V & B Tow Company

V & B Tow Company is a towing business operated by Vato and Blood, whose work combines vehicle recovery with a practical assessment of the people and risks attached to each job. Its late-night search for towable cars, real-time vehicle listings, and readiness to assist Thanatoids show a small company navigating both ordinary commercial calculation and the county’s stranger demands.

Operators and Working Methods

Vato and Blood work as partners, and their business decisions are shaped by more than the price of the vehicle. At the Woodbine Motel, Takeshi Fumimota and DL encountered them moving slowly through the parking lot in a Custom Deluxe called Mi Vida Loca, looking for cars worth towing. The pair assessed the lot as if estimating what could be harvested from a stand of timber: choosing a car meant considering not only its apparent value but what recovering it would actually yield.

That calculation also involves the expected behavior of vehicle owners. The operators regard some cars as more promising jobs than others, because the owner’s response when reclaiming a vehicle can determine whether the recovery ends with a tip or an unpleasant encounter. Their work therefore depends on informal knowledge of both makes and customers, not simply on identifying the most expensive car.

A Market Calibrated to Owners

Vato and Blood describe their trade in terms of interpersonal programming: the tow company’s choices can create or avoid problems. A Rolls-Royce, in their example, may lead to a lighthearted recovery and a tip, whereas towing a Mercedes can be a poor business decision even over a short period. They had recently discussed the issue at a roundtable near Marin, treating customer relations as part of the economics of towing rather than as an afterthought.

The company also provides a practical information service. Vato gives Takeshi a card granting round-the-clock access to the V & B Tow Preferred List, which is updated with a vehicle’s make, model, year, condition, and special features. The list turns the operators’ experience into a current reference for identifying and evaluating vehicles. When Blood mentions that the hour has left them tired, Takeshi responds by producing a handful of white diamonds; the two tow operators then continue their night’s search.

Connections Beyond Towing

The operators’ contact with Takeshi and DL extends beyond the roadside. The morning after meeting them at the motel, Vato and Blood appear at the Karmology Clinic with accounts connected to Vietnam and Ortho Bob Dulang. Their material mixes war stories, questionable tales, and fragments that stop short of a clear account. The clinic listens, asks questions, and takes notes, while the tow operators become an unexpected source of local testimony.

As they grow more familiar with Takeshi and DL, Vato and Blood learn about the Death Palm, the ninja retreat, and the Puncutron. Although they discuss the story among themselves, they are among the few people who do not offer the pair unsolicited advice. Vato instead imagines turning it into a sitcom, laughing as though supplying an entire studio audience himself. Their role in the narrative thus remains characteristically practical and comic: the company’s operators bring the habits of the towing business into the clinic’s more unusual world without claiming expertise in it.

Service to Thanatoids

V & B Tow Company has a distinctive place in the county because it is practically the only towing business willing to dispatch a truck for vehicles connected with Thanatoids and the complications that may follow. That willingness makes the company an important service provider for people and situations other businesses avoid.

One emergency call comes from Shade Creek. A vehicle has gone over the edge of a mountain road and landed in an apple tree in the orchard below. Vato and Blood are summoned to recover it, and their exchange about whether they are heading in the right direction preserves the partnership’s familiar humor even in the middle of a difficult call. The episode shows the company’s work extending from parking-lot searches and customer calculations to recovery jobs shaped by the county’s Thanatoid community.