Max was, as Harriet had said, selling, or trying to sell, something out of his tin collection to two customers. Leaning on the windowsill, Stan observed these customers, who looked as out of place in the healthy brightness of day as Max. They were short and young, barely twenty, with thick black hair and bushy drooping mustaches and swarthy black-eyed faces. They were dressed in bulky dark sweaters and corduroy pants and rope shoes, and while one talked with Max the other kept looking out at the street. Then they’d switch, and the second would listen to Max’s line of crap for a while.

Stan watched them dismiss a Honda hatchback without a pause, then as quickly refuse a Renault Le Car and an American Motors Hornet. They paused briefly over a Subaru station wagon, but then one of them pointed at the rear window and the other one nodded, agreeing this wasn’t their car. Max, misunderstanding, showed them a couple times how well the tailgate worked, but they weren’t interested, so at last Max shrugged and they moved on to a puke-green Chevy Impala, which sparkled both customers right up; they almost danced at the sight of it.

Which wasn’t rational. The Impala was at least eighteen years old, probably the most ancient vehicle on the lot. The side panels were half rusted out, deep rust pits circled the headlights, and the antenna was a wire coat hanger. It was also one of the biggest cars still in existence, a mastodon, a huge heavy gas guzzler, one third hood, one third trunk, and one third passenger space.

But the two young mustachios loved it. They stopped looking out at the street so both could examine this beauty at the same time. While one went around to the front, poking and prodding at the bumper to be sure it was solid, the other had Max open the trunk so he could bring a tape measure out of his pocket and confirm the vastness of the interior.

When Max started the engine and let them take turns behind the wheel—they cared about the steering, that’s all, doing little runs forward and back in the lot, whipping the wheel left and right—Stan decided it was time to interfere. Obviously, Max was prepared to sell these clowns a car, which it would be better if he didn’t do.

First, Stan went back over to the connecting door, opened it, leaned his head in, and said, “Harriet, would you call the precinct and ask them to run a car by here? Not to stop, just drift by.”

“Right,” Harriet said, without asking questions, and reached for the phone.

Stan shut the door, recrossed the room, went out into the sunlight, and gave his Mom a little stick-tight wave as he walked over toward Max and his customers, who were out of the Impala now, standing on the blacktop, nodding impatiently as Max went through the rest of his spiel, the double talk about guarantees and stuff he always rushed through once the sale was secure. Approaching him, Stan said, “Max, I want to—”

“In a minute,” Max said, glowering in surprise at Stan, who after all should know the etiquette of never interrupting a sale.

But Stan went blithely on, as though he’d never heard of etiquette. “The precinct just called,” he said.

Max glowered even more at that news, while the customers gave each other a quick startled look. Max said, “The law? Now what do they want from my life’s blood?”

“I dunno,” Stan said. “Something about being on the lookout for terrorists or some damn thing.”

“Terrorists?” Max demanded. “In a car lot?”

The customers were getting less swarthy. Ignoring them, being open and innocent, Stan said, “I think it’s something about car bombs. You know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Max said, trying to turn away.

But Stan wouldn’t let him get back to his spiel. “I mean those suicide car bomb things,” he said, “where one of them just drives into a place and blows everything up. Usually, you know, they use some old clunker, a big car, something with a lot of power under the hood, something tough that can crash a barricade, good steering to go around the obstacles, lots of room in the trunk for the dynamite.” As though just noticing the Impala, Stan gave it a careless wave and said, “This kinda car, like.”

Max didn’t say a word. The customers again looked at each other, and then turned to watch a police car prowl slowly past, both cops gazing toward the lot. The customers spoke to each other in a language.

Max licked his lips. He said, “Stan, you’ll be so good, you’ll wait in my office.” Turning, he said, “Gentlemen, excuse the inter—”

But the gentlemen were leaving, walking away between the rows of hopeless wrecks in the Ultraspecial department of Maximilian’s Used Cars, moving unhurriedly but steadily until Max raised his voice, calling, “Gentlemen, don’t you want this car?” Then they walked faster, not looking back.

Stan said, “They were gonna pay cash, right?”

“You’re goddamn right they were,” Max said. “Until you come along.”

“Max,” Stan said, “don’t you still get it? Don’t you know what those guys were?”

“Customers,” Max said. Then, before Stan could speak, Max raised a grimy-knuckled and nail-bitten hand, showed Stan its callused palm, and said, “But even if you’re right, so what? If you’re right, you know what I got? The perfect customer. Not only do they give me cash, so there’s no problem with the paper, the credit line, discounting with the bank, having to eat the damn car when they repossess, none of that, but these are customers who will never bring the car back to argue the way they always do. The transmission, the brakes, all this stuff they bitch about. These customers weren’t like that. Even saying you’re right, Stan, and I don’t say you’re right, these customers were the best kind of customers you could get. They’re like the army. They buy the product, they blow it up, everybody’s happy.”

“Except you,” Stan said.

Max glowered at him. “The sun is baking your brains,” he decided. “Come into the office, explain me this favor you did.”

“Be right there,” Stan told him, and walked over to Mom’s cab, where Mom looked up at him out her open window and said, “This is taking long.”

“There was a little complication,” Stan told her. “I’ll tell you on the way home.”

“You’re done? He said yes?”

“A few minutes,” Stan promised, and went back over to the office, where Max was seated behind his desk, chewing an imaginary cigar, the only kind the doctor would let him have.

“Good,” Max said, looking at him as though he’d believed Stan might run away rather than face him. “The expressman with the downside. Deliver.”

“The FBI,” Stan said.

Max shifted the imaginary cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. “The FBI? Whadda they gotta do with me?”

“Your customers,” Stan explained, “your perfect customers out there, they go away with that heap, and a week or two from now some embassy blows up, maybe some airline office, maybe even a police station, the UN Building.”

“Good,” Max said. “The car is out of my inventory and out of my inventory.”

“But there’s enough of it left,” Stan said, “for identification, registration, history of the car. The FBI likes to say it checks out every lead, and that car’s a lead, and it leads here.”

“So what?” Max demanded, taking the imaginary cigar from his mouth and waving it in his hand. “This happens to be a time I’m innocent! I don’t know those people! I sold them a car! That’s what I do!”

“Max, Max,” Stan said, “don’t use the word innocent, okay? I look out the window here, I see half a dozen cars I sold you, and I know where I got them. You want police attention, Max? For any reason at all?”

Max didn’t answer. He gazed at Stan wide-eyed. The imaginary cigar had gone out.

Stan said, “The FBI comes in here looking for evidence on crime number one, checking you out, going through the records, studying the paper. But there isn’t any evidence on crime number one, because you’re innocent, you aren’t involved. So do they go away? Do they just ignore all the evidence they pick up on crimes number two through twenty-eight? Or do they turn over this big thick report to the local cops?”