Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course Read Online Free PDF

telling what else.
    He walked around and opened the driver’s-side door, peering in at the dashboard. “Odometer’s been messed with. Sixty thousand miles. Hah! More like two hundred sixty thousand.”
    She felt a little twist in her belly. “Low mileage in a car like this, that’s rare,” she could hear Jeff telling her about the doctor’s wife.
    “It’s still a good car though, right?” she said pleadingly. “Maybe you could work on it. I could pay you a little bit now, and some more when something goes wrong.”
    “What’s wrong with this car you and me can’t fix,” Milton said grimly. “This here car’s been wrecked. Totaled out. Maybe more than once, all the welding seams under there. Frame’s all bent to hell.”
    He put his big, greasy hand on the hood of the nice, shiny car and Jackie shuddered involuntarily.
    “This T-top rattles like my grandma’s dentures. You didn’t notice that when you drove it?”
    She’d asked Jeff about that noise.
    “That’s just the way it goes with these ‘Vettes,” Jeff had said reassuringly. “What you call an idiosyncrasy. Just do what I do.”
    “What’s that?”
    He flipped the radio volume knob up three turns.
    “See,” he’d shouted. “Now you don’t notice the rattle at all.”
    Milton reached in the car again and with his stubby outstretched index finger, he jiggled the steering wheel like a loose tooth. “How about this steering wheel? It’s fixing to come off of this steering column.”
    “Tilt steering?” She was quoting Jeff Cantrell again.
    “Nah, man,” Milton said, slamming the door shut, walking away, leaving her standing there with her baby diagnosed as a terminal case. “That car salesman seen you coming, Jackie. He picked you clean.”
     
    Funny. She hadn’t noticed the water stains on the roof liner before. Or the cracked vinyl on the dashboard, or the way the passenger-side window wouldn’t close all the way because the rubber gaskets had rotted out.
    Now, not even the complimentary wild-cherry car deodorizer, the one that said “Bondurant Motors,” could hide the smell of rot. She turned the key in the ignition and stalled the car. Three times. She took a deep breath and started the car, listened to the belching motor, and turned the stinky red car in the direction of Bondurant Motors and Jeff Cantrell. She’d see about this piece of crap. Yes, sir.
     
    Jeff Cantrell had a couple of live ones. A young Mexican couple. They were gesturing and yammering in nonstop Spanish over the powder-blue 1979 Cadillac Eldorado he’d pulled into the slot vacated by the red Corvette.
    Ronnie had taught him all the Spanish he needed to clinch a sale.
    “ Trabajo , “Jeff said loudly. “ Ustedes trabajo ?”
    “ Si ,” said the wife. She had a long braid hanging down her back and was doing most of the talking and gesturing. She jabbed the senor in the side.
    He reached in the pocket of his faded jeans and offered Jeff a creased and wrinkled pay slip. The pay slip said his name was Joaquim Morales. It was issued by the Hernando County Public Works Department. They’d driven all the way down here to St. Pete just to look at cars.
    Perfect. Ronnie loved to sell cars to greaseballs. “If they can’t habla , they can’t bitch about nothing,” he said. Even more than greaseballs, he loved to sell cars to guys with government jobs.
    It was impossible to fire anybody who worked for the city or the county or the state, according to Ronnie Bondurant. And if the greaseball got slow on payments, all Ronnie had to do was make a call to a supervisor, threaten to show up to collect his money, and the greaseball would be there on Friday with the dinero in hand. Cash money.
    “ Cuanto ?” Mrs. Joaquim was saying. Her husband was already sitting behind the steering wheel of the El-Dog. That’s what they called Eldorados here on the lot—El-Dogs. Ronnie bragged that he’d sold every pre-1980 El-Dog in Pinellas County, hell, make it Central