City of Ice by John Farrow Page B

and Christmas and Boxing Day. Then on Boxing Day, after we heard about Hagop and that, we got called and told to take the week off. Me, I was told to come in. The boss came down here and we took care of a few customers and the rest we told to come back.”
    “So it came as a surprise. A last-minute sort of thing.”
    “I guess so. Not much of a surprise for me. But it’s been a quiet week for me too.”
    Cinq-Mars returned to the office area. “I see only one car out there,” he said.
    “Yeah. We’re closed.”
    “Did Hagop have friends here?” Mathers asked.
    “He kept to himself a lot. The boss liked him. He hung out with the boss a bit. That made the rest of us, you know, a little careful around him.”
    Cinq-Mars had wandered through to the executive office and plucked a business card from a tray. “This your boss’s name—Kaplonski?”
    “Yes, sir,” the youth said. He was showing morenerves now. The line of questioning had not been what he might have expected. He had hoped to get details he could share with others.
    “What’s that,” Cinq-Mars called through, “Armenian?”
    “Polish,” Mathers answered.
    Cinq-Mars joined them again. “They left you in charge,” he said to Coates.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You must be a big shot to be left in charge.”
    “I’m at the bottom of the heap. Everybody else gets a holiday.”
    “Maybe everybody else deserves one. Did you think of that?”
    “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.” The boy was flustered now.
    Cinq-Mars loomed a head taller than the young man, and he stepped closer to him and stared down the ski slope of his nose. “Where do you work in this place usually? When you’re not listening to the radio and reading Penthouse in the back like you were when we rang the bell, where would you be working?”
    “In the back.”
    “In the body shop? Where that Buick is?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “What kinds of cars do you work on back there?”
    The young man shrugged. “All kinds. Damaged cars.”
    “What makes?”
    “All makes.”
    “Mostly new or mostly old?”
    “I don’t know. Mostly old, I guess. New ones, too.”
    “Up front, where you don’t work, what kinds of cars get worked on up there?”
    The boy shrugged again. “Different cars.”
    “Mostly what kind would you say?”
    He seemed to not like where this was headed. “Mostly German, I guess. I don’t know.”
    “Mercedes-Benz?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “BMW?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “What about Japanese cars? Lexus?”
    “I seen some of those, yeah.”
    “Those were mostly new cars, I suppose.”
    “I guess so.”
    “Do me a favor,” Cinq-Mars demanded. “Don’t guess.”
    “It’s just an expression.”
    “Don’t express yourself, son. Just answer the questions.”
    Coates remained quiet. He was beginning to rebel, Mathers noticed, against this inquiry. He kept looking over to Mathers as though the younger officer might help him out.
    “What kinds of problems do they work on up front here?”
    “Mechanical. I don’t know. It’s not my department. Tune-ups, I guess.”
    “Tune-ups,” Cinq-Mars spat out. “Son, if you owned a new Mercedes-Benz would you bring it down to this shit-box garage in this rat-box neighborhood for a tune-up? Would you?”
    The mechanic looked from Cinq-Mars to Mathers and back again. Then he looked down. “Probably not,” he said.
    “Son, you’ve got stolen cars coming in and out of this place every day, don’t you?”
    The boy kept his head bent down.
    “Well? Don’t you?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I work on older cars. I talk to the customers. I know those cars aren’t stolen.”
    “We’re not talking about the body shop. We already know that’s a front. We’re talking about the cars at this end of the garage. The ones that get priority treatment.Those cars. Does it come as a surprise to you to hear they’re stolen?”
    The boy shrugged in his compulsive manner. “I don’t know,” he said.
    “What do you know?”
    He