“What do you mean by that?”

“Years ago, I was a cop, but off duty, didn’t have my weapon, and I walked into a drugstore right in the middle of a holdup, guy has a sawed-off pointed at the cashier, screaming at her to empty the till.”

“Jesus.”

“So I freeze, and the guy knows I’m there, tells me to back off, but he’s doing this thing with his nose, sniffing, you know? It’s ragweed season, and he’s doing these funny little intakes of breath, and not only has he asked the cashier for money, but a box of antihistamine on the counter behind her. The guy’s very jumpy, like he wants to use the gun even if he gets everything he’s asking for, and it’s clear he’s got a sneeze on the way, and I’m guessing that when it comes, it’s gonna be a doozy. So I wait for my moment.”

“The sneeze.”

“We’re in the windup, each intake a bit bigger than the one before, and it’s just about to happen, and I figure, this is the moment, there will never be a better opportunity to deal with this situation, and then he blows. Nearly blew out a window with this sneeze, and I tackle him the millisecond before it happens, because when you sneeze that big, you close your eyes. He never saw me coming.” He smiled to himself.

“How do you know,” I asked, “if it’s the moment?”

“If you don’t know,” Lawrence said, “then it’s not the moment.”

He brought the car to a stop outside a bureaucratic-looking red brick building that fronted the street and was flanked by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence, and beyond that, hundreds and hundreds of vehicles. Lawrence took the key out of the ignition. “Let’s go look at all the shiny cars. Maybe we can find one with a few million in coke still in the trunk, you and I can both retire.”

“WE GOTTA FIND EDDIE,” Lawrence said. “He’s not the actual auctioneer, but he oversees this whole operation. He’ll tell you everything you want to know, but don’t be afraid to make a run for it if he starts to drive you crazy.” Lawrence asked around inside the office and was told we could find Eddie out in the compound.

He was peering through the windshield of a Cadillac, double-checking the vehicle identification number against a sheet attached to the clipboard in his hand, when Lawrence called to him. He was a slight man, about five-six, probably late forties, bookish in appearance with his oversize black-framed glasses and half a dozen pens clipped to his shirt pocket. His hair was short, curly, and greasy looking, like maybe he hadn’t stood under a shower for a number of days.

“Hey, hey, Lawrence, how are ya, how are ya?” he said. Even with the big glasses on, he was squinting through them at us.

“Good, Eddie. How’s life treatin’ ya?”

Eddie Mayhew shrugged. “Oh, you know, busy, busy, all the time, busy. The stuff’s always coming in, you know, always coming in.”

“How’s the missus?”

I looked at Lawrence. Missus?

Eddie made a face, like he’d caught a whiff of something that smelled bad. “Oh, you know, still talk talk talking, wants me to drive her out to see her sister in the spring, out in Milwaukee. Both of them, talk talk talk, for a whole week.”

“They got a lot of beer there,” Lawrence said, trying to offer Eddie a glimmer of hope.

“Yeah, beer, yeah, that’s good. What I really need, really need, is something to put me out for the drive out, so I won’t have to listen, won’t have to listen, to my wife.”

“That’s kind of difficult if you’re the one doing the driving.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Can’t win.” But then, oddly, a look of calm came over him. “Oh well, oh well. Maybe it won’t be so bad, so bad after all. A lot could change by the spring, yeah.”

“I’d like you to meet my friend here, Eddie,” Lawrence said, allowing me to step forward. “This is Zack Walker. He’s a writer for The Metropolitan, he’s going to do a feature on the auction, have someone take a few pictures.”

“Oh sure, yeah, sure, that’s fine. Good paper, The Metro, I read that. Read that all the time.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I explained that I was doing a color piece on what it was like to buy a car at a government auction. Eddie said he could spare some time to answer my questions, and Lawrence excused himself to register and check out what vehicles were available.

“We’ve got boats, motorcycles, furniture, high-end stereo equipment, oh yeah, we got everything,” Mayhew said. “Sometimes we have people submit written bids, whoever bids highest wins.”

“Like those silent auctions my son’s high school does sometimes for fundraisers,” I offered.

“Well, sort of, I don’t know, I don’t have any kids, never had any kids, but the stuff they’re auctioning off at your kid’s school probably didn’t all belong, at one time, to drug dealers and smugglers, am I right? Huh?”

“That’s probably true.”

“But today, okay, today we’re auctioning off some big stuff, and we’re doing it the way you’re probably more familiar with, with an auctioneer, right? Mostly cars, SUVs, couple of boats, good stuff, really really good stuff. Come on, we’ll go out into the paddock, out in the paddock, I’ll show you.”

We wandered out into what looked like a used-car lot, with the odd boat, motorcycle, and RV tossed into the mix.

“So, who’d this stuff used to belong to?” I asked, scribbling into my notebook.

“We’ve got goods here that belonged to biker gangs, mean ones, you know, mean bikers, and drug smugglers, big-timers who got away with it for a long time, and small-timers who thought they could make it big but were a bit too stupid to do this kind of thing without getting caught. Even some CEO types, stock fraud guys, get their fancy Beemers and boats seized. I know the history of everything out here. Make it my business to. It’s interesting, you know? You got your whole crime microcosm here, wrapped up in these cars.”

“I’ll bet,” I said.

“Ask me anything,” Eddie said. “Go ahead, go ahead, ask me anything about anything you see. Go on.”

“Uh, okay,” I said. I pointed to a shiny red Mustang. “What’s the story there?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, okay, okay, I know,” he said quickly. Eddie seemed to be running on premium unleaded. “Bobby Minor, twenty-four, bought the thing from money he made dealing crack on the north side, it’s got a V8 under the hood, barely 15,000 miles on it. Go ahead, check the odometer, go on, check it, see if I’m right.”

With some reluctance, I opened the door and glanced at the dash. The car had 14,943 miles on it.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“Ask me another,” he said. “Go on, ask me.”

I didn’t know how long I wanted to play this game, but figured I could go another couple of rounds.

“All right,” I said. “That one.” I indicated a motorcycle.

Eddie, cocky behind the Coke rims, circled the bike. “Harley-Davidson, belonged to a member of the Snake Eyes gang, yeah, that’s right, loosely affiliated with the Hell’s Angels, those Hell’s Angels, ran prostitution, table dancers, that’s what they did. This bike belonged to Buzz Crawley. They called him Nut Crusher.” Eddie giggled. “Guess why? Go on, guess.”

“I think I have an idea.”

“You know why? He’d go visit guys, guys who owed the gang money, grab their boys with a set of pliers, drag ’em around the parking lot that way. Oooh, that would hurt, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that hurt?” He was smiling big-time now.

“That would hurt.” I had stopped taking notes.

“You see that Land Rover? That got taken away from the Jamaicans; that little silver car, that was in Lenny Indigo’s driveway before they put him away; that one, that green Winnebago there, that was-”

“You really know your stuff, Eddie, no doubt about it. I think what I’m going to do is, talk to some of the people who’re planning to bid on something, get a bit of color for my story.”