Nick had considered himself a lucky guy, until now. Until his brand-new Mazda was rear-ended by the mayor's wife who was talking on a cell phone. Until the police found a complete human skeleton in his trunk.
Fifteen years with a spotless driving record, not so much as a parking ticket, but of course this was all his fault, or at least that's what the police officer was trying to tell him, since of course the Mayor's wife was perfectly innocent. Did anyone really expect him to focus while his wrists were handcuffed behind him through the rails of a chair? The officer could have been speaking in Klingon, for all Nick knew.
Wait--what was the officer saying now? Oh. At least they were past the accident now and on to the skeleton. That was progress.
"So, punk," Officer Ayers was saying. Was he the good cop or the bad cop? Nick tried to remember which one had read him his rights. Or had they? Oh boy. He really could use a shot of Jack Daniels right now, with a Budweiser chaser.
Officer Ayers got right in Nick's face. OK, he must be the bad cop. "You say you have absolutely no idea how a decaying skeleton found its way into the trunk of your car. Surely you must have smelled something or heard it rolling around?"
Eww. Decaying? Well, there had been that funny odor, but he thought it was dog doo on his shoes from the neighbor's Rottweiler they never chained up.
Nick replied in what he hoped was a confident tone, although when the words came out, he probably sounded more like an teenage boy in the middle of puberty, "Wasn't I supposed to have a lawyer?" Yup, his voice just scaled an octave and cracked in the middle of "lawyer."
Good cop had stood over in the corner being mostly silent, but finally he proved he could actually talk. "We should put him a holding cell with our other guest and let him cool off for awhile, after he makes his phone call."
Bad cop just grunted, but he did grudgingly let Nick call his cousin Eddie. Eddie mostly handled divorce cases, but he was only the only attorney Nick knew. Funny how you never thought about how many lawyers were in your circle of acquaintances until you found yourself in a police station accused of . . . well, whatever it was he was being accused of. Transporting the dead? Having defective olfactory glands?
They put him in a cell with a man who looked a lot like Hulk Hogan, except maybe hulkier. And definitely hairier. Hulk-clone introduced himself as Bobby, which was funny because he definitely didn't look like a Bobby, although Nick still had enough wits about him not to say that out loud.
Bobby was very friendly. "Whacha in for?" he asked.
"Hitting the mayor's wife and having a skeleton in my car."
Bobby blinked his large owl eyes slowly. Nick waited for a laugh, a punch on the arm, a derisive snort, some sign Bobby didn't believe him, but Bobby simply said, "Neat."
"How about you?" Nick asked politely. It was always wise to get on the good side of your cellmates. Or so Nick guessed, this being his first time.
Bobby stretched his arms out wide, then grasped his hands in front of him, cracking the knuckles on his large calloused paws, one by one. Nick had always admired men who could do that. One of those tricks to show off at office parties or Happy Hour, like belching your name on pitch.
Bobby replied, "This time? Bashing some guy's face in. I didn't like the way he kept saying Brett Favre's name. Like it was Fah-vray. I mean, it's French, right, so if anything it should be pronounced Fah-vruh." Bobby said it was a slight flip of the "R." His French accent was pretty good.
"And last time?" Nick asked.
Bobby thought about it for a moment. "Time before that, it was shoplifting women's underwear. So I guess the most recent time, it must have been larceny."
Wow. Maybe Nick should get the name of Bobby's lawyer, because he obviously was good at getting the man out of tough scrapes. Nick couldn't help himself, since he was bored, well, maybe more scared than bored, but trying like mad not to think about it, so he asked, "Larceny?"
Bobby nodded. "A type thereof. Grave robbing."
Huh. Nick hadn't seen that coming. He sighed and leaned back against the wall. Was it just three hours ago he was sitting down for a nice breakfast of fresh coffee and one of those microwave dealies with the pancakes and sausage on a stick while watching WKRT's ditzy but very attractive morning anchor laugh her way through some story about a fatal flood somewhere in the middle part of the U.S., one of those square states?
Nick had obviously taken his luck for granted. He had a nice job where he was on track for a manager position at Sticky Widgets Manufacturing, which always earned him a few laughs, but hey, it paid well. Nice girlfriend who didn't mind tagging along to hockey games and cooked a mean beer omelet. Nice brick Colonial that he'd bought as a fixer-upper and was worth twice what he'd paid for it. And now, it was all just a house of cards crumbling in front of his very eyes.
Bobby tilted his head, staring at him. "You all right?" he asked. "You look a little green, and you haven't even sampled the jail's mystery meat yet."
Nick clutched his stomach, suddenly thinking about the decaying . . . thing they'd found in his car. He ran over to the sink--if you could call it that--in the corner, and retched until he got the dry heaves. Bye-bye pancakes on a stick.
Bobby came over and patted him on the back. "You want I should call the warden, maybe?"
Nick rinsed out his mouth with some of the rusty-tasting water from the sink, and managed to croak out, "No, that won't be necessary. I'll manage."
He sat back down on the bench, and Bobby scooted closer, putting an arm around his shoulders. "First time, huh?"
Nick coughed at that and hoped Bobby was just being neighborly. Bobby continued, "I remember my first time. Got caught shooting out the windows of a local gun store. Thought it was poetic irony. Like Byron's Don Juan, you know?"
Don who? He cast his thoughts back to all those English classes he'd slept through, only getting an "A" because Lucille McFarland had a crush on him, but drew a blank. All he could think of was that Hawaiian singing guy, Don Ho.
Bobby squeezed his shoulder in what Nick chose to interpret as a fatherly way, given their age differences. Nick didn't want to imagine what might be in store for him in a real prison, with all those murderers and their ilk. Fortunately, he was saved from further fatherly affection from Bobby when cousin Eddie showed up on the other side of the bars.
"Good news, Nick," Eddie growled. He always growled, even when he was happy or saying "I love you" to his wife, partly because he thought it made people take him more seriously, but mostly because of the throat cancer surgery he'd had years before. Yet he still smoked the occasional Tiparillo.
"Good news?" Nick parroted back.
"Yup, you're free to go, kid. Of course, there's still the matter of that accident, but I'm sure the insurance companies can straighten all that out."
Nick didn't realize he was holding his breath until he got on the same side of the bars as Eddie, and then he exhaled all at once, causing another coughing fit. Bobby looked over at Eddie, "He's got a rather delicate constitution, doesn't he? You might want to have that checked out."
Eddie looked askance at Nick before herding him out toward the lobby like a good little sheep. Nick gave once last look back at Bobby, who winked and waved. He really was a friendly fellow.
Blinking at the sudden brightness of the outside world and freedom, Nick asked, "Not that I'm ungrateful, but what took you so long? I thought I was looking at Sing Sing."
"Sing Sing is in New York, Nick."
"Whatever. So tell me--what the hell is going on here? And what did you do, wave a magic wand around?"
"Nope. I called the car dealer first, and that solved the problem."
"What?" Nick was now thoroughly confused. "My check didn't bounce, honest."
Eddie rolled his eyes. "Two hours in a jail cell and your IQ is reduced fifty points. You didn't do anything. Not. A. Thing. It was the dealer's fault. They delivered the wrong car."
"The wrong car? You mean I got an undertaker's car or something? Or like that medical examiner on TV. What was his name, Quincy?"
"No and no. You and this other guy bought identical cars about the same time, only the other guy was a crook with a long rap sheet. I guess car companies are so desperate these days, they don't do background checks Anyway, the guy had slipped the skeleton into the trunk during his test drive, knowing all along he was going to buy the car. Apparently, he thought it would be safe overnight while the dealer added custom chrome-plated wheels. But there was a mix-up and they delivered his car to you and vice versa. Same make, model, color, everything."
Through the fog that seemed to have lodged in his brain, Nick fast-forwarded through the dealer and chrome-wheel parts and latched on to the one word that had filtered through. "A crook?"
"Yup, turns out he's been arrested before for grave robbing. Sells the body parts to medical schools."
Nick gulped. "His name wouldn't be Robert something, would it?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I'll check if you want."
Nick shook his head. "I don't think I want to know."
There would be plenty of time later to dwell on kismet and coincidences and that forks-in-the-road stuff. For now, all he wanted to do was go home and lie down with an ice pack. After throwing out the rest of the pancakes-on-a-stick. In fact, he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to think about pancakes the same way again. He also wondered if he could get a good price for a slightly-used Mazda on e-Bay.
