How To Steal a Car

by Pete Hautman

  “This sucks,” Deke said as we drove past John Anderson’s house. “We’re gonna have to park outside the gate tomorrow morning and wait for him to drive out, then follow him to work. Assuming he goes to work. And we can kiss that bonus goodbye. Neal is gonna be pissed.”

  “I have Pilates in the morning.”

  Deke smacked the steering wheel with his palm.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “No it’s not. I hate this shit. I mean, I make more money per hour at Wing’s Wok.”

  “Then why steal cars?”

  He looked at me, and we both started laughing—and even as we were laughing, I was thinking that we were laughing for completely different reasons, but it didn’t matter, because in that moment, we were both on the same side.

  As we pulled out of Forest Glen, an idea hit me. I checked John Anderson’s receipt and there it was—his phone number. Two of them, actually—a home number and a work number.

  I took out my cell and dialed.

  A woman answered.

  “May I speak with John?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but he’s not at home,” the woman said. “May I take a message?”

  “Do you know when he’ll be home?”

  “I’m not sure. He said he’d be working late.”

  I realized then that I hadn’t blocked my number, and my name would be on her caller ID. I had to say something that wouldn’t make her suspicious later.

  I said, “He has a job? I thought he was still in school!”

  The woman said, “Are you sure you’re calling the right John Anderson?”

  “Johnny Anderson? Goes to Kennedy High?”

  The woman laughed. “Sorry, you have the wrong number.” She hung up.

  I dialed the other number on the receipt. It rang five times, then was picked up by an answering system.

  “You have reached the voicemail of…John Anderson. To leave a message, press one now. To speak to an operator, press two.”

  I pressed two. A few seconds later a brisk, chirpy voice said, “CronoMed Industries!”

  “Hi, could you give me your mailing address, please?”

  The woman rattled off an address.

  It was that time around sunset when it’s not really dark but most of the drivers have their headlights on, and the low sun bounces off windows and chrome, and everybody’s in a hurry—or at least it seems that way. Deke weaved in and out of the I-694 traffic in a confident way that made me want to get behind the wheel.

  CronoMed Industries turned out to be a complex of three new-looking buildings just north of the loop in Fridley—one of those places you drive past and idly wonder what they do there and then forget all about it until the next time you drive by. The parking lot was huge, but at that time of day, there were only a couple dozen cars still there. Deke spotted the S550 almost immediately, parked way at the back of the lot. It was white but otherwise identical to the one we’d grabbed from Ridgedale.

  “Looks like he doesn’t want anybody parking right next to him and dinging his paint when they open their door,” Deke said.

  He parked a few rows away, close enough that we could read the license plate.

  “Check the numbers,” he said.

  I looked at the license number on the receipt. “That’s it,” I said.

  “Okay then.” He was looking around.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking for security cameras. I don’t see any. Shit. Here comes somebody.”

  A man was walking from the building entrance toward us. I thought he was going for the S550, but he stopped at an SUV, got in, and drove away.

  “This is bad,” Deke said. “It’s better when the parking lot is full of cars. The way it is now, anybody coming out of the building will see us.”

  A feeling of extreme anxiety had grabbed hold of me. As if something was supposed to happen but it wasn’t happening. The way you feel when you light a firecracker and throw it and the fuse burns down but it doesn’t go off, but you know it might and the longer you wait the less likely it is to happen. But it still might. Or like when you call somebody and leave a message and expect them to call you back, but they don’t.

  “Maybe we should wait till tomorrow,” Deke said. “We probably lose the bonus, but it’ll be safer.”

  I wasn’t thinking about the money. I was thinking about the sudden whoof to the gut that happens when you get into a Mercedes and close the door and the air pressure increases slightly and you are wrapped in sudden silence. I could see in my head, visualizing like in Pilates, the button that starts the car. I could almost feel its smooth surface under my thumb and that slight resistance just before it clicks and the engine thrums to life.

  “You okay?” Deke asked.

  I shouldered open the passenger door.

  “Wait!” he said.

  I didn’t.

  “Kelleigh, don’t!”

  There is this feeling I get sometimes. It’s like my head expands and everything gets sharp and hard and close—but not in a bad way. It’s a good feeling, a safe and purposeful feeling, a feeling of being firmly connected to reality. I usually get it only late at night in bed—the ceiling of my room looks like it’s only inches from my eyes, and even in the dark I can see it in microscopic detail and I’m sure that if I lift my hand, I can press my palm flat against it, but I never try because if it isn’t true I don’t want to know. There is a sound too. A sound without sound, a silent sound, felt more than heard, a buzzing or humming, rising and falling, like the sound a fetus hears before it has ears, or the sound you hear when someone miles away quietly says your name over and over again and you know you’ve heard something, but really you haven’t.

  I had that feeling then as I walked across the parking lot toward the Mercedes. My heels hit the tarmac with perfect trip-hammer regularity, dragging Deke’s voice behind me like an elastic tether. I tugged on the door, but it didn’t open. Deke was still talking, but I wasn’t listening. I tried pressing one of the buttons on the key and heard a click. This time it opened. I quickly got in and closed the door, snapping off the rubbery banner of sound that was Deke’s voice. I was embraced by a cocoon of silence.

  Except for the roar of my breathing and my heart in my ears.

  The car smelled different—a man’s cologne plus leather seats plus the sour reek of cigars. Anyone who could own such an expensive car and then stink it up like that deserved to have it stolen.

  I reached for the start button—but it wasn’t there. Instead, there was a thing like a fat key slot. I sat there staring at it for what seemed like forever. Then I remembered that when we’d stolen the first Mercedes, Deke had told me that the keyless thing was an option, which would explain why the door hadn’t opened for me.

  There was a nub sticking out of the end of the key. I shoved it into the slot and heard it click home.

  The sound of Deke’s car horn pierced my cocoon. I looked toward his truck. He was waving and pointing from behind the windshield. I looked where he was pointing. A man wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase was walking quickly toward me from the building entrance. The second I saw the guy coming, three things happened: The guy in the suit broke into a run, coming right at me. Deke took off in his pickup, his tires smoking. Suddenly the Mercedes’ lights started flashing on and off and the car started going whoop-whoop-whoop!

  Funny thing. Even with everything happening at once, deep inside I was dead calm. I figured out right away that the guy had hit the panic button on his own key, and I remember thinking, I can get out of this car right now and walk away and probably nothing will happen. I will tell the man I noticed the car door was standing open and I got in just to see what it was like to sit in a Mercedes-Benz and he might believe me or he might not but either way he’ll just let me go because otherwise it will be a hassle and it wouldn’t be like I actually did anything wrong except just sit in his car for a few seconds.

  But if I do that, I’ll be stuck here with no way to get
home.

  I twisted the key. The siren stopped whooping. I put the car in gear and stomped on the gas pedal. The car leapt forward. I cranked the wheel to the right, trying to get around the guy, but he dived onto the hood and swung his briefcase against the windshield. It hit so hard I could feel the shock right through the steering wheel, but the glass didn’t break. I twisted the wheel left, then right again, the whole time with the accelerator on the floor. He had the fingers of one hand locked on the edge of the hood by the windshield. With the other hand he swung the briefcase again; I ducked and flinched, but the glass held.

  Don’t ever let anybody tell you that Mercedes-Benz doesn’t make quality windshields.

  I had the wheel cranked all the way to the left, and my foot on the floor. The car was screeching around in a donut and the guy was looking right at me through the windshield, our eyes locked, then he went flying off, practically tearing off one of the windshield wipers, and I felt a thump from the back end, as if the wheels had bumped over a log. I straightened the wheel and headed for the exit, the wiper blade sticking out like a crooked antenna. Don’t look! I said to myself, but I couldn’t help it. I stopped and looked back. The man was getting up. He started toward me again, limping. His briefcase was crushed and the contents were scattered across the parking lot.

  I drove off and did not look back again.

  Later, trying to sort out what had happened, I remembered things in little bits and pieces. Like the way I’d felt when I realized I’d hit something and I was thinking it was him, not his briefcase. Either way, what I felt then—not knowing what had really happened—was not the horror of having caused injury to another human being but anger and frustration that he had gotten in my way, that he had tried to interfere.

  I was also pissed at Deke for taking off.

  Many car thieves are into speed and meth because they like the way it gets them all revved up inside, and they steal cars so they can buy drugs because just stealing cars isn’t enough of a buzz for some people.

  I did not drive directly to the Byerly’s parking lot. Instead, I called Will. The second he answered, I said, “Meet me outside. At the curb. Fifteen minutes.”

  I didn’t give him time to say no.

  In a way I was going back on my promise to Jen that we would both break up with Will, but in another way I wasn’t, because all I wanted to do was go for a ride with him. I knew it was a show-offy thing. I didn’t care. I felt like I could do anything I wanted to do and whatever happened didn’t matter because I’d done this thing, this car thing, like jumping off a cliff, and I’d survived. So from then on it was all free. I’d almost drowned in the Hummer, and I’d almost gotten pulled over by the police when I’d taken the Cadillac, and I’d taken my mom’s car for a ride and nothing had happened, and I’d survived an all-out attack by a crazy briefcase man, so why not take my possibly-gay possibly-ex boyfriend for a spin in my new stolen Mercedes? I know it doesn’t make sense now, but it did at the time.

  Will was standing out in front of his house, all slouchy in knee-length shorts and a tank top. I think he’d grown an inch or two since the last time I’d seen him, even though it had only been two weeks.

  I pulled over and rolled down the window.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Will peered into the car and looked around like he was expecting somebody else.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hop in.”

  Will ran his tongue over his lips. He made no move to open the door.

  “Come on.” I leaned over and pushed open the passenger door. Will stepped back. I said, “Are you getting in or what?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Whose car is this?”

  “It belongs to a guy named Johnson. Or Anderson. I don’t know. Get in.”

  “Did you steal it?”

  “Yes. Get in.”

  He shook his head and backed away a few more steps.

  I put the gearshift in park, got out, and walked around the car. Will looked nervous. No, more like scared.

  “Kelleigh…,” he said, holding up his hands, palms facing me.

  I stopped a few feet away from him.

  “Alton Wright is right,” I said. “You are gay. Totally, totally gay.”

  Will lowered his hands slowly and the nervousness was replaced by an injured, angry look.

  “I’m not gay,” he said.

  “Yeah, right.” I put enough sarcasm into that last word to melt flesh. He just shrugged it off.

  “If I was gay, I’d tell you,” he said. “My uncle is gay, you know. It’s no big deal. But I’m not.”

  The way he said it made me feel like an utter and complete bitch, which just made me madder. “I don’t mean gay gay,” I said. “I mean gay like chickenshit.”

  “That’s not what you meant,” he said. “You think I’m gay. Jen told me.”

  “Jen is full of shit too.”

  “Anyway, I’m not.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out. Suddenly our fight seemed like the most ridiculous conversation two people had ever had—ever.

  “This is stupid,” I said. “Come on, let’s go for a ride.”

  “I don’t get you,” Will said.

  “Obviously.” I looked back at the Mercedes, its engine running quiet as a sigh. “I don’t get you either.”

  “Look, I talked to Jen. She said—”

  “If you want to talk, get in the car,” I said.

  Will looked up and down the street. I walked back around the car and got behind the wheel. I sat there for almost an entire minute, then the passenger door opened and Will got in. He looked around at all the leather and gauges and buttons and knobs.

  “What does a car like this cost?”

  “Ninety thousand.”

  He whistled. That’s a guy thing. They whistle when something costs a lot. I don’t think they know they’re doing it.

  “What about Jen?” I asked.

  Will had found the radio concealed behind a panel on the dash. He cycled through at least ten different kinds of music in about ten seconds. I hadn’t even known it was there. “Wow. Satellite,” he said. He looked up and frowned. “What happened to the windshield wiper?”

  “The guy I stole it from bent it.” I put the car in gear and rolled away from the curb. Will was acting all nervous again, looking back at his house like I was kidnapping him. The car was beeping.

  “Put your seat belt on,” I said.

  Will put his seat belt on. The beeping stopped.

  “What about Jen?” I asked again.

  “She…she said you thought I was gay because I didn’t want to make out with you.” He was pressing buttons on his door, making his seat go back and forth. “And she had this thing about, you know, that you guys were going to both marry me at the same time, except if I was gay, then we’d all have to move to a state that had gay marriage or something. It was really stupid but…I don’t know. I’m not gay. I’m just not into you guys that way.”

  I was driving without thinking about where I was going, just making turns at the corners and stopping at all the stop signs.

  “I mean, I really like you and Jen for, like, friends. But I guess you’re just not my type.”

  “What’s your type?” I heard myself ask.

  Will shrugged. “I don’t know. Like Phoebe Line.”

  I almost drove up onto the curb. “Phoebe Line?”

  “Yeah.”

  Phoebe Line was an elf. She was about four foot nine with a pointy nose and a squeaky little voice and this long almost white hair that hung all the way down to her miniature ass. In high heels she would maybe come up to Will’s armpit. All of which would have been okay except that her physical stature was matched by her mental stature. In my opinion.

  “Have you ever talked to Phoebe Line?”

  “Sure,” Will said.

  Phoebe Line?

  “She’s nice,” he said.

  I turned right, then turned right again.
/>   “Where are we going?” he asked.

  I told him I was taking him home.

  “Whatever,” he said.

  The funny thing about Deke was that even though he was a car thief/ex-con/pothead with no future, he was at least a guy who had an agenda I could count on and understand. He knew what he wanted. Money. He would be pissed at me for making him wait at Byerly’s. That was okay with me. At least he wasn’t all squishy and “whatever” and “Phoebe Line is so cool” like Will.

  I parked in the middle of the Byerly’s parking lot, between a panel truck and a minivan, put the key on top of the left front wheel, and went into the store. I was suddenly starving, and Byerly’s is a great place to be if you’re hungry—they have a huge deli section with everything from fried wontons to sushi to chocolate croissants. I bought an egg roll and a bottle of pomegranate juice, then went back outside to sit on one of the benches and wait for Deke. Assuming he hadn’t already given up on me—otherwise I’d have a long walk home. I was finishing my last sip of juice when Deke pulled up to the curb. I motioned to him to wait, walked over to the other side of the entrance, and put the egg roll tray in the trash and the empty bottle in the recycling—doing my bit to save the planet.

  As I got into the pickup, Deke said, “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I been driving in circles for almost an hour.” He slammed the truck into gear and popped the clutch; my head snapped back against the headrest.

  “I had to run some errands,” I said.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get cracked!” He banged the steering wheel with his fist. “How d’you know that Benz doesn’t have a locator in it?”

  “Because if it did, the guy would have just called the cops. He wouldn’t have jumped on the hood and tried to smash through his own windshield with his briefcase.”