“Sure,” I tell her. “Why not? It’s a slow night. Where can we find this cat of yours?”
“First I need to go home and get changed,” she says. “I can’t go—what was the word you used?” She smiles. “Creep a house wearing this.”
Well, she could, I think, and it would sure make it interesting for me if I was hoisting her up to a window, but I just nod again.
“No problem,” I tell her. “Where do you live?”
This whole situation would drive Hank crazy.
We did time together a while back—we’d each pulled a stretch and they ran in tandem for a few years. It’s all gangs inside now and since we weren’t either of us black or Indian or Hispanic, and we sure as hell weren’t going to run with the Aryans, we ended up passing a lot of the time with each other. He told me to look him up when I got out and he’d fix me up. A lot of guys say that, but they don’t mean it. You’re trying to do good and you want some hardcase showing up at your home or place of employment? I don’t think so.
So I wouldn’t have bothered, but Hank never said something unless he meant it, and since I really did want to take a shot at walking the straight and narrow this time out, I took him up on it.
He hooked me up with this guy named Moth who runs a Gypsy cab company out of a junkyard—you know, the wheels aren’t licensed but so long as no one looks too hard at the piece of bureaucratic paper stuck on the back of the driver’s seat, it’s the kind of thing you can get away with. You just make a point of cruising for fares in the parts of town that the legit cabbies prefer to stay out of.
So Hank gave me the break to make good, and Moth laid one piece of advice on me—“Don’t get involved with your fares”—and I’ve been doing okay, keeping my nose clean, making enough to pay for a room in a boarding house, even stashing a little extra cash away on the side.
Funny thing is, I like this gig. I’m not scared to take the rough fares and I’m big enough that the freaks don’t mess with me. Occasionally I even get someone like the woman I picked up on Gracie Street.
None of which explains why I’m parked outside a house across town on Marett Street, getting ready to bust in and rescue a cat.
My partner-in-crime is sitting in the front with me now. Her name’s Luisa Jaramillo. She’s changed into a tight black T-shirt with a pair of baggy faded jean overalls, black hightops on her feet. Most of her make-up’s gone and her hair’s hidden under a baseball cap turned backwards. She still looks gorgeous. Maybe more than she did before.
“What’s your cat’s name?” I ask.
“Patience.”
I shrug. “That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, that’s her name,” Luisa says. “Patience.”
“And this guy that stole her is…?”
“My ex-boyfriend. My very recent ex-boyfriend.”
That’s what I get for jumping to conclusions, I think. Hell, I was cruising Gracie Street. That doesn’t automatically put me on the other team either. Only don’t get me wrong. I’m not getting my hopes up or anything. I know I’m just a pug and all she’s doing is using me for this gig because I’m handy and I said I’d do it. There’s not going to be any fairy tale reward once we get kitty back from her ex. I’ll be lucky to get a handshake.
So why am I doing it?
I’ll lay it out straight: I’m bored. I’ve got a head that never stops working. I’m always considering the percentages, making plans. When I said I’d come to enjoy driving a cab, I was telling the truth. I do. But you’re talking to a guy who’s spent the better part of his life working out deals, and when the deals didn’t pan out, he just went in and took what he needed. That’s what put me inside.
They don’t put a whole lot of innocent people in jail. I’m not saying they aren’t biased towards what most people think of as the dregs of society—the homeboys and Indians and white trash I was raised to be—but most of us doing our time, we did the crime.
Creeping some stranger’s house gives me a buzz like a junkie getting a fix. I don’t get the shakes when I go cold turkey like I’ve been doing these past couple of months, but the jones is still there. Tonight I’m just cozying it up with a sugar coating of doing the shiny white knight bit, that’s all.
I never even stopped to ask her why we were stealing a cat. I just thought, let’s do it. But when you think about it, who steals cats? You lose your cat, you just go get another one. We never had pets when I was a kid, so maybe that’s why I don’t get it. In our house the kids were the pets, only we weren’t so well-treated as I guess Luisa’s cat is. Somebody ever took one of us, the only thing Ma’d regret is the cut in her cheque from social services.
You want another reason? I don’t often get a chance to hang out with a pretty girl like this.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask.
“The man who lives in that house is very powerful,” Luisa says.
“Your ex.”
She nods.
“So he’s what? A politician? A lawyer? A drug dealer?”
“No, no. Much more powerful than that. He’s a brujo—a witch man. That is not a wrong thing in itself, but his medicine is very bad. He is an evil man.”
I give her the same blank look I’m guessing anybody would.
“I can see you don’t believe me,” she says.
“It’s more like I don’t understand,” I tell her.
“It doesn’t matter. I tell you this only so that you won’t look into his eyes. No matter what, do not meet his gaze with your own.”
“Or what? He’ll turn me into a pumpkin?”
“Something worse,” she says in all seriousness.
She gets out of the car before I can press her on it, but I’m not about to let it go. I get out my side and join her on the sidewalk. She takes my hand and leads me quickly into the shadows cast by a tall hedge that runs the length of the property, separating her ex’s house from its neighbours. I like the feel of her skin against mine. She lets go all too soon.
“What’s really going on here?” I ask her. “I mean, I pick you up outside a girl bar on Gracie Street where you’re dressed like a hooker, and now we’re about to creep some magic guy’s house to get your cat back. None of this is making a whole lot of sense.”
“And yet you are here.”
I give her a slow nod. “Maybe I should never have looked in your eyes,” I say.
I’m joking, but she’s still all seriousness when she answers.
“I would never do such a thing to another human being,” she tells me. “Yes, I went out looking the way I did in hopes of attracting a man such as you, but there was no magic involved.”
I focus on the “a man such as you,” not sure I like what it says about what she thinks of me. I may not look like much, which translates into a lot of nights spent on my own, but I’ve never paid for it.
“You looked like a prostitute, trying to pick up a john or some freak.”
She actually smiles, her teeth flashing in the shadows, white against her dark skin.
“No, I was searching for a man who would desire me enough to want to be close to me, but who had the heart to listen to my story and the compassion to want to help once he knew the trouble I was in.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong guy,” I tell her. “Neither of those are things I’m particularly known for.”
“And yet you are here,” she says again. “And you shouldn’t sell yourself short. Sometimes we don’t fulfill our potential only because there is no one in our life to believe in us.”