by Jérémie Guez
“You broke it, you bought it.”
“Yeah, but I’ll get a good resale price, with the roof the way it is.” Second time’s the charm.
The wall’s fairly high. I know the landing will be rough, so I turn around, lower my legs down into the dark until the whole weight of my body is just hanging there by my hands, then I let go. I hit the ground hard, stumble, but my ankles hold. Cherif, who’s landed without a hitch, helps me up.
“You are such a dumbass.”
Before I have time to say that when you make a living as a thief, there are some things you’re just better at—like breaking and entering—he says, “Not a sound from here on out.”
The wall of the warehouse goes on several dozen yards. Heads down, bent over, we move through the night along this ocean liner of brick and sheet metal until we reach the corner by the entrance. Cherif freezes. He points at the guardhouse by the gate, where two men are sitting in front of a small TV. Luckily, there’s a soccer match on. About twenty yards behind them, two sliding doors: the entrance all cars must pass through.
“There’s a service door at the end. You stay here. I’ll open it up. When I signal, join me. They can’t see us. But they can hear us. So walk lightly, don’t run like some fucktard,” Cherif whispers in my ear.
He hugs the wall, going as slowly as he can, not making the slightest sound. I watch him, terrified, half convinced the two guys will see him. But they don’t. Cherif makes it all the way over to the door unnoticed. He huddles over the lock for half a minute.
A quick click and he waves me over. I take a step and freeze. I’m scared shitless. Cherif waves his arm; he must be wondering what I’m doing. I’m suddenly trapped by the memory of Julien punching me on the floor. I think about death. About the barrel of Claude’s gun. About my fear that this is it. About how I was starting to get a boner. About how I was saying my prayers, then chucked all that out the window when, lying in a puddle of my own urine, I’d begged him not to pull the trigger. What if those two guys over there heard me? No way. But what if one of them just stops watching his bullshit game for a second and comes out to have a smoke or stretch his legs? What if he sees me? Pulls his gun? Would I fall to my knees again?
I look at Cherif a few yards away, and my legs start working again. He holds the door open. I go through with him, and he shuts it without a sound.
“Goddamn,” he whispers. “Don’t move.”
Blackness everywhere—I can’t see a thing. I pull the nylon hose from my face and stick it in my jeans pocket.
Cherif pulls what I think is spray paint from his coat and starts shaking it, the metal ball rattling around the aerosol canister.
“What is that?”
“Polyurethane foam.”
“What?”
“Shut up and stay here. I’ll take care of the alarm.”
Cherif starts walking along the wall. Soon I can’t see him anymore. A few seconds later, I hear a fshhh pierce the silence. Then Cherif, speaking to me in a normal voice at last. “We’re good. I cut it. Come on over.”
Before I can remind him I can’t see a thing, a flashlight beam shows me the way. I rejoin him by a long switchgear with the cover open. He’s pulled the pantyhose off his face too.
“What about the cameras?”
“There are none,” he replies.
“How do you know?”
“I deliver cars here. What kind of pro would I be if I didn’t pick up on details like that?”
I suppress a smile, thinking that Cherif must have known he’d be breaking into this place someday. But he surely never imagined it’d be for me.
“Your Pareira’s pretty stupid.”
“He sells stolen cars. You think he really needs everything that happens here on video? On HD for the prosecution?”
“So how do we find the car?”
He sticks the flashlight between his teeth while he digs around in his pocket and comes up with another one, which he gives me.
“Careful not to aim it too far. The plastic roofing’s translucent; they can see the light from outside.”
“Cherif, I don’t know what it looks like.”
“What? You didn’t look?”
“I don’t have Internet at home, remember?”
He sighs. “Stay with me. And don’t touch a thing. Some cars might be alarmed.”
That seems weird to me. If these cars are all stolen, their alarms should be neutralized. I wonder if Cherif is saying that because he’s afraid I’ll go around laying my hands on everything like some ten-year-old kid. Regardless, I keep my hands to myself and follow him past dozens of luxury cars parked in rows.
“There it is.” He plays his flashlight across it. It looks more like a machine from the future than a car.
“You sure that’s it? It looks like the Batmobile.”
Cherif turns around. I can’t quite make out his face in the dark, but it probably doesn’t look friendly.
“What if there’s another one?” I ask.
“Two R8s, stolen the same week? Anyway, we don’t have time to go through them all. Your client wants that model, end of story.”
Cherif walks around the car and then bends over the windshield. I figure Eric’ll have to shell out for a new door, a new window, or both, but Cherif just grips the handle and opens the door.
“Unlocked?”
“Who’d come steal it?” he replies, getting in behind the wheel.
I climb into the passenger seat. With a stiff metal rod, Cherif forces something under the steering wheel. Then he takes a small electronic box from his coat and connects it to the bundle of cables now pulled out in the middle of the dash.
“What’s that?”
“The thing that’s going to let us start the engine.”
I wonder how many magnificent toys are hiding in Cherif’s black coat. He taps on the screen of his device.
“OK, so this is where things heat up. When I press this button, the engine is going to start. It’ll take a few seconds, maybe a few minutes, you never know. What with the noise from the car, the guys outside are going to hear us.”
“So?”
“So I need you to stand by the main doors. When you hear the engine turn over, open them up. I’ll pick you up at the exit and we drive. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“But wait till you hear the car start, OK? And get that stocking back on your face.”
I get out of the car and make my way over to the big doors, my eyes now used to the dark. The doors are fastened from the inside by a metal bar stuck through two rings of welded steel. I have to make a decision. Remove the metal bar now, or leave it? It might be heavier than it looks. One of the ends might hit the ground. Would the sound rouse the watchmen? Not to mention the door itself. I’m assuming they open easily, but the doors on my dad’s garage have rusty hinges, and you have to push as hard as you can to slide them aside. Lots of questions. No decisions. Until I hear the engine turn over. A huge souped-up roar I didn’t expect. It has to be the loudest car engine in the world. I yank out the steel bar, hear tires squealing. Door one is even heavier than I thought. I’ll never get the other one open in time. And forget putting the stocking back on.
“It won’t fit. I need to get the other door!”
“Get in! It’ll fit!”
I dash into the car. Cherif hits the gas and we go through. It doesn’t feel like it’ll fit. Sparks fly from the body, the stucco wall and door saw the side mirrors clean off, but the car goes through. Outside, we find the two guys, dumbfounded. Cherif steps on the gas, heading straight for them. They dive at the ground to avoid us. The gate splinters, the car drifts left. Cherif spins the wheel, pulls gently on the handbrake, and straightens out the car, which misses a telephone pole by a few inches. My view of the road narrows; we’re already pushing sixty. The rearview mirror—the one in the middle—is full of blinding headlights.
“They’re already on us!”
“If we can make it to the ring road, we�
��re good,” Cherif says, yanking off his stocking and tossing it at me. He switches off the headlights and accelerates again; I feel a little like I’m in a spaceship floating in a dark galaxy—we can’t see more than six feet ahead. Soon we end up on the highway encircling Paris. Then I understand why Cherif wanted so badly to reach open road. The powerful engine leaves our pursuers in the dust.
Cherif tosses a “told you so” my way with the grin of a partner in crime.
I wonder what we must look like, driving through Paris on a Saturday night at the wheel of a luxury automobile without side mirrors, the doors all scratched and dented. Thieves, surely—which is, after all, what we are.
“Well, what now?” he asks.
“I’ll see if we can deliver the car tonight.” I pull out my phone and dial the number Eric gave me for the guy who’d take care of the car. A man picks up.
“I have what you asked for.”
“Where is it?” His voice is scrambled, like he’s speaking through a throat-back.
“I’m in it, in the middle of Paris. Where do you want it?”
The guy gives me an address, doesn’t bother repeating it, and hangs up.
I turn to Cherif, who’s still focused on driving. “I didn’t really catch much. He said he’ll come for us by Porte d’Auteuil.”
Cherif nods. We drive through the city, passersby and other drivers gaping at us, marveling at the luxury car and astonished by its laughable condition. Even if you live here, most people would struggle to drive through it without a map. Not Cherif. He knows every neighborhood, every crucial shortcut. It’s a small miracle we don’t run into cops on the major boulevards, where their presence is more less constant. Trocadéro, pushing farther west. The streets of the Sixteenth are empty, and I’m convinced the sound of the potent engine is waking people in their huge apartments, insulated as they are behind their double-glazed windows.
“We’re nearing Porte d’Auteuil.”
“Circle while I call again,” I tell Cherif, pulling out my phone.
It barely rings. The same voice—now I hear a slight foreign accent in it, despite the scrambling—saying, “I see you. Pull in behind the BMW.”
The line clicks dead.
“He said to pull in behind the Beemer. You see a Beemer?”
Cherif points right in front of me. There is indeed a car on the other side of the street, double-parked with its hazards on, just in front of the on-ramp to the ring road.
“OK, pull in behind him.”
Cherif obeys, and we hug the BMW’s rear bumper.
“So what now? Sit here with our thumbs up our asses till the cops come by?” asks Cherif.
I open the door, ready to get out. My cell rings.
“You alone?”
“No,” I reply, just like that.
“You were told to come alone.”
I’m getting tired of this little game of hide-and-seek. “I came with the guy who works with me. Without him, I wouldn’t have the car at all. Now it seems to me that’s what you came for. So are we just going to sit here or what?”
“Cut the engine.”
“What?”
“Cut the engine.”
I signal Cherif. The exhausting roar stops.
“Now leave the keys in the ignition and go home.”
I hang up and look at Cherif. “He wants us to get out of the car.”
“Why don’t they get out? They’re the ones who want the damn car.”
“Don’t make a scene.”
We comply. The BMW’s passenger door opens. A man in a bomber jacket emerges. What gets me, before I even notice his size or his height, is his face. He doesn’t have one. Or rather, he has one, but it’s hidden. He’s wearing a ski mask. I’m not as well versed in the thugocracy as my childhood friends, but I know a few of its codes at least. And when a guy comes out wearing a ski mask in the middle of the night, that means something. Which seems totally out of whack with what he’s come looking for. You wear a ski mask when you’re picking up a shipment of coke, not to get a car when you’re sure that car hasn’t been followed. Cherif must feel the same way I do.
“Idir, what the fuck is this?”
Without a word, the guy comes over to us. He’s probably counting on getting behind the wheel of the car and starting it up—I’m sure neither of us would lift a finger to stop him. At this point, the night can still end well. We even have time to go nurse a mojito, in peace, around République before going home to bed. But that’s not counting the unmarked car—flashing light on the dash—that cruises right by us in slow motion. The cops who find themselves looking at two brown-skinned guys and a third guy in a ski mask, frozen in the middle of the street next to a luxury automobile with very dinged-up bodywork. They must be wondering if there’s a camera hidden somewhere, or if we really are just a bunch of amateurs.
The rest goes by real fast. Turns out, Ski Mask is packing. He pulls an automatic weapon from his belt as quick as a trained soldier and opens fire on the cop car. Sparks fly from the hood. Cherif takes off; I follow. We cross the road at top speed. More shots from behind us, then the sound of engines. Two cars pass us by: the BMW and the car we brought them, leaving us alone, chased by cops. Running hard. I don’t know the neighborhood. I don’t know where we are. All I hear are sirens. Cherif ducks into a metro station. I think it’s a bad idea, but I follow.
“Hide your face! The cameras!” he shouts as we hurtle down the stairs.
He pulls his hood up; I turn up my jacket collar. We hit the turnstiles like coming out of a slingshot. I haven’t jumped a turnstile in years. My leg hits the bar; I take a blow to the knee. The sound of an arriving train. Stairs to the left, stairs to the right, fifty-fifty, but which? Cherif keeps me from having to choose by heading left. The beeping noise I’ve heard all my life. The doors close on a corner of my coat, but we’re good. We’re in. It’s crowded, Saturday night and everyone looking at us—everyone always looks at the two assholes who make the subway at the last second. But the doors open again. Cherif risks a glance out the window. He sees cops coming down the stairs.
“The back. Quick.”
We push people aside, clear a path. Two cops enter the car and try to spot us. A third waits on the platform, shouting at the driver not to leave. He’s not wearing a uniform. The conductor probably thinks he’s a nutjob. He gets scared when he sees the man running toward his cabin like a crazy person. So he restarts the train. The doors beep and the metro leaves, with Cherif, me, and two cops in the same car, radioing in for reinforcements at the next station.
“We get off at the next stop or we’re dead,” Cherif whispers.
I count the seconds in my head until the metro slows and the platform appears. I see Cherif’s hand reaching for the door. I look at my shoes. The door opens. Cherif runs out first. I hear shouting behind us.
“Stop! Don’t move!”
I tell myself they won’t shoot me in the back. I speed up, not looking back, and hurl myself up the stairs behind Cherif. The street. I feel like we’ve gained a few yards on them. I also feel like my lungs are about to explode. Cherif points at a bunch of teenagers standing outside an apartment building. Music from the floor above. A party in a nice apartment.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”
He charges at the group, which drifts into the building without seeing us. The door closes. Cherif shoots forward, foot out, and kicks the latch from the lock. The door bangs against the wall, and I duck in behind him before it shuts again.
Cherif catches his breath, hands on his knees. Looks at me furiously. I lift my hand in a conciliatory gesture. “Sorry, man. There was no reason that should’ve gone down like that.”
Cherif motions for me to shut up and presses his ear to the door.
“They there?”
“Can’t tell. Can’t hear a thing with the music.” Back to the wall, he lets himself slide down to the ground. “Shit, we’re stuck here. Fuck.”
I go upstairs, following the mu
sic.
“The fuck are you doing?”
“Crashing the party.”
“What?”
“What if a neighbor comes in and finds us here?”
The apartment isn’t hard to find. The music’s turned all the way up. We knock at the door several times. Cherif gives me a little slap on the cheek and grabs my chin, his red eyes looking into mine.
“If the cops come for disturbing the peace, and they—”
The door opens. A girl about twenty, too well fed to look comfortable in her little black dress, greets us, a glass of champagne in one hand.
“We’re friends of—”
“C’mon in and have a drink,” she says. No questions.
We follow her into the apartment. It’s too dark for her to see the gash on my skull. The lighting probably makes my haircut look hip.
“What’s your name?” she asks, glancing back over her shoulder.
“Uh—he’s Jean and I’m Alain.”
I turn to Cherif, who nods like a little boy. The girl bursts out laughing, spilling some of her champagne on the floor.
“Delighted. I’m Chloe.”
We reach the end of the hallway. She waddles into a massive room with a parquet floor screeching from the torture of all those heels driving to the rhythm of violent electronica.
I try for a joke. “At least there are some hot chicks.”
Cherif doesn’t respond. He looks at me, jaw pumping like he’s chewing some imaginary gum. Then he crosses the room, pushing people aside.
“Where are you going?” I shout in his ear over the music.
“To get a drink. I need one.”
We go through several rooms, giant salons where the guests are spread out. They’re all dressed to the nines: dancing, wandering down the hallways high, kissing—sometimes more—in the corners. The bar’s a real bar, with a real bartender behind it. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it. Goddamn, to think all these people are under twenty-five.