By the time I hit the freeway, my adrenalin rush had subsided. In five years as a repo-man I had had a dozen or so such encounters, been shot at twice, and beat up badly once. But this was my first confrontation since getting sober, and I was pleased that the old instincts and tricks were still there. I don’t like hurting people, no sane man does, but there had been no alternative this time. My six years with the fuzz had taught me to read people for signs of violence, and that man had meant to fuck me up.
I recalled another repo from about three years back: a memo had come in from the bank stating that a woman had stiffed Cal with a rubber check for two months’ delinquent payments and three months in advance. I checked out her home address and learned from her neighbors that she was a honcho at the local Scientology Center, a lesbian, and a welfare recipient. No one at the Scientology joint or her apartment building had seen her for several days, so I broke in late that night and discovered she had moved out completely. When I told Cal what had happened and described the woman’s lifestyle, he went nuts. Cal is a big right-winger and took the ditch-out as a personal affront. He told me to find the woman and repo the VW bus regardless of the time and expense involved, promising me a fat bonus if I succeeded.
Through coercion and bribery I got the Scientologists to relinquish the woman’s new address in Berkeley. I flew up there, getting drunk on the plane. After sleeping off the booze in a rented room, I took a cab to the address I had been given. No VW bus, no one at home. I had the cabbie run me by the Scientology Celebrity Center. XLB 841 was not in the lot, or on any of the surrounding blocks. I told him that we had some waiting to do, promising him fifty dollars plus the meter if he kept me company. He agreed.
Berkeley gave me the creeps: the people passing by looked aesthetic and angry, driven inward by forces they couldn’t comprehend and rendered sickly by their refusal to eat meat. A lot of people passed through the center, but I didn’t notice any celebrities.
Finally the VW bus pulled in. Suddenly I was pissed. I had tickets for the L.A. Philharmonic that night, and here I was, four hundred miles away, putting the arm on some counter-culture bimbo for her sleazy bus. Rather than waiting until she entered the building and pulling a simple ripoff, I ran across the street and intercepted her. Flashing my repo order in her face, I yelled, “I’m a private investigator and I have a repossession order for this vehicle. You have five minutes to remove your things, then she goes.”
The pretty young woman nodded along with me, but when I went for the driver’s side, she attacked. I had the key in the door when I felt a sharp kick in my leg. I turned around, the door half open, and caught her purse full in the face. I had never hit a woman, but I swung around and cocked my right arm. Then I hesitated. The heavy leather purse was arcing toward me again, and I grabbed it with both hands, wrenched it free, and hurled it across the parking lot. She was at me now, shrieking and clawing at my face. Her shrieks alerted the Scientologists within the building and I could see them goggling through the plate glass window. I grabbed the woman and flung her to the ground.
Luckily, the bus started easily. People were pouring into the parking lot. I swung out into the alley behind the lot. The woman was on her knees hurling invectives. Her best shot was “urban barracuda.” The cabbie was nowhere to be seen. I found the address of the cab company in the phone book, drove over, and left the dispatcher with an envelope containing fifty scoots. He told me Manny, the hackie, would get it when he clocked out.
I went back to Berkeley to move out my things. I sorted out my observations of the woman, her lifestyle, and her reaction when I presented her with the price of her culpability. I came to one conclusion: if life was to be a game of give and take, with a rational morality deciding who gives and who takes, I would have to watch my personal morality, but stay on the side of the takers. I drove over the Bay Bridge and got a room at the Fairmont, a magnum of Mumms and a call girl. L.A. looked good the next afternoon.
I left the freeway and turned onto Ventura Boulevard, where you can buy anything you want, and anything you don’t want. The storefronts on this smoggy expressway feature manifestations of every scheme, dream, and hustle the jaded American mind can conceive. It is beyond tragedy, beyond vulgarity, beyond satire. It is supreme guilelessness. There are approximately eight billion of these storefronts — and three billion new and used car lots. Cal Myers has three: Cal’s Casa de Cairo, Myers’ Ford, and Cal’s Imports. He makes big bucks. He could sign a contract with a credit agency for his repossessions and save money, but we go back a long time, and he likes as well as fears me.
I ditched the bean-mobile at the Ford lot and dropped the keys and repo order with the sales manager. He told me Cal was across the street at Casa de Cairo filming a commercial.
Cal comes from the same ethnic background I do and we both have blunt, ruddy faces, dark hair, and brown eyes. Black German. There the resemblance ends: he’s much smaller and far more dynamic-looking. The TV cameras were panning as Cal walked down a line of parked cars, stopping in front of each one and extolling its merits. When he got to the last one, he introduced his dog Barko, a senile German Shepherd, to the TV audience. Barko is a nice enough dog, although he smells. He’s been with Cal since before he hit it big. When he was younger, Barko would make on-camera running leaps onto the hoods of cars, turn around, and bark repeatedly at the camera while subtitles were run across the bottom of the TV screen detailing all the wonderful facts about the car he was sitting on. Ingenious. Now that he’s decrepit, Barko has been kicked upstairs to a supporting role: a three-second introduction and a pat on the head from Cal.
Rather than stand around watching dreary retakes of Cal’s spiel, I walked over to his office and let myself in. The large room was out of another era, and I liked it: knotty pine walls with lush, dark-green Persian carpets over an oak floor, bookshelves crammed with texts and picture books on World War II, knotty pine beams studded with ornamental horseshoes. The largest beam, directly over Cal’s giant oak desk, held the Myers Coat of Arms; a vulgar configuration of crosses, flowers, and trumpets around a wounded boar’s head. The walls were festooned with framed photographs of Cal in the embrace of various politicians who had welcomed his campaign contributions. There was Cal with Ronnie Reagan, Cal with Sam Yorty, Cal solemnly shaking hands with Tricky Dick Nixon before his fall.
Cal came in, grinning. “Jesus, Fritz,” he said, “what a work of fucking art! That guy, what’s-his-name? McCoover? We should hire that fucker to redo all our waiting rooms, sales managers’ offices, even redesign our magazine ads. Dragon Wagon! Ha! Ha! Ha! You know what it is, don’t you, Fritz? It’s those goddamned Ricardo Montalban Cordoba ads, ‘I am a man, and I know what I want. I want Cordoba!’ Old Ricardo is a Mexican, this guy McCoover has gotta be a nigger, he sees the ad on TV, decides he wants to be a Mexican, and fucks up a beautiful car designed for white people! Jesus! Fucking Madison Avenue will fuck you every time.” Cal shook his head. “Two good things came out of the deal, though. One, we got old Dragon Baby back, and two, Larry found a bag of weed in the glove compartment. I told him to take it to Reuben and the guys at the car wash. Sparkle up their day.”
I forgot to mention that Cal is also the owner of Cal’s Car Wash, a tax dodge that he operates at a loss to “give my customers the best of... total service for their cars.” He hires nothing but wetbacks, and pays them the minimum wage, naturally. Little goodies, such as the weed and the occasional cases of beer he sends over, keep them from seeking more profitable work, like dishwashing. I decided not to tell him about my fight with McCarver. It would only prompt another racist tirade, undoubtedly not as amusing.