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was gone.
    "Arnie," I said as I swung my car in to the curb, "take it easy. Don't go off half-cocked, for Christ's sake."
    He paid not a bit of attention. I doubt if he had even heard me. His face had gone pale. The blemishes covering it stood out in purplish, glaring relief. He had the passenger door of my Duster open and was lunging out of the car even before it had stopped moving.
    "Arnie—"
    "It's my father," he said in anger and dismay. "I smell that bastard all over this."
    And he was gone, running across the lawn to LeBay's door.
    I got out and hurried after him, thinking that this crazy shit was never going to end. I could hardly believe I had just heard Arnie Cunningham call Michael a bastard.
    Arnie was raising his fist to hammer on the door when it opened. There stood Roland D. LeBay himself. Today he was wearing a shirt over his back brace. He looked at Arnie's furious face with a benignly avaricious smile.
    "Hello, son," he said.
    "Where is she?" Arnie raged. "We had a deal! Dammit we had a deal! I've got a receipt!"
    "Simmer down," LeBay said. He saw me, standing on the bottom step with my hands shoved down in my pockets. "What's wrong with your friend, son?"
    "The car's gone," I said. "That's what's wrong with him."
    "Who bought it?" Arnie shouted. I'd never seen him so mad. If he had had a gun right then, I believe he would have put it to LeBay's temple. I was fascinated in spite of myself. It was as if a rabbit had suddenly turned carnivore. God help me, I even wondered fleetingly if he might not have a brain tumor.
    "Who bought it?" LeBay repeated mildly. "Why nobody has yet", son. But you got a lien on her. I backed her into the garage, that's all. I put on the spare and changed the oil." He preened and then offered us both an absurdly magnanimous smile.
    "You're a real sport," I said.
    Arnie stared at him uncertainly, then turned his head creakily to took at the closed door of the modest one-car garage that was attached to the house by a breezeway. The breezeway, like everything else around LeBay's place, had seen better days.
    "Besides, I didn't want to leave her out once you'd laid some money down on her," he said. "I've had some trouble with one or two of the folks on this street. One night some kid threw a rock at my car. Oh yeah, I got some neighbors straight out of the old AB."
    "What's that?" I asked.
    "The Asshole Brigade, son."
    He swept the far side of the street with a baleful sniper's glance, taking in the neat, gas-thrifty commuters cars now home from work, the children playing tag and jumprope, the people sitting out on their porches and having drinks in the first of the evening cool.
    "I'd like to know who it was threw that rock," he said softly. "Yessir, I'd surely like to know who it was."
    Arnie cleared his throat. "I'm sorry I gave you a hard time."
    "Don't worry," LeBay said briskly. "Like to see a fellow stand up for what's his… or what's almost his. You bring the money, kid?"
    "Yes, I have it."
    "Well, come on in the house. You and your friend both. I'll sign her over to you, and we'll have a glass of beer to celebrate."
    "No thanks," I said. "I'll stay out here, if that's okay."
    "Suit yourself, son," LeBay said… and winked. To this day I have no idea exactly what that wink was supposed to mean. They went in, and the door banged shut behind them. The fish had been netted and was about to be cleaned.
    Feeling depressed, I walked through the breezeway to the garage and tried the door. It ran up easily and exhaled the same odors I had smelled when I opened the Plymouth's door yesterday—oil, old upholstery, the accumulated heat of a long summer.
    Rakes and a few old garden implements were ranked along one wall. On the other was a very old hose, a bicycle pump, and an ancient golf-bag filled with rusty clubs. In the center, nose outward, sat Arnie's car, Christine, looking a mile long in this day and age when even Cadillacs look squeezed together and boxy. The spiderweb snarl of