I simply couldn't wait to see what was waiting in the other four berths of Mick's secret little storage shed – who knew what delicious delights he had in store for me, squirreled away from the world, the proceeds of a lottery win that he had deliberately and determinedly kept hidden from his wife and family. Such a naughty boy, our Mick.
But wait I did, if only for a little while, because the manager of the storage facility – a fat leering pig, dressed in stained overalls, reeking of body odour and eyes fixed on my tits from the moment I entered his office – was not overly cooperative.
"Don't you need a warrant, a court order, or some shit like that?" he sneered, following my flash-of-the-badge and request to inspect Mick's storage space.
I sighed, and cursed the TV show 'Law and Order' once again for making everybody think everything needed a judge's signature on it – which was more or less accurate, but not especially helpful in my line of work.
"Okay bud," I said. "How can we make this happen, nice and quick?"
The piggy little guy looked me in the face – just for a second, quickly figuring if I was serious and what he might get away with asking – and then his eyes fell pointedly back upon my chest. "Show us," was all he said.
I didn't treat him to a sigh, or a roll-of-the-eyes, or any form of protest. I knew his type, and I knew any reaction or show of disgust would be music to his perverse little ears.
I simply unbuttoned my blouse, undid my bra, and let my tits fall out for his appraisal; and I gave him five seconds while he grunted approvingly and rubbed his disgusting little crotch with his grubby little hand, before I gathered up the ladies and put them away again.
"Okay," he nodded, when I was done. "Let's go."
"So: have you seen this guy come through here at all?" I asked, showing him Mick's picture as he walked me down a long line of brick walls and garage doors that made for a series of separate storage spaces.
"Yeah, I think that's the 'car guy'," the manager grunted. "He'd drive into the lot every work-day morning in an old yellow Ford, then two minutes later he'd drive out again in some flashy European piece-of-shit. Usually a funny-looking orange thing."
I tried to cover up my mounting contempt for this man. Anyone who'd describe a Lamborghini Gallardo – one of the most beautiful and capable cars in all of history – as a 'funny looking European piece-of-shit', deserved a bullet in the balls.
"Here we are," the guy announced, as we stopped in front of a very long garage door with the numbers '131' on a sign above it. He fished out a remote with the corresponding numbers on it, pressed the button...
...and revealed a bevy of the most awesome cars I had ever seen.
There were four cars in the five-berth space, and as expected, the first was the yellow Ford station wagon that served as Mick's 'work car', for all intents and purposes. Of course, he only ever used it to drive from home to this storage space, where he would park it and choose from the other exotics he had available.
Alongside the Ford was a jet-black, brand-new Mercedes S65: a long, low, menacing saloon. It had a twin-turbocharged six-litre V12 sitting behind the traditional tri-starred chrome grill, the wheel wells bulging and muscular, the marvellously wide tyres filled with enormous twenty-inch rims that gleamed with undisguised purpose. Exactly the sort of car one would pick when in the mood for a large, luxurious cruiser – soft and supple, padded and luxurious, but forever with gob-smacking power in reserve.
Next to the burly Mercedes was a gaudy, brand new, eye-stingingly yellow Dodge Challenger. This car was all-American, huge and bluff, almost a comical juxtaposition alongside the restrained elegance of the Germanic uber-saloon. The Challenger was a rarity on our roads as Dodge doesn't sell them here, in fact it was the first one I had ever laid eyes on, so Mick must have had it imported and legalised at massive expense. It was a beauty, all the same: big, square and powerful, with dark-tinted windows and carbon-fibre bonnet stripes contrasting nicely against the canary-yellow bodywork, and of course it would have the six-point-two litre Hemi V8 connected to those big fat pipes running out the back.
The third car was another Germanic representative, and I was slightly disappointed: it was a Porsche, a silver Carrera coupe. Yes, fine, Porsche builds some of the most capable and liveable cars money can buy – fast like a Lambo, but a lot more accessible, easier at its considerable limits and far kinder when trundling round town than the Lambo could ever hope to be. My issue was that, in this fine company and context, it seemed something of a cliché – a rich man buys a Porsche? Whodathunkit?
But the fourth and final car really made me grin, for it was one that only a few die-hard car aficionados would be able to identify: a little red Elfin Streamliner. It was tiny, barely big enough to contain two tan-leather-lined seats, pedals and a steering wheel; it had no roof, a miniscule windscreen, and two toy-like little doors which were barely necessary as one could easily step over the cowl and sink into the seats, even clad in a skirt as short as mine. The appeal of the car lay in what hid beneath its bonnet: a tub-thumping V8, itself almost bigger than the rest of the car, and with less than a tonne of weight to motivate it gave this car the potential to be faster than any Lamborghini... though that depended on the skill of the driver, for these cars are famously nervous and spiteful, difficult to control and nearly impossible to tame. And I loved it.
I noted, of course, that the fifth car space was empty – four cars, five berths? Well there was the matter of the Lamborghini, battered and broken and currently dripping its innards all over our impound lot. And you might imagine that a guy like Mick would buy a fifth fast car to fill out the five spaces properly, but then what would he do with his clanky old Ford? Would he leave it idling, open the door, back out the Lambo, leave it idling too, park the Ford, close the door and drive away? I know I would never leave a Lambo idling, not for a precious second. So the Ford deserved its place in the garage, and I doubted Mick had any other expensive playthings to his name. Four of them would do, for sure... plus the old Ford, for the run home at night, or to park at the shops to collect trolley-dings, and so forth.
"Righto, you've seen the cars," the lot manager rumbled – typically unmoved by the breathtaking display of automobilia's finest, the philistine. "Are we done now?"
"You're done," I informed him. "You can leave the remote with me, too," I added, nodding at the little remote control required for access to the garage which he clutched in his piggy little hand.
"No no," he began. "That wasn't part of the deal. You'll have to go 'above and beyond' if that's what you want..." he added, with possibly the most disgusting leer I've ever seen on anyone anywhere.
I looked at him for only a second, before deciding: 'nup. Not gunna happen. Not in a hundred million years. No way.'
"You want me to bring you in on harassment charges?" I asked of him.
"What?" he bellowed. "But you showed me your tits, not even two minutes ago!"
"Yeah, but who's my Lieutenant going to believe: his star and favourite big-titted detective, or a big fat sleazy slob like you?" I replied, matter-of-factly. "And I'll bet a hundred bucks you've got a long list of priors, ya skeeze."
That stopped him – he tossed over the remote, and turned to go. "Friggin bitch," he muttered under his breath.
"Just remember the tits, and have a nice day," I suggested. Hmm, that phrase would go well on a t-shirt...
Back to the job at hand, I put myself back in Mick's shoes. Now he couldn't exactly walk around all day with a pocket-full of keys to a bunch of half-million-dollar cars – imagine if the missus found them on washing day? So what would I do, if I couldn't keep a bunch of car keys on me, but I wanted quick and easy access to them exactly when I needed them...?
I remembered a trick of my dear old grandad's – he liked to keep a spare key to the car in a little magnetic box, which he would hide somewhere under the chassis or a wheel-well in case he locked the keys in his precious old Kingswood...
...and sure enough, in the right rear wheel-well of each car was a little magnet box containing a key.
Oh, happy day. Now: which car to choose?
But of course I was going to choose the red one, the Elfin. A hot-headed, unruly, uncontrollable little minx of a thing – hard, fast, snap-tempered and totally unrepentant. A kindred spirit for me, if ever there was one.
So I stepped over the cowl – glad the manager was gone, lest he caught a flash of my un-knickered box when my tight little skirt rose as I did so – and I sank into the driver's seat, loving how the cool tan leather hugged and cosseted me as though the seat was tailored to fit me personally. I fired it up, and the car came to life with a full-body shimmy and a rowling growl; not much in the way of a muffler between the big bent-eight and the exhausts, which in fact exited in pairs beneath each door. Oh what a car, what a car...
...and waiting only momentarily to see that the remote-controlled garage door shut all the way on my new menagerie of play-things, it was with a whoop and a cheer that I tore out of the storage lot, tyres alight and engine roaring like a lion – just to make sure that the manager knew exactly what I thought of him.
Skeezy, grubby bastard.
***
I made it back to Mick's illicit pad in Warburton in record time, grinning from ear to ear all the way. When the Elfin was able to keep its tyres hooked up, it sprinted like a cheetah, bringing in the next corner like it was clawing down an antelope and squirming unhappily under brakes every time. Here was a car that loved to go fast and hated – absolutely hated – to slow down.
Thrilling from the rush of the drive, I parked the car brazenly and without a second thought in front of the house. I skipped up to the door, let myself back into the house and awaited the arrival of Andy the tech guy.
Hardly had I been five minutes in Mick's office, I heard a call from the front door – but it was not the voice I expected. "Mick?" called a female voice. "Hello?"
Up in Mick's office, I froze. 'Shit,' I thought.
"Mi—ick," the girl called again, rather playfully. "Come out come out. I know you're here, Mickey Mouse. You've left the Elfin out the front."
