The rain had stopped and I drove back to Rivertown leisurely enough to keep an eye on the road behind me. One particular pair of trailing headlamps mimicked my every lane change, speed-up, slow-down and turn. The guard at Amanda’s building had been right. Bohler hadn’t fallen for his story.
Likely enough, too, Bohler wanted another chance to examine my Jeep.
I drove to the Rivertown city garage. Booster Liss operated there. Daytimes, he worked for the city, for cash, cleaning the fleet of Cadillac Escalades that the city purchased, for cash, for its elected officials, who drew modest paychecks but prospered mostly from bribes, in cash.
Night-times, Booster and a small crew used the city facility for private work, cleansing vehicles of fingerprints, identification tags, and worse. Some cars were freshly stolen, on their way to being disassembled for saleable parts in one of the chop shops in the abandoned factories across town. Other vehicles were tainted differently, with evidence of hit-and-runs and gun-shot murders. Those were headed for even more careful disassembly and the crushing of their more worrisome parts. In either case, a wash by Booster was always the first step.
After I knocked, he peered through the small dark glass set in the steel side door and then eased himself outside. He was a big bear of a man, clean shaven, likely scalp-to-toes, so as to not leave his own incriminating evidence, and wore a surgical mask, scrubs, little cloth booties and thin latex gloves. Such caution inspired confidence among his understandably nervous clientele.
‘Dek! Long time, man,’ he said, grinning.
He always welcomed me like an old friend. We’d gone to high school together, or at least until the end of our sophomore year when he dropped out to join the legion of thumpers being mentored at the health center parking lot by seasoned thieves. Ultimately, but not unfortunately, that led to a short stretch in a prison downstate for grand theft auto, which in turn led to a broader circle of acquaintances and a new career. Already a devotee of colon cleansing, Booster saw the possibilities of extending that devotion to stolen automobiles. He began cleansing cars.
‘I’ve been followed here,’ I told him, though the trailing headlamps had vanished after my last turn. They’d probably just been switched off.
‘You’re worried I’ll duck inside and bolt myself in?’ He laughed. He operated with impunity, being connected not only by blood to the lizards that ran Rivertown but also by the services he provided to others even better connected throughout Cook County. Should a clueless cop arrive, Booster would remain safely locked inside until the proper corrective phone calls sent the cop away.
‘I need a cleanse,’ I said, looking up and down the street.
He noticed. ‘In a hurry?’
‘The tail I caught is police. I didn’t see the vehicle, only the headlights.’
He stepped up to finger the shreds of the vinyl top. ‘Full cleanse?’
‘The best, starting with a long power wash.’
He opened the door to look inside. ‘Already wet in here.’
‘Rain, through the rips.’
‘When we’re done with the shampoo, we’ll bake it in the paint booth to get rid of anything organic.’
I supposed by that he meant skin, or blood.
‘Two hundred, ready at dawn.’ It was a bargain rate. He got in the Jeep, tapped the horn and started the engine. The big garage door shot up fast; someone was watching from inside. Booster barely got across the threshold before the door began to drop, just as quickly.
Efficiency can run rampant in Rivertown.