The garage that they finally stopped at was rather unassuming. The brick building was low and squat, only a single story tall, and surrounded by other similar buildings. The doors to let cars in or out were enormous and sturdily built of wooden planks, painted a dull brown with "Finnick's Automobile Repair and Service" written across them in neat white letters, slightly offset where the doors met in the middle.

There was a significantly smaller, and much more normal looking, door to the side of the ones meant for cars, and it was this one that Nick started knocking on. After a moment's silence, Judy could hear the shuffling sounds of movement inside the shop before an incredibly deep and gruff voice shouted out, "We ain't open yet!"

Nick smiled at the response and leaned up against the door casually. "Good morning to you too, Finnick," he called through it.

From inside the shop, Judy heard what sounded like something heavy being dropped. "Nick? That you?"

"Of course," he replied.

Judy heard the rattling of the door being unlocked before it swung open. From the voice, Judy had expected the owner of the garage to be enormous, maybe a bear like Leroy, and she had instinctively craned her neck up. When she saw nothing but the ceiling of the shop, she blinked and looked down at the tiniest fox she had ever seen; he was at least a full head shorter than she was. She might have thought that he was a kit, except for the scowl that hardened his features and the unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He had a dark streak of grease that stood out against his sandy yellow fur on the top of his head between his enormous ears. The fox, who could only be Finnick, was wearing a set of stained gray coveralls and holding a wrench that looked nearly as long as he was tall. "Nick," he said, his voice just as gravelly as it had been before the door opened, "You look terrible."

Considering that the only outward signs of their brush with death that Judy could see on Nick were a small cut and a limp, she thought that was somewhat excessive, but while Finnick's tone was entirely serious, Nick just smiled in response. He looked over the smaller fox's head into the garage. "Business is doing well, I see," he said, "But how have you been?"

Finnick ignored the compliment and the question and pointed the business end of his enormous wrench at Judy. "Who's she?" he asked, looking her up and down suspiciously.

Before Judy could introduce herself, Finnick glared up at Nick. "I know you don't have friends," he said, crossing his arms across his narrow chest.

Nick looked wounded, and Judy wasn't sure whether or not it was an act. "What about us?" he asked.

"Like I said, you don't have friends," he said, emphasizing the "s" at the end of the word, and then both foxes laughed.

"Agent Hopps, Bureau of Prohibition," Nick said, gesturing at her with a careless wave.

Finnick's scowl reasserted itself, coming back deeper than before. "A prohi, huh? You in it now, ain't you?" he said, looking up at Nick and shaking his head.

Still, he lowered his wrench and gestured for Nick to enter. "Oh, that's not the half of it," Nick muttered as he walked into the shop.

Before Judy could follow, Finnick planted himself back in the doorway, blocking her path. "Maybe you can talk to your buddies on the force," Finnick growled, seeming to size Judy up again in light of learning that she was a Prohibition Agent, "Damn idiots about tore my garage apart yesterday."

Judy's ears perked at that. She didn't exactly have any friends on the police force—although Officer Clawhauser had been friendly enough, considering that he had been guarding her—but she was curious about what Finnick meant. "I'm sorry to hear that. What were they looking for?" she asked, still outside the shop as Finnick hadn't moved out of the doorway for her to pass as he had for Nick.

Finnick snorted. "A Camellac Imperial Sedan," he said, "Like I could hide that."

Judy wasn't familiar with Camellac's lineup of cars, considering that she didn't know anyone rich enough to afford one, but from the way Finnick spoke, she guessed that it must have been very large. "Did they say why they were looking for it?" she asked.

It didn't seem to have any obvious connection to the murder in the Thief of the Night, but she had to admit that she was curious about the mammal who was apparently either Nick's friend or at least knew him well enough to joke about him not having any friends. Finnick rolled his eyes at her and shook his head dismissively. "You think they tell preds what they looking for?" he asked scornfully, "How green are you?"

He turned around before she could answer, and then walked into his garage, which Judy took as an implied invitation and followed. The interior of the garage, which smelled powerfully of grease and gasoline, was a single large space except for a small office off in one corner. Considering Finnick's claim that the police had torn the place apart, it seemed pretty well organized, all of the tools either hanging neatly on the walls or organized on benches or carts. The floor of the garage was stained here and there with oil but looked otherwise clean enough to eat off of and seemed almost entirely covered by cars of a truly staggering variety, although they were mostly high-end luxury models. There was an enormous Camellac that was presumably not an Imperial Sedan, its glossy midnight blue bodywork opened up with the engine removed. Packards and Marecedes were scattered here and there, in various states of repair, and a workbench that ran along one wall had a number of rodent-sized electric cars all in pieces surrounded by magnifying lenses and tools that would have looked more at home in a watchmaker's shop. The floor space was dominated, though, by a hulking Roars-Royce that would easily fit a hippo, the body work a creamy yellow offset by what seemed like yards of bright nickel trim that flowed over the sinuous lines of the car. Crammed into the corners of the shop were a number of unidentifiable vehicles, all hidden away under canvas tarps.

Nick had been looking around, apparently with some curiosity as he waited for Judy and Finnick to go into the garage, and once they were in he turned to the little fox. "You got rid of my Moosenburg," he said.

Finnick shrugged. "You gave it to me. What, you thought I'd keep it?"

"I sold it to you," Nick corrected, "Do you still have the Buchatti?"

Finnick scoffed, and it seemed it was his turn to appear wounded. "I said I'd keep it running, didn't I?" he asked.

"You also said you'd keep my house clean," Nick countered, "The windows are filthy."

Finnick shrugged, already walking off towards one of the tarp covered vehicles. "You didn't leave a key. Or a ladder."

Knowing that it was apparently Finnick who had been keeping the outside of Nick's house at least somewhat maintained was one mystery solved, and Judy supposed that Nick might have given him the Moosenburg in exchange for the maintenance on his house and his other car. She had never heard of a Buchatti and as a result was totally unprepared for what she saw when Finnick pulled the tarp off a low shape.

Judy had never cared much about driving one way or the other. Living on a farm, driving was simply a chore like any other, and any enjoyment that she might have gotten out of it had been completely destroyed by the tedious nature of the work of driving her father's balky and beat up truck. In comparison, though, Nick's car seemed to demand to be driven. It was sleek and low, with a tiny cabin barely large enough for two mammals her size to sit side by side, and it had neither a roof nor any apparent means of putting up a convertible top. The windshield was a tiny rectangle that was only in front of the steering wheel, which was on the wrong side of the car. The bodywork was a gleaming vivid blue that complemented the silvery wheels and the black straps that kept the hood closed. The only other color was the logo mounted on the horseshoe-shaped radiator, a red oval with the word "BUCHATTI" in white letters.

"I been turning it over at least once a month," Finnick said, "Rolling it, too, so the tires don't get flat."

Nick looked at the car appreciatively. "It looks good," he said approvingly, "Where's the key?"

Finnick reached into the car's cabin and pulled a key off the seat. He surprised Judy by tossing it to her; before Nick could protest, the small fox fixed him with a glare, pointing one tiny finger up at him. "You think you can work a clutch, limping like that?"

"Maybe," Nick said, but Finnick didn't stop glaring until Nick finally admitted, "No."

"That's what I thought," Finnick said, but before he went to open the garage doors so that they could leave, he turned to face Judy.

"You look after him," he said gruffly, then stomped off without a look back, not even acknowledging it when she said that she would.

She supposed that, no matter what he said, Finnick really did care about Nick, and she thought that she saw a glimmer of warmth in Nick's eyes as he looked at Finnick's retreating back. Judy got behind the wheel of the car, and then looked down at the controls, utterly lost. The steering wheel was just on the column with nothing coming off of it, and while guessed that it had an electric starter she had no idea how to make it move. Nick apparently noticed her confusion and sighed. "This isn't a Furd, you know," he said.

"Look," he said, pointing down into the foot well of the car and pointing at the pedals one by one, from left to right, "Clutch, brake, gas."

He reached his right arm over her shoulder and grabbed her paw in his own much larger one. She could feel the roughness of the pad on his palm as he moved her paw over to the lever on the right that was closest to her. "Push in the clutch with your left foot," he said.

When she did, he moved her paw with exaggerated slowness. "First gear is here," he said, "Second is forward, third is to the left and forward. We won't get into fourth."

She let him start the car, watching as he fiddled with a pump mounted near him and adjusted the timing, and then listened as he instructed her on how to get it moving, speaking up to be heard over the engine. "Let out the clutch as you give it a little gas."

When she had tried them before Nick started the car, none of the pedals seemed to have all that much travel. She pushed the gas pedal about halfway in as she released the clutch. For a moment, nothing happened, the rear wheels just spinning up clouds of foul smelling burning rubber before the car caught traction and it shot forward fast enough to slam her and Nick back in their seats. Judy cranked the steering wheel as far right as it could go, and the tail end of the car swung around, squealing in protest as it just barely missed one of the other cars in the garage. At throttle, the din of the engine and the whine of the transmission were nearly deafening in the enclosed space, but even as she eased up on the gas and steered into the skid they were out of the garage, flying down the street.

Judy thought that she had done pretty well, all things considered, but it wasn't until she came to a complete stop in front of the Bureau office that Nick released his grip on the car's dashboard. "Well," he said after a moment to gather his composure, "At least you didn't stall it."

She smiled sweetly up at him. "I'm a great driver," she said.

Nick was still smoothing down the fur of his tail, which had gone rather frizzy, but he nodded. "Save it for a Grand Prix, Carrots," he said, "I'm pretty sure the cops still ticket prohis. Or is that one of the perks of the job?"

"Afraid not," she said, and Nick followed her into the building.

She had wanted to discuss the case in more detail with Nick while driving to the office, but even outdoors the Buchatti was so loud that it was difficult to hold a conversation, and the unfamiliar controls had taken a fair amount of her attention at first. She had ground the gears on a few poorly timed shifts, but overall thought she had picked up the skill for driving it and would be able to hold a conversation at the same time. Every time she tried, though, Nick had yelled at her to pay attention to the road and the other cars, all of which seemed almost to be moving in slow motion in comparison to the Buchatti.

She resolved that she'd take the opportunity after she was done talking to Bellwether, but Nick had slowed down as they entered the lobby, looking around at the drab interior with its faded carpets and outdated furniture. "You know, I never thought I'd come back here," he said thoughtfully.

He frowned. "It actually doesn't look any different from how it was two years ago."

"Director Bellwether must like it how it is," Judy replied with a shrug, and Nick followed her into the Bureau's main office area.

It was late enough in the morning that there were a fair number of other mammals at their desks, some of them chatting and drinking coffee as they prepared to start the day. When they spotted Nick, however, all conversation stopped and all eyes turned towards them. It occurred to Judy that Nick was the first predator that she had seen in the office, and she guessed that even if the other agents didn't know who Nick was they were probably having the same realization. The door to Bellwether's office was open, and the ewe must have sensed the change in the atmosphere because she poked her head out, her eyes widening as she caught sight of Judy and Nick. She rushed out and grasped Judy by the waist with what almost seemed like a maternal air, and then pulled herself back an arm's length. "Goodness!" she said, "Agent Hopps, what happened to you? You look like you walked through a furnace!"

Judy was suddenly painfully aware that she had a fair amount of fur singed away and was wearing a male's button up shirt like a dress, belted with a length of silk from a bathrobe. She had seen for herself how terrible she looked, but Bellwether was the first mammal to really react to it. It occurred to her that Finnick hadn't reacted to her appearance at all, and she wondered why. Maybe he had been more concerned about Nick, or perhaps he simply didn't care. Before she could think on it any more, Bellwether had turned to Nick, and any motherly qualities she had possessed were entirely gone. "Nicholas Wilde," she said, and it seemed to be taking her a fair amount of effort to say his name without spitting.

"Dawn," Nick replied mildly, looking down at the little ewe, and Judy saw her jaw clench and then relax at his use of her first name.

Judy hardly expected Nick to like her boss, considering what little he had said of their previous encounter, and it seemed the feeling was entirely mutual, though Nick was doing a far better job of disguising it. "What is he doing here?" Bellwether demanded of Judy, jabbing in Nick's direction with one hoof.

"I brought him in to help me with the Carajou murder," Judy said, before Nick could goad Bellwether on any further.

Bellwether seemed about to respond, but then looked around, apparently noticing that all of the agents were watching the conversation intently. "We'll talk in my office," she said abruptly, and when Nick started to follow, she added, "The fox can wait outside."

Judy thought about protesting. Nick was probably better at laying out the details than she was, and she could hardly believe how dismissive her boss was being. Before she could say anything, however, she saw Nick subtly shake his head, and she swallowed her words and followed Bellwether into her office. The sheep closed the door behind them, and then rummaged in her desk for a pen and paper before inviting Judy to speak.

Bellwether listened to Judy's story attentively and without interruption, all the while taking notes. When Judy came to the end, which was as accurate as possible though she skipped over how she had persuaded Nick to help and Nick's explanation of his past, Bellwether continued writing for a moment before sitting back with an expression of deep thought on her face. "I'm sure that you're right about it being arson," she said, "I can pull a few strings to make sure they investigate it properly."

The ewe's expression momentarily darkened, and Judy had little doubt that she was thinking of the police with no small amount of contempt. Then her furrowed brow smoothed and she sighed. "I'm afraid I can't offer you more than that," she said apologetically, "You know how we're funded."

Judy nodded. She was glad that her boss understood and believed her, but she hadn't been holding out any kind of hope for much more. "I'll just ask you to be careful," Bellwether said, "It never gets easier, losing agents."

"I'm going to see this through," Judy said firmly.

Bellwether smiled at that. "I thought you would," she said.

"Just watch out for that fox. I'm sure he has a certain... charm," she said, her muzzle wrinkling in distaste as she spoke the word, "But don't forget that the only mammal he looks out for is himself. He turned on Biggliani to save himself, after all, and I'm sure he'd do the same to you."

Judy wasn't sure she agreed with her boss, but she kept her thoughts to herself as the sheep continued. "I don't know how you convinced him to help or what his angle is in this, but it could be a wonderful opportunity."

"An opportunity, ma'am?" she asked, unsure of where Bellwether was going with her line of thinking.

"Oh, yes," Bellwether said, "He may have escaped justice before, but this is our opportunity to put him away for good."

Bellwether kept speaking, enunciating her words carefully and deliberately as though she was making sure Judy could not misunderstand. "Once this is over, I expect you to arrest him for any charge we can make stick. You'll do that, won't you?"

Judy felt a sinking feeling in her chest. The agreement that Nick had made for turning Mr. Big in prevented him from being prosecuted for any of the crimes he had committed or abetted under the shrew's employ, and Nick's evaluation about Bellwether being unenthusiastic about that agreement was apparently underselling her feelings significantly. Bellwether's opinion of Nick was uncomfortably close to how Judy had felt about him, before pulling him into the investigation, but she was no longer so sure that arresting him would be a case of justice served. Bellwether's eyes were hard and unyielding as she waited for Judy to respond, and she knew that she couldn't drag out the silence any longer.

Judy took a deep breath and did something that she had never done before. "Yes, ma'am," she lied to her boss.

Author's Notes:

Before I get into the notes for this chapter, I'd like to thank DrummerMax64 again for his wonderful write up of this story for its feature on the Zootopia News Network this past week. If you haven't checked out the site before, I do strongly encourage you to do so; it's got a great variety of features, everything from stories to art to videos and music. It's an incredible honor to have my story featured, and I really do appreciate it.

DrummerMax64 is almost certainly the single most voracious reader of Zootopia fanfiction and is definitely one of the most thoughtful commenters on what he reads, but he's also an author. You can check out his story, a nice little post-movie slice of life style work called "Fluffy and Scruffy" with story ID 12566683.

Thank you again, and I'm looking forward to your next chapter!

The title of this chapter, "Take Me for a Buggy Ride," comes from a song by Bessie Smith, arguably the greatest female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. A buggy is an open-topped vehicle; the term originated from a small, lightweight carriage pulled by a horse and was later applied to motor vehicles, such as dune buggies or the lunar rovers known as moon buggies.

The cars in the garage are all, naturally, pretty punny, except Packard, which didn't need to be changed. Marecedes is a pretty obvious Mercedes pun; Mercedes didn't become Mercedes-Benz until 1926, so in 1927 there were still plenty of Mercedes running around. In addition to being a pun on Rolls-Royce, the Roars-Royce is a reference to the Great Gatsby, as it matches the description of the one that Jay Gatsby (Catsby, perhaps?) owned. The Camellac is, as before, a pun on Cadillac; the model that I imagine Finnick having is a 1923 Type 53 Town Car, which doesn't resemble an Imperial Sedan at all. The wheelbase alone of the Imperial Sedan was 11.5 feet (about 3.5 meters), so that really isn't something that you could exactly hide. Moosenburg is a pun on Duesenburg, an American car company that went out of business in 1937.

Nick's car is based on a 1924 Bugatti Type 35; Buchatti is a French language pun, "chat" being French for "cat." It occurs to me in retrospect that most of the French language puns I came up with are cat related. Anyway, the car, more so than his house or his record collection, indicates how wealthy he is (or at least was); today Type 35s sell for millions of dollars, and even when new they were extremely expensive. The description of the car is as accurate as I could make it, although Judy's note that the steering wheel is on the wrong side is simply her American bias showing. The steering wheel of the Type 35 is only on the wrong side inasmuch as it's on the right side, whereas if it were on the left side it'd be on the right side. That last sentence was pretty deliberately confusing, though accurate; the Type 35 was manufactured as a right hand drive car but the US road system and traffic laws are designed for left hand drive cars.

The Type 35 was basically a racecar that could also be driven on the street, and while its top speed of 118 MPH (about 190 KPH) sounds a bit underwhelming today, by the standards of the day it had incredible performance. A 1925 Ford Model T had a top speed of 45 MPH (about 72 KPH); the Type 35 could blow the doors off just about any other production vehicle in its day. It had aluminum alloy wheels at a time when most cars still had wooden wheels and a four speed gearbox in an era when two speed gearboxes were common. It used the engine as a structural element and had a number of other innovative design features, including a hollow axle to reduce weight. It's also low and sleek like a proper racecar when most of its contemporaries were tall and awkward, and I only wish that it were possible for me to drive one. There is an Argentinian company called Pur Sang that makes extremely faithful reproductions, but even those cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Still, if you're writing a modern day Zootopia story, the obvious pun is right there for you.

Even today, Bugatti is a brand without much of a presence; unless you live near millionaires and billionaires, you're unlikely to see one, so if you're not into cars it makes sense to be unfamiliar with the brand. For reference, Bugatti's current model, the Chiron, has a base price of almost three million dollars and performs just as well compared to modern economy cars as the Type 35 did in its day. I'd argue that the modern Ford vehicle closest to the Model T is the Fiesta, which in base trim has a top speed of 115 MPH, actually a little slower than what the Type 35 tops out at. The Chiron, by comparison, has a top speed of 261 MPH (420 KPH). Considering that you can drive it on normal roads, that's ridiculous, but thinking of how crazy that is also gives a better idea of how ridiculous the Type 35 was in its day.

For several chapters, when I've mentioned driving, I've threatened to go into the process in the 1920s, and it's time for me to make good on that threat. We pretty much take it for granted today that the major controls on a car are all going to be in the same places. Sure, the controls for the radio or the climate system will vary a lot from car to car, but the basic controls are all the same. In any car with a manual transmission, the pedal box will have three pedals, and the order is always the same. Clutch on the left, brake in the middle, gas on the right. The gear selector is in the middle of the cabin somewhere between the front seats, and shift patterns are pretty standard.

In the 1920s, however, cars were still fairly new and the controls were not standardized yet. The Type 35 has two minor examples of this; despite being a right hand drive car, the gear selector is also on the right side of the car, actually outside of the cabin, instead of inside the cabin to the left of the driver. Additionally, the shift pattern is upside down to our modern sensibilities; first gear is to the right and down instead of to the left and forward. The rest of the gears follow, with second being where most drivers would expect third to be, third where second should be, and fourth where first should be.

The odd shift pattern might take some getting used to, but for someone comfortable driving a left hand drive car, all of the controls are where they should be. That is definitely not the case for the Model T Ford. Compared to a modern car, the controls are more alien than they first appear.

The Model T does have three pedals, but they don't do what you'd expect them to if you've only driven a modern car. The brake pedal is on the right, the middle pedal is exclusively for engaging reverse, and the left pedal is a clutch, but it doesn't work the same as a modern car. You may notice that none of those is a gas pedal; the throttle is controlled with a little hand lever on the steering column (hence Judy's confusion that the Type 35 doesn't have any controls on the steering column or wheel). The clutch is also quite a bit different from a modern car.

In a modern manual transmission car, the basic way of shifting gears is to take your right foot off the gas pedal, push the clutch all the way in with your left foot, select the gear you want to go into with the gear selector, and then let the clutch all the way out with your left foot while applying gas with your right foot. The clutch in the Model T does not operate like that at all. There are only two forward speeds, and the way that the clutch pedal is used is actually pretty simple. If the clutch is pressed all the way, you're in first gear. While the clutch pedal is in the middle of its travel, the car is in neutral, and with the clutch all the way out, you're in second gear. Note that there isn't even a gear selector lever; it's entirely based on the position of the clutch pedal. When shifting from first to second, you need to ease off the gas with the hand control, let the pedal out, and then give it enough gas to prevent the engine from stalling. As a result, once you're in second gear, you have your feet entirely off the pedals unless you need to slow down or stop.

I really like cars, as you might have been able to guess from earlier chapters and from this one (and my notes for it) especially. Hopefully you were still able to enjoy the chapter even if you're not into cars, and thanks for reading these author's notes especially, which were probably about as self-indulgent as I've ever gone. Any other comments that I'd have for this story would veer into spoiler territory, so I'll leave it at this. Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!