After parking at the end of the main display line, I make a show of looking at price stickers as I walk toward the showroom door. I search the salesmen’s faces through the glass, gambling that the oldest will be Frank Jones. It stands to reason, although in a tough economy retirees might be working jobs like this to supplement their Social Security. When I open the door, everyone is suddenly busy, as though I’ve blundered into a Labor Day blowout sale.

I nod to the nearest salesman, then walk over to a Trans-Am sitting on the display floor and study the price sticker. Twenty seconds of silence is all it takes.

“She’s a beaut, ain’t she?” A head has suddenly materialized from behind a wooden partition near the back wall. “You want two, or just the one?”

The face on the head is over seventy, and it splits into the forced grin of a man who always supplies the laughs for his own jokes. He comes out from behind the partition, right hand extended in greeting, revealing a baby blue polyester sports coat over a blue plaid shirt and brown tie.

“Frank Jones, sales manager!” he barks, pumping my hand. “What can we do you for today?”

“I want to take a test drive.”

“That’s why we’re here. Which car?”

I drop the flat of my hand on the roof of the Trans-Am. “How about this one?”

“You bet.” He looks vaguely to his left. “Open the big door, Jimmy Mac.”

“Sure,” says a young salesman by the window. “Can I talk to you a second first?”

“I got a customer here, son.”

Jones has the gleam of money in his eye. He hasn’t yet spotted the BMW, and he seems to have sized me up as an all-cash type. I sit in the passenger seat as he guides the Trans-Am out of the showroom and stops so we can trade seats. Once behind the wheel, I adjust the seat for my longer frame, then pull out to the edge of the highway.

“That looks like Doc Cage’s car,” he says, finally noticing the BMW.

“It is.” I merge into traffic, make a U-turn, and head for the Mississippi River bridge. “I’m driving it.”

He looks at me and starts to speak but doesn’t.

“I’m Penn Cage.”

“Shit. You’re the book writer.” He stares straight through the windshield for half a minute, then turns to me. “Did you say all that crap they printed in the paper?”

“Some of it. They didn’t exactly stick to what I said.”

Jones snorts. “Don’t I know it. You can’t trust a damn thing you read in that rag. They did the same to me back in sixty-eight.”

“About your account of the bombing?”