Authors: Andrew Vachss
Whatever car I drive, we drop that
one off quick, and jump into one of the switch cars. And even then, we only go
a little ways. There’s plenty of places to stash cars in this part of the
state, now that the plants have all pretty much closed down. Lots of empty
buildings, all the windows broke out.
Nobody on the job ever goes right
back to where he lives, either. J.C. rents places where we all stay for a
while. That way, no neighbor sees you leave just before a job, or come back
right after one. Those are the kinds of things cops look for.
Everybody
wears gloves, so we can just walk away from the getaway car when we switch. But
they can find out stuff from blood, too. One time, J.C. got hit. It
wasn’t bad, but he was bleeding a lot. So, that time, we couldn’t
just dump the getaway car. I dropped J.C. and the other guys off; they took the
switch car, and I went back out.
I drove the getaway car until I got it
way back on a dirt road I knew about. I siphoned a five-gallon can of gas out
of the tank, and I poured it all over the backseat, where J.C. had been
bleeding. Then I wadded up a rag into an empty soda bottle and poured a few
drops of the gas over the top. I lit the rag. As soon as it got going a little
bit, I tossed the bottle underhand through the back window. Flames shot right
up, and I knew there wouldn’t be a trace of J.C.’s blood left.
I walked back through the woods to a main road, where I knew there would be
phones. I figured it would take a few hours, and it would be dark by then.
I’d only gone a little distance when I heard a big air-sucking noise.
I looked back, but the woods were thick, and I couldn’t see
anything.
A
ll the jobs I did with J.C., I was
always the driver. But I wasn’t a getaway man all the time. Sometimes, I
would take the bus to a big city up north. When I got there, I would go to
wherever J.C. said. I could never take a cab to those places; J.C. says that
cabdrivers have to keep records, and we never wanted to be on anybody’s
records.
“The perfect driver would be an invisible man,”
J.C. told me. “Driving an invisible car.”
When I would get
to the places I was supposed to, I would ask for a particular person. Most of
the time, it was a man, but once it was a woman. They would give me a car to
drive.
That was all I had to do, then. Drive the car. A long distance,
it always was. When I got to where the car was supposed to be, I would just
drop it off. The people I dropped it off with would make me wait while they
checked to see if everything was all right. It was always all right.
Then they would take me to a bus station, and I would go back to wherever I
was living.
I asked J.C. once, if I got stopped by the police, should I
try to get away from them.
“No, Eddie,” he said.
“Remember, you were hired to transport a car from one place to another,
that’s all. You’re getting paid by the mile. Lots of guys do that
kind of work. If you ever get busted, you make sure they give you a
polygraph.”
“A lie detector?”
“Right.
Because the only question they’re going to care about is whether you knew
what was in the trunk. And you’re going to pass, understand?”
J.C. knows how to plan things out. He told me, on those drives, I should
always carry a decent amount of cash, but never a gun.
All the times I
drove those cars, there was always a spare tire—one of those little ones
that will take you far enough to buy a new tire—and a jack, on the floor
of the backseat. Never once did I ever have to open the trunk.
None of
these people paid me. They paid J.C., and he would give me my share whenever I
got back.
S
ometimes, I had to lay over a day or two after I dropped
a car off, in case they had another one for me to take out.
One
time, the place where I was staying was near a mall. A huge one, with a lot of
real classy stores in it. Usually, whenever I had time on my hands, I would go
to the movies. But that day, I remembered something I had been wanting to do,
so I walked over to the mall.
I wanted to get something for Bonnie. She
wasn’t my girlfriend, exactly—I had just met her a few weeks
before—but I had hopes.
I’d met Bonnie in Wal-Mart. I went
to get a pair of boots, and she worked there. Not over where you get shoes, but
where they had jackets and stuff.
Bonnie had red hair and real white
skin. She had freckles, too, like cinnamon dusted over milk.
“You
could use a new coat to go with those new boots,” she said, as I was
walking by with the box the boots had come in.
She had a beautiful
smile. It was so wide, it made her eyes kind of scrunch up.
“This
one’s still pretty good,” I told her.
“Good for
what?” she said. “It’s kind of tired. I’ll bet your
girlfriend has been after you to get rid of it.”
“No.”
“No, she hasn’t. Or, no, you
don’t.…”
“I don’t have a
girlfriend,” I told her.
“Good!” Bonnie said. She was
kind of bold, but she was so nice about it that you’d never think she was
slutty.
I didn’t really know how to ask a girl for a date. Most
of the girls I ever knew, I just met them in places I was. Like when
they’d come over to Tim and Virgil’s. Or in a bar. But I never
liked to talk to girls in bars—it seemed, half the time, that ends up
with you getting in a fight.
The girls who came over to Tim and
Virgil’s always talked good about men who took them to nice places. I
wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but I knew they didn’t mean
the movies. I stood there like a damn stump, trying to remember what it was
they said they liked. And, then, I remembered. So I asked Bonnie if she would
like to have dinner with me.
I could see in her eyes that it was the
right thing to say. She gave me her address, and told me to come around eight.
It was a Friday, but she didn’t have to work late, she said, because she
started at seven in the morning.
Eight o’clock seemed pretty late
to be eating dinner to me, specially if you got started so early in the day,
but I didn’t say anything.
A
ll that afternoon, I tried to
puzzle it out. I didn’t know what Bonnie meant by “around
eight,” for starters, but I figured I’d come there at eight
exactly, so I could handle that one. It was the going out to dinner part that
confused me. I had asked her easy enough, but I didn’t have a plan, so I
was a little nervous.
One thing I knew—I couldn’t take
her to Denny’s or McDonald’s or anyplace like that. I looked in the
paper. There were so many places I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t
know how to choose.
So I just started calling them. But when I would
ask how much a meal cost—I figured that was a good way to tell if it was
a classy place—they treated me like I was stupid, and I got all
embarrassed.
Finally, I just went out looking for myself. I drove past
a lot of restaurants until I saw one that looked pretty nice. I parked and
walked up to it. And, sure enough, there was a menu right in the window.
It was
real
expensive, that place, so I knew it had to be a good
one. Enrico’s, the name was.
I got back to where I was staying,
and I took a shower and shaved extra careful. When I went to get dressed, I was
all embarrassed again—I could see what Bonnie meant by me needing to get
a new coat.
I had money. Ever since I got out of prison and started
working, I always had money. J.C. and the others spent their money on all kinds
of things, but I never spent most of mine. When they would ask me if I wanted
to go to one of the gambling clubs, I never much did.
J.C. knew how to
dress. His clothes didn’t look real fancy, but, somehow, you knew they
cost a lot of money.
Tim and Virgil spent money on clothes, too, but
you never had to look close to see that. One time, we were all supposed to go
over to this roadhouse where a band Tim liked was playing. Virgil said there
would be a lot of girls there, and I couldn’t go looking like I was. He
went and got one of his shirts—a beautiful red silky one, with gold
stitching and pearl buttons—and he told me I had to wear it. I was
worried about getting it torn—I had been to that same roadhouse with them
before—but Virgil said there was no point in having nice clothes if they
were going to stay in the closet.
I didn’t give Virgil his shirt
back right away. I wanted to get it all cleaned and ironed first. But when I
brought it over to him, he told me I needed to keep it, because it didn’t
fit him anymore. Besides, he said, he knew the shirt had brought me luck.
That made me embarrassed, but it felt good, too.
I never knew what
happened to that shirt. I wasn’t wearing it when I got shot and arrested
and all, and there was no one I could ask to go over to where I was staying and
get my stuff. Maybe the cops got it.
But J.C. didn’t live near
me, the way Tim and Virgil had, so I couldn’t go over and ask for advice.
J.C. wasn’t the kind of man you could just show up at wherever he was
staying, anyway, even if you knew where that was.
I went out to the
stores. It took me quite a little while, but I found a real nice shirt. Not a
red one, a dark blue one.
B
onnie lived with her
mother. She introduced me, and her mother asked me what I did for a living. I
told her I was a mechanic—J.C. said to never tell people I was a driver;
they wouldn’t understand it.
Bonnie’s mother asked me
where I worked, and I said I worked for myself.
“You’re
pretty young to have your own shop,” she said.
“Well,
it’s not really a shop, ma’am,” I said. “It’s
just a garage behind the house I rent, but it’s got a lift, and
industrial wiring for my tools.”
“You work off the books,
then?”
“Mama!” Bonnie said. “That’s not
your business.”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I
got a bank account for my business. And I pay my taxes regular, too.” I
felt proud saying that. And I was thinking how smart J.C. was. It was him who
told me I had to have a legitimate business.
“It doesn’t
matter if you
make
any money, Eddie. Just so you
deposit
some
money. In the bank. You have to account for the money you spend, so the
government doesn’t get suspicious. We all have little businesses,”
he said. “Cash businesses. Like a parking lot or a cigarette store. You
see what I’m telling you?”
“I … think
so.”
“You have to pay taxes,” J.C. said. “You
don’t pay taxes, they know you’re doing crime. A smart thief always
has a good civilian front.”
“Hah!” Bonnie said.
“Not the answer you expected, huh, Mom?”
Bonnie’s
mother laughed. “Fair enough,” she said. “I apologize, young
man. But Bonnie’s my only child, and you know how that is, don’t
you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
I
t was almost nine when we got to Enrico’s, the
restaurant I had picked out. When we got inside, there was a man standing
behind a little desk.
“May I help you?” he said to me.
He didn’t sound like he wanted to help me.
“We want to eat
dinner,” I told him.
“You, uh, have reservations, I
trust?”
“I didn’t … I mean, I thought we
could.…”
Bonnie grabbed my arm and pulled a little, so I
had to lean down toward her.
“I don’t want to eat here,
Eddie,” she said. “I heard bad things about this place. About the
food, I mean. Can’t we go somewhere else?”
“Sure,” I said. “But I don’t know
any—”
“Oh, I know a
wonderful
place. Do you
like Chinese food?”
T
he restaurant we went to was just like I
would have picked out, if I had known what I was doing. We had a whole big
booth to ourselves. There was all kinds of different food, and I liked every
bit of it.
I was really glad that Bonnie had known Enrico’s
had such a bad reputation. The Golden Dragon was a million times better, even
though it didn’t cost anywhere near as much.
A
fter that, we
went out three more times. To the Golden Dragon twice, and to a club, once. But
Bonnie didn’t favor the club. I was glad—I don’t like it when
it’s very loud, either, but I thought she might have gotten tired of just
going out to eat.
She always looked so pretty. Not just when we were
going out, but all the time. Once, she came by my garage on a Sunday, just to
have a soda with me. She was wearing a pair of overalls and a white T-shirt
with short sleeves. I remember how her arms looked in that shirt, all nice and
round.
I hadn’t said anything to Bonnie about going away for a
few days. I didn’t want to act like it was a big deal; I mean, that it
would be a big deal to her if I was going to be out of town for a while.
I planned on asking her to the movies when I got back. And I thought, if I
got her a nice present, she would know that I hadn’t forgot about her
just because I was away. I thought her mother would like that, too. Not a
present for herself, but that I got Bonnie one. Her mother was that kind of
person, I could tell.
I was thinking about maybe a little bottle of
real good perfume. The girls I knew from Tim and Virgil were always saying how
much they loved perfume. Clothes and jewelry and perfume. It would make me too
embarrassed to be buying girl’s clothes, and I didn’t know anything
about jewelry—Rochelle had picked out that bracelet her ownself. So I
figured on the perfume.
In the mall, I couldn’t find a place with
bottles of perfume in the window. But I did find one with store dummies all
dressed in clothes you knew had to cost a lot of money, so I went in
there.
The place was really big. Not as big as a Wal-Mart or a
Sam’s Club, maybe, but it was three stories, and it sold all different
kinds of stuff.
I wasn’t sure where to go, so I just walked
around. I was feeling good inside. I had money in my pocket and I was dressed
all neat. Nobody knew me in that city. If anyone saw me, they would think I was
a regular man. Maybe one who had a job in a place where I made a good salary. A
man who had a wife and kids, and a nice little house.