Page 72 of Catcher

I get back into Ruby’s car and drive off.

The mechanic’s shop isn’t far, and I know the owner from work we’ve had done before—old brick building, two open bays, grease-dark concrete. The heavy scent of oil, rubber, hot metal, and stale coffee hits me the second I pull in, and it reminds me of my old man.

A bell over the office door gives a weak jingle when I step inside, but the old man behind the counter doesn’t bother looking up right away. He knows me well enough by now to know I’m not here to chat about weather or pretend I give a damn about his fishing stories unless there’s a motor between us.

When he finally lifts his head, his eyes move over me once, then out the window to Ruby’s car. “Yours?”

“No.” I don’t give him more.

He nods like that’s an answer enough and grabs a rag off the counter, wiping his hands even though they’re never gonna be clean.

“What’s it doing?”

“AC’s dead. Been out for months. Anything else you find, take care of it.”

He looks out at the car again, squinting through the shop window as if he can already hear all the things wrong with it from here.

“Months without AC?” he mutters. “In this heat?”

My jaw flexes. “Yeah.”

He takes the keys, moves it into the bay, and gets to work.

I don’t sit in the office. It feels too small. I stay near the open bay instead, arms crossed, watching the work.

In the end, the AC compressor is shot, and the belts are worn. The cabin filter looks like it survived a dust storm and lost. The list grows, each thing he names stacking on top of everything else I already know about Ruby, trying to keep her head above water while pretending she isn’t drowning.

I know what it is to ignore something because looking straight at it makes it real—bills, debt, grief, a house you can’t step inside again, a grave, a woman who looks at you like maybe you aren’t as dead as you feel. Different problems… same damn habit. We keep moving, working, breathing, and hope the thing behind us doesn’t catch up.

The mechanic comes out from under the hood and wipes his hands again. “It’ll take a couple of hours.”

“Do it.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

He studies me. “Ain’t gonna be cheap.”

“Not a problem.”

He gives me a look, then nods and gets back to work.

I step outside after that, letting the heat close around me. The sun sits high and mean, bouncing off hoods and windshields, turning the lot into a skillet. Traffic rolls past on the road beyond the shop.

My phone buzzes. It’s Riggs, so I answer. “Prez.”

“Got a name for the man from the bar. Clay Fentenot, but people on the street call him Gator. He works for a guy they call Crowley, a low-level distributor with delusions of being bigger. He’s connected to a crew moving product through the parishes down around Baton Rouge.”

Low-level doesn’t mean safe. Half the time, men trying to be big are worse because they’ve got something to prove, and not enough sense while doing it.

“Robby tied to it?” I ask.

“Got Kiwi digging. Whoever Crowley answers to, we’ll find out where Robby fits in before this gets any uglier.”

“What do you need from me?” I ask.

“You’re doin’ it,” Riggs says, and the line goes quiet.