“I haven’t sold a car in two weeks. I had that one guy, I was sure he was going to get the Civic, I call him up, he got a Chevy Cobalt. I mean, come on, give me a fucking break. A Cobalt?”
“Happens,” I said.
“I think she’s going to fire me. I’ve tried working my contacts, even family. I’ve already sold my mom a car, but my dad still refuses to buy Japanese. Says that’s why the country’s going into the toilet, we’re not buying from Detroit. I tell him if Detroit hadn’t been so slow to get its head out of its ass and stop making big SUVs, it would have been fine, and then he gets all pissed and tells me if I like the Japs so much maybe I should go live over there and live on sushi. I don’t know if I can pay my rent this month. I’d rather kill myself than move back in with my parents. Things keep going like this, I’ll be making sperm bank donations to get lunch money.”
“Been there, done that,” I said, recalling desperate times in college. “You run the risk of repetitive strain injury.” Despite everything, Andy grinned. “Get out the used-car ads,” I told him.
“Huh?”
“From the newspapers, online, anything in this area. See who’s selling their cars privately.”
Andy looked at me. It was taking a minute for him to figure this out.
“You call them up, you say hey, I saw your ad for your Pontiac Vibe or whatever it is, you don’t want to buy it, but you wondered whether they’d made up their mind about a replacement vehicle, that we have great financing and lease rates on at the moment, and if they’d like to come in, you’d love to get them into a new Honda, bring their current car in for a trade.”
“That’s a fucking awesome idea.” He smiled giddily. “So I tell Cantrell I’m working a whole bunch of new leads.”
“Just be ready when she rips a page out of the phone book and hands it to you.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She’ll say, ‘Leads, you need fucking leads? Here’s a whole page of them.’ She has one phone book in there, all she uses it for is to rip out pages.”
“Hey, you’re first up, right?” Andy was looking over my shoulder. I turned around, saw a stocky, wide-shouldered, middle-aged guy who looked to have cut himself shaving a couple of times that morning, like he didn’t do it that often but today he wanted to make a good impression and it backfired. He had on a crisp, clean work shirt, but his worn jeans and scuffed work boots betrayed him. It was like he was thinking, if the top half of me makes a good impression, no one’ll notice the rest of me.
He was admiring a pickup truck in the showroom.
“Hi,” I said, out of my chair. As I headed over to him, I caught Laura out of the corner of my eye, summoning Andy, the poor bastard.
“Hey,” said the guy. He had a deep, gruff voice.
“The Ridgeline,” I said, nodding at the blue truck. “Gets a ‘recommended’ rating in Consumer Reports.”
“Nice truck,” he said, slowly walking around it.
“What are you driving now?” I asked.
“F-150,” he said. The Ford. Also a good truck, recommended by Consumer, but not something I felt needed pointing out. I glanced out the showroom window, looking for it, but instead what caught my eye was a plain, unmarked Chevy, and Kip Jennings getting out.
“Would it be possible to take one of these for a test drive?” he asked.
“Sure thing,” I said. “I just need a driver’s license from you, we make a photocopy.”
He fished out his wallet, gave me his license, which I scanned. His name was Richard Fletcher, and I extended a hand. “Mr. Fletcher, good to meet you, I’m Tim Blake.” I handed him one of my business cards, which included not only my work number but my home and cell numbers.
“Hey,” he said, slipping it into his pocket.
I walked the license over to the girl at reception so she could make a copy, all the while glancing out into the lot at Jennings. She was short—she probably topped out at five feet—with strong facial features. A woman my mother might have referred to as handsome instead of pretty, but the latter word was also apt. I would have handed Mr. Fletcher off to Andy, but he was in Laura’s office getting chewed out. If I had to let a customer cool his heels while I found out what had happened to my daughter, tough. But Jennings was on her cell, so I took another moment to get this guy set up for a test drive.
I instructed one of the younger guys in the office to track down a Ridgeline, hang some dealer plates off it, and bring it up to the door ASAP.
“We’ll have one ready for you in just a couple of minutes,” I said to Fletcher. “Normally I’d tag along for the test drive—”
Fletcher looked dismayed. “Last place I went let me take it out alone. Not so much, you know, pressure?”
“Yeah, well, I was about to say, if you’re okay going alone, I just have to talk to this person—”
“That’s perfect,” he said.