Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

Spare Change by Chris Rogers

“The Jag don’t belong here,” Murley was saying, big belly grazing the side mirror as he faced the young cop. “Anybody could see that. Sticks out like a damn poodle at a dogfight.”

Jeff Rickey leaned his fifteen-year-old body across the hood of the Chevy he was detailing to swipe at a nonexistent smudge on the polished windshield. He’d never witnessed a real life crime investigation before and didn’t want to miss a word.

Officer Packet stooped, hands on uniformed thighs, to peer in the Jaguar’s driver-side window. Careful, Jeff noticed, not to touch anything and spoil the chance of lifting latent fingerprints. Jeff liked that. It meant the officer had some experience at crime scenes, and maybe something could be learned from him.

“Answer me this,” Murley said, meaty lips pooching in and out as he chewed on the stump of a carrot. He’d stopped smoking cigars, doctor’s orders, but said he couldn’t get through the day without something between his teeth. “Why would any sane human being steal an eight-year-old Dart and leave this spanking new Jag in its place? Don’t make sense.”

The officer straightened to his full six feet plus. Gazing around the car lot, he unbuttoned his shirt pocket to pull out a pencil and a small notepad.

Rookie, Jeff thought miserably, getting a first-time straight-on look at the cop’s youthful face. Just his luck. But Packet appeared intelligent and not completely green, and anyway, every cop had to be a rookie sometime.

“Those chains.” Packet nodded toward the north entrance where fifty-gauge chain links lay piled beside the foot-high steel barrier that kept thieves from driving Murley’s Used Cars off the lot at night. “Were they secured when you left here last night?”

“Tighter’n a new belt after Thanksgiving dinner.” Murley hitched his pants an inch higher over an expansive gut. “Hell, it’s the last thing I do of a night. Drag the chains across the exits, snap on the west side padlock, drive my Caddy out, and lock up the north side. Same routine every night, ten P.M., come hail or kinfolk.”

“Who else has a key to those locks?”

“Nobody.”

“Keep a spare key in the office?”

Murley plucked the mangled carrot stump from his mouth and spit. “Keep a spare set of everything locked up in the desk drawer.”

“Locked.” The officer made a note on his pad. “The drawer’s always locked?”

“Hell no, not during the daytime. We got to get in and out of that desk to get applications and such.”

“So any one of your salesmen could have borrowed the key long enough to make a copy.”

Murley tongued a speck of carrot from his lip to his fingertip. “Ain’t none of my salesmen dumb enough to steal a Dart and leave off a Jag.”

Packet made another notation. Jeff thought it was time the officer called in the license number and had Records run a trace on the Jaguar’s plates.

As soon as Jeff finished school and could pass the exams, he was going to be a cop. Not a patrol cop, but a genuine crime investigator. He was good at figuring things out. Two years earlier he had tracked down the Pattersons’ cat when it disappeared for three days, found it a few doors down, accidentally locked in a neighbor’s house when they left on vacation.

Catching Murley frowning at him, Jeff dropped to his knees and rubbed vigorously at the Chevy’s polished wheel cover. He couldn’t see quite as well now, but he could hear the oystershell ground cover crunching under the officer’s hard-soled shoes as he circled the Jaguar, scribbling on his tablet.

“It’s got a flat,” the cop said, apparently spying the right front wheel.

“Yep.” Murley’s tone said it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. “These fancy foreign jobs get flats just like the homegrown variety when somebody slashes the tire wall.”

Jeff watched the reflection in the Chevy’s chrome as the officer folded his long body to examine the three inch gouge. He made another note on his pad and stood up.

“You have a look inside the car before you called us? Try to find out who it belongs to?”

“Didn’t touch nothing,” Murley said. “Told the kid not to touch nothing, either. Don’t belong to me, don’t want no part of it.”

But Jeff watched Murley’s eyes roaming over the sleek sports car, taking in the wire wheels and twin pipes, probably thinking that half the cars on the lot, lumped up and sold as a package, wouldn’t bring in as much as this gem was worth.

Gem or not, Jeff didn’t like Jaguars.

His sister’s big-shot boyfriend — Sangriff — thought Jags were boss. Top down, showing off his third-degree tan like some kind of South American sun god, he’d pick up Jeff’s sister and take her tooling around until all hours, to places Mom would have shrieked to hear about had it not been the golden boy courting her daughter. Make enough trips south of the border, anybody’d look golden and glossy, Jeff tried to tell Sis. But all she could see were the fancy presents Sangriff brought back, big-shot international trader that he was. What exactly was Sangriff trading, Jeff had wondered. Nobody made that much money in a legit business.

He stood up to polish the Chevy’s side mirror and watched Packet stride toward his blue and white squad car, parked near all the clunkers with oil or transmission leaks on the grass where drips wouldn’t show. Leaning across the front seat, the cop scooped up the radio’s hand mike and relayed the Jaguar’s license number. Faint static issued as somebody replied.

Jeff listened hard, wishing he could think of a reason to amble closer, but Murley would fine him an extra hour of unpaid overtime if he caught Jeff slacking. The fat old man had moved to the front bumper of the Jaguar, giving the car a wily eye that meant he was scheming something, probably trying to figure a way to turn a dollar from his unlikely stroke of luck before Providence teed up for another swing.

Murley didn’t miss a trick when it came to wheeling and dealing. But Jeff had to give the man his due, he wasn’t as greedy as other dealers along used car row. Murley never sold a car without a seventy-two-hour warranty, never repossessed one until a payment was three days late. And Jeff was grateful for having a weekend job that didn’t cut too deep into his school work. Mom wouldn’t have let him keep it otherwise.

Reaching inside the Chevy, Jeff started the engine, as if he hadn’t already warmed up all the cars so they’d start fast and run smooth. Then he lifted the hood and pretended to tinker. Actually, the idle did sound a little rocky, like maybe the carb was mixing too rich. Jeff adjusted it, then switched off the engine and began to detail the already detailed interior.

“You know an Arnold Tanninger?” The officer’s hard-soled shoes crunched across the shell.

Jeff slid nearer the window, skimming an Armor All rag over the dash pad.

“Don’t recall knowing anyone by that name,” Murley said. “Unless maybe a customer from some time back. Paid cash, maybe. Nobody I’m holding paper on now.”

“Tanninger’s a parolee, petty theft, suspected of small-time drug dealing. Last known address is less than a mile from here.”

“Petty theft?” Murley’s tone was incredulous. “And this car belongs to him?”

“The plates belong to a car registered to Tanninger. An Olds-mobile Cutlass.”

“You mean the car and the plates don’t match.” Murley’s eyebrows dipped together like two caterpillars at a square dance.

Footsteps crunched closer, and Jeff peeked out to see the officer standing a few feet away, looking at the Jaguar’s door, thumbs tucked under his belt, lips thinned to an exasperated slash in his lean face. He wants to look inside, Jeff thought, examine the car for clues, bumper to bumper. That’s what I’d do. But first he’ll run the chassis number. That will take longer than the plates, and he’ll have to open the Jaguar to find it.

“Got a slim jim inside, you want to jimmy that lock,” Murley said.

The officer darted him a stern look.

“Hell,” Murley hedged, “customers always locking keys inside their car, wanting us to get ’em out.” He shrugged his thick shoulders.

The officer turned his frown back on the car door.

“So,” Murley said, “you think this guy Tanninger stole the Jag, put his own plates on it, then dumped it here with a slashed tire?”

“We’ve got somebody checking on Tanninger,” the officer said.

Jeff could have told them where to find Arnold Tanninger — pumping gas at the Exxon four blocks down. When he wasn’t pumping gas, he was peddling crack. Tanninger had caught up with Jeff one day leaving the schoolyard after a hassle with the phys. ed. coach.

“Hey, kiddo,” Tanninger’s smelly arm snaking around Jeff’s shoulders. “That was a bum deal you got back there.”

Jeff tried to shrug him off, but the arm stuck like nettles.

“Kinda stuff gets you down,” Tanninger said. “Coach got on my case, too. Kicked me out, so I set myself up in business. Who needs school when you can make more bread on the street than any of those suits in their high-rise cages? Whatcha say we hang out, get mellow, talk some business?”

“Get lost,” Jeff had told him, adrenaline still rushing from the hassle over his American history grades. No pass, no play. He was doing fine in his other subjects, but what use was memorizing dates of old wars and treaties and such?

Tanninger pulled out a knife, a nasty thing with a short curved blade. “Why you laying down that kinda shit, kiddo, hen I’m trying to be nice to you?”

Jeff was scared. It had been stupid to pop off to Tanninger. Now he was in deep trouble.

By that time they were passing the Patterson house, where Jeff had become a hero after finding the cat. He had also helped Mr. Patterson plant Spanish daggers under all the windows to ward off burglars when he worked late and had to leave his family at home alone. The concrete sidewalk lay close to the Pattersons’ house, Spanish daggers grown up man-size after two years, sharp pointy leaves stretching in all directions.

One eye on the ugly knife, Jeff pretended to trip on a deep crack. He feinted a fall and jabbed his elbow into Tanninger’s side, shoving him into the daggers and turning fast, a well-placed kick finishing the job. He hadn’t hung around to find out how Tanninger freed himself, but he heard later that Mrs. Patterson called 911 with an attempted burglary. The wicked knife bearing Tanninger’s prints hadn’t won any favors with the cops.

But a fast-talking lawyer had gotten the attempted burglary charge thrown out of court, and Jeff knew it was only a matter of time before Tanninger would be leaning on him again. One of the daggers’ leaves had missed slicing out Tanninger’s eye by a gnat’s breadth, leaving a deep scar along his cheekbone. Jeff, on his way to Murley’s Used Cars every weekend, had to bike right past the Exxon where Tanninger pumped gas.

Packet had returned from the squad car with a pair of thin rubber gloves. Now he slipped them on and grasped the Jaguar’s door handle. The door swung open.

“Guess you won’t need the slim jim,” Murley said. “And look there, the keys’re hanging right there in the ignition.”

The officer removed the keys before copying down the chassis number and strolling across the shell drive to call it in.

Turning on the hand vac, Jeff ran it over the Chevy’s floor mats, hoping the noise would keep Murley from asking why the car’s detailing was taking so long. He watched the side mirror until he saw the officer’s reflection returning, then clicked off the vac and began polishing the inside glass.

“No report on any stolen Jaguar,” the officer said, glaring at Murley like maybe he thought somebody was pulling his leg. “Computer’s running the body number.”

Murley swiveled the carrot to the other side of his face. “Suppose nobody claims it? Guess by rights that makes it mine, wouldn’t you say?”

The officer didn’t say anything, his smirk indicating he thought Murley was a card or two shy of a full deck. He leaned inside the Jaguar to look around, not touching anything, then squatted to run his gloved hand under the driver’s seat and came out with a pint-size bottle of Wild Turkey. Holding it up by two fingers, he checked the contents — half empty — and put the bottle back where he found it.

“Don’t make sense,” Murley said. “Anybody losing a car like this would be tearing up the police station trying to get it back.”

Once again the officer didn’t say anything. Jeff figured he agreed, though, that it was strange, the car’s loss not being reported.

“Unless the owner didn’t know the car was gone,” Murley added.

“What time did you open this morning?”

“Noon. Always open at noon on Saturdays and stay open till midnight. Folks buy a lot of cars after a Saturday night date, a nice meal and a few drinks.”

Jeff checked the Chevy’s dash clock. Nearly three thirty. Even a late sleeper should’ve noticed by now that his big-shot Jaguar was not parked where he left it.

The officer opened the passenger door, ran his hand under the seat, and came up empty. He opened the glove box, thumbed through the papers, closed it.

“You sure you didn’t take a peek inside here before calling it in? Maybe thinking one of your sales boys had played a little prank?”

“Hell, they ain’t got time for no pranks. They’re busy selling cars.” Murley pointed across the lot to where one of his salesmen was showing a Toyota to a young couple. His gaze fell on Jeff, sitting inside the Chevy, and he frowned. “Hey, boy! Come outa there.”

Jeff scrambled out. The police radio let out a loud squawk, and the cop went jogging toward the squad car.

Murley waved Jeff closer. The stumpy carrot between his fingers had turned brown and looked so much like a dead cigar that Jeff half expected smoke to curl up from it. After fishing a role of bills out of his pants pocket, Murley peeled off a twenty.

“Run over and get us some burgers. My stomach thinks I forgot how to chew.” He glanced at Packet, mike in hand, standing outside the squad car. “Get a couple for him, too.”

Jeff shoved the bill deep in his pocket, thinking it was just his luck the case would probably bust wide open while he was gone. He shuffled past the squad car, headed for his bike.

“Sangriff?” the officer was saying, writing it on his notepad. “S-a-n-g-r-i-f-f, Corland. You notified him his Jag turned up at Murley’s Used Cars?”

The radio squawked in reply, but Jeff was already on his bike and racing down the shell driveway.

Corland Big-shot Sangriff and Arnold Tanninger. Nobody would ever’ve paired those two. Jeff had seen Sangriff at the Exxon often enough, though, Tanninger airing the tires and checking the hood, golden boy Sangriff standing around with his hands in his pockets. The day after returning from one of his buying trips, Sangriff always turned up bright and early at the station, getting the Jaguar serviced.

Jeff wished he knew what Sis saw in the creep. If Dad were still around, he wouldn’t be taken in by the flashy car and designer clothes; he would’ve noticed Sangriff’s too-bright eyes after one of his long stints in the john. The day his father died, he’d made Jeff promise to take care of his older sister, but that was tough with Mom working against him, thinking Sangriff was Sis’s ticket to the good life.

Jeff slowed at a stop sign, checked both ways, and sailed through the intersection. Murley would be ticked off that he stopped at Jack-in-the-Box instead of going two blocks farther to Burger King, but Jeff could see the drive-through was empty. With luck, he could be in and out and back at Murley’s before anything important went down.

One more month and he’d be driving his own car right now. One month until his sixteenth birthday, when he’d be old enough to get his driver’s license. By then he’d have enough money socked away to buy that honey Mustang on the back lot — not on one of Murley’s sucker plans but straight-out cash. He’d miss the wind in his face and the music of his spoke flaps, but having his own car was a milestone right up there with finishing school and becoming a cop.

When he sailed into the car lot and braked beside the office, another squad car was parked on the shell drive, and Sangriff was climbing out of it. The rookie cop had the Jaguar’s trunk open.

“You must have a lot of tire trouble,” he said as Sangriff walked up. “Carrying around two spares.”

Sangriff grinned, teeth lined up and gleaming like new piano keys. “I spend a lot of time on the road late at night. Can’t be too careful.”

Jeff wandered closer, holding the bag of burgers. Besides the two tires, the trunk held a bumper jack, a pouch full of wrenches, and several boxes of odds and ends that belonged in a garage. One of the spares was a small emergency model, good for a few miles at best. The other was full size. Both were mounted on wheels that matched the four on the ground.

“That little doughnut won’t be doing you much good,” the cop said. “Got a hole in it as big as the one up front.”

Sangriff’s smile dimmed a notch. He walked to the front of the Jaguar to stare down at his ruined tire. A flicker of real anger hardened his mouth for a moment; then the lips pulled back and quirked up at the corners, and he turned on the old charm brighter than ever.

“I suppose I should count my blessings that the car wasn’t stripped. Isn’t that what usually happens?”

The officer from the second squad car, older and stockier than Packet, walked along the other side of the Jaguar, looking it over. Jeff wondered whether he was admiring the car or hanging around for more official reasons.

“This theft has a few other peculiarities,” Packet said. “You know a man named Arnold Tanninger?”

“Tanninger?” Sangriff hesitated an instant. “Yes, I suppose you could say I know him. He takes care of my car, changes the oil and keeps it roadworthy.”

“Tanninger’s been picked up for questioning,” the second cop contributed. “Heard it called in. He denies knowing anything about the theft.”

Jeff watched a bead of sweat travel down the side of Sangriff’s hairline. His golden tan seemed suddenly paler against the stark white of his shirt collar. He unbuttoned his snappy blue Italian sport coat and adjusted the knot of his signature tie.

The greasy burgers were bleeding through the sack. Jeff handed them to Murley. The carrot stump bobbed and rolled to the other side of Murley’s mouth.

“Say,” he said, obviously eager to get inside and chow down now that the Jaguar had slipped firmly from his grasp. “The kid here can change that flat, get you back on the road. Looks like you still got one good shoe left to put on the ground.”

Packet glanced at the other cop. “That’s another of those peculiarities I mentioned. Why not disable all three tires if the objective was to keep the car from going anywhere? Otherwise, what’s the point in slashing any of them?”

Sangriff’s forehead wrinkled; his sissy mouth pursed with consideration.

“I understand what you’re saying, officer. Looks like somebody wasn’t thinking too clearly. But if, as you say, Tanninger had something to do with this, I suppose I’m not terribly surprised. He isn’t what I’d call the brightest person I’ve ever met.”

Murley rattled the grease-stained sack growing cold in his hands.

“Listen, fellows, I’m going to mosey inside. You come when you’re ready, have a cold drink and a bite to eat, and I’ll give you a rundown on the Dart that disappeared last night when Mr. Sangriff’s car was left off.” He hustled toward the office, his short legs making surprisingly good time.

Jeff stood out of the way, waiting for Packet to decide whether he should change the flat. Sangriff hadn’t noticed him, hadn’t placed him as Sis’s brother, even though just last month he had given Jeff a hundred dollar bill to detail the Jaguar. Spare change, he’d called it. Big-shot showoff. The car had been road grimy, sure, but Sangriff’s real motive was having an hour or two alone in the house with Sis while Mom was at a movie.

Jeff, full of his own motives, had obliged eagerly.

It hadn’t taken long at all to find the shallow false bottom in the Jaguar’s trunk. Customs officers, acquainted with Sangriff and his big-shot international trading company, likely wouldn’t bother looking past the trunk full of cartons and spare tires.

After a quick trip to the hardware store for polish, Jeff had pocketed copies of Sangriff’s keys, house, garage, and Jag. All he had to do then was wait for golden boy’s next trip down south.

Jeff pictured the sick look on Sangriff’s face that morning when he opened his garage, ready to make his drop, and found his precious sports car missing, along with its even more precious cargo. Tanninger must be half crazy about now, wondering how the tags from the Cutlass ended up on Sangriff’s Jaguar.

“You want me to change that flat now?” Jeff said. “Looks like the spare could use some air. Seal doesn’t look tight.”

Sangriff’s upper lip was beaded with sweat, despite the cool breeze that wafted across the car lot.

“Ahhh, now that I think about it, that tire’s not in real good shape,” Sangriff said. “Why don’t I call a tow truck and have the car taken to my garage where they can check it out, make sure the creep that stole it didn’t pour sugar in my gas tank or something else crazy like that?”

But Jeff had already picked up the spare. “Whoa. That’s as heavy as a truck tire.” He glanced at the rookie cop.

Lips pressed into a tight slash in his bony face, Packet met Jeff’s gaze. His eyes flickered with vague understanding. He swung the spare out of Jeff’s grasp and bounced it on the ground. It thudded heavily.

“You go ahead and call that tow truck, Mr. Sangriff. Might as well let the kid check out the spare, save you a little time and money.” He rolled the tire toward the garage at the back of the office.

“Naw, really.” Sangriff’s snappy Italian coat showed dark circles around the armpits. “That’s not necessary. I’d feel better if my mechanic took care of the whole thing.”

But Packet continued onward as the older cop responded to a squawk from his car radio.

Jeff settled the wheel over the pneumatic tire changer, noticing that Sangriff had hung back, looking like he wanted to run. Jostling the wheel into better position, he pressed the foot feed and heard a sharp hiss, rubber separating from metal.

Footsteps crunched across the shell as the older cop joined them.

“Found the Dart,” he said. “About four blocks down the street. People opened their garage door and the Dart was sitting in the driveway, blocking their exit. The Jaguar’s tags were laying on the back seat.” He placed a reassuring hand on Sangriff’s shoulder, urging him forward. “Beginning to look like a prank after all, Mr. Sangriff. Maybe you ought to think about who you know that’d go to such lengths to cause you a little grief.”

Jeff looked up at Sangriff as he inserted the tire tool under the metal. Sangriff’s eyes were glued miserably to the tire popping free of the spare’s rim and to the avalanche of small plastic bags filled with powdery white crystals.

The rookie cop grinned at Jeff as he picked up one of the plastic bags.

“I’d say somebody caused you more than just a little grief, Mr. Sangriff,” he said.