The Last Brief

Hot Cars

Because there was less of a risk involved, that’s why.

I’ll tell you something, John, I’d appreciate it if for once you let me get a word in edgewise here, instead of all the time interrupting. I been in this crumby cell with you for two months already, and the way the thing reads I’ll be in here for at least another three years, figuring on parole. But everytime I try to explain the whole beauty part of the deal, you stick your nose in and tell me if it was such a beauty I wouldn’t be doing a stretch for grand larceny right this very minute. While at the same time you keep telling me you’re the world’s best pickpocket, and I have always had the decency never to even suggest that if you were such a good pickpocket what are you doing in here? So, if you can just for once keep your mouth shut and let me tell the whole thing before lights-out, I would sincerely appreciate it, because otherwise you’re a nice cellmate, though you snore and pick your teeth.

The way we done it, there was never no risk involved, that was the beauty part. We didn’t have to stand out there on the street practically naked and force the side flap, and then hook the door latch with a wire hanger, and unlock it, and then open the hood and cross the wires, all of which takes a lot of time even if you are an experienced person. There is the danger there of some eager-beaver cop coming up and saying, ‘Hey, what you doing there?’ and maybe shooting you in the leg or something. I know a car man in Frisco who got shot not only in the leg but also where it hurts a lot.

So what we done is we looked through the classified ads, you understand me, John? Like in this newspaper here, and stop picking your teeth, that’s a disgusting habit. Like right here, I’ll read this thing out loud to you so you can get an idea how we set up the marks, and spitting out little pieces of meat like that, what the hell’s the matter with you, John? This here is a typical ad we would circle with a red pencil and then give the guy a call. I’ll read it to you.

And then the phone number, and all that crap where you should contact the person who is selling the car. I’m only giving you this as an example, John, because actually we tried to get cars that had a bigger demand, like right now a used Mercedes 280SL is very big because they ain’t making them no more, and the model they’re putting out costs something like fourteen grand, so there’s a very big market for the old model, you follow me? Your broke your friggin toothpick. But like let’s say this is the car we decide to heist, so what we done is Clara would call the person — she ain’t been to see me, she ain’t sent not even a postcard, I wonder what’s the matter with that dame? She was one of the best in the business, I got to tell you, John, the tale she gave that man on the phone was unbelievable, she’ll probably come next visiting day, I hope.

She would call the number in the ad, and she would start the conversation by saying, for example, if it was this particular car in this ad here, she would say, ‘Are you the person advertising the Cadillac Eldorado convertible 1971?’ she would say.

And he would say, ‘Yes, I am.’

And then it would go-like this:

‘This is Mrs. Abigail Hendricks, what colour is the car?’

She would use different names each time, of course, her real name is Clara Parsons. I think. At least, that is the name she told me was her real name. But for the sake of example, let’s say this time she’d be using the name Abigail Hendricks. John, you can hurt your teeth using a paper clip that way. And the guy who was trying to sell his car would say, ‘Yes, I am the person advertising the Cadillac Eldorado convertible 1971.’

‘What colour is the car?’ the conversation would go.

‘It’s firemist green with a white vinyl top and interior.’

‘Oh, that’s good,’ Clara would say. ‘What’s firemist green?’

‘A sort of off-green.’

‘It’s not like a bright Kelly green, is it?

‘Oh no. No, not at all.’

‘I’ve always wanted a Cadillac,’ Clara would say. Or a Mercedes or a Lincoln Continental or a T-Bird, or whatever car was in the ad, you follow? ‘I used to have a Buick, I sold it last month. But in my secret heart I’ve always wanted a Cadillac. This is a convertible, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Oh, yes.’

‘I’ve always wanted a Cadillac convertible. How many miles are on it?’

‘40,000. More or less.’

‘Is it in good condition?’

‘Excellent condition. It is in excellent condition.’

‘It wasn’t in any accidents or anything, was it?’

‘No, no. Never.’

‘And the interior is in good condition, too?’

‘Perfect condition.’

What’s happening, John, is that the mark is trying to sell her, you understand? He don’t know yet that we are going to heist his Caddy, he’s got no idea we are setting him up. He just listens to the tale, and tries his best to get Clara to buy the goddamn car.

‘And it’s thirty-three hundred dollars, is that right?’

‘That’s all.’

‘That sounds a little high. Is that just the asking price? What I mean is are you willing to come down a little?’

‘That’s the firm price.’

‘I’m a widow, you see. Excuse me one minute, could you? I think I hear one of the children.’

That was where she’d put down the phone, and go to the refrigerator and get herself a bottle of beer of something, or come over to where I was sitting and give me a little kiss, I wonder why she ain’t written, well, she’ll probably show up next week and surprise me. So she’d let him wait on the phone for just a little bit, and then she’d go back and pick up the receiver again and say to him, ‘I’m sorry I took so long. I live in this big old house in Larchmont, Andrea’s room is all the way down the hall. I have three children, two boys and a girl, it isn’t easy raising a family all alone, believe me. My husband passed away last June, you see.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Well, I’m just getting over it, actually. Do you think it’s frivolous of me to want a Cadillac?’

‘No, a Cadillac is a very fine motor car.’

‘It’s just, you know, I think I’ve been in mourning long enough, don’t you? Do you know what colour my Buick was, the one I sold?’

‘What colour?’

‘Black. It was a ‘72 Skylark wagon, are you familiar with that particular automobile?’

‘I can’t say I’m too familiar with it.’

‘I got twenty-five hundred dollars for it, which is how I happen to have the money to buy another car. That Buick always reminded me of a hearse, and now that I’m finally getting over my husband’s passing away, I think I ought to have something more light-hearted, don’t you think? Firemist green. That sounds very light-hearted.’

‘It is. It’s a very light-hearted motor car.’

‘Do you think I should come see it?’

‘That’s entirely up to you, Mrs. Hendricks. I have several people coming to see it tomorrow, so I can’t guarantee...’

‘Oh, please don’t sell it till I’ve at least had a chance to look at it. Where are you located, exactly?’

Let’s say the guy lives on Seventy-eighth and Central Park West, or wherever. So he’ll tell Clara. ‘I’m on Seventy-eighth and Central Park West.’

‘In the city, is that?’

‘Yes, in the city.’

‘Because I live in Larchmont, you see.’

We didn’t live in Larchmont, I hope you understand that. John, you listening to me, or what? I can’t tell if you’re listening when you got your eyes closed like that. Where we really lived was in a hotel on Forty-seventh Street just east of Broadway, that was where we made our headquarters in New York. But Clara keeps mentioning that she lives in Larchmont because she wants to give this picture of a respectable widow living in a big old house she probably inherited when her old man kicked off, and she’s raising three adorable little kids, and she’s got this nice cheque deposited for twenty-five hundred, so it’s reasonable she could have scraped up another eight-hundred someplace, right? Just nod, John. That way I’ll know you’re not asleep.

Anyway, she goes on about how much she’s always wanted a firemist green Caddy, and she asks if any tapes go along with the AM/FM stereo deck, her favorites are Mantovani and Frank Sinatra, though she loves other recording artists, too, and then finally she says, ‘What time do you go to bed?’

‘Well, after the Eleven O’Clock news, usually.’

‘Because I have this friend who’s a mechanic,’ she says, ‘He knows cars inside out and backwards, and if I can get hold of him, I thought maybe I could come look at the car tonight. How long will it take me to get there from Larchmont?’

‘A half-hour,’ he says. ‘Forty minutes? Something like that.’

‘Can I call you back in five minutes?’ Clara says. ‘I just want to see if my friend is free. If he is, we’ll come right down.’

‘Certainly.’

‘Now don’t sell it in the next five minutes, okay?’

‘I promise I won’t sell it in the next five minutes.’

‘I’ll get right back to you.’

So that’s when she hangs up, and comes over to me and sits on my lap or something, and I put my hand up under her skirt or something — you realize I haven’t seen her in two months? Well, maybe she went to visit her mother in Tallahassee who is sickly. Then she calls back the guy and tells him she can’t get a hold of her mechanic friend, but she doesn’t want to lose the car, so she will come down to see it anyway if she can get somebody to drive her into the city. And if the car is as nice as she’s sure it’s going to be, she’ll give the guy a deposit cheque right on the spot, and tomorrow when the bank opens, she’ll go get him a certified cheque for the balance. So the guy hangs up, and since we are only ten minutes or so away from where he lives, we usually make love or something to kill the time, and then we hop into the little Volkswagen and drive up there and start the real pitch.

Now this is where I have to tell you what really happened the last time we pulled this, though it was a freak occurrence and has nothing to do with the beautiful way everything was working before then. We had heisted a total of seven cars in as many states, though of course when they caught me I only admitted to the one I was driving. What happened was that we went through that whole routine with a man who had a 1968 tobacco-brown Mercedes-Benz 280SL with genuine beige leather interior, air-conditioned, two tops, fully-loaded, it was a nice car, I could have got rid of it in New Jersey in thirty seconds flat. The beauty part, you see, is that any of these cars we heisted would not officially become hot cars till the next morning, by which time the serial numbers would be filed off the engine, and the car repainted, and new plates put on it. In other words, by the time the mark realized his goddamn car had actually been stolen, we already had at least a ten-hour lead on the cops, by which time the car was already being driven out to Texas or someplace. That was the way it usually worked, you’ll understand what I mean in a minute if you can stop scratching your ass for a minute.

So the night I got busted, we drove over to see this guy who had advertised the Benz. This was after Clara had gave him the whole pitch on the phone about always wanting to have a Benz with two tops, and all that crap, and about not being able to get a hold of her mechanic friend, but not wanting to lose the car, and so on. So we meet the guy at a garage in the Bronx, it’s underneath a two-story clapboard house, he’s got the Benz locked in this two-car garage, there’s a big padlock on the door. He turns on this little overhead light bulb, and Clara looks over the car and I look at my watch and tell her, ‘Abigail, I’m sorry I have to go, but I’ll be late for work.’

‘But how will I get back to Larchmont?’ she says. We have already established on the phone that she will have to find somebody to drive her to where the car is, you see, and I am the somebody she found to drive her, but I have to get to work now because I’m a respectable hardworking person who is just doing Abigail Hendricks a favour. I am dressed respectable, you know, I am wearing a suit and a tic, and I explain to the mark that I am a bank guard, and that I have to relieve the other guard at midnight, and it is almost that time now. We used the bank guard routine because it made me sound like an upholder of law and order. It always worked perfect. So Clara is worrying now about how she is going to get home to Larchmont, and I tell her that maybe I can let her have the Volks, if she promises to pick me up at the bank tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp which is what time I go off, and usually I am very sleepy by then. I also tell her to be very careful with the car since it is practically in mint condition though it is a 1963 model, and it is here that we establish Clara has never had an accident in the fifteen years she’s been driving. I have to tell you that Clara looks as if she’s never had an accident. She is wearing a brown suit, and her hair is pulled back in a bun, and she is wearing little gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and she looks like her own maiden aunt who lives next door to her mother in Tallahassee. So I give her the keys, and she asks me how I will get down to the bank, and I tell her it’s okay I’ll catch a taxi, and then I leave her with the mark, and I know in about an hour or so I am going to have myself a nice 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280SL to drive over to New Jersey and sell on the spot to this man who will file off the serial numbers and paint it red or whatever.

So Clara goes to work on the mark.

She tells him she just adores this car, this is the car she’s been looking for all her life, and it is certainly the frivolous kind of car that will help her get over her recent bereavement, a year is a long enough time to be mourning a husband, doesn’t the mark think so? Yes, the mark thinks so. But she’s worried, you see, about whether the car is in good running condition, she just wishes her mechanic friend had been able to come down there to the Bronx with her, would it be all right if she drove it around the block a few times, just to see if it worked and all? So the mark and her get in the car, and she drives it around the block three or four times, and then they come back to the garage, and she says. ‘Well, it seems to be all right, but I’m just not sure.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘why don’t you come back tomorrow with your mechanic friend?’ It is now almost midnight, and the guy wants to go to bed, right? He can’t stand there all night trying to convince this nice lady she should buy his car.

‘Yes, but by that time you might have sold the car,’ Clara says.

‘That’s a possibility,’ he says.

‘I just love the car.’

‘Yeah, well,’ he says, ‘what can I tell you, lady?’

‘Oh, I don’t care,’ she says. ‘I’ll buy it!’ She gives a nervous little giggle which is, supposed to convince the mark she’s never made such a big business decision in her life. And then she says, ‘I still wish my mechanic friend could look it over though.’

‘Well, then, come back tomorrow,’ the mark says.

Now this is the moment of truth. This is when the mark can get away completely, wriggle off the hook, this is where Clara can blow the whole thing if she’s not careful, and if she’s not a very good actress, which of course she is. You have to remember that before this night, we had successfully swiped a total of seven cars in seven states, without running the risk of getting shot at in the street by some cop anxious for a promotion.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ she says, ‘I’ll leave you a deposit, would that be all right? That way you can hold the car for me, and when I get a chance to have my mechanic friend look it over, we’ll close the deal. Would that be all right?’

‘That will be fine.’ the mark says, ‘but it has to be a non-returnable deposit.’

‘Oh,’ Clara says.

‘Because otherwise your mechanic friend could look over the car and decide he doesn’t like the way it rattles or something, not that it rattles, but you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, I see,’ Clara says. ‘Well, how much of a deposit do you want?’

The car is selling for forty-five hundred dollars,’ he says. ‘That’s what I put in the ad, that’s a fair price for this car.’

‘Oh, yes, it is, I’m not arguing about the price.’

‘So if you let me have a check for, say, fifteen hundred, I’ll hold the car for you till your mechanic friend takes a look at it.’

‘Well, fifteen hundred sounds like a lot,’ Clara says, ‘especially if my friend should find something wrong with the car, and I lose the whole thing.’

‘That’s true,’ the mark says, ‘how does a thousand sound?’

‘Well, I suppose,’ Clara says, and thinks about it for another minute, and then takes out her check book and writes the guy a phony check for a thousand, signing the name Abigail Hendricks, which is the name on the checking account we have opened in Larchmont with a minimum deposit of two hundred dollars. There is not a bank in the entire United States that will ask you for identification when you are opening a checking account. All they care to see is the long green, and you can tell them you are Adolph Hitler, and they will say, ‘Very good, Mr. Hitler, did you want the checks in green, yellow, pink, or blue?’

So Clara hangs the paper on the guy, and they shake on the deal, and then she starts worrying out loud. The trouble is that her mechanic friend goes to work at eight in the morning, and he doesn’t quit till five, and by the time they got down here it’d be maybe six-thirty, and besides he’s usually tired after a long day’s work, and maybe wouldn’t want to come down here at all, it’d be so much easier if she could take the car up to him. Still worrying out loud, still trying to figure this out, she says that maybe, if this is all right, maybe she could come down for the car in the morning, and drive it up to the garage where her friend works, and have him look at it there. Then, if everything was all right, she’d come down with a certified check which she’d have to get from the bank before three o’clock when it closed. But no, that wouldn’t be so good because that would mean she’d have to make the trip in, and then drive back to Larchmont, and then drive the car back to the Bronx again, whereas she has a better idea.

Since she has to come to the city anyway tomorrow morning, to pick up her bank guard friend who was kind enough to drive her in, if she could take the Benz home with her tonight, she would have her mechanic friend look at it first thing in the morning, and then she could drive it back down with a certified check in her hand, no later than ten a.m., and that would be that. In the meantime, if it was all right, and if the mark promised to take good care of it, she would leave her bank guard friend’s Volkswagen in the garage there overnight. That would be some sort of security for the mark, although he already had her check for a thousand dollars, and she was sure his collision insurance covered anybody else driving his car, though she had never had an accident in her entire life.

It is at this point that the mark either says yes or no.

He has seen the lady, he has sized her up as a respectable widow with a bank guard friend and also a mechanic friend, he has her check for a thousand dollars in his hand, and he also has a 1963 Volkswagen in his garage, and nine times out of ten he will say, ‘Okay, lady, take the car home with you, but be back here with it tomorrow morning at ten o’clock the latest, with the certified check in your hand.’

Then Clara gives the mark her phony address in Larchmont, and also her phony telephone number, and she tells him the mechanic’s name is Curly Rogers or something, and he works for a Mobil station in town there, and that is where she’ll be at eight o’clock on the dot tomorrow morning, after which, if everything is okay, she will go to the bank and get the certified cheque, and be back with it at ten. That’s the way it usually works, unless the mark says no he will not under any circumstances allow anyone to take his car overnight, in which case nothing ventured nothing gained. But that is the way it worked seven times for us, and that is exactly the way it worked this time too. Clara shook hands with the mark, and gave him the keys to the Volkswagen, in case he had to move it or anything, like in case the garage caught on fire, and she drove off in the tobacco-brown 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280SL with the genuine beige leather interior, and she picked me up at the cafeteria where she knew I’d be waiting, and then I got behind the wheel of the car while she took a taxi to the hotel on West Forty-seventh.

I drove to New Jersey already counting the money in my head. The Benz was not yet hot, you understand that, John? The mark did not yet know it had been heisted, he did not yet know he was never going to see Abigail Hendricks again as long as he lived, he did not yet know the Volks in his garage had been stolen in Georgia a month ago, and painted blue instead of red, and fixed up with New York plates and a phony registration in the glove compartment, he did not even know that Clara’s cheque was a phony. All he knew was that he had a deal almost in his pocket because the mechanic was sure as hell not going to find a thing wrong with this little beauty of a car.

John, that Benz was a little jewel, I have to tell you. I went over the Washington Bridge with it, and I could understand why that guy kept it padlocked in his garage, it was some sweet little automobile. I figured it was worth on the retail market at least what he had advertised it for, and I figured I could get fifteen hundred, maybe even two grand when I turned it over in New Jersey, and I was already counting that bread, I was already spending it with Clara in some fancy nightclub in Washington, D.C. which is where we intended to stop next; that is a nice city for heisting cars, Washington, D.C, but not Seattle, Washington. I was driving along at a nice respectable speed of thirty-five miles an hour because, whereas the car would not become hot till the next morning when the mark realized he was never going to see Clara nor the Benz again, I still did not want to take no chances on cops stopping me, the one thing I always try to avoid is traffic tickets of any kind.

When I heard the siren behind me, I was very much surprised.

I did not think it was me at first, but then I saw the red dome light blinking, and this cop’s car was right alongside me and one of the cops was waving me over to the side of the road, so naturally I pulled over. They both had guns in their hands when they got out of the car.

‘Hey, what is the trouble, officers?’ I said.

‘No trouble,’ one of them said. ‘Let’s see your licence and registration.’

I showed them my licence, and I fished around in the glove compartment for the registration, and I handed that to the cop who was doing all the talking while the other cop kept his gun pointed at my head and making me very nervous.

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought,’ the cop who was holding the registration said, and then he went back to the police car while the other cop kept holding the gun on me. I didn’t understand what was happening. The car was not yet hot, and I had just shown them the real and legitimate registration for it. In the police car up ahead, I could see the first cop talking on the radio. The other cop still has his gun pointed at me.

Do you know what it was, John?’

The friggin car was a stolen car! I don’t mean me and Clara stealing it, I mean the mark. The mark had stolen that friggin Benz two weeks before from a dentist in Poughkeepsie and he hadn’t so much as even changed the licence plates, and he’d also had the nerve to advertise it for sale in the goddam New York Times! Now that is what I call amateur night in Dixie. And also, John, when I tried to explain to the detectives who later questioned me that I had only borrowed the car from a friend in the Bronx, and I told then where the friggin mark lived, and they went there, it turned out he didn’t live there at all, he was only renting the garage with the padlock on it from an old lady who was half-deaf and arthritic besides, and the name he had given her was probably a phony, and I guess he couldn’t have cared less if Clara ran off with his friggin car because he already had her cheque for a thousand bucks, which he didn’t know was phony, ahh, John, it was some mess, there ain’t no justice.

So here I am doing time, and God knows where that friggin thief mark is, and also God knows where Clara is, though I’m sure she’ll come to see me next week, don’t you think, John?

John?

Jesus, John, I hate it when you snore like that.