American Hitsuzen
Michael Bettendorf
There’s a yellowed box fan sitting in the corner of the office next to a Ficus. Neither of them is looking too good. Giles has burned through half a pack of smokes since I got here and the poor fan can’t keep up. Then again, who could, with Giles going on and on and on about how much I’ve messed up. Dunno why he’s blaming me, I wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger. And he’s the one who gave us the photo.
“How could you mess this up?” Giles asks through a cough. “This isn’t a rhetorical question, neither. I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me how you’ve managed to step in a pile of shit this deep.”
I nibble at a piece of loose cuticle and think it over. And I am, honest-to-God. This isn’t one of those situations where I’m playing coy or acting wise. I’m honest-to-God thinking of an answer that will be suitable for Giles. I run a few sentences through my mind, but the cursor in my brain stops and flashes. My mind’s a blank page. Eye-strain-bright, white, and full of potential. All of my would-be answers, excuses, despite their truth, and therefore not suitable.
I come to the conclusion that there is no such answer and walk to the percolator, grab a Styrofoam cup, and pour myself some coffee.
“Well?” he asks.
“It’s a bit burnt, but it’s good on a cold day like today.”
Okay, so I poke at him some, but he needs it. The old man is stressed and no matter what the bank accounts look like, the one thing we definitely can’t afford is putting stress on ourselves. Not with our family history of poor tickers. Every spent cigarette is a gamble.
“Smart ass,” he says, and swats the cup out of my hand. It leaves a smear of transmission grease across the back of my hand. It’s mid-morning and he’s already put in a full day’s work. “You know what I meant.”
Coffee pools around my boots and if I’m being honest, it kind of miffs me, because I went to a lot of care not to get blood on them this morning.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say. “I do. But the thing is, I have an answer. You just won’t like it.”
His cigarette hangs loose from his lips. “Try me.”
“Just let me show you,” I say, and as pissed as he is, Giles listens because I like to think he trusts me. I am his nephew after all, and if you can’t trust family in this kind of business then you shouldn’t be in this kind of business.
We leave his office, which takes up a three-hundred square foot corner of the garage. It’s more of a hangar, really. Most days pneumatic wrenches, grinders, and saws scream on account of it being a chop-shop, but no one’s here today, except me and my brother. He’s leaning against the trunk of our beat-up Monte Carlo. The one Giles said he’d fix up for us. The one with the body in the trunk. The one that will no longer be ours after this.
I walk toward the car and try to appreciate the fleeting peace and quiet.
“Open it,” Giles says. “And enlighten me on the answer you say I won’t like.”
Bobby listens, which would have saved us all this mess if he’d done so earlier.
“He looked like the guy,” I say, figuring it didn’t require further explanation.
“What do you mean?” Giles asks.
I look at my brother and say, “Give it.” He pulls out a folded piece of printer paper, dirty and sweaty like a handkerchief. I unfold it to reveal the grainy, stretched-out and pixelated photo of our guy. Giles always said, No cellphone pictures. Never social media. They’re traceable. No texts about a job. Better yet, no texts about anything – pick up a phone. So, if you think about it, this is sort of on him. But I don’t tell him this.
“Look. This is what you gave us.” I hand Giles the paper. “And this is who we got,” I say, and point to the body in the trunk.
Giles flicks his cigarette butt to the slick cement floor.
“Looks nothing like him,” he says after a quick glance inside.
“Yeah right,” Bobby says. “Look at this hipster motherfucker. He’s got the glasses. Tight pants. Dressed like a lumberjack. Beard. He was outside the coffee shop, sipping a latte just like you said he’d be.”
I pat my pocket for my menthols, but Giles tells me he’ll cut my lips off if I smoke in his shop. He does this while he lights another cigarette. Always has been a bastard.
“The resemblance is uncanny,” I say.
“You need to get your eyes checked,” Giles says.
“They could be twins, man,” Bobby says.
“Don’t man me,” Giles says, jabbing a finger toward the body. “This ginger-nuts has red hair. Red beard. Freckles like Pippy Longstocking. He’s no more than, what, hundred and fifty pounds?”
He shoves the paper at me.
“Just because two losers dress the same doesn’t mean they’re the same person, now, does it?” Giles points at the crinkled paper. “His beard is red, but his hair is brown. He’s six-five, two-hundred pounds, and he fucking stole from me!”
I consider telling Giles that our guy had a bike. One of those decked-out hipster ones that probably cost him two Gs. Figured maybe he was trying to lose some weight. Some cyclist-fad. I decide not to mention it.
Giles rips the paper to confetti. “Clean it up,” he says. “Then go grab the right guy. Try not to kill him this time.”
“Clean up the paper or, you know, the body?” Bobby asks.
“Both,” Giles says, coughing through a clenched fist.
“I thought getting rid of the bodies was your job.” My brother has never been one for timing.
Giles bares tobacco-tan teeth. “I can get rid of three bodies just as easily as I can get rid of one.”
Outside, I hear an engine like a rumbling of snakes. A big block 427. It takes everything in me not to sneak a peek through the shop door windows. Giles tells us to leave through the rear bay door. He yells at whoever’s out there that we’re not open today, but stalks toward his office anyway. Guy can’t stay in business by being an asshole.
I’ve recently come into some money and see no reason not to treat myself. Usually, I grab a latte at this hip coffee joint on the other side of town on my way to work, but not today. I quit my job on the spot last week after hearing of my dad’s passing. We weren’t close, but can’t an only son mourn his father by spending a little of his old man’s cash? I’d feel bad, but the Percocet has left my brain all cozy. I’ve got one errand to run and then I’m leaving town, maybe for good.
Didn’t know what George Senior did beyond work in finance and treat my mom like shit before I came around. Then he left altogether. Apparently, I ended up on the life insurance policy anyhow. Maybe he figured he owed me, since all else I got was his name.
The money’s not even the coolest part.
My old man left a key in a safety deposit box. Had one of those old school paper key tags attached to it with old string. The tag said, “To G”, so the executor didn’t think it too much of a stretch to leave it to me. The will didn’t say anything about the key, but the rest of the box’s contents were relics from my parent’s marriage. A wedding ring. A few old photos. Marriage certificate, divorce certificate, and the likes. Also a business card to John’s and Sons Storage. Unit A-15 was written in blue ink on the back of the card.
Unit A-15 was a garage unit. Apparently, my old man had paid enough in advance to keep the unit indefinitely. The only thing in there was a car, covered by a heavy-duty tarp. I called one of my gear-head friends over to give it a look.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked me.
“Yeah, a babe magnet,” I said.
“It’s a ’67 GT500,” he said. And he rattled off facts.
Wimbledon white with Le Mans blue stripes. Some number of horsepower that meant nothing to me. He lost it when he opened the hood and saw two signatures on the engine block. Some chick named Carroll and her husband Don McCain. Or Dan. I don’t remember.
But old cars are such a pain, especially if you didn’t know how to work on them. Which is why I’m heading to get this thing looked over before I leave town. My friend said to take it to some shop run by some geezer. Says he’s a bit of an asshole, but he does good work.
Think I might have them rip out the dash and put in a Bluetooth system. Fill the trunk with subwoofers you can hear from downtown.
Might even repaint it. I’m not sure.
Things are starting to look up for me.
I just moved to the city a couple of months ago in an effort to better myself. Left a bad relationship. Finished school online. Was offered a decent job where I feel respected and valued. Bought a bike and started riding again. I can fit into my favorite flannel shirt, just in time for the first freeze of autumn.
My boss told me to take the day off because I’d been working late all week. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it, because I do, but throwing myself into my work is how I keep the old me at bay. I came here to better myself. When I have too much free time, I have a hard time finding that better me. Old demons like to visit late at night, set loose on the web.
It’s hard though, when you know what I know. What you can learn about a person – any person. Everyone leaves a digital footprint. They always told us to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes to understand them, and so I do.
I follow their digital footprints. See what they like. What they don’t. What they purchase. What they don’t. What kind of porn they’re into.
It’s a sickness, I know – but I can’t help it. It’s a compulsion and I’ve been getting help. Found a new therapist the minute I rolled into town. I also find it hard to take advice from someone who’s into what my therapist is into – what they’ve done.
Look, if I could forget how to do this, I would, in a heartbeat. But the world relies on internet access now. The temptation is all around me. Everything has a keyboard – and I can’t keep my fingers from typing.
It may be my day off, but I’m working.
Coffee shops are one of the places people are most vulnerable. Most coffee shops have terrible Wi-fi and next to zero firewalls or security. And yet people sit and sip lattes and pay bills and shop online and log into any number of places on their phones. Laptops. You name it.
So I order a latte and sit outside. The cool autumn morning nips at my ears, but I don’t mind. It’s all in a day’s work. I just have to sit here and wait for someone dumb enough to sign in to show up – like these two guys in the overalls, Little and Large.
It’s all about being at the right place at the right time.
We leave through the rear bay doors while our uncle keeps on griping about being closed. Vestiges of his verbal tirade echo off the floor and walls all the way back from his office. That throaty motor outside is growling low, but the driver is now calling loud for attention. The mood Giles is in, he won’t like it if he gets it. From the strength of that engine, I figure it’s the cops. Some new guy poking around. One who Giles hasn’t paid off to look the other way.
Freddie rounds the corner of the shop first and stops dead. “Holy shit, would you look at that.”
I peek around the corner and catch a glimpse of a perfect ride idling, wisps of exhaust pouring from the twin pipes. The subtlest of ghosts. But it’s not the super snake that I focus on. It’s the six-foot-five, two-hundred-pound, ginger-bearded motherfucker banging on the shop door who’s caught my eye.
“Back inside.” I pull Freddie back out of sight. “That’s our guy,” I hiss.
“Whoa. No shit.” He takes another look. “Well hell, I believe he is.”
I fucked it up last time and I can’t let a second shot slip through my fingers. “Alright, let’s go take him.”
Freddie places a hand on my chest. “Not here, dingus, we’re on home turf. Besides, he’s come to us. If he really stole from Giles, there’s no way he’d be here. Let’s go see what he wants. Something’s missing here.”
We enter back through the bay door, but leave it open just in case. The shop has gone quiet, save for the impatient asshole’s pounding on the front door. “Get Giles,” Freddie says, “or he’ll just bust our balls for keeping him waiting. I’ll let the kid inside.”
Pisses me off that he’s giving orders, but I go. My brother’s always been better with the customers. A natural conversationalist. He tends to take point on all our jobs, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing. I know he thinks I’m impulsive, but I’d call it something else – decisive. It was his indecisiveness that led me to pulling the trigger earlier. Yeah, I made a bad call, but also it was based on Giles’ intel. Shit happens, though, and I can fix this.
I open the door to Giles’ office to find him on the floor. One hand grips at his chest, painting his overalls with a black flower of oil and grease. A cigarette burns weakly in the other.
“Call… ’n ’mbul’nce… shithead,” he croaks. Never any fucking let up. But there’s a panic in his eyes I’ve seen before. A realization. Last face I saw wearing it is waiting in the trunk back there. Time’s finally up for our uncle, I reckon.
What a loss.
“Giles,” I say, and hunker down with him, “that thing the other ginger-nuts stole from you, was it a white cherry Mustang by any chance?”
“My car…” A glint of the old fury sparks behind the panic. “Get… fucking car…”
“You got it, boss,” I say, and slap him on the shoulder. “We’ll get that car, and then I’ll get right on that ambulance, too.”
He makes a choking noise and flails his spare hand at me, dropping the cigarette on the old stained carpet between us. I pick it up quick and grind it into the loaded ashtray on the corner of his desk. “You should quit these. Burn the whole place down, you’re not careful.”
I close the door behind me as if on a sleeping baby. From the shop, I hear my brother shmoozing the kid, telling him our uncle will be glad to do business with him. How little he knows, I think, and grin as I walk through to greet our new customer. Our first customer as owners of the place.
“Good looking car out there,” I say. “How can we help?”
My brother gives me a look, question marks in his eyes. I ignore him and offer a hand to the kid. It’s a weak shake. Soft hands. The kind of hands that don’t know how to change the oil, let alone maintain something as special as what he’s got.
Freddie takes ignorance in his stride. “Well, George says he wants to rip out the dash and put a whole new stereo system in there. Big subs. Maybe even update that paint job with a sick wrap.” He disguises his disgust well enough even I can barely detect it.
My first thought is to kill the kid, but that’d be impulsive, not decisive. And I’m actually glad Giles didn’t hear that said, it’d be the death of him.
“Big plans,” I say. The kid looks smug. Smug about casually defacing a thing of pure beauty. Pure beauty maybe worth as much as everything on wheels for a block around combined.
Which means he doesn’t know shit. So I add, “Kind of like teaching an old dog new tricks, though, isn’t it?”
Now he looks uncertain. “What?”
I pull a face. “Something that old? New lines are never going to lie well on that. You need a ride on the cutting edge.” I give Freddie a big plain honest look in the face. “Something new, right?”
I see the light go on. “My brother is absolutely bang on. George, let me show you something.” He guides the kid toward the back of the shop where we stash our recent inventory. Like the whole row of Japanese imports that came our way from a recent street racing bust.
“Why mess with that ’stang when one of these already has what you want?” He places a friendly hand on the kid’s shoulder. “For instance, that Mitsubishi Evo is all carbon fiber. Got an inline four-cylinder turbo. And an underbody LED kit.”
The kid whistles, ogling a Nissan Skyline. “What about this one?”
“That’s a 1996 GT-R R33. Inline-Six turbo. Nineteen-inch alloy wheels… high flow fuel injector, bucket seats with five-point harnesses… it’s quite the car.”
The way the kid is drooling over that Nissan I might need to get a mop. “Does it have the LEDs too?” he asks.
“Tell you what, George,” says Freddie, “you put the keys to that old Shelby in my hand, we’ll fit you up with our best set of lights, free of charge, and you can drive away in this beauty before the day is done. Even trade, what do you say?”
“You got yourself a fucking deal!” is what George says.
Freddie grins at me over George’s shoulder as the kid pumps his hand to seal it.
I give him two thumbs back, but really I’m thinking about all the clean up that’s left to do. Still got the poor sap in the Monte Carlo to drop off, and there’s no way we’ll fit Giles in the trunk there with him.
I look out at our new Mustang. And then I smile.
Maybe we can treat Giles to one last spin in his long lost wheels. Just for old time’s sake.
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