Free Roadwork by Stephen King, Richard Bachman Page B

Magliore’s Guaranteed Okay Used Cars. A body in every trunk.” Tom laughed and tapped more ashes into his plate. Gayle came back and asked them if they wanted more coffee. They both ordered more.
    “I got those cotter pins today for the boiler door,” Tom said. “They remind me of my dork.”
    “Is that right?”
    “Yeah, you should see those sons of bitches. Nine inches long and three through the middle.”
    “Did you mention my dork?” he asked, and they both laughed and talked shop until it was time to go back to work.
     
    He got off the bus that afternoon at Barker Street and went into Duncan’s, which was a quiet neighborhood bar. He ordered a beer and listened to Duncan bitch for a little while about the Mustangs-Chargers game. A man came up from the back and told Duncan that the Bowl-a-Score machine wasn’t working right. Duncan went back to look at it, and he sipped his beer and looked at the TV. There was a soaper on, and two women were talking in slow, apocalyptic tones about a man named Hank. Hank was coming home from college, and one of the women had just found out that Hank was her son, the result of a disastrous experiment that had occurred after her high school prom twenty years ago.
    Freddy tried to say something, and George shut him right up. The circuit breaker was in fine working order. Had been all day.
    That’s right, you fucking schizo! Fred yelled, and then George sat on him. Go peddle your papers, Freddy. You’re persona non grata around here.
    “Of course I’m not going to tell him,” said one of the women on the tube. “How do you expect me to tell him that?”
    “Just ... tell him,” said the other woman.
    “Why should I tell him? Why should I knock his whole life out of orbit over something that happened twenty years ago?”
    “Are you going to lie to him?”
    “I’m not going to tell him anything.”
    “You have to tell him.”
    “Sharon, I can’t afford to tell him.”
    “If you don’t tell him, Betty, I’ll tell him myself.”
    “That fucking machine is all fucked to shit,” Duncan said, coming back. “That’s been a pain in the ass ever since they put it in. Now what have I got to do? Call the fucking Automatic Industries Company. Wait twenty minutes until some dipshit secretary connects me with the right line. Listen to some guy tell me that they’re pretty busy but they’ll try to send a guy out Wednesday. Wednesday! Then some guy with his brains between the cheeks of his ass will show up on Friday, drink four bucks’ worth of free beer, fix whatever’s wrong and probably rig something else to break in two weeks, and tell me I shouldn’t let the guys throw the weights so hard. I used to have pinball machines. That was good. Those machines hardly ever fucked up. But this is progress. If I’m still here in 1980, they’ll take out the Bowl-a-Score and put in an Automatic Blow-Job. You want another beer?”
    “Sure,” he said.
    Duncan went to draw it. He put fifty cents on the bar and walked back to the phone booth beside the broken Bowl-a-Score.
    He found what he was looking for in the yellow pages under Automobiles, New and Used. The listing there said: MAGLIORE’S USED CARS, Rt. 16, Norton 892-4576.
    Route 16 became Venner Avenue as you went farther into Norton. Venner Avenue was also known as the Landing Strip, where you could get all the things the yellow pages didn’t advertise.
    He put a dime in the phone and dialed Magliore’s Used Cars. The phone was picked up on the second ring, and a male voice said: “Magliore’s Used Cars.”
    “This is Dawes,” he said. “Barton Dawes. Can I talk to Mr. Magliore?”
    “Sal’s busy. But I’ll be glad to help you if I can. Pete Mansey.”
    “No, it has to be Mr. Magliore, Mr. Mansey. It’s about those two Eldorados.”
    “You got a bum steer,” Mansey said. “We’re not taking any big cars in trade the rest of the year, on account of this energy business. Nobody’s buying them.