Dink was dizzy sitting in the cloud of smoke. It was still dark out when they got there, watching the overcast sky lighten as the sun came up, looking at the dark shapes of trees that had lost most of their leaves.
Squirrel said, “What do you know about this Nazi Zeller was tryin’ to locate?”
“That’s about it,” Dink said. “Man was a Nazi.”
“What’d Zeller want him for?”
“Didn’t say.”
“How’s this fella Levin know where the Nazi’s at?”
“No idea. But what if we find the Nazi first?”
“And then what?”
“Sell him. Somebody’ll pay good money for a genuine Nazi.”
“I thought you admired them.”
“I do but this is commerce.”
Dink saw Levin roll down the driveway and followed him along Woodward Avenue to the freeway and through Hamtramck where the Polacks lived to a scrap yard, mountain of metal rising up behind a low-slung cinderblock building on one side of the yard and a big two-storey warehouse on the other side. They had to get in there for a closer look and Dink had just the way to do it.
They drove back to Dink’s rented house in Pontiac. The landlord had left an old icebox in the garage. It was white with gold fixtures and weighed enough to give you a hernia. Squirrel backed the El Camino up to the garage, lowered the tailgate, laid a tarp over the truck bed and they picked up that goddamn reefer and slid it in without too much room to spare.
“Think this is a good idea?” Squirrel said. “Man knows you.” Dink pulled the brim of the Cat Diesel cap low over his eyes. “But he’s got to see me and then recognize me.”
“What do you think this is, some great disguise?”
“I call it the element of surprise. He’s not gonna be expectin’ me. You understand?”
Squirrel, breathing through his mouth, looked at him with vacant eyes.
There were two trucks ahead of them in line for the scale, colored guys sellin’, by the look of it, steel and copper pipes they’d yanked out of abandoned houses. When it was their turn, the man working the scale, whose blue work shirt had a white name patch that said Archie on it, told them to put the refrigerator on the scale.
“Will you look at that,” Archie the scale man said. “What year is it?”
He had long brown hair parted down the middle and held in place by a headband.
“1926 Gibson,” Dink said.
“Where in the world you get that?”
“Garage,” Dink said.
Squirrel said, “What can you give us for it?”
“I can go twenty-eight dollars, but you can probably get more at an antique store. It was made out of copper, I’d go eighty-four.”
Dink said, “How ’bout it was made out of gold? What would you give us for it then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, he don’t know,” Dink said to Squirrel.
The scale man folded his arms across his chest in a gesture that said he wasn’t going to take any shit. “You want to sell it or not?”
“Well we’re not takin’ it back home, I’ll tell you that.”
“I need your name and address.”
“Why do you want to know that for?”
“We’re payin’ cash for scrap, IRS wants to know who we’re paying.”
“Aubrey Ponder,” Dink said. “Sleepy Hollow trailer park in Pontiac.”
Squirrel gave him the evil eye. Dink looked at him and grinned.
The scale man wrote everything on a small piece of notepaper and handed it to Dink. Squirrel moved the El Camino, parked next to the office. They went in the cinderblock lobby that reminded Dink of his cell at the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville where he done eight years for robbin’ a convenience store, first and only conviction.
There was a tinted double window on the inner wall that slid back and forth. It was open a couple inches and Dink could see a desk, file cabinets and a not bad-lookin’ girl with blonde cotton-candy hair, phone up to her ear. He tapped lightly on the glass with a knuckle. She slid the window open, held her hand over the part of the phone where you talk.
“Can I help you?”
“We’s here for our money.” Dink handed the piece of paper to her.
The blonde brought the phone back up to her face and said, “Mother, I’m going to have to call you back.”
She hung it up and opened a metal lock box on the desk. Dink could see it was full of money. She grabbed a few bills, turned and handed him two tens, a five and three ones.
“Here you go,” she said. “Don’t spend it all in one place.” Dink grinned. “Well, I’ll try not to.”
They walked out of the office, got in the El Camino. Squirrel said, “What’re you doin’ hittin’ on that smelly, you’re suppose to be playin’ it incognito?”
“You’re givin’ her too much credit. There’s nothin’ about me she’s gonna be able to tell anyone.”
Squirrel spun the El Camino around in the yard. Dink watched a crane with a grapple hook drop a load of scrap in a high-sided semi-trailer, shocks compressing, the trailer shaking.
“What you should’ve noticed back there was the cash box full of money.”
“Believe me, I seen it,” Squirrel said. “How much’s in it, you suppose?”
“Enough to bother.”
Squirrel gunned it past the scale man talking to a guy with a stake truck full of rusted farm machinery on the bed.
They stopped at a bar in Hamtramck, had a few cold ones and grilled kielbasa on hotdog buns with mustard and dill chips, and came up with a plan. Well, Dink came up with the plan while Squirrel guzzled four PBRs and inhaled the kielbasa.
After lunch they bought a couple six packs and drove to the trailer park where Squirrel lived. Squirrel had a chain cutter they’d use to cut the chainlink fence. Squirrel also wanted his .45. They sat around the trailer all afternoon and evening watching porno films from Squirrel’s collection, starting with Shoot the Goooo, then Masterbation Frenzy and Dink’s personal favorite, Twat’s Up Doc?
They drove back to the scrap yard, arriving at 2:58 in the a.m., Hamtramck bars had been closed for an hour and the streets were deserted. Squirrel parked on a side street across Mount Elliott from the entrance, killed the lights. There was a car parked in the middle of the yard, looked like a bone stock two-door ’62 Chevy Biscayne. Somebody in it, smoking cigarettes, keeping the engine running, probably listening to the radio. Dink saw the night watchman step out of the Chevy, wander over to the warehouse and take a leak, and that’s when they made their move.
Seventeen
Hess glanced at himself in the rearview mirror, blue-and-red Cleveland Indians cap pulled low, brim hiding most of his face. He had a good feeling that today was going to be the day. He eased the big Chrysler out of Max’s garage, pressed the button on the remote and watched the door go down. He drove through the neighborhood, went left on Atlantic Boulevard and got stuck in traffic, waiting for the drawbridge to go down.
When it did he drove to Oceanside Shopping Center. The parking lot was crowded and he took a few minutes to find a space, parked and went straight to the post office. Hess opened the box and saw a note saying he had received a package. The box could accommodate letters and small parcels, but larger items had to be picked up at the counter.
He showed a clerk the note and Max Hoffman’s driving license. The clerk went into another room, found the package, asked Hess to sign his name and handed him a square padded parcel. He carried it under his arm to the car and started back to Max’s house.