The asshole—a beer-bellied, dumb-shit redneck of a prospective buyer—slouched behind the wheel, his hand rubbing the gearshift knob as if the truck were already his. They were just back from a twenty-mile test drive out I-59, which skirted downtown Birmingham on miles of elevated roadway, and they now sat idling beside the Sheraton and the Civic Center. To their left, traffic overhead rumbled and clattered across the viaduct’s expansion joints; to their right, the blank end wall of the high-rise hotel echoed every clatter a quarter of a second later, as if, in some parallel universe, identical cars and trucks were rumbling and clattering along an identical viaduct, in almost-but-not-quite-perfect sync.
Satterfield wasn’t staying at the Sheraton. He’d said he was, when he’d arranged the meeting with the asshole, but the moment the deal was sealed and the asshole was gone, Satterfield would jog beneath the roaring roadway to the Greyhound station, six blocks south, huddled beneath the forty-story BellSouth building. The next bus for Knoxville was scheduled to leave in less than an hour, and Satterfield was growing impatient with the slow-talking, slow-witted buyer.
“If it’s so damned good, how come you’re so hot to sell it?”
Satterfield shook his head, his eyes downcast. Don’t you even think about backing out on me, he thought. “It’s my wife,” he said sadly. “She’s sick. Real sick—breast cancer. Doctor says she’s got three months. Six, at the most.” He heaved a deep sigh, loud enough to be heard over the traffic and the clatter of the truck’s idling pistons. “We’ve got a lot of hospital bills. Got a four-year-old, too, that I got to raise on my own pretty soon.” He turned to look at the guy now, his eyes full of ginned-up sorrow and anger, daring the asshole to do anything but sympathize and cough up the cash. “That’s how come.”
The asshole nodded slightly, working the tip of his tongue into the crevice between two top teeth, digging for the bit of food that Satterfield had noticed was caught there. “Hmm,” the guy grunted, “too bad.” Satterfield felt a flash of fury at the lukewarm response. So what, if his tale of familial woe was totally fabricated, his tragic characters spun out of thin air? This guy had no way of knowing that. I got a dying wife and a motherless kid on my hands, and all you got to say is “too bad”? You coldhearted, little-dicked son of a bitch. “And you brought the title?”
“Got it right here,” Satterfield said, opening the glove compartment and removing a fat folder. “Maintenance records, too.” He handed the folder across, and the guy riffled through it, glancing at the receipts. “I haven’t put many miles on it this past year. Not since she got sick.”
The guy pulled out the title and studied the name on it. It was Satterfield’s stepfather’s name; it was the name Satterfield would sign, assuming the guy ever shut up and paid up. “And the title’s clean? No liens?”
“Abso-fuckin’-lutely clean,” Satterfield snapped. “I gave you the damn VIN number. Didn’t you check it? I told you to.”
“Yeah, I checked it. Came back clean. Just askin’. Just makin’ sure.” His tongue began rooting around in his teeth again, fishing for more scraps—Why’s he stalling? wondered Satterfield, and then he realized, Ah, here it comes. “Thirty thousand, that’s a lot of cash,” the guy said. He chewed his lip and shook his head, looking pained—like he really wanted the truck after all but just couldn’t quite scrape up the asking price.
“Thirty’s a damn sight less than forty,” snapped Satterfield. “This truck’s worth forty, easy, and you know it. If you want it, you put thirty thousand dollars cash money in my hand right now. If you don’t want it, get your ass out of my truck and quit wasting my time.” Don’t you dare fuck with me, fat-ass, the voice in his head hissed. I will gut you like a big-bellied hog.