Yaris

A dark night in a city that knows how keep its secrets...but up on the second floor of the Clover Park building one man is trying to find the answer to life's persistent questions.

It was a cold Sunday evening, and I was down in a basement working on an old case with my brother over a couple of stale beers. Something about some missing robots and a broad looking for an old guy who was her "only hope." I'd been in the same uncomfortable shoes and smelly suit all weekend long, and I got a phone call from my brother-in-law, Timmy thumbs.

"Hello?"

"Yeah, hey, sorry about your car, but I won't be fixin' it."

Well didn't that just figure. My old jalopy had finally quit on me, like an old broad giving up on a bad marriage. Without Timmy's mechanical expertise there'd be no chance of squeezing a few more hundred miles out of her. She'd been a good old car, but like so many ladies in my life she was finally moving on and leaving for good.

I didn't even call ahead to the airport, I just showed up amid shuffling along the dirty asphalt and looking in the windows of the car rental places. There was one open, and I hired it for two days. It was a sweet little thing, way out of a normal private eye's pocketbook. I climbed inside more weary than I could ever remember and went off driving two hours to a little joint in a town called Hamilton. You see, sometimes in the evenings I play the trumpet with some other cats in town. It's the only work I could find that's more dangerous and less profitable than being a private eye, so it seemed like a good fit.

When I was out there I made some calls to some buddies and got ahold of some fellow selling a Yaris. My brother owned a Yaris, and there was a lot to like about them. Dependable. Small. Easy to miss. I set up a time to meet the fellow on Tuesday and played my gig.

After far too few hours sleep I rolled out of bed again and was back on a case at a local school. I'd been hired to do a job there, canvassing the place for any signs of musical talent. I'd been at it for years, it sometimes felt like, and still hadn't found a thing. I drove the rental car around and even showed it to my kid. He's a swell little boy. He thought the sunroof was great, and he made me open it and close it again about a hundred times. I went back out to Hamilton again that night, and got back so late it was almost Tuesday morning again.

When I got up on Tuesday it was a dark and rainy sort of morning. I pulled on a jacket and drove up to the north part of town, looking for a used car dealer. I didn't have anything in particular in mind, but I thought it might be a good idea to have a second option before I might with that fellow who was selling the Yaris. As a matter of fact, there was a Yaris at the dealership too. I met with some dame named Tina. She was Italian, and kinda pushy.When she asked for my name I told her it was "Mr. Smith." She asked me what I was looking to pay for the Yaris.

"Well, I said, I wanna spend about 7 gs."

She laughed at me and made some big show of asking her manager what he could do for me. They gave me a number and tried to twist my arm into staying and buying their car, but I've wriggled out of too many tight situations. I was on the road again as the rain battered my rental's windshield, but not to go meet the fellow with the other Yaris yet.

I met my wife at a doctor's office on the south part of town. She pulled up in a black sedan, and stepped out into the drizzle. She was a wearing a gray cocktail hoodie, and if it had been form fitting you could've seen that she really big breasts, 'cause she was knocked up. She had our other kid in tow behind her, and he was doing some investigating of his own to see if he could pinch her iPad.

We walked into the fluorescent lighting and ancient carpet of the doctor's office, and some dame gave her an ultrasound while the new baby did its best informant protection and stayed hid. She had to get some blood drawn, and I left her with the boy. I'd seen too much blood already in my days...

I drove back to my place and dug around in the old metal filing cabinets in the basement to find some crucial documents--titles and registrations and the like. Then I drove back up to the north part of town and met with the fellow who was selling his Yaris privately.

The car was a dump. It had been keyed, the brakes were shot, the engine light was on, and the whole inside was covered with a layer of grime. I drove it around the block just to be polite, and the fellow poured out his life story--getting arrested, losing his job, kids from different women, doing drugs (inside the car, judging by the smell) and pretty much guaranteeing that I would not be buying a vehicle from him. I felt like his therapist.

I called back Rita from the used car place, and told her we'd be buying her Yaris. I drove back to the south part of the city, we loaded up the kid and drove up to the north part of the city. If we hustled, we could still drop the rental off before we got charged an extra day.

No luck. There was a hold-up on the paperwork, and they told us we'd have to come back the next day. I shuffled back home again, dropped off my wife and my kid, and then made the journey out to Hamilton. It's tough, life on the road. Nothing but you and your thoughts, and when you're a private eye or an orchestral trumpet player you've seen some scary things in your time. Too many cheating husbands or pompous conductors. It almost makes you lose faith in humanity. But then, just when you're about ready to give up on decent people, you hear some really great music.

Nah, it was a Haydn oratorio. So mostly I pinched myself to stay awake and tried to convince myself that I might have a car again by the next night.

It was cold and rainy again. I poked around the school again in the morning, peering down clarinet barrels and trying to make sense of broken reeds and jammed valves. There are some mysteries that not even the most experienced detective can make sense of. How a fourth grader breaks there instrument twice in one week is one of those mysteries.

In the afternoon we finally dropped off the rental car, and then got ready to liquidate the rest of our earthly goods on a new used car.

Ah, a Yaris. Some call it the Rolls-Royce of the economy import subcompact class. She looked beautiful, even in the the foul weather, all polished up and waiting to be driven. We signed a folder full of papers, got the usual blank stare-turning-into-laughter when I tried to explain how I made a normal income, just in four different pieces, and then signed our names one last time and wrote a check. And then we climbed into our new Yaris and got ready to fight the rush hour traffic on the way back home.

A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets...but up on the second floor of the Clover Park building one man is trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions...