The Getaway Man Read online

  I will always remember the first one. It was one of those all-night stores that sell everything. The guy who found me, Rodney was his name, he said he used to work there, so he knew where everything was, even how to get into the safe in the back. He said they kept a lot of money in there, because they had to pay the delivery guys in cash when they came first thing in the morning, once a week.

  Rodney had it all planned out, he said. A three-man job. One guy to hold the clerk, one guy to get the money, and one guy to drive.

  But the night we were supposed to do it, when I went over to where Rodney was staying, him and Luther, the other guy, they were all pumped up on crystal; buzzing around like wasps in a jar, talking so fast I couldn’t hardly understand a word.

  They both had pistols. Rodney was waving his around, saying if the white trash motherfucker didn’t hand it over, there was going to be hair all over the walls, stuff like that.

  They didn’t want me to steal a car. They wanted to use Rodney’s. “You can pull around the back, bro,” he told me. “Out where the Dumpster is. It’s as dark as a toothless nigger in a coal bin back there. Nobody’ll see nothing. Besides, I put other plates on it.”

  I wanted to tell them I wouldn’t do it, but I couldn’t say the words. It wasn’t that I was scared. I mean, I was scared, but not about the robbery. I was scared, if I didn’t do it, word would get around, and nobody would want me for a driver.

  Rodney’s car had something wrong with the mufflers. It was way too loud. You could hear the sound bounce off the sides of parked cars as we went past them.

  I knew this wasn’t the way to do things.

  We parked off to the side, just past where the lights from the store reached.

  “Let me wait here,” I said. “This is better than going around back.”

  “Not if we have to come out the back, asshole,” Rodney said. “Just do it like we planned.”

  I wanted to tell him there wasn’t any plan, but it was too late for that.

  “This is the slowest time,” Rodney said. “Three-thirty in the morning, you never see anybody in there.”

  “Let’s go,” Luther said.

  I didn’t say anything. I knew who the boss was.

  When Rodney told me, I pulled around the side of the store. Real slow, just letting the car creep, so the muffler noise wouldn’t be so loud. They both got out. I had to hold the seatback down for Luther—a Mustang doesn’t have much room in the rear.

  “I’ll be right over there,” I told them, pointing to a big pool of shadow out past the Dumpster. Rodney was right about how dark it was.

  They pulled the stockings down over their faces and looked at each other. Then they high-fived and walked away.

  I turned off the lights, then I let the Mustang idle over to the spot. I backed in careful, made sure I had plenty of room. I opened the passenger door, so they could get in quicker. The little light on the ceiling went on. I popped off the cover and pulled out the bulb. Then I moved the mirror so I could see behind me.

  It was hard to see good, because it was raining that night. I remember it because I was worried about the roads. I wished I’d had more time to practice driving when it was wet.

  It seemed like a long time, but I guess it wasn’t. I heard gravel crunching, like people were running, then they came around the corner, fast.

  They both tried to jump in the car at the same time, then Luther went in first and Rodney got in the seat next to me.

  “Go!” Rodney yelled.

  I pulled out slow, because I didn’t know if anyone inside even knew we were back there, and I didn’t want to give away what direction we went off in.

  We were only a short distance away when Rodney started yelling. “Fuck fuck fuck!” He hit the dashboard with the butt of his pistol. “God damn it.”

  I was afraid they had killed someone, but I hadn’t heard any shots.

  Nobody chased us.

  When we got back, I found out why Rodney was so mad. “Not even two hundred lousy fucking dollars,” he said, looking at the bills spread out on the kitchen table. “They changed the deal with the safe. Dirty motherfuckers!”

  Luther just kept shaking his head. He was grinning, but a lot of guys do that when they’re hyped up and nervous.

  Rodney divided the money three ways. I got sixty-something.

  The next morning, the TV said two men had robbed the store. And got away with a little more than thirty-five hundred dollars.

  I learned from that job. The more I thought about it, the better I understood what really had happened. All the time I was thinking that Rodney and Luther weren’t really pros, they were thinking the same thing about me. If I was a professional driver, I never would have even gone along on that job. I would have used another car. I would have practiced with it, to make sure it was okay if the roads got slick. And I would have gotten it straight in front how much my share was.

  At first, what I thought was that they didn’t have a plan. Using Rodney’s own car, with the bad mufflers and all, was really stupid. And getting high before they went out, that was the scariest part. I was afraid they might get so amped they would shoot someone. But it turned out they did have a plan, all along.

  I didn’t know about the rest of the plan for quite a while. And I only found out by accident. I was looking in the papers for an old car I could fix up, when I saw this story.

  ARREST IN McMARTIN STORE ROBBERY

  Two More Men Sought

  The second I saw that big black type, it felt like my heart was an engine going redline. I was sure either Rodney or Luther had got themselves arrested, and whichever one it was, he had talked about the whole thing.

  I’m not a great reader, but I can do it pretty good, if I go slow. Only thing, I couldn’t make myself go slow that time, and I had to read the story a couple of times before I understood it.

  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.

  Far 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 foll
ow 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.

  The 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.

  It 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.”

  When 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.

  That’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 ha
d 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.

  Tim 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.