“I have a kid that age,” said Timmy. “Well, almost. He’ll be fifteen next month.”
Weaver grinned. “Good luck, my friend. Fifteen is the worst. Luke put us through hell. Three schools, rehab, you name it. But he’s come out the other end. The car is his reward.”
Timmy thought, You get a reward for that?
“I’ve been looking for one of these for a while,” Weaver said. “Plenty of scammers out there. Everyone says mint condition. Then you find rust in the undercarriage.”
“Not this one,” said Timmy. “Have a look if you don’t believe me.”
“No need. I can see she’s in great shape. You made a great investment,” Weaver said. “It’s a hell of a business model. You buy a car that’s forty or fifty years old, the cars we wanted when we were kids. The nostalgia market. It’s how you get guys our age, at their peak earning power. That’s the sweet spot. The old guys don’t care anymore, and younger guys don’t have the dough.”
They rolled back into the parking lot. Weaver pulled into a space and engaged the brake. He reached into his coat and handed Timmy a sealed envelope, looking over his shoulder. “This feels a little sketchy. I mean, I never carry cash.”
Timmy, who always carried cash, slid his finger beneath the flap.
Weaver looked alarmed. “You’re going to count it?”
“No offense.” Timmy thought, Why the fuck would I not count it? I’ve never seen you before in my life.
“None taken. Just . . .” Weaver glanced around nervously. “This isn’t the best neighborhood.”
Timmy blinked. He’d chosen the meeting place carefully, a high-end grocery store in gentrified Jamaica Plain, where a small apartment went for a half million—still a rough neighborhood, apparently, to a man in pink pants.
He counted quickly. After twelve years in a cash business, he could have done it in his sleep. “Looks like we’re good,” he said.
“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.” Weaver offered his hand. “Sorry, I never got your last name.”
For a second, from long habit, Timmy hesitated—stupidly, because the guy would see his full name the minute he handed over the title.
“Flynn,” he said. “Tim Flynn.”
HE WATCHED THE CAR DRIVE AWAY. EVEN AT TWENTY MILES PER hour, Ross Weaver rode the brake. Handing him the title, Timmy had felt a wave of sadness and guilt. Selling the Cuda to this douchebag was unfair to the Cuda.
Timmy thought how he and Claudia had driven it together, almost without speaking. Her eyes had never left the road.
As the car disappeared around the corner, he raised his hand in a salute.
With Weaver’s cash in his pocket, he set out walking. The snow had melted and refrozen, melted and refrozen. The surface was crusted over with grime.
When he arrived at the tattoo shop, Connor was sitting at the front flipping through a magazine. Timmy saw him through the plateglass window: his skinny arms and Cub Scout chest, the knobby bones of his shoulders poking through his T-shirt. He looked not much older than Timmy’s son, and yet he possessed an awesome talent. The last twenty-four hours of Timmy’s life, remarkable as they were, were due entirely to Connor. Connor’s ink had gotten him laid. How exactly this had happened was, to Timmy, a mystery. Taking off his shirt had seemed natural, inevitable even. He hadn’t even remembered to suck in his gut.
The hours spent in Connor’s chair, the hundreds of dollars he’d spent, the countless bags of weed. Timmy understood, now, the point of it all. He’d done it so somebody would read him, the entire story of him written on his skin.
He studied his back in the mirror.