Except for my scraped knees complaining, our run was no different than usual. When I took Billy Elliot back upstairs, Tom was in the kitchen busy with his accounting work and merely shouted good-bye. We were both doing a good job of pretending everything was normal.
After Billy Elliot, I only had three other dogs on my list. I walked two of them and then took care of the cats and birds and rabbits before I headed north on Midnight Pass Road for Secret Cove. My mind kept going back to the driver of that truck. At the turn into Secret Cove, my car took over and kept going straight to the dogleg at Higel Avenue. City planners like to keep people on their toes by having streets change identity, so Higel makes a sharp right and becomes Siesta Drive, which goes over the north bridge to the mainland, where it becomes Bay before it crosses Tamiami Trail and becomes Bee Ridge.
I passed Video Renaissance and the tae kwon do studio on Bee Ridge, and turned left on a street of old frame houses where rusted sedans and dented pickups sat in driveways. I parked in front of a big garage with an open bay door and got out, shading my eyes to look inside the darker recess of the garage. Several collectors’ cars sat in half-finished states, and I could hear the whining sound of something grinding on metal at the back of the shop.
Birdlegs Stephenson came out, wiping his hands on a rag and grinning ear to ear. I hadn’t seen Birdlegs in several years, but he was still as skinny as ever, brown hair pulled back in a ducktail, long legs in faded holey jeans, his thin torso covered by a stained Bucs sweatshirt with the neck and sleeves cut out.
In high school, Birdlegs sat in front of me in algebra and fed me answers to stupid test questions like how long will it take a train to travel to Chicago if its smoke is blowing back at thirty miles per hour. Like there are still trains with smoke. That’s how I learned to read papers on somebody else’s desk without appearing to move my eyes. The trick is to tilt your chin upward and let your eyelids droop to half mast. That makes you look as if you’re deep in thought, but in reality you’re staring ahead and down, and if somebody just happens to casually move his test paper to the side of his desk, you can see what he did to solve that idiotic question. If Birdlegs hadn’t let me cheat off his papers, I would have written Who cares? and never would have graduated high school.
He said, “Hey, Dixie, long time no see!”
“How’re you doing, Birdlegs?”
“Can’t complain, how about yourself?”
“Somebody in a hyped-up pickup on huge tires tried to run me down, and I want to find out who it was.”
He raised his eyebrows and lowered his eyelids to look down at me, much the same way I used to look down at his test papers.
“What do you mean, they tried to run you down?”
“I mean I was running in a parking lot and they tried to hit me.”
“Some of those guys put those things up so high they can’t see the ground. Maybe they didn’t know you were there.”
“Trust me, Birdlegs, they knew I was there.”
“Jesus, what’d you do?”
“Hit the ground and let it roll over me.”
“Good God.”
“That’s how I felt about it.”
“Did you see what make the truck was?”
“It was too dark to see anything.”
“What size tires did it have?”
I held my hand flat beside my waist. “About this high.”
He measured the distance to the ground with squinted eyes. “Probably forty-twos, maybe more. Tires that big aren’t safe.”
“Is that what they call a Monster?”
He laughed. “No, Monsters are up on about sixty-six-inch tires. You won’t see any Monsters in a parking lot, just at fairs jumping over cars. What about the rack and pinion?”
“I don’t know anything about racks or pinions, Birdlegs.”
“Probably moved it,” he mused. “Tires that big, they’d have to. Bet they used a chassis and a lift kit both. Boy, that’s dangerous. Center of gravity that high and no good coil-over suspension system, that thing’d turn over if it hit a piece of gravel.”
“Tough titty if it turns over, Birdlegs. It’s the danger to me I’m worried about.”
“I haven’t heard anybody say tough titty in fifteen years, Dixie. Not since high school.”
“I haven’t matured much.”
“I like that in a person.”
“So do you know anybody who drives a rig like that?”
“Do I look like a redneck to you? Most of those guys are young, feeling their oats, makes them feel big to sit up high looking down on people. Then they get wives and babies and have to come down to earth. Take off the big tires and be like everybody else.”
“This one tried to kill me, Birdlegs. You’ll forgive me if I don’t get misty-eyed over his lost dreams.”
He laughed. “Sorry. I guess I was talking more about myself. Remembering what it was like to do things that dumb. Most of those old boys are okay, though. Just because they drive those dumb high-risers doesn’t make them killers. Tell you what. I’ll ask around, see if anybody I know has any idea who it might have been.”
“I’d appreciate it, Birdlegs.”
“What’re you going to do if you find him? I mean, if you don’t have any proof, you can’t arrest him, can you?”
“I couldn’t arrest him even if I had proof, Birdlegs. I’m not a deputy anymore.”
He reddened, suddenly remembering. “Oh, hell, Dixie, I forgot what happened. I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have mentioned it—”
“It’s okay. Tell me about that car over there.”
Relieved, he looked at the dreamy convertible I was pointing at. It had a glossy red body, black leather interior, lots of shiny chrome, and a sleek silver hood ornament.
“Ain’t that a beauty? That’s a Honda S-six hundred, 1964. Only a few hundred of them still around. Sweetest little car you ever saw. First car Honda mass-marketed. Fifty-seven horsepower engine and a top speed of ninety miles per hour.”
“You did all the work on it?”
“It was a rusted mess. Guy imported it from some place in South America. I’m gonna hate to see it go.”
“What does something like that sell for?”
“Restored like this, about twenty, twenty-five thousand.”
“Is that all? I’d think it would be a lot more.”
“Nah, they’re not in the big leagues, they’re just sweet little cars.”
“Who owns it?”
“Guy named Brossi. Leo Brossi. He collects vintage cars. Buys them and sells them.”
Carefully, I said, “Is he somebody I should have heard of?”
“Nah, he’s not anybody. Just rich. Owns a call center over on Fruitville.”
“Must be a successful call center.”
“Must be. I guess the no-call business hasn’t hurt those places much. They still call me anyway, and I’m on the no-call list. Who has time to report every one of them? They probably get away with it a lot.”
“Is Brossi going to pick the car up soon?”
“Yeah, it’s done.”
“Birdlegs, do you know a state senator named Wayne Black?”
“Sure, Dixie, I hang out with senators and governors and A-rab potentates all the time.”
“How about Quenton Dyer? He’s a banker.”
“Him neither.”
He was beginning to look toward the work he’d left, so I thanked him for his time and started to leave.
“Call me if you find out who might drive that raised truck, okay?”
“Sure thing, Dixie.”
I was tempted to tell him to call me when Leo Brossi came in to pick up his restored Honda S600. I was beginning to be very curious about Leo Brossi.
Mame wasn’t waiting by the door when I got to her house. I found her in the kitchen sitting in front of her food bowl. I knelt beside her and stroked her head.
“Hey, Mame, sorry I’m late. I had to go see somebody about a car.”