Leroy Kranz

Leroy Kranz was born to work on cars. He had grown up in them as a boy in upstate Indiana. He had worked on and raced them in his tumultuous teenage years. In the Army, he had found a branch that did nothing but work on vehicles, and now he spent what he viewed as the twilight of his life alone amongst the carcasses of cars.

For the most part, the only segment of his life not injected with the smell of oil and gasoline and the reverberating pulse of the internal combustion engine were the 4 years he had spent at West Point as a Cadet, which, by his consideration, were the worst four years he had spent anywhere in his entire life. He ended those, rather fittingly, in a car by spinning his tires and leaving a large track of molten rubber that stretched diagonally across central area as he left, never to return.

The junkyard he now owned and haunted was in Nebraska, about as far away from humanity as a human being could possibly volunteer to live without being considered mentally incompetent. The yard itself was, to the few people who knew Leroy well enough to get to see it, characteristic Kranz; disorganized groups of cars strewn about what at one point was a cornfield. Leroy didn't consider them junk, really - they were classics, all cars made before 1973. In a modern world of electronic fuel injection and onboard computers, they were obsolete and not many people had much use for parts from them. This fact limited the yard's income substantially, but for the most part Leroy didn't give a good damn because he'd rather the parts stayed on the cars anyway. Leroy also didn't give a good damn about the lack of profit from the yard because the majority of his income came from writing books anyway.

Sunday found Leroy sitting on the remains of a rusty white 1964 Impala SS. It was an odd place for a man to sit, and an even odder place for a man to sit and write a novella. A lot of things about Leroy were odd, specifically the way his bushy beard grew at an abnormal rate, the way his glasses refused to sit evenly on his nose, the way his graying hair grew wildly out the side of his head but not at all on the shiny top, the way he wrote while sitting on top of dead cars, or the way he always carried a loaded assault rifle with him. These things in the past had perturbed people to no end, but now that he lived alone in Nebraska he didn't really give a good damn about his oddities and idiosyncrasies because there weren't many people around to be perturbed by them anyway.

A black sedan rolled lazily up the mile long driveway, kicking up a white dust cloud and tripping a series of motion detectors that set off an alarm on Leroy's belt. He had company.

Through the spotting scope, he could see that the interlopers were driving a black sedan, about the most dangerous thing they could have done considering who it was they were going to meet and how heavily armed he was. Black, sedate sedans normally held authoritarian people who didn't share Leroy's views on gun ownership rights, and just as normally said sedans didn't make it much past the first row of claymores wired to the radio detonator on Leroy's watch. However, fortunately in this instance he had noticed the lack of aerial antennas on the vehicle before he detonated the mines, and the IRS agents inside were, for the most part, safe.

The vehicle skidded a little as it stopped on the gravel surface in front of Leroy's office and home. Leroy kept his distance, and clicked the selector on his moderately dirty AR-15 from safe to semi.

The agents regarded the oily, armed man before them with an air of discernment and caution.

"You Leroy Kranz?"
"Yeh, what's it to ya?"
"We want to ask you a few questions…"

The air was heavy with tension and bad vibration. They reminded him of cadets, which was also a bad move on their parts. The second most likely group of people to face leaden rain were ex-cadets and AOG members who wanted to invite him to reunions and/or ask him for money.

"Ask away." Kranz said the words with a tone usually reserved for "Draw" in a spaghetti western showdown.
"It's about a friend of yours… Leighton."

Leroy was shocked. It was a name he hadn't heard in a long time, and hearing it in this context baffled him for a second. He lowered the weapon and smiled.

"Well, boys… Come with me. Let's talk."

Out behind the ranch house about 500 yards was a large crater in the rich, black Nebraska soil that was filled with the remains of some household appliances and other refuse. It was a shooting pit, and Leroy came here often to relieve stress and conjure ideas to write about.

The IRS agents followed Leroy obediently like trained dogs.

Leroy chambered a round in the rifle, brought it up to his shoulder, and sighted in a Maytag washing machine that had failed on him.

"So tell me, what's going on with Tim?"

Crack-ack-ack. Three rounds tore through the machine.

"Well, Mr. Kranz, he's in some financial trouble. When was the last time you spoke with Mr. Leighton?"

Crack-ack-ack

"Well, honestly I think the last time I spoke with him was when he made his first million. He wanted something special, so he came to me with a dream and about two hundred thousand dollars in cold hard U.S. currency. I tricked out a fastback '67 Mustang for him, real classy job. "

Crack-ack-ack

"Ah, the infamous GT-500." The agent glanced at his comrade sidelong. In the Burbank area, the car had become a local legend for traffic violations.

Kranz lowered the weapon again, and tried to gauge the agent.

"It's not a GT-500"
"Pardon?"
"It wasn't really a GT-500; there were only about 1000 Shelby cars ever made made, and there aren't more than a handful of those original ones still around; it'd be a sin to chop one up with modifications. The one I made, it's what we call a clone - a car designed to look like the real thing without actually being a really rare car."

Crack-ack-ack. The washing machine was beginning to resemble metallic Swiss cheese.

"Phony, then?"
"The one I built was way better than anything Shelby ever put together."

Leroy jumped back to the initial statement the agent had made, mostly to confuse him into leaking more information.

"What sort of trouble is Tim in?"
"He owes us a lot of money."
"You mentioned that. Why come to me?"
"Well, you two are friends according to our information and…"
"Were."
"Pardon?"
"Were. I told you, I haven't heard from the guy in nearly 10 years."
"Er… oh. Right."

The last line was punctuated with the final 18 rounds in the clip shredding the remains of the washing machine and beginning work on a troublesome dining room set.

The second agent was agitated with the amount of gunfire in the conversation.

"Could we please go inside?" The agent motioned hopefully at the farmhouse.

Kranz lowered the weapon begrudgingly, put it on safe, and slung it over his left shoulder.

"This way please."

The agents were seated on a rather ratty couch, which fit in perfectly with the rest of the décor of the farmhouse. There were lots of papers and journals laying about, paper weighted with bottles of alcohol in varying stages of emptiness and indiscernible engine parts that were more or less not designed to serve as paperweights.

"Look, we know you two were close in school."
"Yep."
"You own stock in his movie studio."
"Yep."
"If he calls, you'll let us know?"
"No, probably not"

The agents were taken aback by this level of candor.

"Look, Mr. Kranz, please do call us if he calls you or shows up. It is most decidedly in your as well as his interest to do so."

Kranz weighed this problem. It added a new dimension to the gravity of the situation. He did not need people taking introspective into his life or his accounts, especially not with Martinez-Ramos bringing up another shipment of illegal Cuban cars. Those were the sorts of things that got people in trouble, particularly the variety of trouble he suspected Tim had gotten himself into yet again. It was a variety he knew well, and had learned to avoid with vigilance.

"Well, yknow. Alright, I'll let you know if anything interesting happens."

The agents had achieved their goal, and got up to leave. Kranz and the agents exchanged their formalities and he walked them out to their perilous black sedan. At the last minute, Kranz called out to them.

"Hey, yo!"

The agents paused.

"Has he still got the 'stang?"

The first agent didn't know, but the second seemed to and piped up.

"Actually, no. He used it as collateral on a loan he defaulted on, I think. I heard it was some Chicago Mafioso's personal ride, now."

Kranz shook his head and laughed, kicking a spray of gravel at the house as he walked back towards the front porch. As he shuffled back in, he looked towards the pale blue heavens and said something he hadn't had an opportunity or reason to say in a long time.

"Sneaky trick…"