How To Steal a Car (9 page)

“We should stop at the store,” she said. “We need milk.”

“Okay,” I said. I did not mention that my dad had not been alone in his car. Or that the woman sitting beside him looked like a younger version of my mother.

I decided if Deke ever called I would laugh and say something like “Hey, I was just kidding. Ha-ha.” That’s what I thought I’d do. But then he did call. It was the same day I saw my dad with the woman by the Sofitel. And instead of saying I’d just been kidding, I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” But I still didn’t think I was
really
going to do it. I told myself something would happen. My other grandmother would die or there would be a tornado or something.

That night when my dad got home from work, we had BLTs and baked beans for dinner—as minimal a meal as my mother was capable of preparing. I had thought she didn’t believe what I’d said about seeing Dad, but I could tell by the way she was acting that she
did
believe me. Maybe she’d seen
him herself, and seen the woman in the car too, but hadn’t wanted to admit it to me.

As we were eating, my dad told a long story about something that had happened to him in college but I wasn’t listening. I was watching my mom. Usually she’s full of questions, always keeping the conversation going. Like
And then what happened?
or
What did you have for lunch?
or
What were you doing way out by the Sofitel in the middle of the day?

She didn’t ask him anything at all, the whole meal.

I think she was afraid he would lie to her.

After dinner, my mom cleaned the kitchen in that loud, potbanging sort of way she did when she was upset. My dad went into his study to shuffle papers around or whatever it was he did in there. I turned on the TV and watched an old
Sex and the City
rerun, except I wasn’t really watching it, I was thinking about how I was going to get out of meeting Deke.

I had told him I would meet him at Charlie Bean’s the next afternoon, but I’d decided I wasn’t actually going to do it. The easiest thing would be to tell him I was sick, so I was trying to decide what kind of disease I should have—something that lasted a while—when the phone rang.

My dad picked up the phone in his study, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that something bad had happened.
My head went to all the usual places: another death in the family, a serious financial crisis that would force us to live on macaroni and cheese, a diagnosis of cancer or plague, a death threat from terrorist rapists—all the standard horrors. Then Sarah Jessica Parker’s heel broke at exactly the most embarrassing possible moment, and my mother turned on the garbage disposal, and all the conversations with Deke I’d been rehearsing kind of smooshed together and I thought how nice it would be to be bulimic at that moment so I could go to the bathroom and puke. Instead of puking, I turned up the volume on the TV and tried hard to care about Sarah Jessica Parker’s shoe crisis.

What happened: Elwin Carl Dandridge got knifed.

One of the other inmates thought that raping eight girls was sufficient cause for murder, so he stabbed him three times with the sharpened handle of a spoon. Apparently, it is not that easy to kill someone with a spoon, because instead of being dead, Dandridge was in the prison hospital. My dad felt he had to rush right over there to sit with his injured serial rapist and, I don’t know, write down his dying words or something. Actually, I think he was looking for an excuse to get out of the house, what with my mom acting so weird.

He didn’t get home until almost midnight. I was slouched in his recliner, reading about Captain Ahab and his leg made
out of a whale’s jawbone, when he walked in and told me that Elwin Carl Dandridge was going to be all right.

“His wounds were superficial. But he’ll have to be placed in solitary confinement when they release him from the hospital wing.”

Like it was the best thing that could possibly happen, keeping the rapist safe.

Then he asked me if Mom was still up, and I told him she’d gone to bed an hour ago. That seemed to make him happy too.

The next morning when I got up, my dad was packing his suitcase. I had this stomach-dropping moment when I thought he was moving out, like they were getting divorced or something, but he told me my mom was driving him to the airport for an overnight trip to Colorado.

“We’ve located a man who can alibi Elwin Dandridge for several of the alleged rapes. I’ve been trying to find him for the past month, and it turns out he’s been in jail in Denver. I just need to get a statement from him.”

“What’s he in jail for?”

“Auto theft.”

“Oh. Are you going to defend him too?”

“He has a lawyer. It’s a first offense, so I doubt he’ll do any jail time beyond the time he’s already served.” He shrugged. “Nobody gets too excited these days about stolen cars.”

“I was sure you were going
to back out,” Deke said with a grin.

I sat down across from him. There were two Phrap-o-chinos sitting on the small table. His was half empty.

“But you bought me a Phrap anyways.”

“Just in case.”

“What if I
hadn’t
shown up?”

“I’d have drunk it myself.”

That wasn’t exactly what I’d meant.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Just a couple minutes.”

I took a sip of my drink. It was warm, but not hot. I got up and went over to the station with the stir sticks and sugar and stuff, added three packets of sugar, stirred it in, and went back to the table.

He watched me take another sip, then said, “So…you really up for this?”

I’d always thought that stealing cars was something you did at night, but according to Deke, the best time is in the middle of the day, and the best place is in a big busy parking lot, like at a mall where nobody pays any attention to just another teenager.

“Best part is you just have to drive it about a mile to the Park & Ride and leave it there.”

I didn’t get it. “What’s the point?” I asked.

“To make sure it doesn’t have a transmitter on it,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You know—those signal things they put in some cars so if they get stolen the cops can locate them. We drop the car at the Park & Ride, and if no cops show up, my guy has one of his guys pick it up the next morning.”

“So all I have to do is drive the car a mile and I get a thousand dollars?”

“Minus for the key. Minus my cut for setting it up.”

“Leaving what?”

“Two-fifty?”

I laughed. “How about five hundred?”

“It’s only like two minutes of work!” he said.

“Yeah, and I risk getting caught and going to jail.”

“Look, I have to deal with the guy, then locate a car like what he wants, then get the VIN number so I can order a key, and pay the key guy—five hundred bucks just for the key! Then I got to follow the guy whose car it is to work or whatever so we know the best time and place to grab the car, and then deal with you, and—”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll do it for two-fifty.”

“And you won’t go to jail, because you’ve got a clean record and you’re only sixteen.”

I corrected him. “Fifteen.”

His eyes widened. “You don’t have a license?”

I started laughing at the expression on his face, then he was laughing too because if I got pulled over, not having a license would be the least of my problems.

You hear a lot about car thieves hot-wiring cars, but it is much easier to use a key. That way you don’t have to damage the car. Also, many new cars are equipped with antitheft devices that make hot-wiring impossible, or they might have transmitters so the police can track them down by following a signal. To get around that, the thief must park the car in a safe place for a day or two to let it “cool down.”

I should say something about my mental state during all this: Happy and Relaxed.

I think it was the rules. There was no fuzziness about what Deke and I were doing. It was immoral, illegal, risky, and entertaining. I was not distracted by thoughts of Jen or Will or Jim Vail or Elwin Carl Dandridge or even, in a way, Deke Moffet. Because Deke was not really Deke the Boy—he was more like Deke the Auto Thief. He was not who he
was
—he was what he
did.
Like we each had a job to do, and until the job was over we were defined by what we did. What we had to do. I think this is why guys like football, and why
they join the army, because as long as you are playing the game or following orders you do not have to figure out who you really are.

Deke had a little blue pickup truck that he actually owned. It was a mess, with a bunch of McDonald’s wrappers and cups on the floor, and it reeked of cigarettes.

“You smoke?” I asked.

“Marsh does.”

“Oh.” I had been wondering about Marshall Cassidy. “Before, you were boosting cars with Marshall. How come now you’re doing it with me?”

“Marsh is sort of…unreliable. If it wasn’t for him we’d never have gotten caught. It was really stupid. Both of us in the car—I mean, what was the point? We should have just taken turns. Why risk both of us getting cracked? Plus he was driving fifty in a thirty zone and got us pulled over. I should’ve known better than to let him drive. He’d been smokin’ bathtub.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s this cheap meth.”

Meth. That made perfect sense. Marshall Cassidy was one of those guys just born to be a meth freak.

“But you guys are still friends?”

“Marsh and me, we been tight since we were like five.”

Just like me and Jen.

Deke turned off I-394 onto Ridgedale Drive, then into the parking lot on the Macy’s side of Ridgedale Center. He drove up and down the rows of cars, then stopped.

“There it is,” he said, pointing. “The silver Benz.”

He showed me a thing that looked like a small cell phone.

“This car has what you call a keyless option. You just put this thing—I guess it’s a keyless key—you put it in your pocket, and when you walk up to the car it automatically unlocks the doors. You get in, put your foot on the brake, press the start button on the dash, and take off. Nice and slow—nobody’s gonna be chasing you.”

I took the key.

“Now you go shopping,” he said.

“You mean
car
shopping?” I said, thinking he was making a dumb joke.

“No. Go into Macy’s and look at some stuff, then walk out the other entrance so it looks like you’re coming out of the mall and going to your car. That way nobody connects you with me.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Fine.” I put on my sunglasses, got out of the truck, headed into Macy’s, and walked through the men’s department, then into the mall and out the mall entrance past the bench where Jen and I had been sitting the day I’d seen the guy drop his car keys. I reached into my purse and felt
around. The Nissan keys were still there, way down in the bottom. I could feel the Mercedes key in my jeans pocket, almost like it was hot. I stood there on the curb for what seemed like a long time, then something inside me clicked, and I stepped off the curb and headed diagonally across the parking lot toward it, my heart pounding harder and faster with every step.

I was opening the Mercedes door when I heard someone say, “Hey!”

I froze.

“Cordelia?”

I turned toward the voice. A guy—tall, a few years older than me with dark hair and close-set features—smiling. He had on a pair of those jeans that underpaid Asians spend hours beating the crap out of just to make them look old, even though you can tell right away they’re fake.

I said, “Ummm…” And then it hit me who he was. Only I couldn’t remember his name.

“Tyler,” he said. “From the Minnehaha Club pool? You’re Cordelia, right?”

I remembered I had told him my name was Cordelia.

“You guys never showed up,” I said. “At the Starbucks?”

“Oh! Uh, we didn’t think
you’d
show up.” He ran his eyes over the car the same way he’d looked at me in my bathing suit.

“Nice ride,” he said.

“It’s my boyfriend’s.”

“Cool. So, what’s going on?”

“Nothing?” I said. Looking past him I could see Deke in his truck, gesticulating. “Listen, I gotta get going,” I said.

He looked disappointed. “Okay. Well. It was good to see you.”

“Good to see you,” I said. I got into the car and closed the door.

The inside of a Mercedes-Benz is so quiet it feels at first as if your ears have stopped working. I found the start button on the dash next to the steering wheel and pressed it. The dashboard display lit up, but the car didn’t start. Tyler was still standing a few feet away, watching me and smiling. I pressed the button again. Nothing. Tyler was still watching me, and I had a sudden panic attack.
What if this is his car?
But he looked too calm for that. I remembered then that Deke had said something about the brake, so I put my foot on the brake pedal and pressed the start button again.

The engine started with a deep hum, and the car began beeping loudly. The panicky feeling got worse for a second, until I figured out what it was. I fastened the seat belt and the beeping stopped.

I put the car in gear. As soon as it started moving, my panic went away. I felt like I was in a dream. I drove out of
the parking lot, around the entire mall, then re-entered the lot by Macy’s. Tyler was nowhere in sight. I parked the car in the exact same spot and walked away from it. I was almost back to the sidewalk in front of Macy’s when Deke pulled up in his pickup.

“What the hell?” he said.

I got in beside him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Deke said, “Look, you said he doesn’t even know your real name.”

“He could find out.”

“Why would he?”

“I’m irresistible?”

“Seriously, he’s not even going to remember he talked to you. I know guys like that. You’re just another girl to him.”

“He was really interested in the car. And he remembered my name.”

“Your
fake
name. Besides, what are the chances he ever finds out that the car he saw you get into was stolen? Cars get boosted every day. You ever see anything about it in the news? Hell no. Unless somebody gets jacked with a baby in the backseat or something. It’s what they call a victimless crime—except for the insurance company, and nobody cares about them. Besides, even if he did remember and found out
who you are and all, nobody would believe him. Girls don’t steal cars, they—”

“Shut up,” I said. Or maybe shouted. I opened the door and got out and slammed it.

Deke rolled the window down and kept talking, getting mad now. “I paid five hundred bucks for that key!”

“So do it yourself!”

“I will if I have to. Gimme the key.” He leaned across the seat and stuck his hand out the open window. I took the key out of my pocket and looked at it. My heart was going crazy again and I felt like I couldn’t get enough air. I backed away from him, then ran over to the Mercedes, got in, and slammed the door.

Silence.

I pressed the start button.

Nobody in the history of driving ever drove better than I drove that eight-tenths of a mile from the Macy’s parking lot to the Park & Ride. Each second stretched out to a minute as I used every ounce of concentration to bring utter flawlessness to my performance. I imagined my dad, my mom, Deke Moffet, Will, the faceless man who would one day give me my driver’s test, and God all watching my every move. I did not disappoint them. I was perfect.

Afterward when he picked me up just down the street from the Park & Ride, Deke said, “You did good.”

“Thanks.” I had this buzzy, hollow feeling inside, like I had done something really important. Not necessarily something good, but something real.

“Let’s go over to the Pit and smoke a bowl,” he said. “Celebrate.”

“No thanks.” The last thing I wanted was to sit next to a stinky pond and fry my brain cells. I wanted to hang on to that buzzy feeling, but not the kind of buzz Deke was talking about.

“You don’t smoke?”

“I think I just want to go home,” I said.

That night we had a quiet dinner, just me and my mom eating crunchy BLTs and tomato soup. Neither of us had much to say. I wondered what was going on in her head, but mostly I was thinking about what was going on in
my
head. My drive from the parking lot to the Park & Ride kept playing in my head like a loop, over and over.

Later I went to my room and tried to read some more
Moby-Dick,
but the words started looking like little black squiggles, and then I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up I was still dressed and my alarm clock read 5:13 a.m.

I got up and, without even changing my clothes, I walked
all the way to the Park & Ride, which took almost an hour. The Mercedes was still parked where I’d left it. I turned around.

When I got home, my mom was making french toast.

“You
got up early,” she said.

Jen called just as I was about to call Deke, who told me never to call him before ten, so I talked to her for a while. She was on a rant about Will, who had gone to the pool with her, and instead of hanging out with her, had started talking to these guys.

“Remember the blond guy? What’s his name? Damien?”

“Or Andre.”

“Yeah. They know each other. I guess he works at Ducky’s sometimes and they’re both into, I don’t know, some sort of gaming thing. So I…”

I just wanted to call Deke, and I was trying to figure out if there was a way you could text somebody in the middle of a call to somebody else, and Jen just kept chattering until finally I told her my mom was calling me. When I hung up, I had this moment of confusion over why Jen and I were such good friends.

Deke wasn’t home, but I got him on his cell.

“It’s still there,” he told me. “I just drove past it. They should have picked it up by now. Let me call you back.”

A few minutes later my cell rang.

“Neal said the cops were watching it all night,” Deke said.

“Who’s Neal?”

“The guy who isn’t going to be paying us any money on account of the car’s got a transmitter on it.”

“Oh.” The fragment of buzz I still had left whooshed out of me. “Now what?”

“Now I’m out five hundred bucks, and Neal’s pissed. We have to find another Benz.”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking about the car sitting in the Park & Ride with some undercover cop watching it through big official-looking binoculars, just waiting to pounce. Would they take my fingerprints from the steering wheel? Would Tyler the pool guy hear about it and report me? Did anybody else see me?

“You up for it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t.

Jen was still upset about the Will thing when I got back to her later that afternoon. She wanted me to come over, so I said okay and talked my mom into dropping me off at Jen’s on her way to a church meeting. When Jen opened the door, I knew in one second she was drunk.

“My parents are up at Izatys for the weekend,” she said. “I think they go there so they can do it.”