There was a bell on the desk with a hand-printed sign, “Ring bell for servus.” I banged on the bell and chuckled about the misspelled sign. After a long wait, the impound yard caretaker came out of the back room and waddled up to the counter.

His overalls were stretched taunt across his massive girth, and he looked as filthy as the room. The custodian’s fat unwashed hands had ragged fingernails, and the cuticles were grease packed. The man’s head resembled a large round ball balanced on top of a grimy, porky neck. All of his features centered in a tight cluster on his face, his eyes were watery, and when he opened his mouth, I noticed several teeth were missing. The remaining teeth were yellowed stubs. It took me a moment before I realized who this guy reminded me of; he looked like a filthy version of Audrey Bottomsley. I wondered if there was some type of family relationship.

The grey stubble on the custodian’s face looked a days old, but due to his grimy condition, it was difficult to tell the difference between where the dirt ended, and the whiskers began. Even from across the counter I could smell the odor of his drinking along with several other pungent odors coming from his body.

He belched before he addressed me, “Watcha’ want?”

“I’d like to look at a vehicle you have locked up in your yard.” I tried to be as friendly as possible.

“You can’t go back there, too dangerous.” He snarled.

“But I have permission. I have a pass.” I countered.

He continued to snarl at me, “Not from me.”

“Yes sir, I know,” I thought perhaps a little respect might help. “One of the detectives in homicide gave me a pass, which they told me would allow me to go out in the yard and look at a vehicle. I’m sorry if I should have first checked this out with you. Perhaps the detectives didn’t understand how things work.” I was trying as hard as I could to be as respectful as possible.

“Let me see that pass,” he said suspiciously.

I handed him the piece of paper Sakol had given me. The contrast between the piece of white paper and his hand made it gleam. I knew what was written on the note and I was appalled how long it took him to read it. I watched his mouth move as he read each word and when he was finished, he looked up at me and asked, “So, what’s this for?” I had to explain several times more before he understood exactly what I was after. He still wasn’t going to let me in his yard even with the pass from Sakol, but I kept badgering him until he changed his mind.

Finally, he turned and stared at a blackboard hanging on the wall behind him. I tried to make some sense of the board, but it looked like some form of Asian writing to me.

He gazed intently at the board for a very long time as he whistled through his yellowed teeth. Finally, he grunted, reached out, and tapped the board, without turning around he mumbled, “Next ta last row, seven cars in da middle.” And with that, he made a long, wet fart, grunted again, and shuffled to the back of the shack where he came from, slamming the door behind him. I decided I’d just met the grossest person of my life.

It took a while, but I finally located Slim’s car in the next to last row, with Rockingham written in some sort of white paint on the windshield. I could see the car was covered in dust and one of the tires was soft. The wire-wheels had a lot of dust and some mud on them, and the entire car showed it had been there for some time. I never had given it much thought, but somehow the thought that Slim would be a Jaguar sports car kind of guy had never crossed my mind. But then, the more I thought about it, there have been many surprises about Slim.

The Jag XKR was far from stock material. It had a custom paint job, a beautiful shade of a metallic brown, and even through the dust, you could see the flecks of gold in the paint. The car had a light tan convertible top with very tasteful tan pin stripes on the doors, front hood, and rear deck cover that matched the tan color of the top. When I opened the door, the smell of expensive leather filled my nostrils, and even though it was very dusty, the wood dash gleamed back at me in the light.

Since there were still smudges of white dust all over the car from when the technicians had looked for fingerprints, I knew the car had already been carefully looked over by the boys from the lab. I really didn’t expect to find anything. I guess you could say I was just wasting my time, but I still wanted to look at the car anyway.

I reached up to the visor over both the driver and the passenger’s side and pulled them down; nothing but dust fell off. I opened the glove box and noticed a key sitting in the bottom. I picked the key up and tried putting it into the ignition. It slid right in. I didn’t plan to start the car, just turn the key. When the key turned, the cellular phone between the seats powered up, and attracted my attention when it chimed.

I know the cell phone in my rig there’s a way you can recall the last phone number called. Looking at Slim’s phone, I wondered if his phone worked the same way. I pushed the menu button and looked under call history and pushed the outgoing calls button. His phone had some of the same features, allowing me to see the number of the last caller and then I could hit the redial if I wanted to reach that number again.

I pushed the buttons, then jotted down the number displayed on the screen. Afterwards, just for “why not,” I pushed the SEND button. One ring, two rings. When a male voice answered I could feel fear in his voice, “Wheeler here.”