“I’M NOT SURE if I can do this.”
“You’ll be fine. Five minutes of work.”
I turned my gaze towards Erica Strong, the bailiff who was driving us to the job. She drove with a calm confidence, as if this was just another assignment for her. As if she was just going to the store for more cigarettes. The cab of her Ford F-150 was comfortable, but stank of smoke. Erica was one of those 35 people left in the world who still smoked, and riding with her was as unpleasant as being crop-dusted by Philip Morris. I figured I’d need to wash my clothes when I got home.
Still, it was nice to have a ride, especially since I didn’t currently own a car, and rentals were getting expensive.
“I’m not even sure if I’m dressed properly.”
“Yeah, I was going to say something. What’s with the tactical turtleneck and black cargo pants? What are you, a covert operative?”
“I thought we’d be repossessing a car or something.”
“And that’s what you’d wear to repossess a car?”
“I, uh …” I looked at my clothes and shrugged.
“Well, what do you wear normally?”
“T-shirt, torn jeans. Flannel, sometimes.”
“How very Canadian of you,” she said. “That would have been perfect.”
Erica Strong looked and sounded like her name. She was an enormous woman. Tall, yes, but also broad shouldered, broad hipped, and had broad, meaty hands the size of dinner plates. I wasn’t a small guy, but Erica Strong was an Amazonian.
And yet, when it came to her job as a bailiff, some people didn’t take her seriously. Despite her intimidating physique, there were still those who stubbornly saw only a woman, oblivious to the looming danger that her size suggested. As if a woman wouldn’t kick your ass up and down the street. Honestly, even I was a little skeptical, but all the way in the other direction. She was intimidating, yes. And I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with her. But her cartoonish level of thuggery made it tough to see her as a real person. Imagine being intimidated by that villainous boxer from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Erica Strong kind of looked like him, if you squinted. But, don’t tell her I said that.
She gave me a last-minute pep talk before the gig.
“Seriously, Virtue, we’re not stealing jewels from a museum. We’re repossessing shitty cars from shitty people. You might dress like you fit in.”
“Should I go back and change?”
“We’re not repossessing anything today. You need a tow truck for that. Besides—” she said, a hint of a smile crawling across her broad face, “—I’ve got an outfit all ready for you.”
“You do? I don’t like the sound of this.”
“It’ll be perfect for this job.”