Escape Artist

by William A. Noguera

  As soon as they were released from their chains, the prisoners separated. The new prisoner went to the lower level of the roof and Olaf made his way to the control bubble where he convinced his friend the cop to open the door and give him a cup of coffee to warm him up against the cold wind.

  Because they were friends, and the cop trusted Olaf, he never paused. He opened the door to hand the cup to Olaf, but when he stepped out of the office Olaf made his move. He grabbed and hit the cop, knocking him out, then took his keys and threw them to the other prisoner, who unlocked the door to the fenced area where the equipment locker sat.

  Olaf handcuffed the cop with his own cuffs and placed tape over his mouth so he couldn’t call for help. Then he closed the office door, leaving the handcuffed cop outside on the roof with no way to get into his office and alert anyone, even if he managed to escape the cuffs he wore.

  Olaf pulled out a steel bar and forced the fence open. Then he and the other prisoner tied together electrical extension cords and scaled down the building wall of the jail. As soon as they hit the street, they separated. After only a few days the other prisoner, who was facing twenty-seven years to life for murder, was caught a few blocks from the jail at a motel sitting by the pool in the company of a hooker.

  Olaf, however, was nowhere to be found. When asked, the other prisoner said he knew nothing about his plans or where he could be found. A manhunt continued for Olaf with no results. Days passed, which led to weeks, then months. I often wondered where Olaf had gone and how he was doing. I guessed he left the state or country and would never be caught.

  Then one afternoon, a man vaguely familiar looked at me through the TV screen. I turned up the volume and that’s when I learned Olaf had been caught in Boston. Gone was the long hair and beard. The man on the TV screen looked nothing like the man I knew except for the flash of his ice-blue eyes.

  In the months to come, he was put on trial for the forced escape and, acting as his own attorney, was able to convince a jury the reason he escaped and ran was because he feared for his life from the cops in the jail. He was able to demonstrate the abuse he suffered at their hands and that, if he hadn’t escaped, they would have killed him. A jury of twelve found him not guilty. Later, he was sent to prison for the murder he was originally awaiting trial for and I’ve neither heard from nor seen Olaf since.

  Chapter 30

  Adolescence, 1981

  There would be no turning back for me. I was addicted and I’d do anything to continue experiencing the high.

  The ingredients were all the things that brought me the respect and reputation I was building. Not respect in the general sense, like the respect a doctor gets from society. The respect I’m talking about is street respect, based firmly on fear. I was so addicted to building my reputation, I thought of little else. My life became a circle, where everything revolved around getting more of the same.

  By this time, I was involved in underground extreme fighting. I’d grown tired of being disqualified from tournaments for being too aggressive. I made it to the finals in an open tournament in San Diego only to be disqualified for knocking my opponent out in what was referred to as an “uncontrolled” hit—which couldn’t have been further from the truth. I had complete control and struck my opponent with the precision of a surgeon. But in those competitions, “controlled” meant pulling one’s hits—something I didn’t believe in. So I quit.

  As I went to my car in the company of my father, we were approached by a man who identified himself as a fight scout. He asked if he could talk with me about fighting in a league of fighters where I would never have to worry about being disqualified for being too aggressive, where knocking out my opponent was held in high regard.

  I agreed to take a look at his league, and the following week my father and I stood in awe as two men circled each other in the center of a warehouse where hundreds of people placed bets and cheered their fighter. I watched with the eyes of a trained gladiator and an excitement grew inside me. I turned to my father and yelled over the roar of the crowd, “I can beat them.” My father smiled and nodded.

  Later, after watching three more matches, I spoke to the scout and agreed to a fight. It would take two to three weeks to set up, but he would call me within a couple of days to tell me all the details. For the scout, money was the reason to fight, and he explained I’d receive $2,000 if I won, $1,000 bonus if I knocked out my opponent, and $500 if I lost.

  I smiled, leaving little doubt what I thought of losing, and he added that I could make even more if I bet on myself. I’d be the heavy underdog going in because I was unknown and people usually bet on a familiar face. Lastly, he explained the rules. There was only one: No weapons. Everything else was fair game, which basically meant there were no rules.

  Over the next two weeks I trained with a renewed excitement and anticipation. I tweaked my style so I’d be more explosive, maintaining an attack for a longer period of time. Gone were the safety mechanisms in my mind. Never again would I pull a punch or kick. My beasts would be allowed free reign.

  The night of my first fight, I sat in my father’s car waiting. I fought second and wanted to be alone before the fight with my beasts and music, which always brought me an emotional edge and excited me. To Led Zeppelin’s “Trampled Under Foot,” I visualized what I’d do and how. My opponent had no face. He didn’t matter. There was only my will and skill. Nothing would stop me.

  There was a knock on the window. I opened my eyes. My father stood outside and nodded. It was time. We made our way to the side door of the warehouse, and as soon as the door opened the smell of cigarette smoke, sweat, blood, and women’s cheap perfume assaulted my senses. I wore a hood that covered my head, my eyes were cast down, and with each step closer to my opponent I allowed myself to remember how I was once bullied and beat up.

  When I entered the circle, without removing my hood, I knelt and closed off the world. Gone was the crowd, the smell, my opponent. I was alone in my cave and I called to my beasts. Rage and Pain leapt to my side as I reached for them. I opened my eyes and stood, removing my hood. For the first time I saw my opponent. He was Mexican, shorter than me by an inch or two, of dark complexion with gang tattoos, and he outweighed me by twenty pounds or more. But he looked out of shape. I took it all in at first glance, and also noticed he was at least twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old.

  None of it mattered. I describe him here so you get an idea of who stood in front of me. To me, at that moment, he was just an opponent. It didn’t matter if he was green. Within a few moments it would be over.

  Taking off my shirt, I rotated my head, popping my neck joints and preparing myself. The signal to fight was simple. He stepped toward me.

  His stance told me the type of fighter he was. Muay Thai. I knew the style and its fighters’ habit of throwing long telegraphed roundhouse kicks to the legs and head, followed with short punches and elbows. The style was flawed and only effective against someone of the same style or an unskilled fighter. It wasn’t useful, however, against a fighter who had combined the best of several fighting styles and honed them into an instrument of precision and power. He had only a puncher’s chance to win, which was to say, he would have to get lucky and catch me with a wild swing.

  I advanced on him and didn’t give him a chance to study me. Striking out with a front kick aimed at his mid-section, connecting with his hip, I followed with punches to his face, ribs, and kidneys. Sidestepping me and shoving me away, he kicked my leg with a hard roundhouse and followed with a vicious spinning back fist, which grazed my temple. I backed away, giving him space, and he did exactly what he had been trained to do—close the distance with a kick to the head, which I blocked and backed away. I waited and baited him. Every time I backed away, his confidence grew.

  The crowd’s roar at what seemed like a victory for their fighter ended abruptly. Fighters with habits, when in trouble or on the verge of victory, revert to what they are first taught. Involuntary instincts override
everything. Believing I was intimidated, he threw that telegraphed roundhouse kick, which I’d been waiting for. As soon as he cocked his leg to whip it around, I moved in. In one motion I grabbed his leg in mid-air, and his torso, and using his own momentum I picked him up and slammed him into the concrete. I followed him down, pounding my fists into his face until my father’s hands pulled me off him.

  The fighter was unconscious. I glanced at him, then at the crowd, and roared my victory for the child I kept safe and protected inside me.

  Fighting, stealing, and their by-products gave me a sense of my identity, and I liked it. Even in the club, I soon distinguished myself and gave them a certain edge they’d never had. Before I came along, the club was a few good-looking guys with beautiful cars and a reputation built on the rumor that they stole cars. My very presence changed all that. Street gangs had no choice but to leave us alone. Other clubs respected us and no one dared mess with us because doing so would have earned them a one-on-one with me. Not that the other members of the club couldn’t fight, because they could, I just brought a certain level of respect to us that was enough to give most people pause. Recognizing this, I became Sergeant of Arms, a title given to me as much for having the fastest car as being the club’s most feared member. It was a title I took seriously. Every chance I got to boost my reputation, I took, at the same time making the club more and more notorious.

  I loved stealing cars. Everything about it was a rush, and I wanted to be the best. In fact, everything I do that I like, I always try to be the best. I don’t know the reason for this, but it’s wired into me. This included being a car thief, and I worked hard at it. From the moment I stole my ’63, I began perfecting my craft, everything from breaking into the car, to hot-wiring it. I noticed that whenever an alarm system was in place in a car, other members of the club would leave the car alone. I took that as a challenge and learned everything there was to know about car alarm systems. I’d purposely take a member or two from the club to a beautiful car I knew had an alarm system, and when they’d back down I’d disable the system and take the car.

  I quit my job at the skating rink and thought only of cars, fighting, and surfing. School didn’t enter into the equation, and although I still attended I had no interest in it at all.

  During nutrition break at 10 a.m. on a Thursday, Adrian, Francis, and I sat next to his sister’s BMW talking about a couple of cars I’d seen that I wanted to take a closer look at, when Ruben pulled into the parking lot and drove up to us.

  “Hey, what’s up? What are you doing?” Ruben asked.

  “Nothing. Hanging out before our next class,” said Francis.

  “Want to go scoping? There’s an area in Orange County I want to check out.”

  “Yeah, follow me to my house so I can drop off my sister’s car and we’ll go.”

  Scoping was a term we used to describe looking for cars to steal. We drove to Huntington Beach to scope for cars. Sometimes it proved to be extremely fruitful. Other times we looked all day or night and found nothing. This time, we drove by a street and Francis said, “Stop. Go down this street. There’s a clean oval window behind that truck.”

  Ruben backed up and entered the street. A quarter of the way down we saw it, but it wasn’t an oval window, it was two split-window ragtops. One was on the street and the other was parked in the driveway. Split-windows were Volkswagens built only up to 1952, and in some countries until 1953. They were rare and priced above all other Cal Bugs. The problem was finding a pan and paperwork to use for a changeover. Nevertheless, we parked the car and checked out the one on the street. It was clean, mint condition, and fully restored. And so was the one in the driveway. I made a mental note of the address and, after looking at them for a few moments, we got back into Ruben’s car and drove off.

  At the end of the street Ruben turned right, but two police squad cars with flashing lights blocked us in—one in front and one behind us.

  “Step out of the car with your hands up,” the Huntington Beach cop yelled.

  Once we were all out of the car, we were handcuffed, placed into the squad cars, and taken to the police station and interviewed separately. When a detective entered the interview room and asked me questions, I answered honestly.

  “What are you doing in Huntington Beach?”

  “My friends and I were looking at a pair of beautiful split-windows.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love VWs, and those are some of the cleanest I’ve ever seen.”

  “What were you going to do with them once you stole them?”

  “We had no intention of stealing them. We were just admiring them.”

  It went on and on, but I told the truth. He didn’t ask if I was a car thief or if we were out scoping cars. So I didn’t give him that information. They didn’t have anything on us, and the detective seemed upset once he realized we weren’t the guys he was looking for. As we talked, he volunteered that vintage Volkswagens were being stolen in the area, and the two split-windows we were pulled in for were targeted the week before, but the thieves failed when the owner woke up and called the police. He explained that Volkswagens in the past year had become a hot item because of the California VW trend. Everyone wanted one. On that account, he was right.

  We were released and I told my crew that scoping was no longer smart. Driving around looking at cars to steal later, especially in white neighborhoods, would get us arrested again. They heard what I said but didn’t listen. Instead they joked about the cops and how we’d gotten away. This only upset me. There had to be a way to scope but not expose myself to the cops. The answer came a few days later when my girlfriend looked at an Auto Trader newspaper and complained she didn’t have enough money to buy the car she wanted. She showed me the Auto Trader, and there on the front page was a picture and brief description of two VWs for sale. It was perfect and gave me a great idea. Instead of driving around, I’d simply scope out the cars in the Auto Trader and other newspapers and magazines. If the car interested me, I’d contact the seller and get more details. If the car passed that line of questions, I’d go to it, look closely, and, most of the time, take it. I told no one how I found the cars, only that I knew where they were located. I kept a log of their location, year, make, model, and goodies such as engine size and rims. When one of the club members needed something, I gave them the location, and of course I’d include a finder’s fee. Most club members stole cars to fix up or to upgrade their own. I, on the other hand, saw the whole thing as a business. I made contacts at shops, other fences, and interested parties who needed car parts for vintage VWs and Cal-style VWs and to complete cars already changed over.

  There was a huge demand for VW parts and complete changeovers. I was always busy with finding cars, stealing them, stripping them, and changing them over. I went about my business with Thursdays and Sundays as my days to steal, using the days in between to take care of what I’d stolen. Everything went well, except I found it difficult to find enough cars.

  The cars in the magazines and newspapers were fine, but I needed more targets to keep up with demand. More and more shops and fences asked for parts and I had to say no. They also wanted the best parts. High-performance engines, transmissions, and wheels, and they weren’t easy to find. I had to think of something. I hated not fulfilling orders. It bothered me and made me look unprofessional.

  Again, luck was on my side. Go-Go and I were on our way back from the beach when I confided in him about my car, the club, and my small business. Soon he and I began stealing cars together. I still stole with the club, but Go-Go was fearless and he needed the cash. I also trusted him with my life. He was Pack. He was my brother, and that meant he’d never betray me.

  I pulled up to a stop light and, across the street at a Carl’s Jr., at least twenty Cal-style VWs sat in the parking lot. Every one of them was clean, and I decided to pull in.

  “Let’s see who these motherfuckers are and what they’re doing,” I said.

  Pulling
into the parking lot, I revved my engine. A short show of power and all eyes were on me. I parked, and we went inside to get something to eat. Most of the car owners were seated together having a meeting. After eating we got up and went outside, where some of the members were talking and some had their engine compartments open. Every engine was built to the gills, all with Weber 48 IDA carburetors. The engines were customized with chrome, brass, and anodized parts. Steel braided hoses were used instead of rubber ones. All of the cars were in show condition.

  We stood by my car and one of their members came over.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Not bad. I saw your cars and I decided to stop and take a look at them. They’re clean.”

  “Is this your ’64?”

  “’63,” I corrected him. “But yeah, she’s mine.”

  “I heard you come in. What are you running?”

  I smiled, but decided not to play coy. “2180.” I opened my engine compartment and he whistled.

  “Man, that’s clean. Your whole car is. Are you with anyone?”

  “Nah, I haven’t found a club whose cars are clean enough.”

  As we spoke, other members of the club came over to look at my car.

  “Listen, my name’s Ron,” the guy said. “I’m the president of our club. We’re the Lightning Volks. We’re going to caravan to Angelo’s and cruise the place. We’re also taking submissions for new memberships. Maybe you’d like to cruise with us and consider joining. Your car certainly makes the grade. Listen, just consider it. I know you’ve probably been approached by a lot of clubs, but believe me, we’re the best and your car makes the grade.”

  I thought, Makes the grade? My car makes all of these cars look bad. But instead I smiled and said, “Yeah, I like your cars, but I want to think about it.”

  “Here, take a roll sheet so you remember what we’re about. It has all of our members on it, our phone numbers, addresses, and our cars and engine size. All our members have these so we can communicate.”