I wanted to take a long drive through the streets of Los Angeles. It was a driving town, which was one of the few things I liked about it. For public transit, you went to New York, or Paris, or London, or—well, just about anywhere in Japan or Europe, but if you wanted to drive, you came to Los Angeles. I loved to drive.
Lily was sick, though, and she needed some TLC before I could take her around the city. The only mechanic in Los Angeles I trusted with Lily was Phil, the only other non-toxic relationship in my life after my beloved car. God, what a sad thought.
I tried to convince Phil to move after he had been kidnapped and all, but he assured me that his capture was a statistically insignificant outlier data point and only came about because a.) he was defenseless after the attack on his house by Balaam and Moloch and b.) he was caught blindsided by the fact human guns were far more difficult to operate than he was led to believe. I couldn’t force him to do anything. I mean, I could, but I wouldn’t because that’s not how you treated friends.
Lily puttered into Phil’s garage, and he closed the door behind it. I popped the hood as I slid out of the car. By the time I walked around, Phil was shaking his little, green body and mumbling under his breath.
“Distributor cap is gone, fuel hose is leaking, carburetor is shot.” He turned to me. “This is almost a complete rebuild. Are you sure it’s worth it?”
“Would you say that about your best friend? Lily is priceless.”
“Yes, that is what you always say to the thing I always say.” We went through this same song and dance every time Lily needed repairs, which wasn’t as infrequent an occurrence as I would like. “Do you have any idea who did this?”
I shook my head. “No, but considering I met those two idiots at midnight, they were dead by 4 am, and when I went back to the dock at 11 am, the car was gone. There aren’t that many options. I talked to everybody I could find on those docks, and nobody saw anything useful despite my very persuasive interrogation tactics.”
“Torture,” Phil said. “Don’t sugar coat it with me. You tortured them.”
“I mean, yeah…” I shrugged. “I kind of tortured them.”
“No qualifiers. You tortured them.”
“Yes, I did,” I replied. “And since I’m very convinced nobody on the dock saw it, that means the dum dum twins drove it off the dock after they defrosted.”
“They weren’t the dum dums that left the key in the ignition,” Phil said.
“Watch it,” I said. “I can hurt you.”
“I’m just saying that they couldn’t have driven it off if you didn’t give them the means to execute it.”
“Well, I didn’t expect my former lover to interrupt us.”
“You should always expect everything, even outlier scenarios.” He touched a scar on his long neck that reminded him of the time he’d spent being tortured. “I’ll never forget that again.”
“You can’t predict everything.”
“Hrm.” Phil cocked his head. “I wouldn’t care to live if I thought that.” We went back to fiddling with the engine block. “So, Jessica Fletcher, how is finding Lily going to help you figure out who’s trying to kill you?”
“That’s as easy as it is complicated, my good friend. Assuming Balaam and Moloch were the ones who took the car, they would have dropped it off somewhere quickly and quietly. It was somebody they knew well and somebody that could outfit them with a new car quickly. There aren’t many people with that kind of pull who can load a car on a boat the same night. Which means all I gotta do is find a car thief that sells cars in Europe often and has easy access to the ports. How many places do you think have that kind of MO in Los Angeles?”
Stolen novel; please report.
“My gut says very few, but my mind says that in a city of several million, it would be more than you think.”
“Then I guess I should stop talking to you and get started, huh?” I walked to the front of the garage. “How long do you think it will take to repair her?”
“Using my replicator for parts, a couple of hours, maybe a day at most?”
“Why are you complaining when it’s going to take less than a day?”
Phil smiled. “I like complaining.”
I opened the garage door. “I’ll never understand you.”
Everybody in Los Angeles knew my ‘Cuda and respected it. There was very little chance it would go unnoticed that a beat-up ’68 black Plymouth Barracuda perfectly matching mine was on the market, so it had to be a really ballsy asshole who would try to take it.
It was easiest to start at the top of the chain and work down. If Candace didn’t know what happened with my car, I bet she could direct me to the person that did. “Candy” was a car god on the west coast. Whether you needed to find a car, lose a car, or just wanted to talk cars, she was your girl. She was a firecracker, too. She had to be in the testosterone-fueled world of exotic cars.
She was a slight woman at barely five feet, and more than one man had been castrated for joking that she needed a booster seat to see over the wheel of her car. Those that laughed were humiliated when she rose from nothing to the top of the pack, first in Los Angeles, then the West Coast, and now she was expanding into Vegas.
The front for her whole operation was Cotton Candy Exotics, a combination auto body shop and car dealership that Candy bought to give her business an air of legitimacy. She specialized in big, bright paint jobs and rip-and-replace overhauls for high-end collectors around the world. She definitely had the skills to take Lily’s busted body and bring her back to her glory.
During the day, Cotton Candy was a place where millionaire Joes and Janes walked around looking at the merchandise. It cost seven figures just to get into the door, and Candy ran background checks on everyone who booked an appointment with her. When I walked into her shop, she was talking to a buttoned-up couple that looked like they had a stick jammed so high up their asses that they could pull it out their mouths. It looked like it would take chopping them down with an ax to get them to move an inch, yet Candy swayed with the ease of a blade of grass.
Candy was anything but buttoned-up. She had purple and pink hair, with thick, hyper-saturated make-up, and bright pink lips. Her clothes were black leather, and she rocked two piercings in each of her nostrils. She was smacking her gum loudly while she talked with the couple.
“So, if you want Lago Grand Sport, custom, that’s easily going to cost you an easy seven million, and that’s without any customizations.”
“How long?” the man asked brusquely.
She laughed and gave a casual wave of her hand. “Could be a day, could be a year. Either way, I take half up front and half on delivery.”
“That’s highway robbery. What if you don’t find it?” The woman scoffed as if Candy would care. “Absurd.”
Candy spun away with her chin in the air. “Look, my reputation speaks for itself. I know better than to work with people that don’t have this type of money to burn. It just doesn’t work out. I gotta bounce you.”
“Excuse me?” the man said, indignant. “I’ll have you know—”
Candy held up her hand. “Look, I said my peace, now get the Hell out. You’ve insulted me.” She caught my eye and smiled, completely stonewalling and ignoring the rich pricks behind her. “Hey, baby girl.”
“You really know how to talk to people,” I said with a smile. “Those two are going ape.” And they were, hissing and spitting in their fight with each other. “It’s awesome.”
“They are going to come back with ten million, and I’ll sigh and agree as long as they don’t give me any lip. You watch.”
I had to hand it to her: She could play rich people like a fiddle. “I need your help.”
“Sounds like you,” Candy said, still smiling.
“Couple weeks ago, my car was stolen and sold. It just showed up in Portugal, of all places. You’re the best at smuggling cars I’ve ever met. Know anything about it?”
She laughed again. “First off, I wouldn’t touch that ‘Cuda, and you should know that by now.”
“Why not?”
“For a couple of reasons, first of which is you are a reckless wench who would kill me as soon as look at me, and two, it’s hideous. I hate ‘Cudas so much. I would never be caught dead with anything so pedestrian.”
Candy was one of the only people who could insult Lily without getting decked for it. “Fair. Know anyone who would?”
She nodded. “I have a short list.”
The couple approached. “We talked it over,” the man said. “And if you’re willing to help us, we’ll bump you up to an even ten million to make up for the insult.” The man pinched his wife. “Do you have something to say, sweetie?”
The woman looked down at her designer shoes. “I’m sorry for insulting you.”
Candy shrugged. “That was very brave of you to say. I’ll take your order. But I don’t want to hear one more word of lip out of you, agreed?” They both nodded in silent agreement. She turned to me. “Gimme a second.”
That was Candy, the rich prick whisperer.