Free Parts Unknown by Rex Burns

showed filigrees of rust holes, but beneath the hood, a Cinderella of gleaming chrome and polished aluminum charm purred sweetly. The twin carburetors demanded a lot of tinkering to keep them in sync—all SUs did—but when they were tuned, they were very, very tuned, and the smooth, head- snapping acceleration that came from a light jab on the gas pedal made it worth the time.
    Susan, Bunch’s girlfriend, used to say the Healey was my surrogate for female companionship, and I had come to realize that it would have been better if that had been so. Because the way things turned out, Susan was dead, and Bunch still hadn’t gotten over it. But that had been a couple years ago, and neither Bunch nor I talked about it anymore. Not that we talked much about it then. As Uncle Wyn told Bunch at the time, the ones you love live on in your heart, and you have them with you always. He didn’t have as much consolation for me—the one I had loved lived on in the women’s state pen, and all I had left in my heart was a bitterness and sense of betrayal I was still trying to get rid of. And gradually I was managing to. I learned that I couldn’t let someone like that influence the rest of my life; she had her shot at it once and that was enough. But sometimes, alone with the wind whistling across the cockpit and the rumble of the exhaust stirring memories of our good times in the Healey, I wondered what it might have been like.
    Boring.
    That’s what it would have been like. As boring and colorless as the cars we threaded among, and I was a lot better off by myself and doing what I wanted. Such as worrying about the future of Kirk and Associates. Such as sweating a stack of bills on the office desk. Such as thinking like a goddamn accountant. Maybe it wouldn’t have been all that different after all. But—and I shifted down to make the turn from Cherry Creek Drive onto Colorado Boulevard—it made no difference now. As Uncle Wyn had said, that ball game was over. It didn’t pay, he said, to lie there in the dark and play over and over the errors of a game that was already in the record books. It was something that had cost him a lot of sleep when he was a young catcher; but none of it did a damn bit of good once the umpire tossed the first ball for the next game.
    Not that he would say life was fun and games—a cliché like that sent Uncle Wyn’s eyes rolling up until only their whites showed. But there was some truth for him in the idea of ending a thing with the neatness of a final inning. And telling yourself you could begin over with the scoreboard empty and waiting. It was a truth he tried hard to convince me of, anyway.
    Midafternoon was a good time to work out at the health club, a remodeled supermarket that had been expanded to include a swimming pool and saunas as well as the usual arrangement of exercise machines. Most of the clientele wouldn’t arrive until after working hours, and those who were there tended to be models trying to stay in shape between gigs. Their shiny Lycra stretched where it should stretch, and their ponytails bobbed saucily as they ran around the indoor track. It sure beat watching television while you pumped iron, and it was sad to think all this might end in a few weeks.
    Bunch was waiting by the time I returned. “That tall blonde—was she there?”
    “Oh, yeah! Wearing this new skintight silver thing that just … wow!”
    “You’re telling me she wasn’t there.”
    He was right; she wasn’t. “What about the Hally job? What’d they decide on?”
    “Nothing, yet. Coe said he’d call us in a day or two.”
    “You showed him all the options?”
    “Yes, Dev. I showed him all the options. And the prices. And the benefits of going with the better equipment. But I don’t think he was impressed. The guy’s cheap, that’s all.”
    Well, I hadn’t really counted on any money coming from that direction anyway. “What about Senora Chiquichano’s friends?”
    “I don’t think she’s