Chapter Seven

(One)

Golden's Pre-Owned Motor Cars North Broad Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1 August 1941

There was no doubt in Dickie Golden's mind that despite the seersucker suit, the kid looking at the 1939 LaSalle convertible coupe on the platform was a serviceman. For one thing, he had a crew cut. For another, he was deeply tanned. For another, he didn't look quite right in his clothing. He was wearing a seersucker suit, but he was obviously no college kid.

He was probably a Marine from the Navy Yard, Dickie Golden decided. They looked somehow different from sailors. He was too young to be more than a PFC; but maybe, just maybe, he was a lance corporal; and the finance company would sometimes write up a lance corporal if he could come up with the one-third down payment. There was of course no way this kid could come up with one-third down on the LaSalle convertible, even though it was really one hell of a bargain at $695.

Cadillac had stopped making LaSalles as of 1940, which really cut into their resale value. And the last couple of years Cadillac made them, they had practically given them away. But that hadn't worked, and LaSalles were orphans now. A 1939 Cadillac convertible like this one, with the same engine… about the only real difference between a little Cadillac and a LaSalle was the grill and the chrome… would sell for twelve, thirteen hundred.

The down payment on this would have to be at least and the odds were the kid looking at it didn't have that kind of money. Dickie Golden did the rough figures in his head. Say he had the $250, that would leave $500 over two years plus a hundred a year for insurance. A $700 note over two years at 6% was right at $29 a month. They paid Marine privates $21 a month. He didn't know what they paid lance corporals, but it wasn't much more.

But, Dickie Golden decided, what the hell; it was an up. It was possible the kid had just come off a ship or something, with money burning a hole in his pocket from a crap game. He just might have $300 for a down payment. More likely, he could switch the kid over to something he could afford. If he wanted an open car, there was a '37 Pontiac convertible at $495 and a '33 Ford-a little rough, needed a new top-for $229.

He walked over to the kid.

"Good- looking car, isn't it?" Dickie Golden said. "I've been thinking of buying it myself for the little woman." McCoy didn't reply to that. "You got the keys?" he asked.

McCoy had just about decided to buy the LaSalle. Everything else was crazy, why not buy a crazy car?

McCoy had just come from dinner with an officer and his wife. That was why he was wearing a suit. Maybe an apartment in a tall building at 2601 Parkway wasn't like officer's quarters on a base, and maybe there was some difference between a regular officer and an intelligence officer, but he was a corporal, USMC, and Sessions was a captain, USMC; it was the first time he had ever heard of a captain's wife "insisting" that a corporal come to dinner.

More than that. Grabbing him by the arms, and hugging and kissing him on the cheeks… with her husband watching.

She was a good-looking woman. Decent looking. Wholesome. She looked a lot like Mickey Rooney's girl friend in the Andy Hardy movies.

"Ed told me what you did at the ferry, Ken," Mrs. Sessions said. "I can call you 'Ken,' can't I?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

"Well, you can't call me 'ma'am,' " she said. "I won't have that. You'll call me Jean."

He hadn't replied. On the wall was an eight-by-ten enlargement of the picture he'd taken of Sessions in the black cotton peasant clothes.

"I want to thank you for my husband's life," Mrs. Sessions said when she noticed him looking at it, and then when she saw how uncomfortable she had made him, she added: "I know he's not much, but he's the only one I have."

Then Captain Sessions put a drink in his hand, and soon afterward they fed him, first-class chow that McCoy had never had before: one great big steak for all of them served in slices. Mrs. Sessions (he was unable to bring himself to call a captain's wife by her first name) told him they called it a "London broil."

Since they were both being so nice to him, he had been very careful not to say or do anything out of line. He watched his table manners and went easy on the booze (there was wine with the London broil and cognac afterward). And as soon as he thought he could politely get out of there, he left.

Which had put him all dressed-up on North Broad Street at eight o'clock at night with no place to go but a bar; and he didn't want to go to a bar. Drinking at a bar and trying to pick up some dame and get his ashes hauled did not seem like the right thing to do after a respectable dinner with a Marine Corps officer and his lady in their home.

So he had figured he would walk up North Broad Street and maybe see if he could find a car in one of the used-car lots-at least get an idea of what they were asking for iron these days. And then he'd seen the LaSalle and decided, what the hell, why not see what he could do?

"The down payment on a car like this would be $300, maybe a little more," Dickie Golden said, not wanting to let the kid take the car for a ride if there was no way he could handle it, "and the payments, including insurance, about thirty bucks a month over two years. Could you handle that much?"

"Yeah," McCoy said. "I could handle that much."

"You're a Marine, aren't you?" Dickie Golden said. One more fact out of him, and he would go get the keys.

"Yeah," McCoy said.

"The finance company don't like to make loans on a car like this to anybody's not at least a lance corporal."

"I'm a corporal," McCoy said. "And I can make the down payment, okay? You want to let me hear the engine, take it for a ride?"

Dickie Golden put out his hand. "I'm Dickie Golden, Corporal… I didn't catch the name?"

"McCoy," McCoy said.

"Well, I'm pleased to meet you, Corporal McCoy," he said. "You really know how to spot a bargain, I'll tell you that."

You bet your candy-ass I do, you sonofabitch. I grew up on a goddamned used-car lot. You're about to be had, buster, presuming the engine isn't shot in this thing.

"Seven hundred dollars seems like a lot of money for an orphan like this," McCoy said.

"Well, maybe we can shave that a little, if you don't have a trade," Dickie Golden said.

The battery was almost dead, and went dead before the engine would crank. A colored man with a battery on a little wheeled truck was called. Dickie Golden said he would replace the battery.

"Maybe all it needs is a charge," McCoy offered helpfully.

You dumb sonofabitch, if you knew what you were doing, you'd not only make sure there was a hot battery in here, but you'd start it up every couple of days. These flat-head 322-cubic-inch V-8s are always hard to start.

"No," Dickie Golden said, grandly, "I want this car to be right." He told the colored man to replace the battery. And then "while they were waiting" he suggested they take the information for the finance company down on paper.

He was obviously pleased with the facts McCoy gave him: That he was a corporal, unmarried, and had no other "installment loans" outstanding. McCoy decided he was going to come down $100 from the $695 and make it back by slipping the paper to some finance company who would give him half of the fifty back and make it up by charging eight percent, maybe ten. That would make the car $595. Then he would sell him insurance through some shyster outfit that would charge twice what it was worth-making it part of the easy payments-and slip Dickie Golden another twenty-five bucks back under the table. Then there would be a credit-check charge, and Christ only knew what else.

After McCoy's first look at the LaSalle, he went to another used-car lot and gave the wash boy there a dollar to go in the office and borrow the Blue Book for him. The Blue Book told him the LaSalle was worth $475 wholesale, the average retail was $650, and the average loan value was $400. McCoy decided he would pay $525 for the car.