Mike made the call at seven forty, standing in the kitchen doorway with his coffee going cold and the red Porsche sitting on the apron of his driveway like it had signed a lease. He dialed the non-emergency line first, because Sarah had made him promise that everything, absolutely everything, would be on the record.
"Columbus police, non-emergency," the dispatcher said.
"Morning," Mike said. "My name is Michael Callahan, 1417 Maple Court. I'm calling to report a vehicle blocking my driveway, and to let you know I've arranged a tow. I've got a log going back six weeks, a certified letter that was signed for, time-stamped photographs, and a posted sign on my fence. I want somebody official to know before it happens, not after."
There was a pause. Then the soft clatter of a keyboard. "That is actually very helpful, Mr. Callahan. Most people call us after the tow truck is already in a fight. Do you have the plate number?"
Mike read it off the logbook by the door, where he had written it so many times he could have done it in his sleep. The dispatcher gave him a report number and told him an officer might swing by, given the documented history, and Mike thanked her and hung up.
Then he called Marino Towing.
Big Joe Marino answered on the second ring, with a shop radio going somewhere behind him. "Marino Towing."
"Joe, it's Mike Callahan, on Maple Court."
"Mike." A pause, with weight in it. "Is it about the Porsche?"
"It's about the Porsche."
"Is it there now?"
"It was there at midnight. It was there at five. It's there at seven forty, and I have pictures of all three with the clock in the frame, like you told me."
Joe exhaled the way a man exhales when a long story turns its last page. "Then today is the day. Give me twenty minutes to get the flatbed. And Mike — tell me you called the non-emergency line first."
"Report number and everything."
"Of course you did." Joe was laughing now, quietly. "You may be the single most documented man in the state of Ohio. Twenty minutes. Put the kettle on."
Sarah came down the stairs in her work clothes and read his face the way she had been reading it for twenty years. "Today?" she said.
"Twenty minutes."
She nodded once and went to the cupboard for the big thermos and the sleeve of paper cups, because Sarah Callahan understood that a tow on Maple Court was not an errand. It was an event. And events required refreshments.
Emma appeared in the doorway with her backpack and took in the thermos, the cups, her father's squared shoulders. "Is it happening? Is it finally happening?"
"You'll be late for first period," Sarah said. "Tell the school it's a family civic event. I will write the note of your life."
Mike stepped out onto the porch. The morning was bright and cold, an October morning that made the maples along the court live up to the street's name. The Porsche sat exactly where it always sat, two wheels up on his apron, low and gorgeous and shameless. Rosa Delgado was already at her fence in her cardigan, holding her mug with both hands, and she lifted it toward Mike in a small salute.
Tom Weaver came out of his house carrying a folding chair. He did not ask a single question. He set the chair at the end of his own driveway, sat down, opened his newspaper, and did not turn a page for the next hour.
At eight o'clock exactly, the sound of the flatbed reached the court before the truck did — the deep, unhurried diesel note of a machine that had never once needed to be in a hurry. Big Joe Marino turned the corner with his amber lights off, out of respect for the hour, and rolled to a stop alongside the Porsche with the precision of a man parking a piano.
Joe climbed down. He stood six foot four in his boots and coveralls, with hands like catcher's mitts and a mustache that had its own weather system. He took in the car, the apron, the sign wired to Mike's fence — NO PARKING, DRIVEWAY IN CONSTANT USE, VIOLATORS TOWED AT OWNER'S EXPENSE — with the paint not quite dry on the word CONSTANT.
"Morning, Mike. Morning, Sarah." He nodded down the court. "Morning, Rosa. Morning, Tom."
"Morning, Joe," said Maple Court.
Joe walked once around the Porsche, slowly, the way he walked around every car he was about to move, because a tow man's first job is to see what a car intends to do before it does it. He photographed the car where it sat, and the sign, and Mike's logbook open on the porch rail. Then he nodded to himself.
"All right," Big Joe Marino said, to the street at large. "Let's do this properly."
Chapter 12: The Box