“Forget it,” Jay Walt said.

When they were in Jay Walt’s light-blue Mark IV, Ryan said, “He could’ve called the cops, you know that? Had you arrested.”

“Sure I know it,” Jay Walt said, “but asshole doesn’t. Listen, you can tell them, Christ, anything, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“I’d believe it,” Ryan said. “What do you do with his stuff?”

“Wait twenty-one days, that’s the law, put three notices in the paper nobody can find, and supposedly sell it at auction,” Jay Walt said. “How’d you like a home entertainment center, Jackie? Pretty good speakers, the йtagиre, everything, seventy-five bucks.”

Rita told him he should have taken it, get rid of the Mickey Mouse record player he had. What the heck, seventy-five bucks, if he didn’t grab it somebody else would. Ryan said listen, the cluck still had to make his payments; you realize that? Okay, Rita said, so it’s a shitty deal. Life’s full of shitty deals.

Well, maybe, but he wasn’t going to get involved in that kind of stuff. He wouldn’t mind having a light-blue Mark IV and an expensive hi-fi setup and a few other things. He wouldn’t mind having a box at the ball park, right behind the Tigers’ dugout, so he could get a good look at the guys as they came off the field and hear some of the things they said. It was possible. But he wasn’t going to get a hernia trying, or give anybody else one.

He was doing all right.

At the end of three years he’d put 83,000 miles on the Cougar and traded it in on a Pontiac Catalina two-door, light-blue, with air and heavy-duty shocks, forty-six fifty-eight delivered. He was glad to finally get rid of the Cougar, though he’d still think about it every once in a while. There weren’t many cars around with four bullet holes in the door.

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