20
THE GARAGES WERE just something to do—one thing he knew he could wrap up by midmorning, be back up to Rochester before noon to check on her and see if he could take her home. It was something to do other than sitting around going crazy.
Like driving down here with your sheriff’s jacket isn’t crazy. Questioning that poor girl at the station.
“I know what I’m doing.”
I know you know what you’re doing. That’s what scares me.
“Hey, I’m her father—all right?” he said, but she said no more.
At the third and last garage, three miles from the second, he pulled in and parked and walked slowly past the three bay doors, one of them just raising and four or five men at work in there, a face here, a face there, but mostly their backs, their blue mechanic’s shirts. Lug-nut removers shrilling. A radio tuned to country. In the office a redheaded woman sat tapping at her keyboard, squinting at her screen. Thirtyish. On the wall behind her a round clockface set in a small-scale Goodyear tire said ten minutes to ten.
“Hi there how can I help you,” said the woman, and Sutter waited for her to look up.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m here to see the young fella who worked on my car.”
“All right, what’s his name?”
“Well, that’s a good question.” Sutter scratched his head. “I wanna say… Bud?”
“Bud?” She frowned. “There’s no Bud here. How long ago was this?”
“Coupla weeks back.”
“No Bud then, either. There’s never been a Bud worked here since I’ve been here.”
“How long is that?”
“Sir?”
“How long have you worked here.”
“Too long. You sure it was here you had the work done?”
Sutter glanced again at the tire clock. “Well, I’ll just talk to someone else then.”
“All right, who do you want to talk to?”
“A mechanic.”
“Any mechanic?”
“Your best one.”
“Best one? I couldn’t say, sir. It depends on the problem.”
Sutter placed his fingertips lightly on the countertop. He nodded toward the glass door that led to the garage. “How about I just go on in there and talk to one?”
“I’m sorry, sir, customers aren’t allowed, for safety reasons.”
Sutter smiled. “All right.” He lifted his fingertips from the counter. How about just fuck it then, how about that?
Then aloud he said: “How about that young one then, what’s his name.”
“Which young one?”
“I forget his name. The tough one.”
She made the face of guesswork: “Ryan…?”
“That’s him,” Sutter said. “I’ll talk to him.”
She smiled thinly and said, “He might be on break, but I’ll try,” and she picked up her handset and pushed a button and said into the receiver, “Ryan to the front desk, please, Ryan to the front desk,” and through the glass door at the same instant came the same request in electronic echo.
She hung up and regarded him. “There’s coffee there, and chairs.”
“Thanks,” Sutter said and stood where he was. He looked at the tire clock again and checked it against his watch. The woman resumed tapping on her keyboard. Just go back out and walk in there and look each of them in the face and walk out and get in your car, what are they gonna do, call the cops? He’d already turned toward the glass door he’d come in through when the other door opened and a young man walked in wiping his hands in a rag and looking around. No one to see but the woman behind the counter and Sutter, and Sutter’s heart slapping once on his breastbone when he saw the lines on the young man’s face—four neat scab lines running from cheekbone to jaw, like he’d been swiped by a large housecat. The markings gave him a strange, primitive look, like some Indian brave in the making, dressed weirdly in blue shirt and blue Dickies and grease-darkened workboots, and Sutter’s first impulse was to grab the young man by the throat.
“Help you?” the young man said, stepping toward Sutter. ryan stitched in red in the white oval on his shirt.
“Hey, Ryan.”
“Hey,” said the young man, taking a closer look.
“Tom Wilson.”
“Sure. Hey, Tom.” Brown eyes half-hooded and underslung with blue shadows. Brown hair too, buzzed on the sides and thick on top, tossed and peaked. Sutter gave the young man’s right hand a shake and let go. He described his problem and the young man was happy to follow him out to have a look and a listen. Sutter pulling the hood release and turning over the engine, then stepping out and standing beside the young man, who was aiming his ear toward the whirring pulleys, the snaky blur of the belt.
“I don’t hear it,” he said, and Sutter said, “That figures. Doing it all week long and now it stops.”
“Probably the tensioner rod. They do that on these old Fords. Sounds like somebody dumped a jar of bait crickets under your hood.”
“Yep,” Sutter said. “What do you drive?”
The mechanic’s eyes swung up from the engine. He looked at Sutter, then gave a slight toss of his chin toward a half dozen parked cars and trucks. “That Chevy there.”
“The two-tone?”
“Yep.”
“’Eighty-seven?” said Sutter.
“’Eighty-five.”
“They don’t make ’em like that anymore, do they.”
“No, sir.”
They stood listening to Sutter’s motor.
“Well,” said Sutter. “Looks like I wasted your time, Ryan.”
The young man looked at him again. Trying to place him. He put fingertips lightly to the scab lines on his face, one to each line, as if to make a chord on them. Then he said, “Hell,” and swung down the hood. “It’s the boss’s time, not mine.”
“I hear that.”
They stood there, Sutter holding the young man in place with his eyes.
“That’s some scratch.”
“What?” He raised his hand again but stopped short of touching his face. “That ain’t nothin.”
“Cat?”
“What?”
“Looks like a cat scratch.”
The young man looked at him and looked away. “It ain’t nothin.” And turned to go.
“Well,” said Sutter, his heart thudding. “Thanks anyway.”
“No problem.”
“Say hey to Bud for me.”
The young man paused.
“Bud?”
“Bud. He said go see Ryan at Anderson Auto.”
The young man nodded, sucked at something in his teeth, and when he said nothing more, asked no more questions—How do you know old Bud?—Sutter knew he’d made a mistake, although he wasn’t sure where, which was the worst kind. He saw the young man glance at his Minnesota plate before he moved on. But then after a few steps he turned back to toss Sutter a kind of two-fingered salute and an empty smile. “If those crickets come back,” he said, “you bring her on back and we’ll get her fixed up.”
21
THE WOMAN PUT him on hold and in those minutes Sutter ordered a coffee from the waitress and received it, stirred milk into it, and drank half of it down. From the booth window he could just see the garage a half block away, the two-tone Chevy in the lot.
At last the doctor came on the line to tell him that Audrey was doing much better today, stronger, her temperature considerably down, and he was taking her off the drugs.