The Stranger

Chapter 29

The American Legion Hall was close to the relative bustle of downtown Cedarfield. This made it a tempting place to park when the limited metered spots on the streets filled up. To combat this, the American Legion powers that be hired a local guy, John Bonner, to “guard” the lot. Bonner had grown up in this town-had even been captain of the basketball team his senior year-but somewhere along the way, mental health issues began to gnaw at his edges before they moved inside and settled in for the long haul. Now Bonner was the closest thing to what Cedarfield might call a homeless guy. He spent his nights at Pines Mental Health and his days shuffling around town muttering to himself about various political conspiracies involving the current mayor and Stonewall Jackson. Some of Bonner’s old classmates at Cedarfield High felt bad about his predicament and wanted to help. Rex Davies, the president of the American Legion, came up with the idea of giving Bonner the lot job just so he’d stop wandering so much.

Bonner, Adam knew, took his new job seriously. Too seriously. With his natural tendency toward OCD, he kept an extensive notebook that contained a potent blend of vague paranoid ramblings and ultra specifics about the makes, colors, and license plates of every vehicle that entered his lot. When you pulled in to park for something other than American Legion Hall business, Bonner would either warn you off, sometimes with a little too much gusto, or would intentionally let you illegally park, make sure that you had indeed gone to the Stop & Shop or Backyard Living instead of the hall, and then he’d call his old teammate Rex Davies, who coincidentally owned a body shop and car towing service.

Everything’s a racket.

Bonner eyed Adam suspiciously as he pulled into the American Legion lot. He wore, as he always did, a blue blazer with too many buttons so that it looked like something used in a Civil War reenactment, and a red-and-white checkered tablecloth-cum-shirt. His pants were frayed at the cuffs, and a pair of laceless Chucks adorned his feet.

Adam had realized that he could no longer afford to sit back and wait for Corinne’s return. There were enough lies and deception to go around, he thought, but whatever it was that had gone terribly wrong in the past few days had started here, at the American Legion Hall, when the stranger told him about that damned website.

“Hey, Bonner.”

Bonner may have recognized him, may have not. “Hey,” he said cautiously.

Adam put the car in park and got out. “I got a problem.”

Bonner wriggled eyebrows so bushy they reminded Adam of Ryan’s gerbils. “Oh?”

“I’m hoping you can help me.”

“You like buffalo wings?”

Adam nodded. “Sure.” Supposedly, Bonner had been a genius before his illness, but wasn’t that what they always say about someone with serious mental health issues? “You want me to get you some from Bub’s?”

Bonner looked aghast. “Bub’s is shit!”

“Right, sorry.”

“Ah, go away.” He waved a hand at Adam. “You don’t know nothing, man.”

“Sorry. Really. Look, I need your help.”

“Lots of people need my help. But I can’t be everywhere, now, can I?”

“No. But you can be here, right?”

“Huh?”

“In this lot. You can help with a problem in this lot. You can be here.”

Bonner lowered his bushy eyebrows to the point where Adam couldn’t see his eyes. “A problem? In my lot?”

“Yes. See, I was here the other night.”

“For the lacrosse draft,” Bonner said. “I know.”

The sudden recollection should have startled Adam, but for some reason, it didn’t. “Right, so anyway, my car got sideswiped by some out-of-towners.”

“What?”

“Did some pretty serious damage.”

“In my lot?

“Yeah. Young out-of-towners, I think. They were driving a gray Honda Accord.”

Bonner’s face reddened at the injustice. “You get the plate number?”

“No, that’s what I was hoping you could give me. So I can file a claim. They left at approximately ten fifteen.”

“Oh, right, I remember them.” Bonner took out his giant notebook and started paging through rapidly. “That was Monday.”

“Yes.”

He flipped more pages, his pace growing more and more frantic. Adam glanced over Bonner’s shoulder. Every page in the thick notebook was filled from top to bottom, from far left to far right, with tiny letters. Bonner kept turning pages at a furious clip.

Then suddenly, Bonner stopped.

“You found it?”

A slow grin came to Bonner’s face. “Hey, Adam?”

“What?”

Bonner turned the grin toward him. Then he did the gerbil wriggle again and said, “You got two hundred bucks on you?”

“Two hundred?”

“Because you’re lying to me.”

Adam tried to look perplexed. “What are you talking about?”

Bonner slammed the notebook closed. “Because, you see, I was here. I would have heard your car getting hit.”

Adam was about to counter when Bonner held up his palm.

“And before you tell me it was late or it was noisy or it was barely a scratch, don’t forget that your car is sitting right over there. It’s got no damage. And before you tell me you were driving your wife’s car or some other lie”-Bonner held up the notebook, still grinning-“I got the details of that night right here.”

Caught. Caught in a clumsy lie by Bonner.

“So the way I see it,” Bonner continued, “you want that guy’s license plate number for another reason. He and that cute blonde he was with. Yeah, yeah, I remember them because the rest of you clowns I’ve seen a million times. They were strangers. Didn’t belong. I wondered why they were here.” He grinned again. “Now I know.”

Adam thought about saying a dozen things, but he settled on the simplest: “Two hundred dollars, you say?”

“It’s a fair price. Oh, and I don’t take checks. Or quarters.”