So, after two days in Chicago catching up at the office, I took a late Wednesday morning flight to Kansas City. I’d arranged to see Robert Greenlease mid-afternoon at his place of business, where the day before I’d reached him by phone.

“Don’t come to the house,” he’d said, almost whispering. “Make it before five, here at the dealership.”

That was where the cab was taking me, to the four-story reddish-brick wedge-shaped building on the triangular corner of 30th and Gillham and McGee Trafficway, just south of downtown. The terra-cotta-trimmed edifice, unlike its Used Car lot cousin across the way, was damn near as grand as the Missions Hills mansion. You could almost see Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady driving by drooling, money-green with envy as they took in the facade’s lettering:

G R E E N L E A S E

above the familiar coat-of-arms crest, which loomed over

Cadillac

atop a showroom window displaying a current Coupe De Ville.

The cab dropped me by a garage entry where, on the side of the brick exterior wall, a less grand sign read:

IN MEMORY OF

ROBERT C.

GREENLEASE, JR.

THE GREENLEASE

MOTOR CAR CO.

Will Be Closed

OCT. 9th.

I entered a high-ceilinged showroom whose tile flooring was marble as was the wainscoting. All around me were tail-fin rides as if Martians had landed—rich ones. The subtle rocket-styling that had crept in a year or two ago had taken off now, the colors getting out of hand—not just red but pink, not just blue but turquoise, and all the taillights were big bright red bullets.

To a guy with a ’59 Jag Roadster at home, I didn’t know whether to feel superior or jealous. I settled for superior.

I didn’t recognize Will Letterman at first, but he knew me at once. He intercepted me before a salesman in a suit as well-tailored as mine could get to me. Letterman was in a Brooks Brothers or better himself, yet he still had a Sunday school teacher look with his wire-frame glasses and white Friar Tuck hair.

We shook hands and exchanged the kind of smiles that go with encountering a familiar friendly face tied to bad memories.

I said, “I thought you ran the Tulsa branch.”

He had already slipped his hand on my shoulder and was walking me past all the Buck Rogers rides toward the offices at the rear. “The old man is only working half days,” he said. “He brought me in. It’s an honor. This is the flagship store.”

Hearing him call Bob Greenlease “the old man”—Letterman being no spring chicken himself—was a reminder that the father of Bobby Greenlease was now in his late seventies.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“He does well when he’s here,” Letterman said. “I think that’s why he hasn’t retired. And both he and Virginia get a lot of satisfaction from their charity work. With her church, you know.”

“I didn’t. But that’s good.”

We were outside a glassed-in office whose drapes were drawn.