He walked like a man with somewhere to be. He cut along sidewalks crowded with Worcester’s night life. Red brick pubs spilling over, men talking loudly and walking sideways. Miles hunted for something worthwhile—steel-framed, older, with a big engine.
Something he could blow the doors off.
He wasn’t expecting to find anything on Canal Street but he liked to look. This was the trendy part of the old mill city, hipster bars selling local craft beers to guys in flannels driving Teslas. Noisy clubs packed with college kids, bankrolled by parents with deep pockets driving luxury sports cars.
It was also loaded with cameras.
Miles moved north, towards Kelly Square.
Tonight he was working. He browsed parking lots and scanned traffic but nothing stuck out, if it did it wasn’t the right time or place. Too bright or too busy.
He found himself thinking about the dreams. Tired of waking up tangled in sweat-soaked sheets that felt like they were trying to consume him. Same nightmares he had as a boy, always the same.
Alone in the rotting woods, dead trees with branches like long fingers, roots tearing up from the earth. The image came unbidden, sharp enough to make him quicken his pace.
He passed a coffee shop, a couple uniforms sitting on an idling cruiser. One of them bragged about slamming a guy’s face into the hood of his car.
“I swear, his fucking tooth was stuck in the hood,” he laughed but went quiet when he clocked Miles, square face tight.
The city at night kept him grounded. It was the quiet that made his skin crawl and his thoughts race.
His heavy boots echoed like a warning when he moved under Pigeon Bridge, steel beams groaning under the weight of a passing train as it rolled through on its way south to Auburn or Providence, bell ringing lazily as it eased past.
There was an older Land Cruiser he considered, engine and transmission Hector could move fast. It sat on a set of expensive rims, probably had a sound system. It was tucked into the corner of a repair shop just out of the glow from the bright fluorescent spotlights.
He lingered at the edge of the property, eyes scanning the building for security. He found it.
Cameras, small glass domes tucked under the gutters.
Discipline kept him out of jail. He walked.
It was hot and the black hooded sweatshirt didn’t help, it was a tactical choice he told himself. Black jeans and shirt to match the set of latex gloves he carried.
Tonight he went light: picks, a slim jim, a screwdriver, and the small flashlight he carried everywhere. Low-tech. Old-school. The satisfaction of stealing cars like their grandparents did.
He continued along until the road got quiet, traffic got lighter and the buildings started to grow further apart.
He was close, it was in the air. Like a hunter he could sense it.
Somewhere in South Worcester he found it, about a half mile from College Hill in a dark parking lot. The kind women avoid at night, the kind with few lights, plenty of cover and no one in sight.
Tuned up Honda Civic, older model. She was dressed in blue, all wheels and exhaust, covered in stickers for performance parts, brand names that meant money.
Miles smiled to himself and went for the black gloves in his back pocket and in a heartbeat he was next to it, the slim jim in his hand. He swept over the lot again before he slipped it in, quick slide, no wasted motion.
Upward pressure and the million dollar sound:
Six seconds and he was sitting inside of it, seat back and screwdriver in hand, the pen-size flashlight in his teeth. He peeled the steering column back and went for the ignition switch.
Ground and power. Expose the copper.
The car coughed once before it came to life, the growl of the exhaust, a low rumble, the sound carried over the vacant parking lot, drowning the sound of running air conditioners and faint sounds of music from far away.
Miles kept the lights off until he got back on the road, bright halogens lit up dirty streets as he blasted past the homeless who squatted beside shelters made of ripped tarps and corrugated boxes.
The Honda whipped up Harding to avoid the police who always hung around the twenty-four hour stores further along Southbridge. Rough neighborhoods, old triple deckers with sagging porches, windows boarded with plywood. Drug dealers lurked on street corners and the prostitutes roamed in packs.
Worcester’s Revitalization Project at work.
He sat back with his hand loose on the wheel as the hot summer air tore through the car’s open windows. Not a thought to be had, no dreams to think about or war memories to unpack. Even the noises inside his head went quiet.
The real work was done at a shady little repair shop in the industrial part of town that had been around since the forties. At one point it had belonged to the Italian Mafia but was now owned by an Albanian and run by an ex-con named Hector who made a small fortune by selling stolen cars and parts.
No tail and no one in sight. The closest neighbor was an abandoned brick factory and a railyard. A lot of cracked asphalt and chain link.
Miles killed the lights and rolled through the empty lot. He pulled it right up to the bay door and gave the horn a quick double tap, in a moment the bolt snapped and the heavy steel door rolled open.
Hector appeared, cigarette between his teeth, lips curled in a satisfied smile as he waved Miles in.
Miles eased it between the yellow lift and heard the door close behind him.
“No Hellcat tonight eh, Gringo?” The older Puerto Rican gave his crooked smile and scrubbed his greasy arms with a rag.
The hood popped. “Not tonight.”
They stood at the front bumper arguing part prices with cell phones in their hands. It was the same back and forth every time, Miles went high and Hector low and they’d meet somewhere in the middle.
He lifted the car and unlocked the rolling closet-sized toolbox he kept there. His adopted mother would have been proud of him, each tool in its place, every drawer meticulously organized.
Miles had always been her favorite, his adopted brother Lenny had been the polar opposite. He thought of his strange little family, raised by a couple too old to have children of their own. They were gone now but he still managed to call Lenny once a year.
Wheels removed, tires stacked. The exhaust was next, the only thing of value was the catalytic he cut out with a sawzall. He dropped the performance suspension, no rust, it came apart like a dream.
His hands worked and his mind drifted.
Thoughts of Afghanistan, reflections of war and lost friends. The night of the breach when he was number two at the door, muzzle up and eyes locked. Enter and clear left, that was the plan. That was what he trained for, time and again, but it didn’t go down that way.
The door didn’t swing, it came apart and became shrapnel. What happened next happened in a second, a gunman on the other side opened up, killing two men.
The whole thing was a clusterfuck. One mistake and two lives gone.
On cold nights he felt the steel in his ribs. The small pieces from the door they didn’t see or didn’t care to get when they had him laid out on a kitchen table.
He saw their faces still, young men lost in the desert.
By morning the car was a husk. A blue shell stripped to pieces, she’d leave on a hook. Miles washed up in a dirty sink and made his way into the office where Hector sat watching the Red Sox game from last night on a tiny old tube television.
Old faithful he called it when people told him to break down and get a flat screen.
“I’m thinking five,” Miles said. He slowly made his way to the old leather sofa opposite Hector’s desk.
The Puerto Rican laughed and shook his head, “no, no, amigo. Too much money, my friend. Two.”
The negotiations began, both men arguing about value and quality, rims with scratches and who knows exactly how many miles that turbo had anyway? Hector never paid top dollar for anything. After all, the man owned a television built in the eighties because he refused to spend any money.
They settled at thirty-two hundred and Miles was keeping the control unit. He had someone looking for one and, unlike Hector, would actually pay for it.
“Bueno, Gringo. Muy bueno.”
Cash next week. Another envelope of crisp bills.
They chained up the gutted Honda and dragged it into the yard. Hector fired up the crusher behind the shop, a hulking monster, a relic from another time, chugging black smoke into the early morning air.
The Puerto Rican grinned like a man who enjoyed his work as he fed the machine with the forklift. With the pull of a lever he turned evidence into a block of blue steel. Watching always gave him a sense of relief, weight off his shoulders.
No grand theft auto charges tonight. Not now.
Miles locked his toolbox and checked his phone. A text from Ray.
got somethin. red light. 7:30
“You got something alright,” he muttered.
Ray was a lot of things but a criminal mastermind he was most certainly not. However, that’s not to say the charismatic Italian was useless, he was good at finding things and sometimes that included a good score.
He gave the morning shift a nod and Hector a lazy wave. He stepped into the New England humidity in the back lot where the flat black Cutlass waited.
He collected his key and stepped inside. It roared to life with a twist of the key, the low throaty rumble of the Flowmaster exhaust. He sat, engine idling. The door closed with a thunk when he pulled it shut.
“Let’s go see what Ray’s got.”
