Shimmy Bang Sparkle(24)
I took a deep breath and steeled myself. And then I did something I’d never done before or since, but it just seemed like . . . the thing to do. I extended my left hand, palm down, in the middle of our little triangle. Roxie put her hand on mine, and Ruth did the same. Suddenly, we weren’t three sixth graders at an ice rink. We were the ThunderCats, we were Jem and her crew. We were the Three Musketeers in pastel parkas. We were invincible.
We were awesome.
“All for one!” I whispered as our mittens and gloves crinkled.
“One for all!” whispered Roxie and Ruth together. And all three of us raised our hands at once.
Again, we approached the desk. Smokey lifted his eyebrow and shifted his chew from one cheek to the other. “Back again.”
I pawed around on the countertop. “Is there a phone I can use?” I manhandled a stapler and a roll of tape. “Or maybe you can just dial my dad at work for me? I’m pretty sure about the number. We might have to try three or four before we get him, though.”
“You know . . . oh gosh,” Roxie said, swaying slightly. “I don’t feel so . . .” And then Roxie toppled over. She went right down into a pink-and-purple heap on the rubber mats. It was magnificent. The man behind the desk dropped his magazine and rushed around to help her. It was time for Ruth and me to make our move.
We bolted behind the desk and grabbed the glasses box. Ruth began looking methodically through them one by one, but in the thrill and excitement of it all, I took a different approach and began shoving them all into my pockets. Kids glasses, adult glasses, sunglasses. A pair of safety goggles. Everything. Ruth followed my lead, and we took all that we could carry, jamming them into our parkas like kangaroo pouches.
By the time we got back to Roxie, she had her eyes open but had one hand to her forehead and was making swooning noises. “Do you have a Fruit Roll-Up?” she asked. “Strawberry, maybe? Or grape?”
The man looked from me to Ruth and at our lumpy pockets. At first, he looked really mad. Right then, I was sure we were goners. They’d probably cart us off in a paddy wagon. McGruff the Crime Dog had made that much pretty clear. I had no idea at all what would happen after the paddy wagon came, but I was pretty sure I’d enjoyed my very last juice box. Jail had to be skim milk only.
The man looked over at Gus, who clutched his broken frames. A big wet splotch of tears and snot darkened his parka sleeve.
Smokey scratched his beard, filling the air with a grating sound. He glanced at my jacket pockets and at Ruth’s. He’d been crouching low, but now he sat up slightly so he was at eye level with us. As he did, his flannel shirt shifted on his forearm. There I saw something I didn’t understand then. It was a tattoo in the shape of a spade.
And one day, not so long after, I’d learn that it was the mark of a thief.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, mostly to me. “Bring your friend over here. We’ll see if any of those glasses help him. The rest go back in the box.”
Ruth, Roxie, and I all nodded in terrified unison.
The man exhaled slowly, then looked at each one of us, very slowly and meaningfully. “Listen. I’m no career counselor, but I’m gonna tell you something for nothing. If you’ve got to steal ever again, I want you to follow three rules. You hear me?”
That time, I couldn’t even nod. I was too scared to do anything but blink.
Smokey lifted his eyebrow and counted on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “One, be smart. Two, do it for a damned good reason. And three”—there he paused, staring me hard in the eye—“never take more than you need.”
12
NICK
The text I’d received proved the age-old theory of the Karmic Shithammer. Just when I was feeling my best, like I had with Stella, wham—some shit-ass decision from the past came back to hit me right in the balls.
Hands down, the shittiest decision I’d ever made was breaking into the trunk of a Mercedes when I was sixteen years old, and it hadn’t even been my goddamned idea. I’d been working as a mechanic’s assistant at a seriously sketchy garage near where I lived with my dad. The sort of place where you could get your tires rotated and your VIN scratched off with a screwdriver. In spite of the sketchiness, I loved it. I loved working on cars and always had. But one day, when I was just about to clock out for the afternoon, a Mercedes had rolled in on a flatbed and the owner of the shop had said, “Norton. Open that trunk,” handed me a pick set, and walked away.
I’d never picked a lock before in my life. I had zero idea what the fuck to do. A couple of the guys in the garage did, though. And they were more than happy to teach me what they knew. Teach me they did. One of them slapped me on the back and said, “There ain’t no training like on-the-job training, son.”
That was where it all started.
Here’s the thing about lock picking: it isn’t really a skill. It’s an art. It takes patience, grit, and so much stubbornness that it might be a serious character flaw. Mercedes trunks are an infamous pain in the ass—warded and bolted—so the old cons in the garage had me work up to it. They started me on less difficult locks—a Buick trunk, a Chrysler glove box, the bathroom door. I got obsessed with the locks—with the way the pins move and that last shift of the bolt. Such a goddamned rush. After a few days of learning and getting blisters from the picks and the wrenches, I turned my attention to the Mercedes, which the old cons had planned to drill out. They said they were too fucking old to waste their time on it. But I could try first. I spent hours on that fucking thing, determined to do it.