Chapter 26 : Two Tapes

Chapter 26: Chapter 26 : Two Tapes

Preston was still rooted to the spot, his face going red, then white.

"Fine." His voice came out hoarse. He cleared his throat and raised it. "Fine. It’s a 330, I’ll give you that. Which means you people were in on it from the start. You took my money for a fake."

He pulled a twice-folded sheet from his inside pocket, snapped it open, and held it up to the crowd. "Bill of sale, in black and white. What Big Bob’s sold me was an M3—"

His eyes dropped to the page, and the sentence stuck halfway out.

Ray leaned in, squinted, and read it aloud. "Model, 3 Series Coupe. Description, silver coupe, M3 Sport Appearance Package." He paused and glanced up at Preston. "Appearance, son. What they sold you was what an M3 looks like."

His finger moved down the page. "VIN starts with WBA. Matches the car. Bottom line, as is." He straightened up and handed the page back. "There’s not one false word on this thing."

Somebody in the crowd couldn’t hold it in and laughed out loud.

Preston’s knuckles had gone white around the paper. He was staring at the price line, and his voice shot up. "Thirty thousand? I paid forty-five!"

The moment it was out, even he froze.

Slowly, every eye in the service bay turned to Kyle.

Bob turned to look at him too. The gum in his mouth went still. Kyle took a step back, bumped into the tool rack, and a handful of wrenches clattered to the floor.

Ethan shook his head.

"We’re not done," he said. "I’ve got something else to show you."

He waved toward the back. Maya came over hugging her laptop. She’d bought it with her share of the first video’s prize money, and a Linux penguin sticker still clung to its silver lid. She set it on the M3’s hood and turned the screen toward Preston, and toward Chuck’s photographer.

Two files sat side by side on the desktop. One was called BAY. The other was called ROOF.

"They’ve been ready for days," Maya said quietly, without looking at Ethan. She double-clicked the first one.

The picture jittered, then came up. The service bay, shot from the tool rack at a slightly crooked angle. The tarp, the lift, the row of wrenches on the wall, all exactly as they were right now. In the bottom corner, the timecode ticked forward second by second.

The first time Ethan saw this footage was the evening before the contest.

He’d been crouched behind the car in the middle of the lot, one hand on the trunk lid, unable to shake the feeling that something was off. Then Noah called to him from the editing room door. "Come here a sec. I need you to look at something."

Noah’s voice was flat, but his face was white.

He’d been going through the twenty-odd test tapes one by one, the way Ethan had told him, labeling the usable ones DON’T ERASE and setting the rest aside to wipe. The last one came from a DV one of Sam’s students had propped on the tool rack in the service bay two days earlier to test long-play mode, plugged into the wall, and then forgotten. Ninety minutes. The first forty showed nothing but an empty service bay.

At minute forty-one, Kyle pushed the door open, and someone came in behind him.

Ethan watched it from start to finish. Twice. When it was over, he didn’t say a word. He ejected the tape and slipped it into his pocket.

Noah couldn’t hold it in. "Call the cops? Or go get Bob right now and blow this open in front of everybody—"

"And then what?" Ethan said. "The contest’s dead, and Bob’s sign goes down with his son-in-law. As for Preston, he never even shows his face on that tape. It’s just a name. He’s got a hundred ways to wash his hands of it." He paused. "We lose three things, and he loses nothing."

"So what do we do?"

"Let him come," Ethan said. "He wants to bring a reporter and check the car? Then let him."

Before dark, Ethan knocked on Bob’s office door.

When Bob finished watching, he didn’t make a sound. He took off his reading glasses and set them on the desk, put them back on, took them off again. Somewhere along the way, his jaw stopped working on the gum.

"Six years," he finally said, his voice gone rough. "Six years he’s been calling me Dad."

Ethan didn’t say anything.

"He told me somebody’d pay thirty grand, and I thought, finally, the kid did something right by me." Bob looked down at his hands. "Just this once. That’s what I told him. Just this once."

Then he looked up. "What do you want to do?"

Ethan told him.

Kyle went home for dinner at six every day without fail, and that day was no different. His car had barely turned the corner when Bob climbed into the real M3 in the middle of the lot and backed it into the service bay. Ethan pulled the tarp off the other car, and together they pushed the 330, kit and all, out to the empty spot, covered it, and tugged the folds back the way they’d been. The two keys had been cut from the same blank. Hanging on the key board, nobody could have told them apart.

Then Bob sat back down at his desk and pulled out a blank bill of sale. Model: 3 Series Coupe. Description: SILVER COUPE — M3 SPORT APPEARANCE PACKAGE. The VIN he copied letter by letter off the plate under the 330’s windshield. At the bottom, AS IS. Price, $30,000.

"I’ve sold cars my whole life, and I’ve never put one false word on one of these." He capped the pen. "Not starting today."

He slid it into a manila envelope, sealed it, and put it in the drawer.

Before heading back to the dorm, Ethan climbed onto the showroom roof and wedged a NightShot DV in beside the air-conditioning unit, lens aimed at the back gate. He pressed record, and a small green light came on.

On the screen, Kyle pulled back the tarp.

The sound was a little muffled, but every word came through.

"We run the contest with this one." Kyle patted the 330’s roof. "Once the winner’s got the keys, you bring in somebody who knows cars, bring a reporter, check it in front of everybody. That pelican whatever of his turns into a joke the whole city’s laughing at."

On-screen, Kyle held up one finger. "That idea costs another ten."

The man with him turned his back to make a call. He kept his voice low, and only a few words leaked out. "...Preston... yeah, bring a reporter..."

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

The man hung up, turned back around, and grinned. "You’re cold, man. Your father-in-law’s finished too."

On-screen, Kyle laughed along. "Call it a little retirement money for the old man."

Preston lunged and reached to slam the laptop shut.

Ethan was faster. He put up a hand, palm flat against the top edge of the screen, and Preston’s swipe caught nothing but Ethan’s wrist.

With his other hand, Ethan tapped the space bar. The picture froze on Kyle’s grinning face.

"What’s the rush?" Ethan said. "We haven’t even gotten to the second one. The back gate, that night. The cash got counted out stack by stack. Twice. Want to see?"

Preston didn’t answer. He slowly drew his hand back. He glanced at the frozen Kyle on the screen, then at the crowd. The same faces that had been shouting "I knew it" with him a few minutes ago were all turned on him now.

He knew it. Today was over. All of it.

Without a word, he turned to go.

"Yo, rich boy."

Noah called after him. Preston looked back on reflex.

The A camera was aimed right at his face, red light on.

Not just the A camera. B and C, the two night-vision cams down by the floor, the roving cameras around the edge. Not one of them had stopped rolling since the moment he’d driven in.

The blood rushed into Preston’s face.

Ethan walked up and leaned in close, his voice pitched so only Preston could hear. "I know this trick too." He paused. "Relax. I won’t put you in the cut."

Preston’s lips moved twice, and nothing came out.

Nobody could say who started it, but booing broke out at the back of the crowd and rolled forward in waves. Preston kept his head down, shoved through the crowd, and walked out the gate. He didn’t even take the key. The silver 330Ci sat crooked under the lift, its door still hanging open.

Gus walked over, bent to peer at the dashboard, shook his head, and shut the door for it.

Somebody finally thought to look for Kyle. The showroom doorway was empty.

Chuck Ross hadn’t left.

He stood beside the black sedan with his notebook closed. He hadn’t written a word. His photographer leaned in and asked under his breath, "Boss, we still shooting?" Chuck didn’t answer.

He’d been in this business more than twenty years, and he’d watched plenty of young people come up. Twenty or so, smart, fearless, sure the world was theirs. Most of them were finished inside two or three years. A few of them, he’d finished off himself, one column at a time.

But none of them had been like this. Branded a con man in front of everyone, hundreds of eyes on him, the internet howling, and the kid hadn’t raised his voice once from start to finish. He’d just stood there and waited while his opponent wound the rope around his own neck, one loop at a time.

Watching the young man in the middle of the bay, Chuck thought, for the first time, that he’d bet on the wrong side in that column.

This one was different.

Ethan turned and signaled to Noah. Noah caught it right away and rounded up the camera crews for pickups. Owen and his mother, Mac, Bob, one at a time. Sam’s students fanned out with their cameras.

Ethan himself cut quickly through the crowd, all the way to the black sedan, and stopped in front of Chuck.

"Mr. Ross." He smiled and tipped his chin at the packed service bay behind him. "You came all this way. Want to get some pictures?"