The Midnight Dog of the Repo Man (3 page)

“Or Montana, maybe,” Mark speculated.

“The part of Montana that looks like Europe,” I translated.

“Exactly,” Kenny affirmed.

“Well, okay then. First thing in the morning, I'll go relieve Mr. Montgomery of his obligation to put gasoline in his Cadillac,” I declared.

“Wait, free gas? I don't get it,” Kenny replied.

“Where did you get the car keys?” Mark wanted to know, pulling them out of the folder and waving them at me. I explained that the dealer retained key numbers on every new car sold, just in case the owner lost them or the repo man needed them. “They don't have a clicker on them, but they'll work just fine.”

“That is so cool,” Mark admired.

“Why didn't you guys get something up front for the dock job? Everyone knows Montgomery is a deadbeat,” I inquired. “He doesn't pay his gardener, the trash pickup, anybody. Half the town has taken him to small-claims court.”

“The guy's
rich,
” Kenny protested. “He drives a Cadillac.”

“Not after tomorrow, he doesn't,” I said.

“I don't get it. He's got a yacht, this amazing place right on the lake, his dad left him like a hundred billion dollars—why doesn't he pay his bills?” Mark pondered.

“A hundred billion sounds high,” I noted skeptically.

“I think you should have turned back there,” Mark observed.

The Kalkaska nightscape is dotted with places where the oil companies have punched holes in the sandy soil to get at the petroleum and are burning off excess natural gas in waste flames, which must make the environmentalists just giddy. When we got to the pole barn it was illuminated with the flickering light from one of these eternal torches and the whole effect was damn spooky.

“I'll wait in the tow truck,” Kenny volunteered. He reached in and pulled out the rubber snake as if it were a weapon.

Mark found the key for the padlock hidden under a rock that was the first place any burglar would look and opened up the huge sliding doors. Inside was an absolute mountain of the kind of crap you see decorating the walls in chain restaurants with names like Sure Happy It's Thursday! and Pirate Gomez O'Malley's! Watering cans and license plates and snow skies and lunch boxes and hockey sticks and there, in the center of all of it, a gigantic Ford truck with a snowplow and massive rear tires. The thing was dented up and down the length of its body—Mark's cousin apparently used trees to guide himself into parking spots.

I glanced at my watch. It was just midnight.

I always did my best work at midnight.

*****

I
DROVE THE
F
ORD
and my two cohorts followed in my tow truck. Kenny kept playing with the flashing blue lights on top, the two of them back there laughing like idiots. A thousand dollars has an intoxicating effect on some people.

By the time we got back to the bar, Stasia and Cora had apparently decided that the whole robbery wasn't such a cute meet after all and had left. My two helpers looked pretty dejected, so I gave them each another beer before I bounced them out the door.

“We'll come back, of course,” Kenny promised.

“Knock yourselves out,” I agreed.

The next morning I woke up feeling pretty good about things—the thousand bucks from the plow truck repo would help Becky keep the Black Bear open until the summer crowds showed up, which would be happening any time now, the leaves had burst out of their hiding places right before Memorial Day, and the sun was shining, and the air was so clean it hurt.

So: a rewarding night and a perfect June day and I was off to repo another car—enough to make a guy like me damn near euphoric. Furthermore, this Montgomery was not some poor slob who had been ground up and spat out by the economy—no, Gabriel Montgomery was an infamously pompous jerk who cheated everyone the way he had cheated Kenny and Mark. Montgomery lived like the hundred billionaire he was, in a stunning summer home perched on the south arm of Lake Charlevoix, right where the Ironton Ferry transports cars back and forth across the narrows. The land there was so coveted that if I put all my cash assets together I might be able to buy a single frontage foot of it. Montgomery had three boats tied up to the enormous permanent dock that
K
ENNY AND
M
ARK HAD
just repaired, because obviously no one can get by with just one boat.

I was in such a good mood as I drove down to the ferry that I was completely unprepared for what hit me when I got there.

The ferry was on the east side of the lake, six hundred feet away, so I had several minutes before it came back to get me. I saw my friend Toni Marteney, the captain, directing people onto the ferry, wearing a cap that she stole from the skipper on
Gilligan's Island
. I got out of my truck, parked and locked it, and then, though the sun was still shining, felt a dark, chill cloud settle over me.

This was where everything went south for me—right here, in Ironton, population practically zero. One minute you're the big Kalkaska football star, local hero, fame and fortune lined up to shake your hand and welcome you into the club, and the next your head is down as you listen to the judge sentence you to prison. Now I was finally free from behind the razor wire, which was a substantial improvement, but I was broke, hadn't had a date in forever, was going absolutely nowhere. All because of what happened
right here
.

I watched a family eating lunch on the docks just to the north of where I was standing, at a great little place called The Landings. It's a restaurant housed in what was, when I was a little kid, a bait shop hugging the shore. Now it's a place for people on watercraft to tie up and dine on food that is better than what the Black Bear serves by an order of, oh, a thousand. Just shows what happens when you have a kitchen instead of just a microwave and a chef instead of just a sister. The family was enjoying the sun and the meal and the day, oblivious to the fallen hero watching them. They had normal, happy lives. I had what felt like no life at all.

“Ruddy!”

I looked up. Toni had made it over and loaded two cars and was waving at me.

“You coming?” she wanted to know.

“Yeah,” I said. I trudged over and got on the ferry.

“You leaving your truck?”

I nodded. “Going to pick up a Cadillac.”

She grinned at me. “Ah. Anybody I know and dislike?”

“I couldn't tell you Gabriel Montgomery's name; that would be a violation of the Repo Code,” I responded. My heart wasn't in the banter, however. I moodily looked into the clear, emerald water as the ferry chugged across to the Boyne City side.
Right here
.

Usually a good repo will perk me right up, but the sour mood left an aftertaste I couldn't shake, even after I walked down Montgomery's long driveway, the day's heat radiating up through my shoes, and saw the guy loading his car.
My
car, I corrected mentally, patting the keys in my pocket. This would be easy. I slid over behind a tree to watch.

Montgomery had jet-black hair combed carefully back, pressed pants, and a blue polo shirt that he probably got playing polo. He had an air about him, the kind of person who feels the world owes him extra consideration at every turn because his daddy invented something or sold something or accomplished something to fill up the Montgomery family bank account.

He was, indeed, headed on a trip, it looked like—he was shoving a couple of matching hard-sided suitcases into the backseat. They were bright red and looked as expensive as everything else he wasn't paying for. Probably wasn't going to drive all the way to Europe, but it was clear he'd be gone for a while. It if hadn't been for Mark and Kenny, I would have missed him.

Good. When you steal someone's car, you have to return his personal property. The suitcases would make that easier.

Montgomery didn't see me observing him. The Cadillac was in the circular driveway in front of a house that probably had six bedrooms more than mine. From where I stood I could see down the gentle, grassy slope to the big wooden dock—more like a pier, really, with giant gray timbers pounded into the lake bed supporting a latticework of perfectly spaced boards. Montgomery had a fifty-five-foot cigarette boat next to a forty-foot sailboat and a sixteen-foot ski boat. Maybe the bank would be sending me out to pick up the boats, too.

Montgomery went back into his house and I walked down to his car, got in, started the engine, and then sat waiting for a moment. When he stepped out of his house lugging a duffel bag, he stopped dead, his blue eyes bulging at the sight of me, his mouth opening comically. “Hey!” he shouted.

Normally this was the best part, but I was still in a dark mood. With no joy at all I gunned it, cranking the wheel and spitting gravel. Looking in the rearview mirror, I saw Montgomery chasing after me on foot, and even that didn't make me happy.

I drove down to where Toni was just raising the gate on the ferry, but when I honked she looked up and, smiling, dropped the ramp so I could trundle on. I parked and got out. “Nice ride,” she observed, running her hands on the smooth black finish.

“Yeah. I just got it,” I replied. I went to the railing and looked a hundred yards down the lake, waiting to see if Montgomery would make an appearance on his perfectly spaced dock.

He did not disappoint. Carrying the duffel bag he'd been bringing out of the house, he ran out on his pier and stared at me escorting his car across the channel.

I waved.

Montgomery dropped the duffel bag and unzipped it, fishing around inside with hurried purpose. I watched with interest. Binoculars, maybe? Clearly he was going for something other than spare socks.

When he stood up from the bag, I gulped. What he held in his hands was what most people call an assault rifle—big and black and ugly. He pointed it at the ferry.

“Toni!” I shouted. I didn't know what the range was on the thing, but I figured we were probably within it. I grabbed Toni and dragged her behind the ferry's cabin—a tollbooth-like enclosure that had thin metal walls that might or might not stop a bullet.

“What? What's happening, Ruddy?” Toni asked anxiously.

“He's got a rifle.”

“Who?”

“I can't tell you. Repo Code,” I replied. I raised myself up, risking a peek around the corner. Montgomery was no longer scoping the ferry.

He was getting into his ski boat.

“Uh, Toni? Can this thing move any faster?” I asked.

Toni shook her head. She was still crouched behind the cabin as if we were taking heavy fire. “This is pretty much flat-out as she goes, Ruddy,” she confessed mournfully. We were making our way at what felt like five miles an hour.

We were close enough I could actually hear Montgomery fire up his twin outboard engines. “I'm pretty sure Montgomery's boat can hit forty knots,” I mused as I watched him back out of his berth. I triangulated his approach with our dead-slow crawl and figured he had us beat by a long shot.

“Wait, this is a no-wake zone! He can only go six miles an hour!” Toni blurted, relieved.

“I somehow think that doesn't matter to our friend,” I answered. As if to prove my point, Montgomery cranked it up and came thundering toward us, carving a deep, white trough of foam in the placid waters.

Toni and I decided we would be more comfortable in the cabin and dove inside, crouching down. There really wasn't room for both of us in there. I smelled coffee and mildew and, frankly, Toni, who was sweating profusely. “Are we safe in here?” she asked worriedly.

“Sure, if he doesn't shoot,” I replied. Toni did not appear assuaged.

Montgomery cut the throttle—he was close, his engines growling like twin bears just on the other side of the thin metal walls. I heard the slap of his wake against the sides of the ferry and pictured him matching our speed, sighting down the barrel of his weapon, thinking how best to take his shot.

“I sort of have to stop the ferry soon or we'll crash it,” Toni apologized.

“The hell with this,” I decided. I stood up, left the cabin, and walked out to the railing, staring at Montgomery, who had set down his gun to steer his boat. I could see the thing, though, sitting on a white seat right next to him. He was less than twenty feet away—if it weren't for his motors, we could have conversed in normal tones.

“I'll meet you on the other side!” I shouted to him. “Dock your boat at The Landings!”

His glare was dark and implacable, but after a long moment he did as I asked, his engines howling as he rocketed ahead of us and went to the docks. The family eating lunch watched him without much interest as he hastily tied up, but when he climbed up on the sturdy dock and padded on bare feet over to greet the ferry he had his rifle swinging free in his right hand.

The father made a decision and moments later his family had abandoned their lunches and darted into the restaurant.

“You want me to go with you?” Toni asked, clearly hoping I'd decline the brave offer.

I shook my head. “You got some customers,” I said, gesturing to the vehicles that had shown up over on the Boyne City side. “Better get going.”

“Want me to call the cops?”

“No, they'd just mess up the repo,” I replied. Police officers take a dim view of self-help repossessions, believing it makes for a far better outcome if the bank hires a lawyer and waits for a court date and then gets a judge to sign a Writ of Replevin and then hires the local sheriff to go out and pick up the car. The police also prefer it when the law is called in to settle a bar fight. I guess the shorthand for it is that police officers take a dim view of
me
.

I slid into the cockpit of the Caddy and drove slowly over the ramp and onto the land, waving my thanks at Toni, who appeared to be hyperventilating. Her job is to sail back and forth across the same six hundred feet, day in and day out, so I guessed this had all been a little more excitement than she was accustomed to.