15
That night found Kat and I driving around in her Dad’s old pickup, wandering about looking for the perfect car. Kat seemed more excited about it than I was. That anarchistic streak of hers runs fucking deep.
Anyways, we cruised around town, looking for likely candidates, of which there were plenty. The problem was finding one where we felt the surroundings where safe enough to get away with it.
We eventually settled on one on a street near my place. It was a cul-de-sac, so there wasn’t any through traffic and there wasn’t much in the name of street lights. Perfect conditions if you ask me.
The car was a 78 or 79 Malibu. While scoping it out, I “lost” my pack of smokes out the window and “had to go back for them”. Thankfully they actually bounced under the front of the car, so when I retrieved them I could check out the engine.
“How’s it look?” Kat asked when I got back in the truck.
“Pretty good. It’s got a 350 in it, a little greasy around the oil pan but not too bad. It looks like it’s in decent shape.”
“What about an alarm?”
“I didn’t see one of those blinking lights. Sides, who’d put an alarm on that?”
“Good point. When do you want to hit it?”
“Round two or three. There shouldn’t be a lot of folks up at that point.”
“Well, it’s eleven now.” She switched to southern belle. “Whatever shall we do till then?”
“My place is about three blocks from here.”
She looked dubious.
“I have air conditioning.”
“I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
—-
After spending some quality time naked in the air conditioning, Kat and I headed back out to the target. I did the heavy lifting, as I wasn’t too inclined to have my new girlfriend put in jail, women’s prison fantasies aside.
Turns out I didn’t need tool number one, the wire coat hanger, as the soon to be ex-owner was thoughtful enough to leave it unlocked for me. After all, who’d steal an almost 20 year old Chevy in a quiet neighborhood?
The second and third tool in my kit was a cheap chisel and a hammer.
When you see someone steal a car in the movies or on TV, they are always crawling under the dash, cutting wires and all that. Problem is, while you can get a car started that way, there is this small problem of the steering lock.
You know how in most cars, you can’t turn the steering wheel without turning the ignition? Well that’s your steering lock. I’m most of your older cars, the ignition lock is doing double duty as your steering lock, and the Malibu is no exception.
I figured the easiest way around this was to pound the chisel into the ignition until it’s wedged in there good and tight. Then take a pair of vise-grips and lock them on to the chisel at a 90 degree angle and take a length of metal pipe and stick it on the end of one of the handles. This gives you a lot more leverage.
Then all you need to do is pull up on your pipe hard enough to break the lock. With any luck you’ll just pop the lock and not knock the cylinder loose from the wheel. If you do that, your fucked, cause that takes some time to fix, the kind of time you don’t have when stealing a car.
The other thing about this particular method is, if you pop the lock and not the cylinder, then the car will start at the same time.
That’s the theory anyways. Practice is something different. I had to learn from experience on the fly as the first time I tried it I put the pipe on the wrong handle and sent the vise-grips flying. The second time was the charm though. I pulled up on the handle then pop, crack, vroom, the engine was running.
As per the plan, I drove the car and Kat followed in the truck. Didn’t try back roads or anything like that. Just normal surface driving at just over the speed limit so as not to draw attention.
We made it back to the garage without incident. We parked both the truck and the Malibu in the bay, just in case someone caught the license plates.
Then it came down to making sure the Malibu was in good enough condition to survive the job.
Automotive engineering must run in her family, as Kat is a more than capable mechnic. We divied up the chores for the car and turned on the radio nice and loud. Kat checked out the engine and adjusted the timing (it seemed off when I was driving it) while I changed out the tires. Whoever the owner of this car was, maintenance was not his strong suit.
Way I had it figured, the latest owner had bought this car from someone who knew what he was doing, since it wasn’t in terrible shape. It just didn’t seen to be to well cared for for the past year or two.
Case in point, the tires were more fucking bald that Captian Picard. Thankfully, all the garage inventory was still there, including a set of tires that fit the Malibu’s rims. Said rims, however, were in decent shape, so there wasn’t anything to worry about there.
The music seemed to make the work a lot more tolerable. At the time KTSR was still a rock and roll station, and a good one at that. I’ve never found another station with such a good mix of music as KTSR had in the nineties. They played ZZ Top and Metallica, SRV and Megadeath, they even played Primus on occasion. Hell, they played Zeplin’s “Heatbreaker” correctly, meaning it was followed directly by “Living Loving Maid”.
Unfortunately Clear Channel finally decided that it didn’t sound like everything else and changed the format, but that was years later. At the time, I was in love with the track list.
They were playing Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” when we got done with the maintenance and started in on the modifications. About the time that the sun was coming up we were just about finished. I was sitting in the back seat, half out the passenger side door, tapeing wires to the headliner when Kat ran at me and pushed me down into the back seat.
“It’s pretty roomy back here,” she said from on top of me.
“Yeah, it is,” I said, looking into those gray eyes.
“You ever had sex in the back of a car.”
“Nope.”
We started kissing and groping. I had a hand under her shirt when she suddenly stopped and sniffed the air.
“Do you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
“That.” she said taking another sniff.
I took a sniff. There aren’t many things that you can mistake for the smell of vomit, so I was pretty sure what it was.
“Good lord,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I hope that smell comes out. Wanna get out of here?”
“Hell yes,” she said. ”Let’s head upstairs. We need showers anyways.”
—-
“You have got to be kidding me.”
That was Carl. After it got to hot to sleep again, we showered, dressed, called the guys and ordered pizza, which Evans picked up on the way. Within the hour the guys, plus Lisette, plus pizza had arrived at the garage. Needless to say, they were less than impressed.
“What?”
“You expect me to drive this piece of shit?”
“I told you something like this was going to happen,” said Evans.
Gus continued to bitch. “Maybe we should have had Lisette steal the car. She would have at least gotten us a nice one.”
“I do not steal cars,” she stated.
“What the fuck guys? What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s this?” asked Carl.
“We needed a car so I got us a car.”
“We,” said Kat.
“Yeah, we got us a car,” I amended.
“Where the fuck did you get this piece of shit?” asked Gus.
“Like I said, don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“I have seen worse,” said Lisette.
“Yeah,” started Carl, “but this is America, sweetie. We expect better things here.”
All this bitching had pissed me the fuck off. ”Look you ungrateful fucks, this is the perfect car for the fucking job. It’s on the large side of mid-sized, so it has plenty of mass. It’s got a 350 small block V8 that cranks to 165 horsepower, so it’s plenty fast. And it’s a four door with big ass doors and a huge back seat and it’s pretty fucking inconspicuous. If you wanted to do the job in a fucking Caddy, I suggest you steal your own fucking car.
“Now where’s the fucking pizza?”
Evans pointed to the table at the back of the garage. I walked over and tore into one of them.
“Why is he so mad?” asked Lisette.
“He gets cranky if he doesn’t get his breakfast,” Kat answered.
“How’s it run?” asked Carl. I just glared at him. The fucking ingrates. I get them the guns, which wasn’t even my fucking job, and then they have the nerve to bitch about the fucking car.
“Hey, CT,” said Gus. ”Don’t get all defensive man. We’re all concerned here. Our safety is on the line.”
“He’s got a point,” said Kat.
“Yeah, ok,” I finished the slice, grabbed another, and headed to the Malibu. ”Kat and I worked on it last night. The engine is tuned up…” I sat down behind the wheel and flipped the ignition. The engine roared to life. “…and it purrs like a kitten. We put on new tires, and I made some modifications.”
“What kind of modifications?” Gus asked.
I stood and motioned for Gus to take my place, stuffing more pizza in my face in the mean time. Once he was settled, I started in again.
“OK, see those three switches?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I broke the ignition lock getting the car. The switch on the left turns the car on and off. Push it up all the way to start it then let it go. To turn it off, just flip it to the off position.”
“Ok, got it. What’s the other two?”
“Oil slick and smoke screen.”
“Really?”
“No. The first one turns off the license plate light.”
“What good is that?” asked Evans from behind me.
I turned to address the room. I felt like I was giving a class. Like “Automotives for Thieves 101″. ”Well, it’s so that it’s harder to read the plate at night.”
“So?”
“So,” started Carl, “we are hitting the joint just after it closes Saturday night.”
“Oh,” he said.
“And the last one?” Apparently Gus was the man with the questions today.
“That one cuts all of the lights, including the dash and the radio. That way, we can sit with the car running without giving off any light.”
“It turns off the radio?”
“Yeah, I couldn’t figure out a good way to kill the light without killing the radio so I said ‘Fuck it, we don’t need the radio anyway.’”
“All right,” said Carl. “It’ll have to do. Now we need to clean it. Were you guys wearing gloves when you were working on it.”
“Yep,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie since I didn’t remember if I had them on the entire time or not.
“Ok, everyone put on gloves and let’s wipe it down. From here on out we don’t want to leave any prints.”
—-
“God damn, man,” said Evans from the back seat. “It smells like puke in here.”
“Hey, CT,” yelled Gus. “Did you check the trunk to make sure nothing died in there?”
Evans shook his head. “I’d rather not think about that.”
Carl and Lisette walked back in through the open garage door, allowing us to catch the end of whatever saccharine “I love you more than beer” bullshit conversation the were having.
“… my Superman?” said Lisette.
“You know it babe.” As they passed, Carl addressed us. ”Make sure you don’t miss and spots. And CT, don’t forget the dash.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I started, then I had a realization. ”Wait a minute. Why the fuck am I even cleaning. I’m the one that got the car, remember? If anything, your ass should be the one in here cleaning this shit.”
“Someone has to supervise.”
I stood and threw my rag at Carl. ”My left nut! It’s your turn to be the bitch, asshole.”
Carl grabbed a pair of gloves and picked up the rag. ”Fine,” he said reluctantly.
I leaned against the fender and lit a smoke.
“Hey boss,” said Gus. “What are you doing in here with us blue collar boys. Someone knock you off your pedestal?”
“Shut it, Gus.”
“Why don’t you get in the back?”
“Dude, I’m not getting in the back, OK? Just shut up and clean.”
“Hey,” said Evans. “I don’t want to touch some of the shit back here.”
“Look guys, we’re all going to be riding in this thing. Do you want it to ride around in a car that smells like puke?”
“Good point,” said Evans turning back to the task at hand. ”You know, Carl, I’m kinda surprised that you’re OK with CT bringing Kat into this after the shit he gave you about Lisette.”
“Damn-it Evans,” I head Gus mumble.
“Yeah,” said Carl climbing back out of the car and turning towards me, “what the fuck CT?”
“What?”
“Kat, you dick.”
“What about my dick,” said Kat from the back of the garage.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said to her before turning back to Carl. “What about her?”
“Why didn’t you talk to us about it?”
I noticed that everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch us. “Oh, so you think you’ve turned the tables huh?”
“Yeah, asshole.”
“Well, fuck you, you dick. There’s a difference between the two.”
“What, cause you’re in love with Kat? How the fuck does that make anything different?”
“Two reasons. One, she’s not getting a share, unlike Lisette who hasn’t done a goddamn thing that I’ve seen.
“And two, we all know Kat. We don’t have to question her motives. We don’t have to worry about if she’s going to stab us in the fucking back. Unlike Lisette, Carl, Kat’s not a fucking thief.”
It looked like Carl was about to hit me, but Lisette ran between us and out the door, crying the entire way.
“Motherfucker,” he said to me. Then he turned to follow her.
I looked at the rest of the guys, but I couldn’t read their faces. They wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. Kat looked concerned though.
“Fuck!” I yelled and kicked the nearest thing to me, which happened to be one of the old tires. They have plenty of give, but it tends to spring back at you. In this case it knocked me off balance and I fell to the floor.
“Y’all are stupid,” I heard Evans say.
“Dude,” started Gus, “that kind of shit is all you ever say. I know you have more than a six word vocabulary.
“Being around you guys that’s all I need.”
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