OUR BLOCKS FROM HOME the car’s engine ground to a halt. Stephanie coasted to the curb, put the car in park, and tried to restart the motor. She turned the key, willing the car to start, her mutterings falling in rhythm with the puny engine’s sobs. Then, as if by magic, it sprang to life, whereupon Stephanie pulled from the curb and went her way–heading home, to a place where Angelo Quintano was working his way through the bedroom drawers.
Up to that point he’d collected nothing but the small handgun and a recent photo of Mitch. After pawing through socks, underwear and pantyhose, he stepped to the small walk-in closet and pulled the string to a single light bulb jutting from the ceiling.
The closet was packed with women’s clothing, arranged by category: tops hung at the far left, slacks in the middle, designer dresses on the opposite wall. The floor at the front was lined with women’s shoes; assorted clothes were stacked against the side and back walls. Most was at least three years old–and quickly falling out of style. Some, badly creased, dangling limply from metal hangers, clearly had not been worn since it had been sorted and hung. A shelf above the closet rods sagged from the weight of designer jeans, folded v-neck shirts and sweaters, piled almost to the ceiling. Angelo pressed his arms between the clothing at the corners to see what might be tucked away out of sight.
At the same moment Angelo removed a metal filing box from its concealment, Stephanie rounded the corner to her dead-end street. Once again, the car’s engine sputtered and quit, just three doors from home. This time it wouldn’t restart on the first try. The car’s resistance, Stephanie decided, was the perfect opportunity to leave it parked on the curb, where Mitch could fix it.
Inside the house, Angelo thumbed through dozens of auto-related invoices and other records, all filed haphazardly. No dividers or tabs separated the stack of papers. Dumping the pile in the center of the closet floor, he began to search for any document or envelope that might resemble a title.
After rolling up the windows and locking the doors to the Escort, Stephanie walked across the street and up the driveway to the front door of the well-worn rambler home. Two little Mexican boys, wearing only dirty T-shirts and stained underwear that sagged and gaped around their skinny legs, played with rusty Tonka trucks–beds loaded with mud and water–under the shade of a huge Siberian elm tree two lots away.
Stephanie unlocked the door and slipped inside. Immediately she kicked off the shoes that pinched at her swollen feet, unzipped the dress slacks that strangled her waist, and dropped her paycheck on the countertop near a growing pile of bills. The thought of Linda’s vicious words kept pounding at her subconscious as she unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it in the clothes basket in the hallway outside the bedroom. She reached to the thermostat on the wall and moved the control from a stifling 82 degrees down to a more comfortable 74. The hum of the compressor could be heard kicking into action in the backyard.
Out of habit, she sidled over to the window to close the drapes while she undressed. Strange–they were already closed. Her mind still preoccupied with Linda’s caustic behavior, she reasoned that she must have forgotten to open them before she left for work that morning.
Trying to crowd the myriad depressing thoughts from her mind, Stephanie began to whisper baby names. She liked to hear them spoken aloud–how they sounded as brother and sister: “Andrea & Austin . . . Carlie & Crosby.” She smiled as she let her slacks slip from her slender hips and crumple to the floor near the doorway of the dark closet. Then she reached for the light string.
Angelo, from under partial cover of the bulging wardrobe, inched his hand closer to the pistol wrapped in the plastic bag tucked beneath his belt. The light switch clicked. Nothing happened. Bulb must be burned out, she thought.
“Drake & Darcy,” she uttered under her breath as she pulled the string again, then felt in the darkness for an empty hanger. Drake . . . Darcy–they were two of her favorites, but unfortunately they meant, respectively, “dragon” and “girl of dark hair.” She didn’t know if that made any difference. . . .
She started to reach up to unscrew the bulb, oblivious to the heat that yet radiated from its glassy surface, then paused. “Jeff & Stef.” These brought a smirk to her lips. Lowering her arm, she tugged another hanger from the rod.
Angelo’s eyes widened as he studied her fashion-model profile, silhouetted in the light from the bedroom window. The woman now was standing less than two feet away, fumbling in the darkness. From the back of the closet, lustful thoughts rustled noiselessly through the cavity like a silent black wind as the meticulous thief struggled to steady his thoughts and remember why he was there.
Mitch parked in front of the used car office of Smith Chrysler and strode directly through the swinging glass doors. A bitter anger had begun to swell up from inside his chest, even as his mind tried to convince his bursting heart and lungs that everything would be okay. At any second he hoped beyond hope to see his glistening gold GTO inside one of the mechanic bays.
The receptionist glanced up from her desk and smiled at the potential customer. “Hi, may I help you?”
“I hope. Do you have a salesman named Jose Vasquez?”
“We do–he’s our manager. Would you like to speak with him?” Mitch breathed a sigh of relief as the bubbly brunette called over the intercom, “Mr. Vasquez, come to the sales floor please. You have a customer waiting.”
Stephanie picked up the pants from the doorway. Her eyes had finally adjusted to the dim room. She snapped the slacks to the hanger clips and pried the mass of clothes apart to wedge the garment between the overflowing bulk. “Joseph & Josephine.” Her hand glided down the pants to straighten them among the others. Nah, sounds too much like a prophet and a gypsy. She drifted away from the closet.
Meanwhile, buried inside its inky recesses, her uninvited visitor’s heart quickened–not because of his close proximity as an intruder, but out of lust.
Stephanie went around the corner and dropped her underwear in the clothes basket before entering the bathroom. When the water started, Angelo hurriedly resecured the partially unscrewed light bulb and finished rummaging through the wad of papers he’d jammed back in the metal box. He found four Nevada titles among the clutter and replaced all but the title to the GTO, which he folded into his back pocket.
After returning the box to its hiding place, he paused at the bathroom door, slightly ajar. The hypnotic sound of splashing water, the flowery scent of bodywash, the blurred, misty image cast on the foggedup mirror . . . they were all more than enticing. But, no. He must keep his mind on his main objective.
Plodding on down the hall, he disappeared through the kitchen door and backed the GTO from the garage, leaving his unsuspecting nonvictim standing under the rush of soothing, hot water.
A dark-skinned, rotund man–nearly as wide as he was tall–dressed in white shirt and dark blue pants pulled up high around his chunky midsection, waddled onto the sales floor from the back. “Can I help you?” he asked in a jocular tone, his breathing labored from the extra load he carried.
“I’m here to see Angelo.”“At your service.” The man presented his thick hand and gave Mitch a friendly shake.
Mitch’s gut churned. “You have a son named Angelo?”
“No, sir, I’m one of a kind. No children, married only to my work.” He chuckled as if it was the first time he’d used the line.
Mitch pointed at the 300 parked outside the showroom window. “Does that car belong to you?”
“Sure thing. Does your boss want me to fill out the paperwork?”
“Who?”
“Your boss . . .” the big man smiled.
“I think we’ve both been had,” Mitch said, a solemn expression etched onto his face.
“Don’t you work for the Burger King down the street?”
Mitch shook his head. “The guy that borrowed your car stole mine and gave me your business card. Said he was you.”
Mr. Vasquez’s droll personality transformed to fire and brimstone. Motioning to his receptionist, he demanded she get the police on the phone at once. Company policy didn’t allow for customers to take cars from the lot without a salesman, and he was about to turn the floodgates loose on his own actions.
“Wait!” Mitch exclaimed. “You haven’t been hurt. Your car’s back–mine’s the one missing.”
The receptionist paused. Mr. Vasquez turned on his heels, dropped both thumbs down the front of his enormous pants, then pulled them back up over his belly. “You’re right, son. What’re you going to do?”
Mitch had been wondering the same thing. “I don’t know. Something’s wrong. This guy knew he was going to steal my car before he even saw it. I think he set you up so he could set me up.”
“Let’s go back to my office.” The hulking, panting fellow reached up and put his hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “What kind of car did he steal?”
Over the next few minutes, the two men exchanged as much information as possible. Mr. Vasquez was hard-pressed to give even a rudimentary description of the car thief: “. . . wore a low baseball cap, sun-glasses, average height, weight, Spanish accent.” He’d been corresponding by phone for the past two or three days with the owner of the Burger King several blocks down the street. Seemingly legitimate, the guy had been looking for a good deal on a good used car. The 300 had come in on a new car trade that very morning, and Vasquez had called to invite him to come in and take a look at it.
“He told me he’d send one of his employees by to pick it up.”
“Then you have his number?”
Vasquez shuffled through a tangle of papers on his desk. Finally he retrieved from the clutter a note with a name and number scrawled across its surface, and handed it across the desk, shoving the phone toward Mitch with his other hand. “It’s your car.”
Mitch dialed the number and waited, hung up, then dialed again. Discouraged, he asked if he could keep the scrap of paper, thanked the manager for his help, and asked for a ride home.
Out in the showroom, the receptionist was bent over the garbage container, digging through its contents. She stood up, slightly embarrassed, when the men appeared. “I heard a phone ringing,” she apologized. “Twice. . . .”
Mitch went over to her desk and, for a third time, dialed the number on the slip of paper. A faint ring could be heard coming from the container, kind of a muffled plea. Lifting a crumpled Burger King bag from the basket, Vasquez produced the wailing, ketchup-smeared cell phone. Mr. Vasquez readily consented to Mitch taking the phone with him as they left the showroom