The Van With the Hidden Weld

No Court

On Thursday morning I called a lawyer in Safford, a nice man with a bolo tie who gave me half an hour free. He told me the truth. The van had been sold as is, with the buyer’s guide signed, and the title paperwork said clean.

To win, I would have to prove Orson knew, and the justice court’s limit is thirty-five hundred dollars. My loss was eleven thousand four hundred. Superior Court would take a retainer of four thousand dollars and eighteen months. Arizona’s lemon law covers new cars, not a used van off a lot.

“I just can’t tell you that being right is going to get your money back,” the lawyer said, “and I won’t take your four thousand to find out.”

I went to the sheriff’s office on Thursday. A deputy named Reyes, very polite, took a report in the lobby and read it back to me. He said it was a civil matter unless I could show Orson knew, and that I should talk to a lawyer. I said I had. He said he was sorry.

I filed a complaint with the attorney general’s consumer office from my phone in the Cottonwood parking lot. I got back a case number and a message that said it might take six to nine months. I printed it and put it in a folder.

The Folder

That Thursday night after the kids were in bed, I was sitting at my kitchen table with the folder from the attorney general, and Nacho called. He asked if I could come by the shop on Friday.

I came by on Friday after work. Rosalba was in the shop office, a small woman with silver in her braid, with a plate of tamales for Brodie. Nacho took a manila folder from his desk drawer and set it in front of me.

Inside the folder were six sheets of paper, and on each one was a name, a car, and a note in his square printing.

Clarice Whitlock, 2013 Ford Fusion, bought from Stubbs, front rail repaired and covered. Tomas Barraza, 2012 Silverado, rear frame bent. The Abeyta family, a Chevy Equinox, the same overspray on the door seals. A young couple, a Camry. A man from Duncan with a Ranger. A teacher, a Malibu.

“Every one of them brought me a car,” Nacho said. “Every one of them wanted to know what was wrong with it. I told every one of them. And every one of them said the same thing to me.”

“What?”

“They said, please don’t tell anybody. They said they felt like fools.”

He closed the folder.

“A man does not like to say he got took, Deena. A woman does not like to say it in front of her husband, or her church. They went back to Orson, he said it was as is, and they kept driving it. Six people in two years. I think there are more that never found me.”

I looked at the folder for a long time.

“I won’t call him a thief,” I said. “I won’t put it on a sign. I don’t know what’s in his head, and I won’t say a word I can’t prove.”

“You don’t have to,” Nacho said. “The car talks.”

Rosalba put down her pen. “Tell her what you were thinking,” she said to her husband.

“I was thinking,” said Nacho slowly, “that people won’t walk up to a stranger and say they got cheated. But people will come to a free coffee and a free look at their car. A man can stand in line for a free look and nobody has to ask why.”

I said, “A free frame check.”

“Across the road from his lot,” said Rosalba, and I saw that she had been planning this for some time, “on a Saturday, with tamales.”