Thieving Weasels (7 page)

“Oatmeal or eggs?” I mumbled over and over again. “Oatmeal or eggs?”

“Hi, Cam.”

I looked up and Claire was standing in front of me. She had changed her clothes, her hair was wet, and she looked even more beautiful than the night before.

“Hey.”

“Which of these mouthwatering selections do you recommend?”

“That's a tough one. The oatmeal is bad, and the eggs are even worse. On the bright side, no one's died of food poisoning yet.”

“When you put it that way, I think I'll try the oatmeal.”

“An excellent choice.” I spooned some mush into her
bowl and said, “How are you feeling, by the way?”

“Good. Tired. But good.” She smiled to let me know that she meant it.

“Me too.”

“Want to go to Cassidy's for lunch when you're done?” she asked.

Cassidy's was a diner in town where all the cool kids went to eat. If Claire took me there, it was the equivalent of a front page headline in the
Weekly Wheatonian
announcing we were a couple.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Great, I'll swing by your room at eleven.”

Claire walked away, and I exhaled.

See you around, Cam Smith
.

So Claire did want to see me again! I was stunned. Claire dated upper classmen, and I was just this little mouse who scurried around the edges of campus. But not only did Claire want to see me again, she wanted to do it in public. This was major. As I stood there slinging oatmeal and eggs I thought about our night together and how, for the first time in forever, I hadn't been worried about my family, my grades, or even my future. No, none of that mattered because being with Claire made me feel like an actual human being instead of someone who was only pretending to be.

Maybe I wasn't a little mouse after all.

“S
EE
HIM
?”
MY
MOTHER
ASKED
,
POIN
TING
TO
A
SKINNY
kid walking beside an old woman in a black dress.

“Yes?”

“That's Tony. He's been here three times for drug addiction. The first time he was only thirteen years old. That woman he's with is his grandmother. She's a saint.”

I stared at the guy. He seemed normal except, like every patient there, he moved with what I had begun calling the “Shady Oaks Shuffle.”

“Do they have a lot of that here?” I asked, attempting to bring up the pharmacy in my mother's medicine cabinet. “Drug addicts, I mean?”

“The Shady Oaks Rehab clinic is one of the best in the state and has had lots of famous patients.”

“They told you this?”

“No, but you hear things.”

We were sitting in a white wooden gazebo about a hundred yards from the O'Neil Pavilion. There was a cool breeze in the air, a picturesque sunset over my shoulder, and a dog barking in the distance. It was a perfect winter's day, and I had a hard time reconciling the beautiful surroundings with the not-so-beautiful fact that I'd been dragged back into O'Rourkes' World of Crime. I closed my eyes and wondered how long it would be before I was hijacking beer trucks and stealing lumber from construction sites.

“Did Wonderful talk to you about the job?”

I opened my eyes and said, “You know about it?”

“Of course I do. It was my idea.”

I bit my lip and sighed. Was there anyone in my family who wasn't involved in this clown show?

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I'm not sure yet. So far, I've only heard the broad strokes.”

“Which are?”

“That we're scamming some old guy who wants us to kill an ex-mobster for him.”

“That's it in a nutshell. Just remember not to say anything stupid when you meet the mark.”

“No way,” I said, shooting to my feet. “I already told Uncle Wonderful that I'm strictly backup on this deal. I'm not meeting anybody outside the family, especially not the mark.”

“That's going to be a little tricky,” she said in a low voice.

“Why?”

“Because here he comes.”

I turned and saw an old man in a velour tracksuit hobbling toward us on a pair of wooden canes. He looked harmless enough, although harmless people rarely ask you to kill a guy for them.

“Do you mind if I use the other bench?” he asked when he reached the bottom step of the gazebo.

“Of course not,” my mother said. “Sal, this is my son, Skip.”

“Visiting from college?” he asked.

“Prep school, actually.”

“That's a lot better than me. I never made it past the fifth grade.” He climbed onto the gazebo and stuck out his hand. “Sal DeNunsio.”

“Skip O'Rourke.” We shook, and I noticed that the knuckles on his hand were covered with scars. Nasty ones.

“Sal's a friend of mine from years ago,” my mother said. “I almost had a heart attack when I found out he was living at the Williams Pavilion.”

“The Williams Pavilion?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “What's that?”

“The hospital's geriatric residence,” my mother said.

“That's right,” he said with a laugh. “I'm not crazy, just old.”

“You seem in pretty good shape to me,” I said.

“You ever heard of a fighter having a glass jaw?”

“Sure.”

“I got two glass hips. After the second one went, I sold my place and moved here.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Smartest thing I ever did,” he said. “But hey, you folks were talking, and I interrupted. I'll just sit here quietly and read my
Racing Form
.”

“Got any hot tips?” I asked.

“Yeah, study hard and go to college.”

“I mean with the horses,” I said with a laugh.

He unfolded the paper and put on a pair of reading glasses. “Right now I'm trying to choose between Sandy's Pride and Road Runner in the fifth at Aqueduct. What do you think?”

“I don't know much about horses, but the Road Runner always beat the Coyote on television.”

Mr. DeNunsio pulled a pencil from behind his ear and scribbled something in the paper. “Then Road Runner it is.”

In the distance a couple of orderlies were starting to wheel the older patients inside and I said, “It's almost time to go.”

“You're leaving?” my mother asked, snapping back to reality. “Why? When will you be back?”

I heard the panic in her voice and took her hand. “It's okay, Ma. It's just that visiting hours are almost over. I'll be back again in the morning.”

“Whew, I thought you meant you were going back to school.”

“No, I'll be here through New Year's.”

“Good, you had me scared there for a second.”

It was upsetting to see my mother acting so fragile. She had always been the tough one in the family, and it was her example that gave me the strength to run away in the first place. As much as I wanted to get back to Wheaton and Claire, a small part of me felt an obligation to stay on Long Island and help my mother get well.
If
she was actually sick, that is. I couldn't tell, and between all my guilt and skepticism I thought my head was going to spin right off my shoulders.

• • •

On the drive home the thought of robbing Mr. DeNunsio began to gnaw at me. This wasn't going to be like ripping off a department store, or scamming some faceless bureaucracy. Mr. DeNunsio was a real human being with thoughts, hopes, and desires, and how would I have liked it if a couple of knuckleheads stole my life's savings? Granted, I would have never asked a couple of knuckleheads to kill a man for me, but I'm sure Mr. DeNunsio had his reasons. Either way, the job stank and I wanted to get as far away from it as possible.

Think
, I told myself. There has to be some way to get out of this thing. Uncle Wonderful might have had connections at the Wheaton financial aid office, but he wasn't God.

Then it hit me: my car. The Mustang was registered in my name—or at least one of them—and if I sold it, the proceeds would not only make up for my scholarship, but give
me a head start on Princeton. My desperation vanished, and I drove to the nearest Ford dealership where I was delighted to see that a new GT cost over thirty thousand dollars. Considering there were less than two hundred miles on mine, I could easily clear twenty grand on the deal. Life was looking up.

Or was it?

That car was a gift from your mother
, I reminded myself. A big one, too. And if ripping off Mr. DeNunsio was cruel and heartless, selling my Mustang while my mother was possibly suicidal was not only cruel and heartless, but karmically bankrupt.

Except I didn't believe in karma. I believed in working hard and doing the exact opposite of everything I was taught growing up. And that's exactly what selling my Mustang would allow me to do. It might not have been the gift my mother had intended, but it was the best thing she could have done for me—whether she liked it or not.

I was exhausted from spending the previous night on the bathroom floor, but when I got home I couldn't sleep. All I could think about was going back to school and escaping my family permanently. The only hitch in this plan was whether the Mustang was paid for or not, and before I knew what I was doing I was tearing the house apart searching for the title.

My first stops were to my mother's usual hiding places: under the sink, on top of the refrigerator, and in the empty mayonnaise jar in the pantry. I found nothing. Either she
had gotten more ingenious in her old age, or she had nothing to hide—both of which I found impossible to believe. Next, I checked all her secondary spots: inside the toilet tank, under the rugs, and behind the dresser in the bedroom. Still nothing. I was about to call it a night when I spotted a piece of loose molding beneath her nightstand. I pulled it free, and in a spot where the Sheetrock didn't quite meet the floor, I spied some metal that looked like the bottom of a document box. Bingo. As I reached down to pull away the Sheetrock my weasel senses began to tingle, and it occurred to me that the plaster work was much better than my mother could have done on her own. This meant someone else knew about the box, and that I should probably cover my tracks.

I went into the kitchen and came back with a steak knife. A matte knife would have been better, but I took my time and cut around the Sheetrock until it pulled free and the box tumbled to the floor. There was nothing special about the box except that it was locked, and I didn't have the key. I could have wasted more time searching for it, but I figured the odds of me finding the key were slim to nothing. At this point your average weasel would have put the box back and hired a guy to make a fake title. Except I wasn't your average weasel; I was an O'Rourke. Something in that box was important, and I needed to find out what it was.

I picked up the box and threw it on the floor. Nothing happened. I tried again and got the same results. By my sixth attempt, I should have accepted that this was not the
best way to open a sealed document box, but I was tired, cranky, and growing more frustrated by the second. I threw the box down one last time and, for lack of a better idea, carried it to the garage and wedged it under a rear tire of my Mustang. I cranked the engine and backed up until I heard a pop. Success. I pried open the box and found a passport, birth certificate, and driver's license all made out to someone named Dolores Spencer. I had never met Dolores Spencer, but she bore an uncanny resemblance to my mother.

Why? Because Dolores Spencer was my mother's good name. She had never told me this, of course, but the paperwork said it all. It was something else, too—leverage. I hoped it would never come to it, but if my family made a move against me I now had a bargaining chip. I turned the box upside down and a shower of wallet candy fell to the floor. In addition to the license and passport, there were credit cards, a Social Security card, and membership cards for AAA and AARP. All were slightly worn and all were up to date. It was the best fake identity I had ever seen, and I was impressed by my mother's thoroughness.

“If only you could use your powers for good,” I said aloud.

I thumbed through the rest of the paperwork, but the title for the Mustang wasn't there. On to Plan B and finding someone who could print up a bogus title. As I put the paperwork back in the box I spotted the date on Dolores Spencer's driver's license. It was three months old—as was
her AAA card and both her credit cards. This made absolutely no sense. Why? Because a person who applies for an AAA card isn't thinking about killing herself. Not in a million years.

A person who applies for an AAA card is thinking about
going
somewhere.

T
HE
PLAN
WAS
TO
MEE
T
AT
THE
OLIVE
GARDE
N
AT
EIGHT
o'clock. I picked up Vinny at seven thirty and got there ten minutes early. Roy picked up Jackie and got there twenty minutes late. This gave Vinny and me half an hour to watch as every bar stool, table, and drink coaster in the restaurant got taken. By the time Roy and Jackie arrived there was a twenty minute wait, and I was so hungry my stomach was starting to digest itself.

“This place is jammed,” I said. “Let's go across the street to the Sizzler.”

“No way,” Vinny said. “I've been looking forward to a Never Ending Pasta Bowl all day.”

I turned to Roy and Jackie, but they were too busy making out to offer an opinion. I pulled out my phone and checked the time.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “We've been waiting almost
forty minutes.” I tapped Roy on the shoulder. “Hey, we need to talk.”

Roy untangled his tongue from Jackie's tonsils and said, “What's up?”

“You want to get going?”

“But we've only been here like a couple of minutes.”

“No.
You've
only been here like a couple of minutes. Vinny and I have been here since Washington crossed the Delaware. C'mon, let's go to the Sizzler.”

“But they don't give you all the pasta you can eat.”

“Who cares? I'm ready to eat my sneakers at this point.”

Roy sighed. “All right. Let me go talk to the hostess.” He turned to Jackie. “You want to come?”

“Sure. You boys want anything from the bar?”

“Absolutely,” Vinny replied. “Get me a Heineken.”

“What about you, Skip?”

My hangover was still fresh in my mind and I said, “I'll have a Sprite.”

“You sure you don't want something harder? Like a glass of milk?” Jackie asked.

“No, Sprite's fine.”

“Suit yourself.”

The happy couple headed for the bar, and Vinny stood up and cracked his neck. “Wanna go outside and fire up a joint?”

“No thanks. I didn't sleep very well last night, and if I smoke anything now I'll pass out in my Never Ending Pasta Bowl.”

“Okay, tell Roy I'm around the corner.”

Vinny stepped outside, and when I checked my phone I was delighted to see that another minute had passed. The way things were going we'd be eating dinner sometime in the next century.

Roy reappeared a few minutes later looking triumphant. “I slipped the hostess a ten spot and the next available table is ours.”

“Fabulous.”

“Where's Vinny?”

“Getting high.”

“Excellent,” he said, and turned toward the door.

“What about Jackie?” I asked.

“She's talking to the bartender. When she gets back tell her that me and the Vinster are outside.”

Four never-ending minutes later Jackie appeared with our drinks.

“Here,” she said, handing me a glass filled with a pale yellow liquid.

“What's this?” I asked.

“A white wine spritzer. I know you wanted a Sprite and everything, but it's two-for-one night, and I didn't want to waste a free drink on just soda.”

I took a sip and said, “It tastes pretty good. Thanks.”

“No problem. Where's Roy?”

“Out getting stoned with Vinny. If you want to join them I can stay here and listen for our names.”

“No, thanks. Pot makes me sleepy.”

“I know what you mean.”

I took another sip of my drink. Roy had said it was my job to impress Jackie, but I couldn't think of anything impressive to say. The best I could do was compliment Jackie on her dancing, which I was about to do when she looked down at me and said, “You treat Roy like crap.”

“Excuse me?” I sputtered.

“He told me that you were like his oldest friend in the world, but I don't buy it. Wanna know what I see?”

“Uh, what?”

“I see a guy who goes off to some fancy school and comes back thinking his shit don't smell.”

I didn't know what Roy had told Jackie about me and said, “I'm sorry. My mom's been sick.”

“Big deal. My father dropped dead of a heart attack, and I still talked to my friends.”

I was at a loss for words. Jackie may have been obnoxious, but maybe she did have a point. “I'm sorry,” I finally said. “But if it's any consolation, last time I went to the toilet it sure didn't smell like potpourri.”

Jackie ignored my lame attempt at humor and said, “You think you're so different from Roy and Vinny, but let me tell you something. You're just like them. The way you talk. The way you act. It's i-freaking-dentical.”

She took a sip of her drink, and I noticed a small scar above her left eye. I was about to ask her about it when she leaned in and said, “This waitress I know got this hotshot Wall Street trader to put her up in a nice apartment. Now
whenever I run into her she acts like she doesn't know me. But let me tell you something. The girl's a joke. She thinks she's so high and mighty in her five-hundred-dollar heels and Michael Kors dresses, but she's still a Shooters' Girl and everyone knows it but her. I can't wait until the guy dumps her so I can laugh in her face.”

I stared at Jackie and sighed. Talk about the night from hell. Not only was I exhausted and starving, but now I was getting chewed out by someone I'd known less than five minutes. I didn't think things could get any worse when the door flew open and Vinny burst in.

“Yo, Skip, get out here quick. They're tugging your ride.”

“What?”

“Your car! Some dudes are jacking it.”

I raced outside and saw two men hooking up my Mustang to a tow truck.

“Hey,” I shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

A big guy with a shaved head and handlebar mustache looked up from the bumper. “You Stephen O'Rourke?” he asked.

I was so upset it took me a moment to remember that Stephen O'Rourke was the name I was using at that particular moment.

“Yeah,” I said. “What about it?”

The guy held out a greasy hand. “Keys.”

“I'm not giving you my keys.”

“Fine, then any damage we do to the vehicle is added to the lien.”

“What lien? What the hell are you talking about?”

He jammed a piece of pink paper in my face. “This is a sheriff's order authorizing me to take possession of this car for delinquency of payments.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means pay your bills, Johnny Appleseed. Now hand over the keys, or I swear we'll mess up this vehicle so bad your credit rating will be trashed for the rest of your life.”

I turned to Roy for help.

“Give the man your keys, Skip.”

Seeing no alternative, I did as I was told. I held out my keys, and as the guy reached for them, I pushed the panic button on the fob. The car alarm blared, and the second repo man fell backward and landed flat on his butt.

“Sorry about that,” I said with a shrug. “My bad.”

The repo men went back to work and, if nothing else, I now knew who my car belonged to: the finance company. Vinny fired up a sympathy joint, and he and Roy passed it back and forth as we watched them tow my car away. At least the repo guys kept their word and didn't trash it in front of me.

“Hey, Roy!” Jackie called from the restaurant. “Our table is ready.”

“Excellent,” Roy and Vinny replied simultaneously.

With nothing better to do, I trudged back to the Olive Garden. Not only had I just kissed my ride to Claire's good-bye, I'd also bid adieu to my only chance of escaping my family. I glanced over at Roy who was so high he was
practically levitating and wondered if what Jackie said was true. Was I just like him? Sure, we talked alike, and sometimes we even dressed alike, but so what? That didn't make us the same person. I had a 3.92 GPA at one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country. I had ambition to be something more than just a successful criminal. Those things had to count for something. Then again, how long would my gold-plated ambition last if returned to Long Island permanently?

Use your head
, I told myself. There has to be some way to untangle yourself from this mess. Some kind of double cross . . .

And isn't that exactly what an O'Rourke would think
? a voice inside me replied.

It was, and I felt like screaming. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, my inner weasel always reigned supreme. Who was I trying to kid? Didn't I lie to get into Wheaton in the first place? And Princeton, too? Wasn't I lying every time I failed to tell Claire who I really was?

Why even bother asking that question?
I said to myself.
Every cell in your body is tattooed with the DNA of a weasel. Face the facts, you were born a thief and you'll die a thief. Why not just accept your fate and get on with your life?

I hated to admit it, but sometimes I wished that I had never heard of Wheaton Preparatory Academy. True, I never would have met Claire and got accepted to Princeton, but I wouldn't have known any better. I'd be the prize
crook in a family of crooks. The pick of the litter. And maybe, just maybe, I'd be happy instead of desperate and overwhelmed, which was how I felt at that moment.

But hey, there was a Never Ending Pasta Bowl in my future, so at least I had that going for me. The hostess led us to our table, and as we sat down Jackie turned to me and asked, “Did those guys really just repossess your car?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Wow,” she said with just the hint of a smile. “That really sucks for you.”