The Getaway Man (3 page)

The guy
they arrested wasn’t Rodney
or
Luther. It was the guy who worked
in the store. The “inside man” is what the police said he was. The
story said it wasn’t a robbery at all. The guy who worked there, he just
opened everything up and handed it over to Rodney and Luther.

I had
been a stupid kid from the beginning. Rodney’s kid, is what I felt like.
It wasn’t so much that they cheated me. It was that they never needed a
driver at all.

I hoped they never found Rodney or Luther. Not because I
cared about what happened to them; I was afraid they’d tell.

Not
tell the cops—I was afraid, when they went back Inside, they would tell
the other guys that I was just a stupid kid. Not a real driver at all.

F
ar as I know, they never caught Rodney or Luther. I figured the inside
man had told on them, but the paper had said the cops were looking for two men,
not three. So probably Rodney and Luther never told the inside man they even
had
a driver.

After that time, I was a lot more careful. I
found a guy who wanted cars stolen. He ran a big junkyard, where he could take
the cars apart and piece them out to body shops and other places that needed
different parts of certain cars.

That’s what I had always told
the other guys I was doing. When I was locked up, I mean. So it seemed right
that it would come true. Maybe that was part of my destiny, too.

I
worked for Mr. Clanton for almost a year, doing that. He paid me depending on
what the car I had to steal was worth to him, but it was never less than five
hundred dollars, so I didn’t have to work very often.

I got
chased a couple of times, but it was different from when I was just driving
with no place to go. I knew I couldn’t go back to the junkyard if the
cops were close on me, but Mr. Clanton told me about a whole bunch of spots
where I could stash a car and just walk away … all I had to do was get
some distance between me and the cops and bail, he said.

After a while,
I got pretty good at getting into cars. I was never behind the wheel long. Mr.
Clanton’s place was way out of town. The last bit of road was nothing but
a dirt track between the trees. I got so I could run without lights. That way,
nobody could follow without me knowing.

There was a place I could pull
over and wait. That was hard, sitting there with the engine off, listening for
the sirens. But I had to do it. The worst thing that could happen would be for
me to lead the cops back to Mr. Clanton’s. He said, if I did that, they
could get a search warrant, and a whole lot of people would go to jail.

When Mr. Clanton told me that, I was in his office. There was some other
men there. I guessed they was the other people he was talking about.

I
was driving a beautiful blue Mercedes the night I got caught. Mr.
Clanton always liked them. He said a Mercedes was like a good fat pig—you
could make money out of every last little piece of it.

I spotted the
cop before he saw me, I think. County sheriff. Around there, the troopers
worked the Interstate, the city cops had downtown, but the sheriffs’ cars
got to go anywhere they wanted. There’s a lot of law where I come
from.

It wasn’t like that time with the Camaro. I wasn’t
speeding or anything. And I had a driver’s license with my picture on it.
The license was a fake. I got it from a guy Mr. Clanton sent me to. It looked
real good, but I never used it, except to buy cigarettes, if I was in one of
those places that asked you.

When I took a car, I always looked in the
glove compartment. Sometimes people left money in there, but that wasn’t
what I was looking for. I wanted the registration and the insurance papers.
That time I’d gotten lucky. Or, anyway, I thought I had.

So when
the sheriff’s car showed up behind me with its roof lights flashing, I
didn’t try to run.

On TV, when the cops stop someone in a car,
they always call the driver “sir.” The cop didn’t do that
with me.

I showed him the papers from the glove compartment. He told me
to wait where I was, and he went back to his cruiser. I could have rabbited out
of there, but I knew I couldn’t outrun his radio. So I just sat there.
Like that time next to the Dumpster, waiting for someone else to decide what
was going to come next in my life.

The cop walked back to the Mercedes
real slow. His right hand was down at his side, next to his pistol.

“Are you related to Jayne Howard?” he asked me.

“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t know her.”

“Those papers you gave me, they say this car is owned by one Jayne
Howard.”

“I don’t know anything about that,
sir.”

“Where’d you get this car, then?”

“Well, a guy came by this bar. He said he needed someone to drive his
car over to Atlanta. He offered me two hundred bucks to do it.”

“Is that right? Where in Atlanta?”

“The Classy
Club, on Peachtree,” I said. I remembered one of the guys I did time with
was always talking about that place. Like it was famous or something.

The cop nodded his head like he was thinking it over. He asked me a couple
more questions. I thought I was handling them pretty good, too. Until I saw the
two other cruisers pull up.

T
he cop who arrested me told the man at
the front desk that there hadn’t been any trouble; I was a real
gentleman. And, while they were taking my picture, I heard him tell another
cop, “Ten to one, this kid never says a word. He’s a real
pro.”

I wanted to thank him for saying that, but I
couldn’t figure out how to do it without sounding stupid.

After
they locked me up, they asked me if I wanted to make a phone call. I knew
better than to call Mr. Clanton, and I didn’t know anyone else.

After a couple of days, they took me to court. There was a Public Defender
there. A black guy. Young. Real clean-looking, wearing a nice suit.

He
had them take me into a room where he could talk to me private. I told him what
I told the cop. He gave me a sad smile.

Later that day, they had some
kind of little trial. To see what they were going to charge me with, I think.
Only the cop got to testify. My lawyer asked him a lot of questions about what
he did after they arrested me. It sounded like he was saying the cop never
checked out my story.

After that was over, I went back to jail.

The lawyer came to see me again a few days later.

“You never
told me you had a record,” he said.

“I’m
sorry.”

“A record for stealing cars.”

“I guess I should have,” I said.

“Never mind.
Just tell me the truth. That’s the only way I can help you.”

“I already told you.”

He showed me his sad smile again.
He looked older when he did that. “Which is it, Eddie? You think
I’m dumb enough to believe that fairy tale? Or
you’re
dumb
enough to think a jury will?”

“It’s all I can
say,” I told him.

“No, it’s not. Listen. The ADA says
he’ll give you a suspended sentence in exchange for
cooperation.”

I didn’t know what an ADA was, but I knew
what “cooperation” meant. “No,” I said.

He
nodded, like that was what he’d been expecting.

I
t was another
couple of weeks before he came back again. He had papers in his hand, white
papers, with a blue back holding them together.

“You know
what’s wrong with your story?” he said. “The ignition was
popped. If it wasn’t for that, for that and your track record, I mean,
you might have a fifty-fifty shot with a jury.”

“The car
was running when that guy pulled up,” I said. “I never looked at
the ignition.”

“Uh-huh. Well, Eddie, here’s the deal.
Here’s
a
deal, anyway. You’re not going to beat this case,
but they don’t want to go all the way through a trial for a minor league
GTA bust. And the car wasn’t banged up, so there’s no insurance
company to raise hell about making an example of you. Bottom line,
they’ll give you a misdemeanor plea, if you cop.”

“Cop to what?”

“Use without
authority?”

“What’s that?”

“Just
what it sounds like,” he said. “Driving the car without permission
of the owner. They’ll drop the Grand Theft Auto, so no more felony.
How’s that?”

He looked real pleased, like he’d done
extra good.

“How much time would I get?”

“First offense … as an adult, anyway. Misdemeanor, on a plea,
we can probably seal it for six months county time.”

“You
mean, stay right here?”

“Yep. And with the time
you’ve already got in, plus the time they’ll take off if you stay
out of trouble, maybe four months.”

“I … don’t
know.”

“It would be just you, Eddie,” the lawyer
said. “You admit to driving the car without permission, that’s all.
You wouldn’t have to say anything else.”

W
hen I got out,
I went over to Mr. Clanton’s. He said I was a good, standup kid. He said
he knew people who were looking for a driver like me.

T
hat’s how I ended up in the state pen. Mr. Clanton introduced me
to Tim and Virgil. They were brothers. Tim was the older one, and Virgil pretty
much followed his lead. I don’t mean Tim was like his boss or anything;
he just knew more things.

Tim was only a few years older than
Virgil, but Tim always called him “kid.” The way he said it, you
could tell it didn’t mean what it meant Inside.

The first job we
did was a liquor store. I just pulled up out front and waited while they went
in. Virgil stayed by the door; Tim went all the way inside.

It seemed
like only a minute when they came flying back out. I drove away fast and
smooth. Never even heard a siren.

When we got to the long sweeper curve
just before you could take the dirt road up to Mr. Clanton’s, Tim told me
to pull over. Him and Virgil got out of the car. Tim came over to my window. He
said to take the getaway car to the junkyard and leave it with Mr.
Clanton—only he called him Seth—and there was another car there I
could use to get back.

The money was in a yellow-and-black gym bag on
the front seat. Tim said to wait two days, then call him at the number I had
for him. If everything was okay, I should bring him and Virgil the money
then.

I
wasn’t exactly sure what Tim had meant by two days, so
I waited until the night after the second day to call.

Tim answered
the phone. He recognized my voice. Said everything was okay; told me to come
over to his house.

Tim and Virgil lived in an old double-wide trailer,
in a heavy patch of woods a few miles outside of town, right at the base of
some little hills. They had built it out nice, with wood framing and aluminum
siding. It was pretty damn big, but set so far back you couldn’t see it
from the road.

I knocked on the door. Virgil opened it. He moved his
head to show me to come on in. Tim was sitting at the kitchen table.

“You bring the money, Eddie?” he said.

“It’s right here,” I told him, holding up the gym
bag.

“Sit down,” Tim told me. He took the gym bag from me.
Held it up with one hand, like he was trying to guess the weight. “How
much was in there?” he asked me.

“I don’t
know,” I said.

“You can’t count?” Virgil
said.

“I never looked,” I told him.

Virgil made a
little noise in his throat. Tim looked at him until he was quiet. Then he
unzipped the gym bag. “Let’s see,” he said.

He took
out the money. It came in little bundles, with rubber bands around them.

“Count it,” he told Virgil.

Tim lit a cigarette. He
asked me if I wanted one. I said yes.

Virgil counted for a few minutes.
Then he said, “One thousand, six hundred, and forty-four
dollars.”

Tim didn’t say anything. He just stared at Virgil
for a few seconds. “What did I tell you?” he finally said.

Virgil stuck out his hand for me to shake. I didn’t understand why he
did that, but I shook with him.

T
im counted out some money, handed
it to me. “That’s six hundred,” he said. “Virgil and I
will split the rest. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Those package stores don’t keep much cash around.”

“That isn’t my part,” I said. “I’m the
driver.”

“Right. The liquor store, that was kind of like a
little test run, you know what I mean?”

“I … I think
I do. I think I do, now, anyway.”

“You drive like a
pro,” Tim said. It made me feel a lot better than the money did.

T
im went over to the wall, where the phone was. He dialed a number.
“Your friend Rochelle doing anything tonight?” he said.

I couldn’t hear what the other person said back. Then Tim said,
“Oh, she’ll like
this
boy, I promise you.”

I
don’t know how much Rochelle liked me, but I liked her, all
right. In the morning, I drove her to work. She was a waitress, and she had the
early shift.

I saw her for a few weeks straight after that. I used
some of the money from the job to buy her a bracelet she saw in a store window.
Rochelle said she really liked that bracelet, so I knew I couldn’t go
wrong getting it for her.

One night, Rochelle told me her man would be
back sometime the next day. The County was cutting him loose, and he would be
moving back in with her. She said he was crazy jealous, and she couldn’t
be seeing me anymore.

I wasn’t upset—I had never figured on
a girl like Rochelle staying with me for long.

“Thank you for
telling me,” I said. “Otherwise, I might have come by your house
one day, and it could have been bad.”

Rochelle gave me one of
those looks I never understand. “Do you want your bracelet back,
Eddie?” she asked me.

“It’s your bracelet,” I
told her. “I bought it for you. I guess you could tell your man you got
it from—”