From a Buick 8(10)

It had rained heavily the night before and the roads were still wet (hell, still underwater in some of the low places on the west side of Statler Township) but the sun had come out around eight o'clock and by ten the day was both bright and warm. Nevertheless, the man who got out of the car was dressed in a black trenchcoat and large black hat. 'Looked like a spy in some old movie,' Brad said to Ennis Rafferty an hour or so later, indulging in what was, for him, a flight of poetic fancy. The trenchcoat, in fact, was so long it nearly dragged on the puddly cement tarmac, and it billowed behind the Buick's driver as he strode toward the side of the station and the sound of Redfern Stream, which ran behind it. The sound of the stream was very loud that morning; it had swelled wonderfully in the previous night's showers.

Brad, assuming that the man in the black coat and floppy black hat was headed for the seat of convenience, called: 'Door's open, mister . . . how much of this jetfuel you want?'

'Fill 'er up,' the customer said. He spoke in a voice Brad Roach didn't much like. What he told the responding officers later was that the guy sounded like he was talking through a mouthful of jelly. Brad was in a poetical mood for sure. Maybe Hugh being gone for the day had something to do with it.

'Check the earl?' Brad asked. By this time his customer had reached the corner of the little white station. Judging by how fast he was moving, Brad figured he had to offload some freight in a hurry.

The guy paused, though, and turned toward Brad a little. Just enough for Brad to see a pallid, almost waxy crescent of cheek, a dark, almond-shaped eye with no discernible white in it, and a curl of lank black hair falling beside one oddly made ear. Brad remembered the ear best, remembered it with great clarity. Something about it disturbed him deeply, perhaps even horrified him, but he couldn't explain just what it was. At this point, poesy failed him. Melted, kinda, like he'd been in a fire seemed to be the best he could do.

'Oil's fine!' the man in the black coat and hat said in his choked voice, and was gone around the corner in a final batlike swirl of dark cloth. In addition to the quality of the voice ? that unpleasant, mucusy sound ? the man had an accent that made Brad Roach think of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle show, Boris Badinoff telling Natasha Ve must stop moose und squeerul!

Brad went to the Buick, ambled down the side closest to the pumps (the driver had parked carelessly, leaving plenty of room between the car and the island), trailing one hand along the chrome swoop and the smooth paintjob as he went. That stroke was more admiring than impudent, although it might have had a bit of harmless impudence in it; Bradley was then a young man, with a young man's high spirits. At the back, bending over the fuel hatch, he paused. The fuel hatch was there, but the rear license plate wasn't. There wasn't even a plate holder, or screw-holes where a plate would normally go.

This made Bradley realize what had struck him as wrong as soon as he heard the ding-ding of the bell and looked up at the car for the first time. There was no inspection sticker. Well, no business of his if there was no plate on the back deck and no inspection sticker on the windshield; either one of the local cops or a Static from Troop D just up the road would see the guy and nail him for it . . . or they wouldn't. Either way, Brad Roach's job was to pump gas.

He twirled the crank on the side of the hi-test pump to turn back the numbers, stuck the nozzle in the hole, and set the automatic feed. The bell inside the pump started to bing and while it did, Brad walked up the driver's side of the Buick, completing the circuit. He looked through the leftside windows as he went, and the car's interior struck him as singularly stark for what had been almost a luxury car back in the fifties. The seat upholstery was wren-brown, and so was the fabric lining the inside of the roof. The back seat was empty, the front seat was empty, and there was nothing on the floor -not so much as a gum-wrapper, let alone a map or a crumpled cigarette pack. The steering wheel looked like inlaid wood. Bradley wondered if that was the way they had come on this model, or if it was some kind of special option. Looked ritzy. And why was it so big'? If it had had spokes sticking out of it, you would have thought it belonged on a millionaire's yacht. You'd have to spread your arms almost as wide as your chest just to grip it. Had to be some sort of custom job, and Brad didn't think it would be comfortable to handle on a long drive. Not a bit comfortable.

Also, there was something funny about the dashboard. It looked like burled walnut and the chromed controls and little appliances ? heater, radio, clock ? looked all right . . . they were in the right places, anyway . . . and the ignition key was also in the right place (trusting soul, ain't he? Brad thought), yet there was something about that setup that was very much not right. Hard to say what, though.

Brad strolled back around to the front of the car again, admiring the sneering chrome grille (it was all Buick, that grille; that part, at least, was dead right) and verifying that there was no inspection sticker, not from PA or anyplace else. There were no stickers on the windshield at all. The Buick's owner was apparently not a member of Triple-A, the Elks, the Lions, or the Kiwanis. He did not support Pitt or Penn State (at least not to the extent of putting a sticker on any of the Buick's windows), and his car wasn't protected by Mopar or good old Rusty Jones.

Pretty cool car just the same . . . although the boss would have told him that his job wasn't to admire the rolling stock but just to fill 'em fast.

The Buick drank eleven dollars' worth of the good stuff before the feed cut off. That was a lot of gas in those days, when a gallon of hi-test could be purchased for seventy cents. Either the tank had been close to empty when the man in the black coat took the car out, or he'd driven it a far piece.