Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998

Jimmy’s Car by Mark Herr

It was a few days before we heard about Jimmy Hoffa going missing that the car turned up on the side of my field. It was at the edge of a field that I almost never go into, but I was sure I noticed it the first day it was there. Now, I’m not saying that Jimmy Hoffa’s body got parked on my field out in the middle of the Bible belt. But I’m not saying that it wasn’t put there either.

The fact of the matter is, I left it alone. People’s cars do tend to break down in the most inconvenient places, and the edge of my field would probably qualify as one of them. If my fights weren’t on up at the house, I could see where someone might walk clear into town before they’d find a place with a phone. So I just left it there, thinking a tow truck would show up for it in the next day or so.

After about a week, I guess, I started asking people if they had seen anyone come around the night the car was dropped off. Then I would describe it if they hadn’t been by my place in the past week. It was a light blue Ford with some big old fins on the back. No one remembered any strangers, and in our neck of the woods people remember strangers. So my mystery got a little bit bigger.

“A car just doesn’t appear by itself on the edge of a cornfield,” Harold said. He was the best friend I had although I didn’t care for his attitude on a lot of things. But it’s like my mama always told me, beggars can’t be choosers. And when it came to friends, I had always been a beggar. Me and Harold stood up on my back porch looking across the land at the blue hunk of junk. “Why don’t you just go over and bust the window and see what kind of registration it has in it?”

“Break into someone’s car?”

“Someone’s abandoned car.”

“Can’t do it.”

Harold stared at me, wheels in his mind turning. “You haven’t even gone over to see if it’s unlocked, have you?”

I shook my head, looking down at the ants crawling on my porch.

“Why the heck not?”

“Don’t seem right somehow.”

“I can go take a look if you want me to.”

“Don’t you dare, Harold!” I said with a quick snap of my head. “I want you to leave my car alone.”

He chuckled. “Your car? So now it’s your car, is it? Walter, you sure are a queer son of a bitch.”

“Don’t touch the car, Harold,” was my only response as I walked off the porch and away from the Ford. Truth is, I liked having the car around. It gave my mind something new to work on. Not knowing gave me cause to speculate. Not a lot happens around these parts, so when something new like this comes along, my mind just grabs hold and doesn’t want to let go. I didn’t want Harold ruining it by telling me the car belonged to some traveling salesman who lived over in Wichita. I wanted the imaginings to last as long as possible. And I still figured the tow truck would show up any day to pick it up.

It was only after the third news story I saw on Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance that my mind started to wander in that direction. Sure, we were a long way away from this Hoffa guy’s stomping grounds, but that don’t mean nothing. I mean, those mob types could take someone like that all the way to India if they really put their minds to it. Let New York’s finest try to find him over there, in the big city. Of course, they would have just as much trouble finding him around here. People not from the area often complain that we don’t have any street signs, say they can’t find their way around. Folks here say if you don’t know where you are you really don’t have any business being here. So to me it made perfect sense that Hoffa could be in the trunk of that car out there. I made the mistake of telling Harold my new theory.

“Hoffa? You have got to be kidding me, Walter.” We were on the porch again, watching the sun set off to the west. “They wouldn’t just plop him in the trunk and leave him on a farm somewhere. They would finish the job. They would bury that sucker.”

“Well, maybe they hit car trouble like I thought before and just got as far away as possible. That way, when the police do find the body, they’ll be back in their own neck of the woods.”

“Only one way to find out for sure,” Harold said, and he began to stride directly toward the Ford.

I jumped down after him and ran to block his path. “Don’t you touch that car, Harold. I mean it.”

He stopped in his tracks and looked up at the darkening sky. “You are such a dreamer, Walter. You think up these crazy scenarios, but you don’t want to prove or disprove them. You just want to go on thinking up these crazy ideas until another one comes along. Next week you’ll be saying that it’s really one of them flying saucers and the little green men left it behind and beamed on out of here.”

“I don’t want you touching that car.”

“Fine, Walter. You don’t have to worry about me ever coming near it. I’m leaving.” And he stormed off like he had never stormed off before. I was sure that old hunk of junk had just cost me my best friend.

“People disappear all the time. They just usually don’t get the coverage that Hoffa’s getting.” I was watching the Ford rust with Larry Hartford. Larry was not exactly what I would call a best friend, more like a good acquaintance. I mean, Larry and me had known each other since the first grade, but we never really hung around together. An occasional fishing trip, an occasional beer, and that’s about it. It had been about two months since the car first appeared and almost as long since I last talked to Harold. He sure could be a sorehead when he wanted to be. So I was pretty much stuck with Larry, or he was stuck with me, depending on how you look at it.

“Are you saying that some guy offed his wife, stuck her in the trunk, dropped her off here, and told her family that she took off with another man?” I was starting to like the way Larry’s mind worked. “Well, there could be a million possibilities. She runs off with some guy, and he turns out to be some psycho and kills her the first chance he gets. In the world today you never know who the crazies are.”

I paused before I said anything. “Do you think I’m crazy for not touching the car?”

“Heck, no. You could be tampering with evidence. The state troopers show up and start asking why your fingerprints are all over the car, and next thing you know, you could wind up in jail for killing some girl that you never known while the real killer runs free. Just not worth taking the chance if you know what I mean.”

I nodded my head. I did know what he meant. It made me feel better to hear that I was right and Harold was wrong. You just don’t go messing with other people’s things. You never know what kind of trouble it can land you in.

Halloween that year brought some trouble as far as Jimmy’s car was concerned. Jimmy’s car, that’s what I had come to think of it as by that point. If I ever thought too hard about it, I would tell myself that I was just being a silly middle-aged man. But then again I never tried to think too hard about it.

So Halloween night I was sitting out on my porch in the dark as I did a lot of nights when I couldn’t find anything worth watching on the television. I saw some flashlights flickering on and off along my property fine. I picked up the shotgun that I kept just inside the door. You city folk might think that’s an odd thing to do, but the crazies seem to like to leave the city lights and head out to the country. They figure we live so far apart it will be easier to get away with any danged thing. So most of us keep the heavy artillery within a quick reach.

I made a straight line for Jimmy’s place. I could tell that was where the flashlights were headed. Maybe after all these months someone was finally coming for whatever they left behind. Maybe they were using this goofy holiday to cover anything strange happening. It was the one night of the year that people wouldn’t look twice at you if you were wearing a mask. Maybe the New York mobsters had come back to see why Jimmy had never turned up in the news. Or maybe the crazed husband came back to remove all identification from his wife’s body, or maybe just to look at her one more time to convince himself he had actually done the horrible thing that his nightmares told him he had. To look at his loving wife’s face just one more time...

Whoever it was, they were close to me at that point and not doing too good a job hiding their approach.

“Stop giggling. Someone will hear us,” a hushed whisper said.

“I can’t help it. McNally will flip when he sees his car is gone,” another not-so-hushed voice said.

The first voice said, “If he catches us while we’re doing it...”

“I’ll blow your head clean off,” I said with as much menace as I could muster. I cocked the shotgun for effect.

“Jesus Christ! He’s here!”

There was a mad scramble as the three figures tripped over each other trying to get as far away from me as they could. Just my luck, a bunch of the local schoolboys come to mess with goofy old Walter McNally. Was I really that easy a mark? I hoped the shotgun story would make its rounds and enough people would know I meant business when it came to Jimmy’s car. Or anything else on my property for that matter.

I guess it did the trick because the old rust bucket sat there on the edge of my field undisturbed for quite some time. I eventually got up the nerve to walk up to it, to get a real good look at it. It had local plates that were now expired. The inside of the car was all black vinyl. And it was clean. There were no suitcases clogging up the back seat. There was no bloody trail leading to the trunk. There was just dusty old seats. I didn’t try the trunk. I knew that as long as I had the car I could never pry that thing open. Heck, I didn’t even try the doors to see if they were locked or not, to see if there was anything under the seats. I didn’t want to ruin the magic of this car. It had kept my mind whirling for the longest time, trying to come up with every possible solution to how this car got here and why no one had come for it. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. And no matter how many scenarios I came up with, I always came back to Jimmy. They hadn’t found him yet, so it could still be him.

Things were quiet for a long time. Months rolled by as I buried myself in farmwork. It wasn’t hard to do. There’s no such thing as a day off on a farm. When the weather got warm again, I took to sitting out on the porch, sometimes with Larry, more often just by myself. When Harold came up onto the porch, it sent me for a loop, that’s for sure.

“What if there’s money in there?” were the first words out of his mouth. I shook my head. If he’d come back just to get me to go into the car, he might as well have stayed away. And I was ready to tell him that, too.

“Walter, don’t be stupid. You could be a millionaire, and you don’t even know it.”

“People don’t abandon millions of dollars in cars. If they did, they’ll come back for it. Nothing good would come of taking it out.”

“You’re a fool, Walter. I don’t know why I bother.”

I built a small wooden rail alongside it, to trap it into my land. So that everyone would know that it was my car, on my land. And if someone came looking for it, well, I hadn’t moved it an inch from where they had left it. Most of the locals had forgotten about how the car showed up on my lawn. Me and Larry would talk about it from time to time, but that was about it. In this part of the state most of your bigger homes have at least one car somewhere on the property. But me and Larry weren’t the only ones who hadn’t forgotten.

It was a long time later, but when Harold returned, he was still on the same topic. “Says here in this magazine that Hoffa is buried at Giants Stadium.”

“Don’t prove nothing,” I told him.

“But this is from a mobster. He would know.”

“Don’t touch the car, Harold.”

He stormed off again.

When Harold came back, he didn’t come to the porch. I had just gone into the kitchen for another beer during a commercial break when I glanced out the window and saw a flashlight working its way toward Jimmy’s car. I glanced at the clock and thought about the stupid high school boys. It was a school night, but what did that ever matter to delinquents?

I cursed at whatever stupid idiot this was going to turn out to be because I was going to miss the end of my show. This was before everyone had them VCR’s. Not that it would’ve mattered. I never learned how to program the thing. I picked up my shotgun and headed out. The flashlight was not like when them kids went to it. This was a steady beam of light, making its way straight to where the car sat.

I moved as quickly as I could over to where Jimmy’s car was. I could tell that the flashlight would beat me there, and I thought about shouting out to whoever it was, but I wanted to see the face of who was doing this to me. If I yelled, they might run off, and I would always be left wondering just who it was.

As I got closer, I heard the sound of breaking glass. I ran as fast as I could, and when I came up to the car, I saw someone sitting in the front seat on the passenger’s side. It looked like they were going through the glove compartment. I stood a few feet away and aimed the gun at the intruder. “Get out nice and slow.”

The figure turned and smiled at me. It was Harold. “Hey, Walter, I had to find out.”

“You?” I momentarily faltered. My gun started to dip toward the ground. “What are you doing in the car?”

“There could be money in this car. Don’t you understand? We could be rich, beyond our wildest dreams. We could have young girls wanting us. Things that could never happen without money.”

“What do you mean, we? This car is on my property, not yours. Now, get out of the car. I mean it. I don’t care if there’s a billion dollars sitting in there. This car was not to be touched. And I told you that more than once.”

“I opened the glove compartment. I know who the car was registered to.”

“I don’t want to hear it!” I shouted louder than I had intended. Not that it mattered. My closest neighbor was not in shouting distance. “Get out of the car, Harold, before I shoot you where you are.” I raised the gun again. His eyes fixed on the long, dark barrels and nothing else.

“Walter, don’t be stupid.”

“I am really tired of hearing you say that. You were my best friend for years, but you always told me I was stupid. You stopped talking to me, all over this car, and now you have the nerve to say it again. Now, I asked you once already. Get out of Jimmy’s car.”

“This is not Jimmy’s...”

Harold never finished his sentence. Or if he did, I couldn’t hear it over the shotgun blast. I stood there looking at his body strung out over the front seat. The glove compartment was open, and papers were hanging out and some lay under him. Eventually I moved back toward the house, leaving him be. I knew no one would be coming down the road this time of night. I got an old equipment cover from the shed and flung it over the whole scene. It covered everything, even Harold’s legs, now hanging out the passenger door. I didn’t shut the door, I didn’t do nothing. I just left it there until the following night.

No one came by asking about Harold. No one wanted to know if I had seen him. I guess after years of not talking to each other, people no longer thought of us in the same sentence. That night I forsook television and made my way out to Jimmy’s place. I pulled back the cover and looked at what damage had been done the night before. Harold was still dead; his blood had ruined the front seat. The papers from the glove compartment looked ruined as well. I climbed over Harold, not really thinking about what I was doing, until I was in the driver’s seat. I released the emergency brake, then got out and pushed Jimmy’s car a few feet forward. Finally I took shovel to earth and began to dig, in what I knew would be a long night.

I wanted to give Harold a proper burial, so I dug down six feet, just like they’d do at a Christian cemetery. By the time I finished digging I was too tired to say any words, so I just pulled him out and flung him in the grave. I did look down at his body and stared for a long time.

“You tried to take the magic away.”

The sun was rising by the time I’d filled the grave. I didn’t take no breaks. I knew that I had to finish before there were folks about. The blood-soaked papers I returned to the glove compartment. I didn’t even think about looking at them. I had to preserve whatever was left of the magic.

I pushed the car back into position, relocked the doors, and threw the cover over the car. Then I headed back to the house to take a much needed shower.

I have watched the snow cover the car and wondered about how old Harold was coping. I have watched them auction off his farm. His name is almost never brought up no more. No one really knows what happened. Sometimes people disappear. Like Jimmy Hoffa.

I know Harold said with his dying breath that the car wasn’t Jimmy’s. That doesn’t really surprise me. I mean it has local tags. I imagine the hit men that brought Jimmy out here have cars in every state for whatever emergency needs to be taken care of. Besides, Harold didn’t look in the trunk, and my guess is that is where whatever secret this car holds is. That is where the magic remains.

They built an interstate nearby a few years back, and my old country road has seen a definite increase in traffic. More and more farmers are selling off their land to real estate people who turn them into tract homes. That type of life is not for me. I look out the window at the car, half covered with a sheet that blows off more times than it stays on, and I keep waiting for someone to drive by and recognize the car.

And I imagine who it will be and how they will recognize it. Will it be the husband of the long missing wife, or some mobster guy in the witness protection program who panics when he sees the car with Hoffa’s body sitting plain as day at the edge of the farm? Sometimes I think that when someone does recognize it they’ll come after me and kill me. And the more I run that play through my mind, the more I don’t think that’s so bad. There isn’t much good on television any more these days, and I miss talking to my friend Harold.