Black Cat Weekly #80

Chapter 5-1

byCher Downey marched into my garage on lime green crocs and dumped a sawed-off catalytic converter on the floor with a defiant humph, as if to say, take that Klaus Richter, you’re not the only badass who can stir up trouble around here.

humphI was tinkering underneath my 1976 Chevy Nova, so I saw the crocs first, her stride more suited to the Labor Day parade that marched through Booker three weeks ago. Then came her pink pants and a patterned smock with daisies or sunflowers. I rolled out on a creeper and stared into those flaring, dragon nostrils.

“I stole this thing, and I don’t care,” she said, toeing the boxy metal piece. “People will pay good money for it. I can get lots more, so let’s talk prices.”

I pushed up off the floor, ignored the first question that came to mind and asked the second. “How’d you get it off the car?”

“Reciprocating saw,” she said with pride. “Sliced it like a piece of pimento loaf.”

Her plump face was flushed red. You could blame it on the soupy haze squatting over this part of Virginia, from the shipyard in Newport News to the North Carolina state line, Booker being smack dab in the middle. But the heat wasn’t turning her mouth panicky at the edges or making those hazel eyes dart east and west. Some people require deep brooding and navel-gazing to reveal their troubles, some blurt it out in thirty seconds. I decided to play along.

“You are correct about catalytic converters being valuable,” I said. “They have rare metals. Platinum, I think, and maybe two others.”

Cher c****d a hip. “I don’t care if they have adamantium and Wolverine stocks up on catalytic converters to grow his fingernails. I’m seeking financial gain.”

“First off, he has claws, not fingernails. Second, why don’t we have some sweet tea and talk about your newfound criminal career? I got a pitcher in the mini fridge.” When she snorted, I said, “I’ll let you have my glass mug. It’s clean and frosted. Come on now, Cher. Drinking tea from a frosted mug on a day like this?”

She frowned. “I suppose.”

We drank tea for a minute. Then another. That icy tonic worked like a dimmer switch on her mood. Shoulders sagging, she ran the mug over her forehead and rubbed her eyes from exhaustion or tears, maybe both. “I need money real fast, Klaus,” she said. “I got fired two hours ago after Sam Cox accused me of stealing cash from a resident. He personally escorted me through the dining room in the middle of breakfast.” She stabbed at her phone. “I must have twenty emails from the old folks. Everyone’s worried about me.”

Cher is, or was, the head housekeeper at Red Bend Retirement Village, so named for the creek that curls around the property. She is the proud owner of a 2013 Hyundai Accent, a serial oil changer who pays me with honest money. She’s raising a five-year-old boy and has worked at Red Bend for several years. From what I know of nursing homes, that itself should merit an award.

“Who is the resident accusing you of stealing?”

“James Marano. He’s new, and he’s out twenty dollars. You heard that right. I lost my job for twenty dollars. It’s a mystery.”

My eyes wandered past the workbench, where belts and hoses hung from metal pegs, and came to rest on a cork board tacked with thank-you notes that had nothing to do with cars and everything to do with life’s other problems. The more serious kind.

Cher followed my gaze. “I see the wheels turning, Klaus. When I said it was a mystery, I wasn’t asking to be one of your celebrated cases.”

“You’re too proud to ask, so I’ll do the asking. This Marano, did you ever enter his room?”

“Never mind.”

“That means you entered his room.”

“Damn it, Klaus. I’m out of a paycheck and that’s all that matters. I got a kid who eats like a Doberman. This morning, I used the last of the milk and crumbs from the cereal box to make Fruit Loop slurry.” She gulped back a sob with the force of will. “My job prospects in Booker are dead.”

She almost cried. Almost.

“It’s not like you had a future at Red Bend,” I said. “In my high school days, we always called that place the Dead End. I suspect you won’t miss the smell of urine, fruit compote, and hard bleach, am I right?”

“You been out there recently?”

“No, and I don’t intend to. I’ve seen plenty of people near death during my travels. I don’t need to see any close to home.”

Cher looked into dark, cool corners of my garage. “Red Bend is trouble. I’m sure it’s too much for you to handle. Find a place to sell this thing and say hello to Wolverine while you’re at it.”

I held up my hand as she turned to go. “Let me get this straight. You got fired this morning, which came as a surprise, then got escorted out, also a surprise. Yet you had the presence of mind to slice off someone’s catalytic converter immediately afterwards and come see me?”

“No, Sherlock. I drove around for a while, calmed down, then googled side hustles. Stealing catalytic converters finished just ahead of Ponzi schemes and beat selling plasma by a mile. I went back to Red Bend, got the reciprocating saw from the utility shed and scoped out my victim. The vehicle was parked in a space labeled None of Klaus Richter’s Freaking Business. Now stop with the interrogation before I get a hair across my ass.”

“But you didn’t steal the cash?”

She got up in my face, smelling of Juicy Fruit gum. “Didn’t. Steal. A. Dime.”

Her Hyundai spit gravel as she sped away.

I shouldn’t have badmouthed the nursing home. Just because it’s not a four-star hotel doesn’t mean you can’t be attached to the place. I decided to drive to the Dead End that afternoon to set things right for Cher and her cereal-chomping kid. My cork board had room for a few more thank-you notes, but it was getting crowded.

That was my own fault, too.

Two years ago, I returned to my hometown of Booker after a twenty-five-year hitch in the Marine Corps and another twenty as a private security contractor, seeing places where people have been hating each other since hating was a thing. Bosnia. Yemen. A few dark corners that never make headlines. It wore me out, playing whack-a-mole with one hotspot after another. So I came back here, where I led the Booker Badgers to the Jefferson League football championship in 1975. I bought a ramshackle farmhouse with a garage to fix cars on the cheap. I don’t do state inspections or fool with diagnostic computers. But you’ll pay less for a brake job than at the dealer, where some bro named Chad is pushing windshield treatments and undercoats. Men with soft hands and pressed khakis should never talk about cars on general principle.

That was supposed to be my retirement: a string of simple fixes and people saying, Look at Klaus. Finally following in his daddy’s footsteps.

Look at Klaus. Finally following in his daddy’s footsteps.Just as I started my life of leisure, Lois Kramer’s 14-year-old granddaughter disappeared with her cockapoo. The sheriff’s department organized a search, recruited volunteers, the whole nine yards. Thing is, no one asked why it happened. Sure, they asked, but they didn’t press. Lois was my chemistry partner in eleventh grade and helped me get a C-minus, a Herculean feat on her part. She had adopted her granddaughter from Guatemala, but you didn’t say “step-granddaughter” around Lois without getting swatted. That kid was family. Over coffee, I sat with Lois and waited for the knot in her gut to unwind. It turns out Mr. Kramer was smacking that poor child into next week and doing a number on Lois every so often. Lois knew where the kid might be hiding and preferred she stay away. I found her at a campground outside of Norfolk, hungry but healthy. The cockapoo was two rows over, mooching granola in a microbus crammed with neo-hippies who tumbled out like clowns upon approach.

askedThe child-beating Mr. Kramer ran a real estate business and plastered his face on billboards from here to North Carolina. Word spread that I helped Lois find her granddaughter and might have broken Mr. Kramer’s handsome nose in the process, with a promise to break something else if that girl had so much as a hangnail ever again.

After that, people started asking me to fix problems apart from cars. Problems like Josh Moore, a smart-a*s punk who became a pharmacist and dealt drugs to kids from the back of his store, always talking a blue streak about how great he was. One day, he showed up for work with his jaw wired shut. The Lister Brothers moving company tended to misplace their customer’s antiques, which showed up on eBay. That required a minor episode of breaking and entering, photographing merchandise in their warehouse, and plastering the images on telephone poles around town. In Booker, pictures on telephone poles can work better than YouTube.

It’s not that the police don’t care, but they’re underfunded and must deal with a Booker tradition that goes back to when I was a kid: When controversy looks you in the face, you tamp it down. Booker has been run by the same seven or eight families for years now, and they like everything neat and clean, even when it’s dirty.

Sooner or later, I suspect the town fathers will tire of me breaking noses of prominent businesspeople and posting embarrassing pictures on telephone poles. But they’re leaving me alone for now, and it was a nice day for a drive. I fired up my old Nova and kept saying Red Bend, Red Bend, so I wouldn’t insult the help when I arrived.

Pulling into the parking lot of the retirement home, I wondered if I missed a turn. Gone was the place I ridiculed as the Dead End, a squat brick behemoth that looked more like an East Berlin bus terminal circa 1954. In its place was a sandstone and gray building with modern, sloping lines, ringed by manicured shrubs and featuring a smoked glass atrium. The entrance brought me past hanging plants to a receptionist desk staffed by an elderly woman with a disarming smile and a hair color not found in nature.

“This isn’t like the place I remembered,” I said by way of introduction. “Is this building new?”

“If by new you mean fifteen years ago.” According to her name tag, she was Rebecca, a senior communications associate. “Are you looking to move in?”

“The hell. I’m sixty-three.”

“We accept fifty-five and over, so feel free to look around. And we don’t tolerate language here. Otherwise, how can I help?”

She gave me Jim Marano’s room number and pointed to a softly lit hallway with pastel-colored walls, floral prints, and handrails. The air smelled of dryer sheets. Elevator music tinkled in the air. Halfway to my destination, a man yelled my nickname from high school.

“Richter the Rifle. Hold up.”

An old man on a walker was catching up to me. I recognized him as Matt Gardner, a longtime accountant who at one time prepared income taxes for half the town. In the 1970s, Gardner Accounting sponsored the most valuable player award after Booker Badger home games. I’d won a few of those, and somewhere in moldy newspaper archives are photos of me and Mr. Gardner shaking hands and hefting a plaque. He owned an Oldsmobile larger than some back porches, and I installed brakes on it six months ago. He smiled gamely while pushing that walker.