Fifty-two thousand was a fair market price for the model and condition — not a ripoff, but not a deal either.
"Too high," Klein said. "Come down."
Mike considered it for exactly as long as it took to decide he still wanted to make the sale. "You came through Tony, so I'll skip the theater. Fifty thousand."
"Forty-six."
Mike's smile flickered briefly into something pained before he reassembled it. "Mr. Liu, at forty-six I'm not covering my costs on a truck in this condition—"
They went back and forth for a few minutes. The number landed at forty-eight thousand.
Klein counted it out from the backpack in clean stacks. Mike verified the bills, wrote a receipt, and took down the license information.
"Want to drive it off today, or wait until the paperwork's processed?" Mike asked.
"Three days enough time?"
"If everything moves clean — yeah. I'll have it washed, tanked up, plates and documents ready on the seat." Mike patted his chest. "Guaranteed."
"Three days," Klein said, and they shook on it.
On the ride back, Klein counted out a thousand dollars and set it on Tony's dashboard without comment.
Tony glanced at it twice before he couldn't help himself. "Mr. Liu — Mike's already cutting me in on the commission. You don't have to—"
"Take it." Klein was watching the street go by. "And put some real effort into moving the house paperwork fast."
Tony's throat moved. "Understood. Don't worry about a thing."
The car was quiet after that. Klein closed his eyes, running through his checklist.
House: pending paperwork. Car: three days out. Business plan for the ground floor: still blank, not urgent.
He'd figure it out.
Three days later, Klein pulled up to Mike's lot and found the F-150 sitting outside in the afternoon sun, freshly washed and looking considerably better than it had under the shed. Tank full, documents and plates stacked neatly on the passenger seat.
Mike handed over the keys and walked him through a few things worth knowing about the truck — nothing Klein hadn't already picked up through the threads, but he listened anyway.
He climbed in. Leather seats, wide windshield, the deep even rumble of the engine when it turned over.
This is the right kind of vehicle.
He drove it around Brooklyn for twenty minutes, getting the feel of the size and the steering, and was halfway through deciding on lunch when his phone rang.
Tony.
"Mr. Liu — it's done." He sounded like he'd been waiting to make this call. "Transfer is complete. You can come to the Housing Bureau this afternoon and sign for the keys. What time works?"
Klein checked the dashboard clock. Three days from preliminary agreement to full transfer, in a city where bureaucratic processes moved at the pace of something geological.
The extra thousand had apparently been well spent.
"Two o'clock," Klein said. "I'll be there."
He found a decent steakhouse nearby, had lunch, and drove the new truck to the Housing Bureau without rushing.
Tony and Dr. Chen were both waiting at the entrance when he arrived.
The process was smooth — Tony had clearly prepared the path in advance. Signatures, document confirmation, tax payments, all of it moving at a pace that suggested someone had made a few phone calls ahead of time. Klein counted out the remaining balance for the house in the back of his truck and handed it to Dr. Chen, who counted it carefully and methodically before nodding once.
She held out the keys.
"It's yours now." A brief, genuine smile crossed her face. "I hope you do something good with it."
"Safe travels back," Klein said, and shook her hand.
She picked up her bag, said nothing else, and left.
Tony handed over a folder of document copies, beaming. "Everything's in there. Call me anytime."
Klein tucked the folder under his arm, gave Tony a nod, and got back in the truck.
He drove back to the two-story building on the Brooklyn corner street and parked directly in front of the rolling shutter door.
Sat there for a moment.
Then he got out, walked to the door, inserted the key, and pushed up.
The shutter rolled back with a clatter. Afternoon light poured in across the whole ground floor, clean and even on the pale concrete.
Klein stepped inside. His footsteps echoed.
He stood in the middle of the empty space and let the feeling settle.
Since the day he'd woken up in a bathroom in someone else's life, he'd been moving — figuring out the rules, building resources, surviving. Always on borrowed ground. A room that belonged to someone who was gone, a neighborhood that tolerated him, a life he was inhabiting rather than owning.
This was different.
This was his.
He walked the ground floor a few times, turning over possibilities. Restaurant — too labor-intensive, brutal competition. Convenience store — too slow, too tedious. Something else, something that made use of what he could actually do—
Nothing crystallized yet. That was fine. He had time.
He went upstairs.
The second floor caught the late afternoon light well. He moved through the rooms slowly, standing in each one long enough to picture it — where the bed would go, which room made sense as a workspace, whether the smaller bedroom made more sense as storage or as something else entirely.
The light outside shifted from gold to amber to the first purple of evening before he noticed the time.
He was hungry.
"Come back tomorrow and sort it out properly," he told the empty room, and went downstairs.
He was reaching for the shutter handle to pull it down when voices drifted in from the street — two people walking past, their words half-swallowed by the evening air.
Most of it blurred. But a few words came through clearly.
Klein's hand paused on the handle.
He listened.
[End of Chapter 17]
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