The Getaway Man

THE
GETAWAY
MAN

VINTAGE CRIME / BLACK
LIZARD

Vintage Books  A Division of Random
House, Inc.  New York

I
t was just after
two in the afternoon when we pulled up. Tim said that’s the time it was
always slow in the bank, specially on Thursdays.

Virgil had a
double-barreled sawed-off. Those are good for scaring people, Tim said. Much
better than a pistol. Virgil carried the shotgun under his coat, against his
chest, held there by a loop of rawhide around his neck. Tim had a pair of
pistols, like he always used to carry.

“Five minutes,
Eddie,” Tim said to me. Then him and Virgil went into the bank.

The clock on the dashboard was one of those digital ones. It said
2:09.

The clock said 2:12 when I heard the crack of a pistol. Then
the boom of Virgil’s shotgun.

People started
screaming.

for
…

Cammi, Jessie Lee, Johnny the Gambler,
Detroit B., Bust-Out Victor, Iberus, J.R., Everett, Water Street, the East Gary
Express, the Uptown Community Organization, a whole lot of back roads, and some
wrong turns.

and for
…

Jim
Procter, who drove the car.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Joe R. Lansdale

It’s true, bro. We would have been kings.

THE
GETAWAY MAN

E
very
outfit needs a getaway man. It doesn’t matter how smooth the job goes; if
you don’t get away with the money, it was all for nothing.

I
learned that when I was just a kid, when I first started getting locked up.
Once that happens the first time, it’s like that’s your destiny.
They let you out, but they know you’re coming back, and you do, too.

Inside, some guys get tattoos, so that when they get out, other guys will
know where they’ve been. I never wanted one. I figured people can always
tell, anyway.

Every time they sent me to the kiddie camps, it was for
stealing cars. I never stole cars to keep; I just wanted to drive them. I
wanted to learn how to do that more than anything. The only reason I took the
cars was so I could practice.

When you’re in one of those places
for kids, guys always ask you what you’re in for. The first time I went
in, before I learned, I told them the truth.

I found out quick how dumb
that was. When I told other guys, that first time, why I took the cars, they
said that wasn’t even stealing, it was just joyriding. That’s what
a kid does with a car, joyriding. A man wouldn’t do that.

It
sounds weird, but the worst thing you can be in the kiddie camps is what they
call a “kid.” The word means something different in there.
Something very bad.

Right after I told the truth that first time, I had
to fight a lot. So I wouldn’t get taken for a kid.

By the next
time I went in, I was smarter. I knew nobody would understand if I told them I
took the cars so I could practice my driving. So, after that, when they asked
me, I always said, “Grand Theft Auto.” I wasn’t some little
joyrider; I was a thief.

A thief steals cars to keep. To sell, I mean.
The really good thieves, they get a reputation, and people hire them to steal
certain cars. Like ordering food in a restaurant, and the parking lot is the
menu.

It’s good to be known as a thief when you go Inside.
It’s even better to be known as a killer, but only a certain kind. Like
if you killed someone in a fight, that would be good. Or if someone paid you to
do it.

It’s pretty unusual, to be in one of the kiddie places for
a killing like that, but I know one guy, Tyree, who was. A drug dealer paid
Tyree to shoot someone, and he did it. Everyone respected him for doing that.
It was something a big-time criminal would do.

But not every killing
got you respect. The sick-in-the-head kids, they were nothings. Nobody was
afraid of them. Like the one who chopped up his mother with an ax. Or the one
who went to school with a rifle, and shot a bunch of other kids who were
bullying him.

After that kid got locked up, he still got bullied, only
much worse. The kind of bullying they do in here.

Sometimes, a killing
happens right where they have us locked up. The one I most remember, it was a
little kid who did it. Devon, his name was. A bigger kid, Rock, had done
something to him.

After Rock did what he did, he told everyone that
Devon was
his
kid.

Everybody knew what had happened, but
nobody said anything, even the ones who weren’t scared of Rock.

After Devon got out of the infirmary, he got a shank—that’s a
piece of metal you sharpen into a knife. One day, he came up behind Rock in the
cafeteria and stabbed him in the neck. Everybody saw it.

We knew Devon
had stuck him good, because they didn’t send Rock to the
infirmary—they called for an ambulance.

The guards charged in and
locked us all down, so we couldn’t see what happened after that. But,
later, we heard that Rock died before the ambulance came.

If they had
let Devon stay in there with us, he would have been all right after that.
Nobody would have tried to do anything to him anymore, even with him being so
little. But they took him away, to the prison for grownups.

I
didn’t actually know Devon. Just his name. But I hoped, wherever they
sent him, he found another shank real quick.

I
always wanted to be a
driver. It was just something that called to me. Even when I was practicing to
be good at it, I wasn’t sure where it would end. But I knew I had to do
it.

Where I come from, lots of guys dream about racing stock cars.
But that was never my dream.

Dreams are for kids. And I never wanted to
be a kid. There’s nothing good about being a kid.

I had faith. I
knew if I kept practicing, if I got good enough, I could be the driver.

T
he very first time the cops caught me, I was so little they thought
someone else had took the car, then ran away and left me holding the bag. They
kept trying to get me to tell who had done it.

I told them the
truth; it was just me. One cop slapped me. It wasn’t that hard, but it
hurt. I didn’t cry; I was used to stuff like that.

Another cop
said I was being a chump, taking the weight for the older boys. He said they
would all be laughing at me while I was in jail. But they didn’t even
send me to jail at all, that first time.

All cops lie. All thieves lie,
too, when they talk to cops. That’s the way it is.

I knew that
good thieves didn’t lie to their partners. I wondered if cops did.

I
don’t remember much about the first time they locked me up, but
I know it was only for a few weeks.

After that, they locked me up
every time they caught me.

The first few times, it was because I
didn’t know how to drive. I know that sounds stupid, and I guess it
was.

What I mean is, I didn’t know how to drive like a regular
person, so I kept bringing attention on myself. One time, I got pulled over for
going through a stop sign. The cop didn’t even know the car was stolen
until he saw how old I was. Then he knew the car couldn’t be mine.

Another time, I was just speeding, and they got me. That time, it
wouldn’t have mattered even if I had looked old enough to drive, because
I didn’t have any of the papers the cop wanted.

After a while, I
figured out: If I was going to take cars, I had to drive them like I was a
regular person, going somewhere.

But if I drove like that, I
couldn’t practice the way I needed to.

The longest they ever
locked me up for was six months. Until the time I ran from the cops.

On
that crazy night, I was driving past this roadhouse at the edge of town. I
usually went out that way because there’s a lot of places to practice.
It’s pretty much all two-lane blacktop with no streetlights, and even a
lot of dirt roads off on the sides.

I saw a bright orange Camaro with
white stripes slam on the brakes and slide on the dirt in the parking lot. I
stopped the car I was driving to see what was going on; I thought maybe the
Camaro was challenging someone to race, and I wanted to watch. But all the
other cars around there were parked.

All of a sudden, the
Camaro’s door opened and a girl jumped out. She walked away, fast. The
driver got out and yelled something at her, but she kept on walking. He started
after her, and she turned around and ran. He chased her all the way around the
side of the building.

He had left his door standing open. I could see
smoke coming from the exhausts. I didn’t really think about it—the
next thing I knew, I was behind the wheel of the Camaro, peeling out of the
parking lot.

T
he Camaro was a terrific car, the first truly fast one
I’d ever driven. I was a little disappointed that it had an automatic
transmission. By then, I knew how to drive a stick real good.

I knew
I wouldn’t have any couple of hours that time. But it seemed like only a
couple of minutes had gone by when I heard the siren and saw the flashing
lights in the mirror.

That’s when I made them chase me. I
don’t remember much about it except that I couldn’t hear
anything—it was like I had gone deaf or something. But it didn’t
scare me. Nothing scared me that night. I was driving. They were chasing me,
and it felt like that was how it was supposed to be.

I was running, but
I had no place to run to. And I was doing all right, until the spike strip they
laid down blew out my tires.

By the time I got the Camaro stopped, it
seemed like there was a dozen cop cars surrounding me. They kept coming, more
and more of them. They shined big lights, so bright I couldn’t look at
them. They were screaming things at me, but I couldn’t understand what
they were saying.

I got out of the car, and put my hands up, like
I’d seen people do on TV. I saw a lot of guns pointed at me. I walked
toward them. They kept screaming at me.

I never saw the cop who tackled
me from behind. Then there was a lot of them. Some were yanking my arms behind
my back for the handcuffs. The other ones were punching me, or kicking me, or
hitting me with sticks … after a little while, I couldn’t
tell.