A Clear Title
by Corby Anderson
October, 2008
My old friend and longtime mentor Dan Shipp once gave me some sage advice. Literally. There, atop the summit of a steep ridge that runs alongside his modest ranch in unincorporated Pitkin County, Colorado, wading waist deep through snowbound mountain sage, which he is violently allergic too and limits his beloved hill climbs to just once or twice a month, Dan stopped to deliver one of his tremendously simple and prophetic life spiels to me; his tenant and protégé in all things fun and lively.
As my landlord, though he hardly fit the stereotype, with the regular, wild parties and family style suppers and weekend long whiskey binges, Dan knew well the state of my financial affairs – and all other affairs as well. He knows that I tend to live for the moment, and to spend my paychecks accordingly. Mr. Shipp, as I call him, approves of my soulful intention, but not the shortsighted ignorance of my plan, which is really not a plan at all, but a reaction to my native desire to live an interesting life of high times. Dan is a businessman – a successful trial lawyer and an esteemed member of the Colorado Bar, and more importantly perhaps, of the Aspen valley community, and other communities that he has roared through over the course of his decidedly full life. He has built his small empire out there on Shipp Ranch in Emma, Colorado over measured time, with the equity of his own hard work, brilliance in the chambers of law, and astute financial reckoning
Stopping to catch out breath after a lung searing climb to The Cairn, a lovely pile of mossy granite built by a forlorn divorcee friend of ours, Dan offered me water, and a bit of his down home wisdom
“Corby”, he said in that thick, distinguished Mississippi drawl, “don’t ever buy a used car from a dealer. They are not to be trusted. Don’t buy used cars PERIOD! Save that money and put it down on a new car when you can afford to take on the new payment…And start two savings accounts that you put a hundred dollars in every month. And here…” he said, passing me a flask of VO, “Drink this. You’ll thank me on the way down…
I thought of that day on The Hill, sitting next to The Cairn, as I drove over to Chuqui’s Used Autos this morning. My mind was wrestling with issues of weighty substance as I pulled into the used car lot. This was officially day two of the New Depression. The bitter marketeers had responded like deprived babies to the news of our Congressional rejection of the proposed Bailout yesterday, and had lashed out with spurned fury and vindictiveness at the very core of the American financial system. A trillion dollars in collective wealth was flushed unceremoniously and nearly silently, save for a few silent screams and the light thud of an impotent gavel.
To boot, there were issues to consider of a personal nature: such as what to do with myself for the next two days come ten o’clock tonight, when the long run of schizophrenically scheduled work days relented and spilled me out into the streets with a midweek 48 hour leave. Also, this matter of not having listened to Dan’s sage advice.
Three months ago, my wife and I went on a car hunt. I had saved a wad of dough after a series of fortuitous freelance video productions came my way, and had just enough to buy her something to get up and down the coast to work with. We didn’t have any savings, and combined we make only enough to support one car payment, so against Dan’s advice, I made the call to buy a car that would work for the interim, fully aware that this was likely going to be a temporary fix to our two car conundrum.
For the first six months of our new life in Monterey, we shared one vehicle, the newish and brutish Toyota that I had somehow pulled out of the overvalued townhouse that we somehow own in Colorado. That car was used as well, and, yes, I bought it from a dealer. And dammit, if the thing didn’t have a previously undisclosed, pocked and chipped windshield when I showed up in Phoenix on Christmas Eve day with only a one way ticket there, a bank check, and the cloths that I wore. Realizing the fruitlessness of my objections, and the nature of my self-imposed and stupidly confident stranding, I bought the pig fucker anyways. It was too cool, my dream ride, and I had gone years without a reliable ride, and indeed had gone months without a ride of my own at all, once both of our cars finally shit their respectful beds.
Of course, on the very first morning that the truck spent in the below zero Colorado winter, wrapped in giant red ribbons like a giant Tonka truck for a Christmas reveal, those chips formed a thread, and the thread a crack, and the crack a river of broken windshield glass. That windshield costs a cool (pun!) grand to replace – and big surprise! The dealer refused to reimburse, despite his assertions on the lot that the mystery chips had been sealed, that the window was crack proof. I should have learned.
Chuqui’s Autos is a typical lot. It sits just off of the main drag between Salinas and Marina, California, beckoning needy travelers with shiny castoffs and tempting projects. Promise and revitalization course through the asphalt rows where it’s occupants sit like stunned puppies waiting for a kinder home. It is there that we found a sleek black rig to satiate my home girl’s need for some respectability and comfort following a truly bad luck streak of beaters.
When I met Sharon, she was driving a glorious old Volkswagen bus, which I took to almost as immediately as her. We camped, and cruised, and necked, and watched stats, and drove to baseball games, and took the dogs to the lake almost every weekend. But time caught up with her orange bus, and it self-immolated there on Main Street while she was driving it. A passing driver signaled to her to pull over, that her car was engulfed in flames. She bailed, but not before getting her laundry basket out, and then it was gone.
Her last car was a faded red Jeep Cherokee that we bought off of my parents for a thousand dollars, paid off in irregular payments of $100. It was the car of my youth, and that of my brothers, and proudly showed the scars of youthful indiscretion and family trucksterism. By the time that it got to us it had well over 200,000 hard miles engraved on it, suffered from a myriad of chronic illnesses; a hidden malignancy in the electrical system, toasted brakes, a shredded drive train, and sported a curious limp. It came with a warning, an expiration date, and then dutifully served its purpose as a valley car (a car that is not to leave the valley, upon penalty of self-destruction) for a good year before I doomed the thing with consecutive, defiant trips to the rutted roads of Moab, Utah, and a final death blow of a failed attempt at making a vital appointment over the mountain to Denver. It keeled over one last time with a grating gnash on a blind curve on a 6% downgrade in a snowstorm at 5 in the morning. I walked to town cursing my luck, and, after a series of sad phone calls and tow rides, signed it’s death warrant in the storm littered graveyard of a Georgetown, Colorado salvage yard.
After several weeks of internet shopping, Nickel ads, and looking in the local papers, we commenced upon a roving sampling of used car dealerships in the area, finally settling on the Infinity from Chuqui’s, despite it’s tonnage of miles and misleading name. It ran strong on a road test, held a straight frame, and fit the shoe full of money that we had saved. The negotiations with Chuqui’s were brief and basic, but notable in the absence of authority that our “agent” seemed to be able to muster. With each price that I proposed, he would apologize, stand up, and go into a back office, which was directly behind the desk that we were sitting at.
The office at Chuqui’s is a rejiggered construction trailer with soft, thin walls and strange décor. Behind the brown door of management, there was nothing but quiet. Any thing being discussed was at a whisper, if at all. I imagined that Alberto was just going in for a breather, staring at the walls, perhaps checking his email. With each new point of negotiation, he would return and refer to a boss that had either approved or disapproved of a proposal. It was odd, and I was tired, worn down by this charade. Out of energy, we relented on the price and signed the papers. I handed over the cash in a long black leather Wells Fargo bank bag, grabbed the keys and clarified the title transfer process. Alberto told us that the title and registration would arrive in the mail within three weeks. The temporary plates gave us three months. I let it go and kept an eye on the mailbox.
Weeks passed, time peeled away. Groups of months formed. Nothing came. I called every few weeks. Stopped by the lot, inquired. Always, I was told to wait, that the DMV takes up to three months, and to be patient. Doubt crept in. Something about the way that the dodgy geek was always moving, never stopped to talk, to sit down with his worried customer told me that he was a fraud – and that I was caught up in some sort of Larcenous game. But still I waited. I had other fish to fry.
And then I looked at a calendar. Suddenly, September was over, bringing Central California pseudo-Fall and the scrutinous heat of the Law, who would surely pounce on a sleek black truck with a pretty redhead and out of date plates. This is what these guys live for! And who knows what they might find when they did. I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I went back down to Chuqui’s fired up, ready to demand action. New energy coursed through my body, bolstering my will. I wore a suit, mirrored aviators, and a thick undercover mustache. I carried with me a small wire bound notepad and a fat red felt pen, for notes, and for effect. I meant business.
Walking in the door I ran into Alberto, who asked how he could help me. I told him that I wanted my car title, and the registration that I had paid for. I asked why his boss’s wife, who apparently handles such things, did not call me back on Monday, as he had promised that she would when I had called the previous Friday. “Alberto” I said, “I am not fucking around here. I want to know where this title is.” He looked at me blankly, then got on the phone, and when the phone answered he rattled off a two-minute barrage of Spanish. I cursed myself for not paying more attention to Olga Tarshis’ brutal lessons in high school. But who in their right mind can concentrate on foreign adjectives with a ripping case of teenage angst, a meandering mind, and an unrequited desire to hump any girl that would let me? Also, there was the tantilyzing matter of the elderly Tarshis’ alleged communist Cubanism, and the unforgettable habit of pulling a tissue from out of her grey bra to blow her nose, the process, which was then reversed. It was all too much for a southern boy to follow without slipping into a defocused clowning survival mode.
“Thursday.” Alberto said, smiling through his front gold tooth, which I thought an odd bit of flair for a wiry gamer type. “Thursday? Why Thursday? Why not today. Thursday is beyond the expiration date. We will have to park the car, or risk a ticket. Have you seen my wife? She’s a rolling billboard for cops to fuck with. I need this today. “Thursday Mr. Anderson. You can have your registration on Thursday.” Alberto said from his chair. I scribbled notes in my new, totally undecipherable shorthand. I vowed to myself to invent a small notebook with horizontal lines so that I could use the length of the page rather than the tall part, which is a ridiculously short line.
“Why have I had to wait for three months for this to happen?” Alberto looked nervously at my notepad. “What is that for?” “I am a journalist, Alberto. I write for the Monterey County Weekly. I am very interested in the story of this car that I purchased from you with cash, Alberto…why have we had to wait until the last minute for you to register the thing, and why is it suddenly going to happen on Thursday, after the registration is invalid?” I challenged. He shifted in his creaky managers chair, then stood up and walked to the infamous back office, where all used car dealers go to vanish. “One moment, Mister Anderson, let me see what the hold up is.” He said in a Spanglish tinged blur as he passed. Just as soon as he entered the room, he came back out, as if we were on the set of a high school play. I made a note to write a play about a used car salesman named Chuqui and a reporter named Anderson. Art mimics life, or something like that. The total amount of time that he was in that vague back room was less than 5 seconds. He walked back over to me and asked if I would like to have the registration mailed to me on Thursday. “Fuck no I don’t want it mailed. According to you this goddamned thing has been in the mail for three bloody months! I want this done now!” I was getting irritated.
Just then a tall, thin white man with blond bangs hanging down over his eyes walked out of the back room. He had the look of a hyena circling a healthy wild beast. Nothing he could do but menace, until his pack arrived. “Hey! You. Are you the owner of this place?” I demanded. “That doesn’t matter.” He said in a low voice. “Doesn’t matter? Look here, what’s the game here pal? I gave you all five thousand dollars for a car that I cant get registered, this guy keeps making promises that he can’t keep, I need some answers. I write for the papers, you know.” I tried to sound official, thinking that it sounded better than threatening to set up a power point presentation at the resort. This send the aging surfer over what little edge he had been toeing. “I don’t care if you write for the New York fucking Times. Talk to him! He’s doing much better than I will with you.”
I looked at Alberto, and he had taken on a mousy shirk to his posture. He looked beaten, destroyed. “He’s no good. I need answers. All that I want is my registration and I will be out of your hair.”
“I know, I know, you’ve had to wait three whole months! I’ve heard you a dozen times back there. Big fucking deal! I’ve got people who have waited five months!”
“And these are your customers? Why would they put up with that? You can’t legally drive after three months.” Flipping his thinning mop back, the owner moved towards me, pointing a bony finger, wagging it. I made a note that his hand was shaking at a frequency that I had only seen in crank fueled bowling alley fights back home, back in Olga’s hood.
“You want the BLAME somebody?” he scowled, moving closer, still pointing his Richter needle finger at me, “then I suggest that you go down to Governor Schwarzenegger’s office and complain to him, because he is the one paying people minimum wage, and I used to be able to go to the DMV and do five at a time but now I can only do one and….” He was lost in a rant. I countered, stopping him. “What does this have to do with me? Are you telling me, your customer, who gave you a lot of money for a car, that the answer to my question as to where the clear title and registration is, is to call the Governor? Do you realize how insane you sound?” The dealer shrunk back, his confidence land sliding down his body. For the moment, he had nothing to say in response.
“What is your name?” I asked. “It. Does. Not. Matter. I told you that before.” He answered in a low growl, moving back towards his office. “Look man, if you are the owner of this business then I have a right to know. I can find out anyways. What is your fucking name?” He mumbled something incoherently. “What? You speak like a child, man. Fess up!” “Todd.” “Good. Last name?” “It doesn’t matter, I’ll be gone by Friday anyways. You’ll never see me again, how is that? That make you happy?” he tilted his head like a vengeful teenager driving home a ridiculous point. “Make me happy? You are telling me, Todd…” “That is with two D’s”, he shot back, cutting me off. I stared at him for a moment. “Really? How…odd, Todd. Two D’s, you don’t say?” “Yep!” he said proudly. “Two D’s” “Tod.d.d….” I said repeating the D’s at the end of his name for effect, “You are telling me that I am supposed to believe you, and this tool over here”, I pointed behind me, where a disinterested Alberto was lost in a game of battling elf’s and dragons at his desk, “…are promising that I will have my title and registration on Thursday, but that you are leaving on Friday, and that I will never see you again? Is this shop going to be open on Friday? What the fuck, man? What is going on here? How am I supposed to believe a fool word that comes out of you?”
Todd grabbed the pad of paper and red pen from my hand, snatching it to scribble something, and then hastily shoved it back towards me. “Here!” he said. I looked down at my notebook.
U SHOULD BE HERE THURSDAY.
ToDD (sic)
I laughed, possibly maniacally. This was getting to be beyond silly, we were entering a new layer of ridiculousness. I wished to a god that I do not even believe in that I had my lost audio recorder with me. “What the fuck is this?” I thrust out the paper that he had soiled. “What do I do with this shit? Is this some sort of receipt?” “You wanted proof.” He said arms on his hips, “That is proof.” It was all too much to take. I reiterated how crazy it all was. Todd was getting antsier than I thought possible for a human to be. “You’re shaking” I commented, trying to calm things down, to sort myself out. This situation was far beyond what I had prepared myself for, and I was late for work. “I KNOW! I KNOW! It’s low blood sugar, or something. I need food.” He begged. “You need food? Lets go to Taco Bell! I will take you to Taco Bell, how is that?” Incredulous. I did not want to go to Taco Bell, especially with Todd. I told him this, and he became infuriated. It felt like a good time to probe the inconsistencies in Todd’s story. ‘Where are you going on Friday?” I asked innocently. “Nowhere!” He shot back. “I was kid-ding, don’t you have a sense of humor?” for the first time I noticed how patriotic his eyes were. Deep blue, laced with red and surrounded by a tiny splash of white. His pupils were nearly gone. “I’ll be here till the end of time. They will bury me here!” then he went into another tirade, something to the effect of: “This business is going down by the minute, do you have any idea how bad things are for a used car dealer now? Bills, and credit, and registrations….”He was speaking in abbreviated sentences. Alberto yelled out loud: “Simone! Take that, cho wart puerco!” Todd stopped in mid-sentence, we both looked back at Alberto, who stood at his desk, headset attached to his narrow skull. “Oh.” He said, slowly taking off the headset. “Sorry about that boss.”
“What is your number?” he asked. I gave it to him. He dialed my number with the cordless home phone that was in his right hand. My cell phone rang in my pocket. “That’s me,” he said. “No shit? Why are you calling me, I am right here in front of you?” I asked. “So that you have my number.” “I HAVE your fucking number. It’s all over the place!” I said, pointing out the huge sign out front that proclaimed CHUQUI”S USED AUTOS – for a sweet deal 384-5555! Chuqui’s apparently rhymes with cookies. The license holder on our truck asks if the tailgater behind up has “Got Milk? Chuqui’s Autos”.
“Will you buy my car back?” I asked Todd. “No” he said, vigorously shaking his head to and fro. “Let me ask you a question. What would I want with your money? Five thousand dollars means NOTHING to me! I could barely get to Barbados with that kind of money.” “Interesting” I said. “What is interesting?” “Barbados. That came to you pretty quickly. You going to Barbados?” “NO!” Fuck Barbados! I was kid-ding again!” he was in a tither now. My phone rang again. I took it out of my pocket. It was Todd. “Why are you calling me again?”
“Just what in the fuck do you think I want with your money?” He demanded again. “Look Todd, I don’t know. Part of me tells me that you are all just lazy, not doing your jobs, I don’t know how else to explain three months to do paperwork that doesn’t get done despite constant requests.” I narrowed my gaze. “But part of me says that you are shysters, rip off men, that this car is stolen. Can you prove that the car isn’t stolen?” “Why you lousy fucking bastard. I DO NOT STEAL CARS AND I DO NOT SELL STOLEN CARS! HOW DARE YOU INSINUATE, ON MY PROPERTY THAT I AM A THIEF! Now I aint gonna do a fucking thing for you, you’ll never see that registration!” I really had him going now. He unholstered his quezy pointer finger once more, jabbing it within a few inches of my face. We were standing toe to toe. I was calm, but ready for a punch to fly, and could feel my antennae go up, patrolling my back for unseen cohorts of coworkers to come at me with a lug wrench, or worse. I was unarmed, as is typical for a workday. “Your in my space. Get your finger out of my space, Todd” I said calmly. “I will jab this finger in your fucking left EYE!” he screeched. I’ll take you out in that lot and kick your reporter ass! Get off of my property, before I call the cops!” “Call the cops? Look here your greasy fool, that is exactly what I WANT you thieving bastard! GO AHEAD!” Todd glared at me with hateful murder in his watery eyes. A chill crept up my spine. I looked at my phone. I was already an hour late for work
The stand off ended there just as quickly as it began. Thankfully it was a bloodless draw. I walked back to my car and called my lawyer, Dan Shipp. He did not answer. “Dan.” I said into his answering service, “I ‘m gonna need your skills of legal persuasion….and a slug of VO…”
Read Full Post »
Down Canyon - Words, Thoughts, Ideas, and Stories by Corby Anderson 