Car repossessions are the only money Lou has coming in now. Most of the handyman work was in the summer, but he still has a classified ad in the paper and gets random calls for odd jobs. Some of the jobs really seem quite odd; the details don’t make a lot of sense and leave me wondering exactly what is going on behind closed doors.
I like doing the repos with him, and he prefers to take me instead of his fraternity brothers because he feels like he should pay them for their help, or at least be indebted to them for a return favor. It’s always exciting, and we have some good stories from it.
One time, my father saw that Lou had driven me home in a repossessed Jeep. He wasn’t thrilled and said he didn’t want me in the repo cars because they may not be safe. He figures that if a person isn’t making their car payments, they probably are not keeping up on maintenance either. He’s probably right. I can only imagine what he would say if he found out that I actually go on the repos with him and drive the getaway car with no license, registration, inspection or insurance. I’ve done a lot of repos; most are not exciting and involve hours of just waiting around for someone to come home or drive by.
Lou has a lot of stories from when he did repossessions in New York City, where he used to carry a gun. There’s no gun now that I know of, and I don’t think he ever actually used one. I think he would have told me. On one repo, someone convinced Lou to take him home to get money to pay off the loan and ended up locking Lou in the garage and threatening to kill him. Another time, Lou was driving a repo car that suddenly caught on fire and was totaled, which kind of proves my dad’s maintenance theory.