Thieving Weasels (13 page)

T
HE
FIRST
TIME
ROY
AND
I
PLAYED
CRASH
IT
WAS
A
GOOF
—just a couple of juvenile delinquents messing around on bikes—but the more we played, the more competitive we became. Which is a nice way of saying crazier and way more dangerous. The time Roy broke his wrist is the perfect example. One of us got the bright idea to ride our bikes on train tracks, and the other agreed. For those of you who have never tried it, riding a bicycle on train tracks is right up there with sticking pebbles in your ears or playing with matches as A Really Dumb Thing to Do. First off, you have to ride your bike over railroad ties, which is like totally impossible. Second, you have to stand up the entire time, or it's like getting punched in the nuts every two seconds. And third, you can get hit by a train.

The way we got around the railroad tie and nut-busting part was to cut the tires off our bikes and ride directly on
the train rails. This is infinitely more difficult than it sounds, and the hardest thing about it was getting started without falling over. That's how Roy broke his wrist. But here's the amazing part: After Roy broke his wrist he didn't say a word. He just got right back on his bike and fell over three more times before he finally got going. Can you imagine landing on a broken wrist not once, but
three
times? It must have been excruciating, but Roy didn't even grunt. Which was why I should have known something was wrong when I visited him after the accident and he complained about his leg itching. Complaining just wasn't Roy's style.

Crash was definitely on my mind that night when I took a bus to the Sunrise Mall and stole a bike from the rack behind H&M. Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to do it, but with Roy's bike being guarded by a couple of drooling potheads and a formerly dead Shooters' girl, I had no choice. Locks had grown more sophisticated since the last time I had stolen a bike, but auto parts stores still sold air-conditioning coolant, and in less than two minutes I was pedaling away on this totally sweet Trek DS. Just for old time's sake, I rode past the Macy's where my mother and I were arrested and stopped by the Burger King for a soda. It had been over a decade since I'd been there, and as I waited at the drive-through I wondered—for perhaps the millionth time—what it would take to get away from my family forever.

The easiest thing to do, I realized, would be to kill them. I had a gun, and more than enough ammo, so what was
stopping me? Only everything. Still, the more I thought about it, the more appealing it became. Shooting Uncle Wonderful was a no-brainer. I already despised him, so it was simply a matter of following my bliss. Shooting Roy and my mother, on the other hand, would be hard. Then it hit me. Maybe I only needed to shoot Uncle Wonderful for my mother and Roy to understand how serious I was. And if push came to shove, I could always pump a couple of bullets into Roy's knees to prove I wasn't fooling around. Sure, then afterward I could rob a bank, hijack a yacht, and become a pirate.

Okay, so there was no way I was shooting anyone, but somewhere between ordering my Dr Pepper and picking it up at the drive-through window, an even better idea came to me. I had asked Mr. DeNunsio to get me a Walther PPK because it was the only gun I knew. But what if, instead of taking Mr. DeNunsio's gun to Fat Nicky's, I took Uncle Wonderful's gun instead? That way, if something went wrong, I could leave Uncle Wonderful's gun for the police. I could even plant a few strands of his hair around the crime scene for extra bonus points. Now here was a plan I could get behind, and as much as I would have enjoyed dressing up like a pirate and sailing the seven seas, this seemed a lot more doable.

With Uncle Wonderful out of the picture, it was time to focus on the other two members of my family. I dialed my uncle's house, and when Aunt Marie answered I said, “This is Skip. I need to talk to Roy right away.”

“He's not here right now,” she said before her brain kicked in. “Wait, I mean he's asleep. That's right, he's asleep.”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to laugh. “Do me a favor, and tell him I'll be over tomorrow afternoon around one.”

“Sure, Skip. I'd be happy to.”

My next stop was Shady Oaks, and as I pedaled across town a wave of sadness washed over me. I didn't care that Uncle Wonderful had set me up, but it really hurt that Roy was part of the deal. I know it sounds corny, but I would have given anything to play Crash with him one last time. Unfortunately, that was never going to happen. During the time when I had grown a conscience, Roy had just grown hard. And cousin or not, I was the guy who had stolen the imaginary millions he thought were his.

I took a detour through Massapequa Park and rode under the elevated train tracks as the train to New York City pulled into the station. I looked up at the concrete stanchions and every intelligent cell in my body told me to forget about Claire and Princeton and get on that train and never look back.

The only problem was I couldn't. I'd chosen my path, and the best I could do was race the train to the next station. I started out in the lead, but the train caught up fast and beat me by a mile.

It took a long time for me to catch my breath after I had stopped pedaling, although this was probably because I was crying so hard. Roy, Aunt Marie, Uncle Wonderful.
They were all against me now. And the more I thought about it, the more I knew my mother was, too. Talk about being careful what you wish for. I'd been trying to get away from my family since I was thirteen years old, and now that I was almost there, I felt scared and alone. And young. Really young. It's embarrassing to admit, but even after I took Grandpa Patsy's money, I still told myself I could return home if things got bad. But now things were bad, and it was my family who was making them that way.

Then I thought of something else and stopped crying. Yes, my family was against me, and yes there was a strong chance that if I went through with the job they still wouldn't leave me alone. Except I was smarter than they were, and the only reason I had fallen for their little scam was that I was out of practice. I'd been thinking like Cam Smith when I should have been thinking like Skip O'Rourke. That ended now. As much as I hated to admit it, Jackie was right. I
was
like them.

But here's the thing: I was also enjoying myself. I had stepped up to the challenge of out-weaseling my family, and not only was I good at it, it was some of the most fun I'd had in a long time. And since I had zero choice in the matter, I figured it was time to enjoy myself a bit more.

No more Campfire Girl stuff for me.

T
HE
ANGRIEST
I
EVER
SAW
MY
MOTHER
WAS
TH
E
TIME
SHE
got ripped off by her card club. We were living in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in this dinky apartment complex filled with a bunch of old retired ladies who had all worked at the same oil refinery in Linden. They were a tight-knit and cliquish group, and we had an impossible time making friends with them. This was a problem for a couple of reasons. First off, my mother prided herself on being able to talk to anyone, and when she couldn't strike up a conversation with the Ladies from Linden—as we began calling them—it was a major blow to her ego. Second, and far more important from a business perspective, was that if we couldn't talk to them, we couldn't rob them.

Mom and I tried every trick we knew to ingratiate ourselves with the Ladies from Linden, but after three weeks with zero success we were about to give up. Then, out of
nowhere, Mrs. McGreevy from the fourth floor asked my mother if she wanted to play cards that night with “a few of the girls.”

“It's just a penny-ante thing,” she assured us. “More BS-ing than cards.”

My mother agreed immediately, which surprised me. After watching Grandpa Patsy throw away every nickel he stole betting on football and basketball games, my mother despised gambling. I was even more surprised, however, when we went back to our apartment, and she broke out the playing cards.

“Sit down,” she said, cutting the seal on the deck with her thumbnail. “I need to practice.”

Over the next few hours, my mother taught me everything she knew about poker. She started off easy, but by the time we were finished with Five-card stud, Texas hold'em, and Follow the Queen my head was ready to explode.

“Where did you learn this stuff?” I asked in exasperation.

“Uncle Wonderful and I used to play all the time when we were kids. Watch this.” She fanned the deck with one hand and pulled out the five of clubs with the other. Next, she placed the five on the top of the deck, shuffled the cards, and put the deck in front of me.

“Take the card off the top.”

It was the five of clubs.

“Good. Now put it back.” She shuffled the cards again and said, “Now take the card off the bottom.”

It was the five of clubs again.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“A good magician never reveals her secrets,” she said with a grin. She showed me two or three other tricks, and by the time she was through, I was convinced my mother was the greatest card player in the world.

Which was why I was so surprised when she came home from her card party looking like she wanted to cry.

“What's happened?” I asked.

“I lost sixty-two bucks.”

“I thought it was penny ante. That's like six thousand, two hundred pennies.”

“I know how many pennies it is, Socrates,” she growled. “I don't know what happened. It wasn't like any of them were particularly good card players, but they just kept winning. I don't get it.”

The same thing happened the next week, except this time she lost eighty-one dollars. Her luck improved the week after that when she won twelve dollars, but then she lost fifty-three and seventy-one dollars in the following two weeks.

“You're being taken,” Uncle Wonderful said when he heard her story.

“That's impossible,” my mother replied. “I've been watching those biddies like a hawk, and nobody's doing better than anybody else.”

“That's because you're looking at it the wrong way. It's not you against four individual biddies. It's four biddies teamed up against
you
.”

My mother's eyes grew wide and she slammed the table with her fist. “Son of a bitch! That's how they did it. How could I have been so stupid?”

“Face it, Sheila. You always were lousy at cards.”

“Shut up, Wonderful.”

I don't know what made my mother angrier, the fact that she lost a few hundred dollars or that Uncle Wonderful had figured out the scam first. Either way, by the following week, we had it all worked out. While my mother went to Mrs. McGreevy's apartment and lost another fifty-four dollars, I went to the other ladies' apartments and stole everything they treasured. But that was far from the end of it. Even though she never set foot in New Jersey again, my mother spent the next two years doing everything imaginable to make the lives of the Ladies from Linden a living hell. She scrawled their phone numbers in truck stop bathrooms, ordered dirty magazines in their names, and had their phone and cable service downgraded, upgraded, or cut off entirely. It was ridiculous.

“Why are you still doing this?” I asked after the joke had been ground into dust a dozen times over. “It's not like you haven't been ripped off before.”

“Yeah, but those old bags did it for fun.”

“What difference does that make?” I asked.

“A lot,” she replied. “Think about it, Sonny. Every one of those women is collecting a pension, Social Security, and God knows what else. They don't
need
the money. Ripping me off was a game to them. A lark. They saw this dumpy woman with
stretch pants and a bad perm and thought they could take me for a ride. They thought I was a sucker and that they were better than me. Well, guess what? They might have won the first round, but they won't win another.”

This was how I knew my mother was part of Roy's scam. She may have missed me when I ran away, she may have even loved me, but she could never forgive me for stealing Grandpa Patsy's money. So, like the cable service and multiple subscriptions to
Playboy
that she showered upon the Ladies from Linden, the car, the house, and the suicide attempt were all part of an elaborate con to get back at me. I knew this instinctively. The only problem was, I still loved my mother, and all those years of the two of us crammed into crummy apartments, living on frozen pizzas, and watching
Judge Judy
on our stolen Trinitron forged a bond between us that even revenge couldn't completely erase.

But knowing's not enough, and like Grandpa Patsy used to say, there's nothing more useless than an understanding criminal. Which was why I got out the box containing my mother's good name, made copies of everything inside, and shipped the originals to Wheaton. It wasn't the greatest insurance policy in the world, but it was better than nothing. I just hoped it was enough to save my life when my family made their move against me.

S
TEALING
UNCLE
WONDERFUL
'
S
GUN
WAS
EASY
PEASY
. W
ITH
Roy strapped in his fake casts, and Aunt Marie and Uncle Wonderful at Lowe's fighting over discount lighting fixtures, their bedroom was wide open. It took less than a minute to pull on a pair of latex gloves, hop on a stepladder, and steal the gun from the closet.

I slipped the Walther into a Ziploc bag and was about to take a few strands of hair from the brush on Uncle Wonderful's nightstand when I spotted his backup false teeth. They were sitting on his dresser like a couple of dusty clam shells and upon closer inspection I saw that each pair had a unique serial number etched on top. They were perfect. Not only were the teeth covered in Uncle Wonderful's DNA, but fake name or not, the serial numbers would lead the police straight to him. I stashed a pair of teeth in the Ziploc along with some hair and a
can of maximum strength jock itch spray I found in the bathroom.

When I got back home, I ran some water through the coffeemaker and squeezed a couple of drops of Crazy Glue into the carafe. I held the jock itch can over the steam, and a dozen fingerprints appeared like magic. Most were smeared, but two were perfect, and unless Aunt Marie had a sex change operation while I was off at Wheaton, the fingerprints were definitely Uncle Wonderful's.

I waited for the glue to dry and carried the can, gun, and battery-powered UV light I'd bought at the local spy store into a closet. I turned on the light and compared the fingerprints on the gun to those on the jock itch can. There were three good prints above the grip and two more on the barrel. I concentrated on the barrel because it would be impossible not to smear the prints above the grip if I was forced to pull the gun on Fat Nicky. I glanced back and forth between the gun and the jock itch can until I was certain the prints belonged to Uncle Wonderful and not Roy or Aunt Marie.

My next task was to try on my wet suit. I had never worn one before and I'd learned from the salesman at the dive shop that the best model for late December water was something called a 5/3. These numbers stood for the thickness of the layers of neoprene used in the suit's construction, and meant it could be worn in water as cold as 45 degrees. Considering that the average late December water temperature was in the low 40s, this was the suit for me.
Unfortunately, they didn't have a 5/3 in my size. I could have bought a larger one, but the salesman warned me that a badly fitting wet suit is almost as bad as no wet suit at all. I wound up settling for a 4/3, which was rated for water temperatures down to 50 degrees. This was a little worrisome, but I figured I'd only be in the canal for ten or fifteen minutes and I'd just have to suck it up and deal.

I packed the suit, false teeth, and gun in my backpack, and when it got dark outside I went out to steal a Honda Accord. Long Island is Accord Heaven and nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to them. It took less than twenty minutes to find one without a kid's car seat in the back and another two minutes to pop the door and crack the ignition. After that, it was simply a matter of changing the radio station and topping off the gas tank.

I parked the Accord in the garage and went to take a nap. I was too cranked up to sleep and spent the next two hours going over the job in my head. In the past, I'd always been the thief-in-training, but this time the entire job rested on my shoulders, and I was overwhelmed. I once asked Grandpa Patsy what it felt like being an adult, and he just laughed and said, “Two words, Skip: more responsibility.” I now understood what he meant, but I still didn't feel like an adult. I felt like a kid about to steal his first bag of M&M's.

The doorbell rang, and I sat up in bed. No one beside my family knew where I was, and there was no reason for them to be paying me a visit. That left a neighbor, a kid selling
cookies, or the police. I could have ignored the first two, but the last thing I needed was a cop parked in the driveway when I pulled out of the garage in a stolen Accord.

I hid the Walther behind a throw pillow in the living room, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

“Cam?” Claire said, her face pinched with confusion. “What's going on?”

I was too shocked to reply and just stood there with my mouth hanging open.

“Aren't you going to answer me?”

“What was the question again?”

“What the hell are you doing here? You said you were at school.”

“Funny you should mention that . . .” I began, but the rest of the words died in my mouth. Yes, I could have concocted some outrageous story, and yes Claire might have believed it. But then what? More stories? More lies? No, I was through telling lies. It was one thing to deceive my family, who wouldn't have recognized the truth if it whacked them over the head, but I couldn't lie to the one person I truly loved. It was time to come clean, and if Claire didn't accept me for who I was . . . Well, at least I tried.

“Come on in,” I said, taking her hand. “I want to show you something.” I led her to my bedroom and showed her my wall of awards.

“Who are all these people?” she asked. “I don't recognize any of the names.”

“They're me,” I replied. “They're all me.”

“I don't understand.”

So, I told her. I told her everything. All the way from my very first break-in straight to the hot-wired Accord in the garage. I held back nothing and spared no one, especially myself. I thought it would be painful, but it turned out to be the opposite. To finally get all those lies and stories off my chest was the most liberating thing I had ever done. Claire stayed silent through my entire saga and never once interrupted. I had no idea what she was thinking, and I eventually stopped caring because it felt so good to make a full and complete confession.

When I was finished, I looked Claire in the eyes and asked, “Any questions?”

“Only a million,” she said, and her gaze came to rest on my wall of awards. She stood up to examine them more closely and without looking back at me asked, “Cam, if you're so good at lying, how can I ever trust you? I mean, how do I know I'm not just another security guard you're fast talking?”

“Because this is different. Think about it. You're the first person who knows who I really am who hasn't tried to steal my Social Security number.” Claire didn't respond and I said, “What I mean is, I love you. And I think—
I hope
—you love me.”

“That's the problem,” she replied. “I fell for someone named Cam Smith and now I find out he's really named Skip O'Rourke. Or,” she pointed to one of my awards. “Is it Stephen James? Or Matthew Trezza? Or Martin Grant?”

“I'm me,” I said, placing a hand on my chest. “I'm the same person I've always been. It's just that . . . It's just that—”

“What?”

I got up and stood next to her. “Do you remember what it was like to be thirteen years old?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think you could have done what I did and leave everything you knew behind?”

“Of course not. I was just a kid.”

“And I wasn't?”

“You were,” she said, turning away. “But you were also a thief and a liar.”

Claire's words were the equivalent of a guilty verdict. I sat down on my bed and tried to think of the right thing to say, but it was useless. I could talk for a million years, and it would never erase where I came from. I was a liar and a thief, and that's who I would always be. And now that Claire knew my story it was ridiculous to think she would see me as anything else. My family had won without even trying. But I couldn't let them claim victory without a fight and said, “Look, Claire, I know I've messed up big time, but is there any way we can fix this?”

“We can start by never lying again.”

“It's too late. As far as Wheaton and Princeton are concerned I'm Cam Smith. It's a done deal.”

“I understand that, but you have to promise never to lie
to
me
again.”

“Of course I'll never lie to you again. I never wanted to lie to you in the first place.”

Claire turned to me with an expression I couldn't quite read. “And I promise I'll never lie to you again.”

“What are you talking about?”

She looked down at the ground. “I never finished my Princeton essay.”

“That's okay,” I said, not understanding why she was so upset. “There are still a couple of days left before it's due. We can work on it together if you want.”

“Cam, I didn't finish my essay because I never started it. I don't want to go to Princeton. I never even applied.”

“Never even applied? That doesn't make sense.”

But of course it made sense, I thought as anger tore through my veins. It made
perfect
sense. I fell in love with a girl, and she lied to me. It was the story of my life.

Claire said something, but I didn't hear her as I sprung up and began pulling the awards off the wall. What was the point of yellow ribbons and calligraphy-covered certificates? What was the point of
anything
if I couldn't trust anyone? If every word was a lie, and every emotion a weakness to be exploited?

“Stop it!” Claire yelled. “You're not the only one trying to start over.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly how it sounds. You look at my life and see this wonderful thing to aspire to, but all I see is this endless future of drunken affairs and Junior League rummage sales. I
want to get away from my family just as much as you want to get away from yours.”

“Your family is nothing like mine,” I said. “And besides, not everyone who goes to Princeton turns out like your parents. F. Scott Fitzgerald went to Princeton.”

“And he drank himself to death.”

“Okay, so maybe he isn't the best example—”

“Listen to me, Cam,” Claire said, and took my hand. “Princeton was your dream, not mine. It always has been.”

“It's not a dream without you,” I said.

“That's bullshit! And if I thought for one second you really believed that I'd walk out on you right now.”

“Isn't that what you're doing? Walking out on me?”

“No. I'm just not going to Princeton. My parents are going to be furious about this. Please don't be pissed off at me, too. I'm sorry to be dropping this bomb on you now, but I didn't make up my mind until I went home.”

“But you had to be thinking it.”

“Yes, and I felt like I was being unfair to you the entire time. And you know what the worst part was? The more excited you got about Princeton the more horrible I felt.”

“Why didn't you just say something to me?”

“I didn't know how until you told me about your family, and then I realized we're kind of going through the same thing.”

I tried to picture Princeton without Claire, and everything went from color to black and white. “What are you going to do if you don't go to school?” I asked.

“I'm not sure yet.” Then a smile crossed her lips and she said, “Maybe I can work at Home Depot.”

“That's
so
not funny,” I replied.

“Aw c'mon,” she said, poking me in the ribs. “You have to admit it was a little funny.”

“No, it wasn't.”

“I thought you said you'd never lie to me again?”

“Okay, fine. It was a little funny. Are you happy?”

“Delirious.”

And that's when we kissed.

• • •

Later, as we were lying under my
Star Wars
sheets and basking in the post Possibility of Expulsion glow, I asked Claire how she had found me.

“Remember that picture you sent me a few days ago? I was looking at it this afternoon and noticed Han Solo and Chewbacca in the background. I'd never seen these sheets on your bed at school so I looked up the metadata on the photo, and it said you were here. It seemed like a mistake, so I turned on the Find My iPhone app, and that said the same thing. It made no sense why you would lie to me about where you were, and I didn't know if you were dealing drugs, or if there was another woman, or what.”

“You're right,” I said. “There is another woman in my life. It's just that she's my mother.”

“Even after everything you've told me about her, I almost wish I could meet her.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Because she's your mother, and you're my boyfriend, and it's kind of the normal thing to do.”

“But my family isn't normal. They're a pack of weasels.”

Claire laughed. “You say it like you don't love them.”

“Of course I love them. They're just better loved from a distance of a few hundred miles.”

“Do you really think they'll leave you alone after tonight?”

“Probably not, but I think they'll let me finish Wheaton if I go through with the job. Right now that's the best I can hope for.”

The alarm on my iPhone chimed telling me it was time to go. I got up to look out the window and saw that it was snowing.

“Damn it,” I said.

“What's the matter?”

“The storm got here earlier than it was supposed to. Riding my bike in this weather is going to suck.”

“I can drive you.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but the last thing you need is to get involved in my family's nonsense or get arrested. Stuff like that follows you around the rest of your life.”

“My father was arrested, and it turned out okay for him.”

My mind flashed to the life-sized Ken doll I'd seen in the Wheaton parking lot and shook my head. “That's impossible.”

“Okay, so technically he was only indicted, but it's practically the same thing.”