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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1985 by James Holding.
Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 1984.
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com
A TEMPORARY BIND
Didn’t somebody famous once say that all good things come to an end?
Whoever he was, he could have had me in mind. For more than two years I’d been living the good life on my cut of the Pelican Bank robbery—nice little apartment, big fancy car, girls, gambling, all the rest. But all at once my money ran out and my luck, too—as well as my credit, as far as Leo Guardini was concerned. Leo ran a small private gambling club and was holding ten thousand dollars’ worth of my markers—he was getting impatient with me, and Leo is a guy you don’t want feeling impatient with you for very long.
So now all I had left was my car.
* * * *
I maneuvered it through the brick archway at the end of the alley, drove a hundred yards forward, and turned into the entrance of a garage with the name MICHAELS lettered inconspicuously above it.
The garage had been a brewery warehouse before the national outfits put most of the local breweries out of business. Now it was an autorepair and body shop. There were half a dozen cars in the bays being worked on by mechanics, and beyond them I could see somebody spray-painting a newly straightened fender.
I switched off my motor. The nearest mechanic raised his eyes from his work, gave me a sharp glance, then came over to me with a socket wrench still in his hand. He spoke through my rolled-down window.
“What can we do for you?” he asked. His eyes were roving over the car like those of a drunk sizing up a stripper. “What a set of wheels!” he breathed with honest admiration. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I think it may need some work,” I said. “Are you the boss?”
He grinned. “No way. That’s his office over there.” He nodded toward a small partitioned-off cubicle at one side of the garage. “You want to see him?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He raised his voice. “Mr. Michaels! Guy wants to see you!”
I got out of the car and went to meet the tall, shambling, bald-headed man who emerged from the door of his tiny office. “Mr. Michaels?” I inquired when we were close enough.
“That’s me.” Michaels’ voice was warm and interested but his eyes were something else again. There was no color in them at all—they were as cold and colorless as ice water. “Something I can do for you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Harry Childs seemed to think so.” I watched his expression, but it didn’t change at the mention of Harry Childs’ name. He merely turned on his heel and said over his shoulder, “Come into the office and tell me about it.”
I followed him in. Motioning me to a dirty straight-backed chair beside his cluttered desk, he sank into a swivel chair that creaked protestingly as it took his weight. “You know Harry Childs?” he asked with an air of indifference.
“We graduated from the same college,” I said. “Down in Raiford.” I saw some of the tightness go out of his face at the mention of the state prison.
“Well,” he said, “any friend of Harry is a friend of mine. Mr.—?”
“Jenkins. Woody Jenkins.”
“Okay, Woody. What is it Harry thinks I can do for you?”
I answered bluntly, “Strip my car and put it out on the street.”
He stared. “That beautiful car out there? It lists around twenty-five grand, don’t it?”
“Twenty-four when I bought it two years ago.”
“Do you own it?”
“Lock, stock, and barrel.”
His colorless eyes examined my face. “So?”
“So I need money, Mr. Michaels. Cash. I’m in a temporary bind. So the car has to go.”
He gave me a half grin that didn’t show his teeth. “Oh,” he said, “like that, huh? No problem if we can strike a deal.”
“Good,” I said, feeling vastly relieved. “Let’s talk about that.”
He said slowly, “We strip your car down to the frame and put it on the street for the cops to find after you’ve reported your car was stolen, right?”
“Right.”
“And since it’s a total loss when found, you collect actual cash value from your insurance company, huh?”
“That’s it.”
“Is the car insured?”
“Covered like a tent. Comprehensive, fire, theft—the works.”
“Premiums all paid up?”
“Till the end of the year.”
He took down a book from a wall shelf and consulted it briefly. “Actual cash value ought to be about twenty, twenty-one thousand. That enough to cover the cash you need after my costs?”
“That depends on what you’d charge me,” I said.
“Ten thousand,” he said promptly.
“Ten thousand!”
Michaels said, “There’s a lot of labor involved, Woody. And remember, what you’re doing ain’t exactly legal.”
“But you get to keep the parts and sell them! They ought to be worth a small fortune off a car like mine!”
He shook his head. “They ain’t. I never had a call for parts like yours, Woody—probably never will. I’ve got to be sure of a little profit before I deal.”
I kept quiet.
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