The Mercedes was still there. It would be there for about two more hours.
I dialed.
Marcus Hill answered on the third ring.
"Marcus. It is Nathan Cole, over on the east side. Frank gave me your number."
A pause, the sound of an engine idling. "Frank with the brake pads?"
"That is the one. I have a car I need moved off my driveway."
Another pause. "Yours?"
"Somebody else's. Parked across my garage door. Posted sign, nineteen days of records, parking enforcement said call a licensed company."
"Well," Marcus said, "you did the homework. I will be there in forty."
He was there in thirty-five. The truck came down the street slow, amber light bar off, and pulled to the curb in front of my house with the easy confidence of a man who has done this in every kind of neighborhood, good and bad. Marcus Hill was a large man, big shoulders, gray hair cut short, and he moved like nothing in the world was in a hurry. He shook my hand, looked at the Mercedes, looked at my sign, and nodded at the stake.
"That yours?" he asked.
"Printed it myself."
"Good sign. Clear language. Visible from the street." He walked around the Mercedes once, slow, the way I walk around a car before I quote a job. He noted the plate. He noted the wheels, the tint, the condition. "Nice car," he said. "Too nice for what it is doing."
Then he looked at me. "You got ID? And the registration on the property?"
I went inside and came back with my driver's license and the property tax record with my name on it. He studied both, held the license up next to my face in a way that was not rude, just thorough, and handed them back.
"You are the owner of record," he said. "The car is on your driveway. The sign is posted and visible. That is everything I need."
He had a clipboard. He wrote down the plate, the make and model, the location, the time. He took his own photographs, four of them, the sign included in two. Then he walked back to the truck and started working the controls, and the flatbed began to unfold behind the cab with a hydraulic whine I know better than my own voice.
I stood in the garage doorway and watched. I had imagined this moment a dozen times over the last nineteen days, and every version of it had been louder than this one. In my head there was shouting, there was Tyler running across the street, there was Meredith on the porch with her phone out. In reality it was just a Tuesday morning, quiet, a big man in work boots doing a job he had done a thousand times.
Marcus noticed me watching. "First tow?" he asked.
"First one I ever ordered."
He nodded. "Twenty years I have been doing this. You would not believe the things people say when the truck shows up." He hooked the winch cable under the front of the Mercedes with practiced hands. "They cry. They threaten. They tell me their uncle is a lawyer. One lady told me I was ruining Christmas, and it was July."
"What do you say back?" I asked.
"Nothing much. I just keep everything." He straightened up and looked at me. "That is the whole job, really. Keep everything. The paperwork, the photographs, the times. Because somebody is always going to tell a different story later, and the paper is what stands still."
He sounded like my father. I did not say that out loud.
The flatbed stayed folded. Marcus didn't touch the winch.
"Here's how this works," he said. "I can't take a car that isn't here. When he's on your property and you want him gone, you call me, and I come."
"He'll be here tomorrow," I said. "Seven-sixteen, give or take."
"Seven-sixteen," Marcus said, writing it down.
He tore a card off the clipboard and handed it to me. "Call this number, not the office. It rings in the truck."
I took the card and put it in my wallet, behind my driver's license.
"And when I get here," he said, "don't stand between me and the car. You stand by your garage and let me do the job."
"I can do that."
"Most people say that. Most people mean it until the shouting starts." He tucked the clipboard under his arm and looked at the driveway, the sign, the cameras. "You did this right. Most folks call me first and ask questions later. You called me last. That's the right order."
He shook my hand and climbed into the cab. The truck pulled away slow, the amber light bar still off, and I stood at the foot of my driveway with his card in my pocket and watched it turn the corner.