Liar, liar car's on fire

My daughter just bought a car from a private owner, who happened to be a relative of a friend of ours. At her first visit to the seller's home he was congeniality itself: smiling, deferential, helping her up the unsteady stairs as he and his wife showed her around the house. Everything was quite chummy and pleasant. She was charmed by him and the car. I investigated the car and felt that she really had a good deal. So this Tuesday she gave him the money, took the title, and leaving the car with him, went to get it registered. When she returned to pick up the car it had a fresh dent on the driver’s door.
“The pizza guy bumped into it,” said Mr. Charming, “I got him to pay for the damage.” Then he smiled brightly, paused and asked: “Can I keep the money?"
You read that right. He was asking my daughter for the money to pay for the repair on her car. As crazy as this sounds, it’s understandable if you knew my daughter. She is one of the kindest people I know and her persona and presence invites people to take advantage of her. Also, Mr. Scam felt from the beginning he was “giving away the car” and must have seen this as his opportunity to make a little more money.
“Sure, no problem,” said she. Truth be told she probably would never have noticed the dent and wouldn’t care about it if she had.
My inclination when I heard about it was to laugh about it and let it go. Until I heard how much the pizza dude was shaken down for: $500. I’ve delivered pizzas and $500 is a lot of cabbage for a guy hustling a second job.
Mr. Generosity had offered to clean out the car, wash it and do an oil change as a way to sweeten the deal for my daughter. She was to meet him this morning at his house. I drove along with her. He didn’t know I was coming.
I detected a certain nervousness about him as I introduced myself. After shaking his hand I said: “I may have the facts wrong, so let me get this straight and correct me if I’m wrong.” I summarized the history of the transaction and ended by saying:
“So, you worked the pizza guy to pay for damage on a car that wasn’t yours to pay for repairs you never intended to fix.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I don’t understand where you’re coming from, she (here he pointed to my daughter) was happy, she was fine with everything.”
Besides being unscrupulous he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer so I tried to help him out.
“Here’s the deal,” I explained as I pointed to a house across the street, “this is like me selling your neighbor over there on the need to have his porch painted, taking the money, and then painting my porch instead.”
I paused to let this sink in.
“That’s not the way the world works. That’s wrong.”
He began to get upset, “Listen, this has been way more trouble than I ever meant it to be. I’m done with it!”
I was beginning to not like him. “No, I don’t think so. It’s not your choice to be done with it.”
I have a friend who takes dents like this out of cars and can do it inexpensively, so I said, “What you did to the pizza guy is between you, the pizza guy, and God, but I think we can resolve this fairly easily with a friend of mine.”
In the end, he coughed up the money for the repair and we got a good laugh. Even the pizza dude probably felt he escaped lightly from an insurance nightmare, so I guess we all won.