Not good. Not good at all. Ken couldn’t have handled him one-on-one, let alone wearing the other two around his neck.
And then, to make matters worse, they headed north out of the city along the West Side Highway. He’d topped off, but the Caddy with its outsized tank would have the range on him if they went over a couple hundred miles.
They didn’t. Two hours later the Cadillac made a turn onto Oak Street in a little town called Dudson Center and pulled up on the gravel driveway just shy of a chain-link fence behind the old-fashioned two-story white clapboard house at number 46. Good. No garage.
Ken steered the red Toyota past, made the next right, the next left, and parked. Maybe they were Gyppos after all; the big guy, who looked like two pro wrestlers at once, had sat in the backseat waving a tambourine around on the way up.
Didn’t matter. Two minutes and the Caddy would be his. He retraced his route on foot, shambling along round-shouldered and thrust-jawed like an ill-tempered dangerous bear.
The Eldorado had been left unlocked. Ken slid in behind the wheel. Man, it was loaded — cruise control, a/c, cassette player, reading lights, extremely woodlike dashboard trim. As he keyed the ignition, a bread company van pulled in behind him, filling the rearview mirrors and blocking his exit.
“Hey,” Ken said. He leaned out to look back at the van’s driver. Hell of a time for a guy to make a delivery. “Moo fit!”
Instead, the driver switched off the van’s engine, pulled on the emergency brake, and stepped out to the driveway, calling toward the house, “Andy! Mayday!”
And hell, here came another one, climbing over the driver’s seat to get out on the same side as the driver. That made five of them. The new one said, “Who is he, Stan?”
“No idea.”
“What’s going to happen?”
“No idea.”
Ken hit the button that locked all four doors, tried his keys, kept working them. Once the Caddy started, he’d push the van back out of his way and be off about his business.
People erupted from the house; first the two who’d been in the front seat of the Caddy on the way up, then a not-bad-looking woman making unconscious motions like a person lighting a cigarette off the stub of another one, then the big guy, finally a really mean-looking old dude. He and the woman stayed on the porch. The three he knew about came over to join the two from the bread truck. They were all looking in at him. He could hear them talking through the closed window.
“What’s going on?” the guy Stan had called Andy asked.
“No idea,” Stan said. He turned to the other bread truck guy. “Wally?”
“That man was in the car,” Wally said, in great excitement, “when we got here.”
“He’s still in the car,” Andy said, and rapped on the glass in the driver’s door, calling to Ken, “Hey! What’s the story?”
He found a key that popped over, and the engine purred. Ken looked over at the right-door mirror to back up and push the bread truck out of the way, when he saw a heavy-laden pickup pull into the driveway behind the van, filling the driveway and blocking the sidewalk as well. A handsome blond guy in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt that said Work Is for People Who Don’t Surf got out and strolled curiously forward.
“What’s the story here?” he asked.
“No idea, Doug,” Stan said.
This was getting confusing. All these people to keep straight. Could he push both the van and the pickup? He had to try, get on out of here. He shifted into reverse — and watched a green and white taxi pull up to the curb, parking crosswise just behind the pickup. A feisty little woman in a man’s cloth cap got out of the cab and joined the crowd beside the Cadillac.
“What’s happening?”
“No idea, Mom,” said Stan. “Dortmunder, do you...”
The other guy who had been in the Cadillac just shook his head. Ken considered the chain-link fence. No: the metal pipe supports were embedded in concrete. Get the elephant mad, he might pick up the Cadillac and shake it ’til Ken fell out.
The feisty little cab-driving woman went into the house. Andy leaned close to the glass separating him from Ken.
“We’re gonna put a potato in the exhaust!” he yelled. “We’re gonna monoxide you!”
Ken was feeling very put-upon, very confused. For the first time, he studied this mob around the Cadillac. They just didn’t look right. Could he have made a mistake? But the car was right: make, model, and color. The M.D. plate was right. He’d picked it up in front of a mitt-camp, for God sake! There was even a tambourine on the backseat.
Still, something was wrong. Tambourine or no tambourine, these people just weren’t Gypsies. As the woman cabdriver came out of the house carrying a big baking potato in her hand, Ken cracked the window beside him just far enough to talk. He announced through the crack, “Ngyou’re gno Gnipthy!”
Andy reared back: “What?”
“Gnone of gnyou are Gnipthyth!”
“He’s a foreigner,” Stan decided. “He doesn’t talk English.”
Ken glared at him. “Ngyou makin funna me?”
“What is that he talks?” Stan’s mom asked, holding the potato. “Polish?”
“Could be Lithuanian,” the elephant rumbled doubtfully.
Dortmunder turned to stare at him. “Lithuanian!”
“I had a Lithuanian cellmate ice,” the elephant explained. “He talked like—”
Ken had had enough. Pounding the steering wheel, “Ah’m thpeaking Englith!” he cried through the open slit of the window.
Which did no good. Dortmunder said to the elephant, “Tiny, tell him it’s our car, then. Talk to him in Lithuanian.”
Tiny. That figured. He said, “I don’t speak Lith—”
“Ikth’s gnot your car!” Ken yelled. “Ikth’s gha bankth’s car!”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Andy said. “I understood that.”
Dortmunder turned his frown toward Andy: “You did?”
“He said, ‘It’s the bank’s car.’ ”
“He did?”
“Fuckin’ right!” Ken yelled.
Stan’s mom pointed the potato at him. “That was English,” she said accusingly.
“He’s a repoman,” Stan said.
“Ah’m a hawk!” Ken boasted.
“Yeah, a carhawk,” Stan said.
Wally said, “Stan? What’s going on?”
Stan explained, “He’s a guy repossesses your car if you don’t keep up the payments.” Turning to Andy, he said, “You stole a stolen car. This guy wants it for the bank.”
Ken nodded fiercely enough to whack his forehead against the window. “Yeah! Nghe bank!”
“Oh!” Andy spread his hands, grinning at the repoman. “Why didn’t you say so?”
Ken peered mistrustfully at him.
“No, really, fella,” Andy said, leaning close to the window, “no problem. Take it. We’re done with it, anyway.”
Handing Doug the potato, Stan’s mom said, “I’ll move my cab.”
Handing Stan the potato, Doug said, “I’ll move my pickup.”
Handing Wally the potato, Stan said, “I’ll move the van.”
Wally pocketed the potato and smiled at Ken as if he’d never seen a repoman before.
Ken, with deep suspicion, watched all the other vehicles get moved out of his way. Everybody smiled and nodded at him. The other woman and the mean-looking old man came down off the porch. The woman smiled and did that thing like lighting a cigarette off an old one again.
The mean-looking guy said, “Kill him.”