The Accident

THIRTY-EIGHT

It wasn’t immediately obvious these parts were all junk. As knockoff electrical bits went, they looked pretty authentic. But sitting in the back of Doug’s truck, studying them, I was able to spot things that didn’t pass muster. The circuit breaker parts, for one, had no certification marks on them. Anything legit would have had them. The color of the plastic used for the light switches was off, not consistent throughout. You handle parts like these long enough, you just know.

I had a terrible, sinking feeling. There was something Sally had said. “What if someone gave him the wrong parts and he couldn’t tell the difference?” Maybe Theo hadn’t been in the business long enough to spot this kind of thing, to have an instinctive feel for it.

Shit.

What the hell was junk like this doing in the back of Doug’s truck? Was he the one who’d substituted parts like this on the Wilson job? Had he done it on any others?

I slid the two boxes along the truck bed until they were positioned on the tailgate, then carried them, stacked one atop the other, to my own vehicle. I tossed them into the back, put up the tailgate, then locked the shed, the office, and the gate that led into the property.

I called Doug on his cell phone, hoping his service hadn’t been cut off for nonpayment. Surely the bill had been one of those tucked, unopened, in his kitchen drawer.

I got lucky.

“Yeah, Glen?” He sounded weary.

“Hey,” I said. “You get settled in with Betsy’s mom?”

“Yeah, but man, this is no way to live. She’s got five fucking cats.”

“Have any luck at the bank?”

“They were closing when we got there, so we’re going to go first thing in the morning, try to talk some sense into them. This is totally unfair, man, really.”

“Yeah. Listen, I need to see you.”

“What’s up?”

“We need to talk, in person. I know you’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment, but it’s important.”

“Yeah, well, I guess.”

“I can drive up to Derby, but I don’t know where your mother-in-law’s place is.” Doug gave me an address. I was pretty sure I knew the street. “Okay, I’m heading up there now.”

“Can you stay for a beer?” he asked. “Because, listen. That thing I said the other day, kinda threatening you, that was out of line, you know? I feel bad about that. Elsie-that’s Betsy’s mom-she’s got some beer in the fridge and she says I can take three a day out of there. I’ll save you one.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “See you in a bit.”

It wasn’t that far to Derby, but it felt like a long drive. I’d really wanted to lay all this on Theo. I’d never liked the guy, and I’d never been that crazy about his work. If the fire had to be blamed on him, well, that suited me fine. Even considering that Sally was supposedly going to marry the guy.

I would never have wanted Doug to be the bad guy. I wondered what my father’s reaction would have been to finding out that one of his supposedly most loyal employees had done something that could destroy the company.

He’d have fired his ass, that’s what he would have done.

I found the street, turned down it, and about halfway up, in a driveway on the left, I spotted Betsy’s Infiniti. I wondered how much longer she’d have that. I could see a ten-year-old Neon in her future.

I parked in front of her mother’s house, a brick two-story. A Siamese cat was watching the street through the front window. I went up the drive and was about to knock when the door opened.

“You made good time,” Doug said, a cigarette dangling between his lips. “Usually you run into some rush-hour traffic this time of the day.”

“The roads were pretty clear.”

“Which way did you come? When I come, I usually take-”

“Doug, cut it.”

“Yeah, sure, okay. But you want that beer?”

“No.”

He took a long drag on the cigarette, then threw it to the ground. Smoke continued to waft up from it.

“Listen, I really appreciate your help this afternoon, and for kind of, you know, defusing a tense situation. If you hadn’t been there, I swear, I don’t know what I might have done to Betsy.”

“Emotions were kind of running high,” I said.

“Now, here at her mom’s, I got two of them going at me. Elsie takes Betsy’s side in everything. She doesn’t know how to see the big picture. And the place smells like cat piss.”

“Walk with me,” I said, leading him down the driveway to the truck.

“What’s on your mind, Glenny?”

“Just wait a minute. There’s something I need to show you.”

“Sure. I don’t suppose it’s a bag full of cash?” Doug forced a laugh. I didn’t respond.

I unlocked the tailgate and opened the window.

“I unloaded your truck for you,” I said.

“Oh, that’s good of you, man. ’Preciate it. Hope it doesn’t take up too much room in the shed.”

“I found these two boxes up by the cab.” I paused, waiting for a reaction. Getting none, I said, “You recognize these?”

He shrugged. “They’re boxes.”

“You know what’s inside them?”

“Beats me.”

“No idea?”

“Can we open ’em up?”

I pulled back the cardboard flaps on the first one, tossed aside some Chinese newspaper clumps, and lifted out a circuit breaker switch. Doug, uncrumpling a balled-up piece of newsprint, said, “How does anyone read this shit? Have you ever wondered how the Chinese do typewriters when there’s, like, a million letters? Their computers must have keypads the size of driveways. How do they do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“This stuff was in my truck?” Doug said, tossing the paper aside.

“Yeah. The other box is full of the same. Switches, outlets, all that kind of thing.”

“Huh,” he said.

“You saying you don’t recognize this?”

“They’re switches and shit. Sure, I recognize that kind of thing. But I don’t know what it’s doing in my truck. Just supplies, I guess. You know everything that’s in the back of your truck?”

“This stuff, none of it’s up to code,” I said. “It’s made overseas, made to look like legitimate parts made here.”

“You think?”

“I know. This is what caused the fire at the Wilson house, Doug.”

“This stuff here? It doesn’t looked burnt or nothing.”

“Stuff just like it. I got the news from Alfie today, over at the fire department.”

He took the part from my hand. “Looks okay.”

“It’s got no certification stamp. Although some, I gather, do, but the stamps are fake.”

He turned it around in his hand. “Damned if it don’t look like the real McCoy.”

I took the part from him and tossed it into the box. “I just accused Theo Stamos of installing this in the Wilson place. It got a bit ugly. He swore up and down it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t believe him. Thing is, I still don’t. I think he installed it. But what I’m wondering now is, did he knowingly do it?”

“Knowingly?”

“I wonder if the parts got switched on him.”

“Why would someone do that?” Was Doug really this thick, or was it an act?

“You substitute knockoff parts for the real thing, you can return the real stuff to the store and make a tidy little profit.”

“Yeah, I suppose- You? You mean me?”

“That’s what I want to know, Doug. I want to know if that’s what you did.”

“Jesus, are you kidding me? You think I’d do something like that?”

“I never would have, but now, I don’t know anymore. You went behind my back with Sally, tried to get an advance on your salary. That was wrong. You threatened to call the IRS on me. You’re in the middle of a financial meltdown, and your wife spends money like she’s printing it off the computer.”

“Come on, man. That’s a serious accusation.”

“I know. And I want you to explain to me why this stuff is in your truck.”

Doug swallowed, glanced up and down the street. “I swear to you, I don’t know anything about this, Glen.”

“No idea,” I said.

“Nope.” A lightbulb seemed to go off. “You know what I think?”

“Tell me.”

“I think I’m being set up or something.”

“You’re being framed?”

“Yup.”

“Who’s framing you, Doug?”

“If I knew that, don’t you think I’d tell you? Maybe it’s KF.”

“Ken Wang,” I said.

“He’s Chinese,” he said. “Maybe those are his newspapers in the box there.”

“He’s grown up in America,” I said. “I don’t even know if he knows Chinese.”

“I’ve heard him speak it. Remember that time we went into that Chinese place for lunch, Ken was talking to the owner?”

“I don’t remember that,” I said.

“Well, I do. He was all ‘egg foo this and moo shu that.’ You should talk to him, that’s what you should be doing.”

“The stuff is in your truck, Doug.”

Betsy popped her head out the front door and shouted, “What’s going on?”

“Go inside!” Doug shouted at her, and she did.

“You know what I think?” I asked him.

“What?”

“I think you’ve let me down. Big-time.”

“No way, man. We go way back.”

“That’s why this hurts so much. I know you’re in deep shit, Doug. I know the wolves are at your door. But you ask for help. You don’t betray a friend. You don’t put everything he has at risk.”

“Seriously, I don’t know nothin’ about those boxes.”

“Don’t come in tomorrow, Doug. Except to pick up your truck.”

“What about the day after that? What are you saying?” Something occurred to him. “Can I still leave our stuff in the shed?”

I slammed the tailgate shut and walked around to the driver’s door, Doug trailing me.

“Come on, man! This is the worst day of my life, and now you’re, what-firing me? Is that what you’re doing? What the fuck?”

I got in the truck, slammed the door and locked it. Through the closed window I could still hear Doug shouting at me.

“You’re supposed to be my friend, you son of a bitch! Why are you doing this to me? Huh? Your old man would never treat me like this!” A pause to catch his breath, then, “I should have let you burn!”

I hit the gas and was on New Haven Avenue when I had to pull off into a service station parking lot. I threw the truck into park, rested my elbows on the steering wheel, and pressed the heels of my hands into my forehead, taking deep breaths all the while.

“Damn it, Doug,” I said under my breath. I’d never felt more let down, more betrayed.

You think you know people.

“I don’t know anybody anymore,” I said to myself.

When I got home, it was dusk.

I didn’t like coming back to an empty place. I knew sending Kelly away was the best thing to do, but right now, I wished she was here. I needed someone. And while I wouldn’t have poured my heart out to Kelly the way I would have to Sheila-I was hardly going to burden her with my disappointment in Doug-I would have hugged her, and felt her arms around me in return, and maybe that would have been enough.

With all the spring in my step of a dead man walking, I went to the front door, and as I was about to slip the key into it, I noticed it was slightly ajar.

I knew that when I’d left I’d closed and locked this door.

I pushed, ever so gently, against it, just far enough to slip inside. I thought I heard some kind of jostling in the kitchen.

It looked as though I was going to get my wish after all. There was someone in the house.