buying a non operational car in Cali.

The guy ghosted me. Seeing how the title wasn't in his name, the title signer was dead and he was selling it for a family sounds like this was going to be a 'parts only and cut the thing up before the cops find it in my driveway' sort of deal. Trouble with that was I was going to make HIS truck operational with my motor and trans. It wasn't non-op'd so the guy wasn't going to non-op it for me to get a title transfer. It was obvious he was as new at this as me as I was asking all the questions and 24-36 hours later he would give me a 2-3 word response: yes, no , I dont know. F it unless the guy reaches back out to me. I had TT5.9s trailer lined up and all..his loss.