Thieving Weasels (2 page)

T
HE
FIRST
TIME
I
GOT
ARRESTED
I
WAS
FOUR
YEARS
OL
D
. Actually, arrested is the wrong word for it. It was more like I was taken into custody. My mother was the one who got arrested, although we both wound up with our pictures in the paper. In the photograph, we're being led out of Macy's in handcuffs and beneath it the caption reads “The Littlest Criminal.” Except that was wrong, too. Not the little part, the criminal part. Mom and I were never criminals. Criminals rob banks. Criminals steal cars. Criminals deal drugs. Mom and me? We were weasels. We were thieves. We were slime. And so was everyone else in our family. I'd bet a million dollars there hasn't been one minute in my entire life when at least one of my relatives wasn't collecting welfare under an assumed name. And I'd bet another million there were at least two more cashing disability checks for jobs they never held.

Like I said, we were slime.

The kid in the paper told the police his name was Michael Dillon, but that was an alias. Over the years I've been Bobby, Timmy, Richie, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For a long time I wanted to be called Waldo after the guy in the
Where's Waldo?
books, but my mother said no to that because it would have stood out too much. And in our line of work that's the last thing you want. My real name is Stephen O'Rourke, although I've never seen my birth certificate or any legal proof of my existence. My mother calls me Sonny, and everybody else calls me Skip. The best thing about a nickname is you don't have to change it every time you change your identity, which I've done more times than your average seventeen-year-old has flossed.

Here's how it worked: Mom would lease an apartment under a fake name, pay first and last month's rent, and after that we'd rob the place blind. People were always happy to talk to a jolly fat lady and her cute little boy, and by the end of the first week we'd have learned everything there was to know about everybody who lived there: the hours they worked, when they were gone, and when they were born. After that, it was simply a matter of slipping into their apartments and finding their Social Security numbers. We'd take out credit cards in their names, shopped till we dropped, and sell what was left of their identities for a few hundred dollars. Three months later, and we were on to the next place.

I once asked my mother if she felt guilty for stealing from the people who lived next door.

“Why?” she replied. “It's not like they're family.”

Then she'd rip off one of my uncles, and when I asked her about that she'd say, “That's because he's a real A-hole.”

I'll say this about my mother: she may have been a coldhearted thief, but she rarely cursed in my presence.

That said, she did lie about everything. Especially to me, and especially about who my father was. Sometimes he was an Irish tenor. Other times he was a diesel mechanic. Most of the time he was just “some guy.” When I asked my Grandpa Patsy about it, he'd just sigh and say, “Talk to your mother. That's her deal, not mine.”

So, there you have it. Most kids have a father. I have a deal.

I was seven years old when I started to realize just how messed up my life was. This was a challenging time for Mom and me. My value had always been my size, and as I grew I became a liability. People began to wonder why the kid wandering through the Fragrance Department at Lord & Taylor on a Tuesday afternoon wasn't in school. In other words, they paid
attention
to me—which is something you really don't want when your mother is trying to stuff bottles of Chanel No. 5 in your Buzz Lightyear backpack.

We had two options: I could hang around our apartment all day, or I could go to school. We tried the former, but there are only so many hours a day a seven-year-old boy can watch television, and after I almost burned down the third floor of the Cheshire Arms Apartments, we tried the latter.

The night before my first day of school I was super nervous. With the exception of my cousin, Roy, I had never spent time around kids my own age and didn't know how to act. Was school like jail, where you were supposed to punch out the toughest guy in your cell? Or was it like a convenience store, where you flirted with the lady behind the counter while your mother stole milk and Mylanta? I had no idea.

What surprised me the most about school was how easy it was and how much easier it became. I could barely read when I got there, so they put me in a class with the dumb kids, and let's just say the contrast was more than a little obvious. I had grown up fast-talking sales ladies and policemen while my fellow students could barely wipe their own noses. By the end of the first week I was the star pupil, and by the end of the second I was transferred to a class where, if nothing else, the kids knew which end of a pencil to stick up their noses.

What I liked best about school was the companionship. No one had ever wanted to be my friend before, and overnight a whole new world opened up. I had been living in this alternative universe where playdates, class trips, and just about everything else a seven-year-old boy might enjoy had no value. Sure, my mother stole plenty of nice stuff for me, but even the best toys aren't much fun when you have no one to play with. In school, however, I was just like everyone else, and it was
glorious
.

“Don't get too attached,” my mother said when I told
her about my new friends. But I didn't listen and made pals with everyone from the strange kids who smelled like pee all the way up to the principal. I can't tell you how exciting it was to have people I barely knew call me by my name in the halls. Even if it wasn't my real name.

Then the inevitable happened.

“Get your things together,” my mother said one Saturday morning.

“Why?” I asked. “I don't have school today.”

“We're leaving.”

Her words were like a punch in the stomach.

“But I have a test on Monday,” I begged. “And Mrs. Fleagler said I could sing the song from
Cats
in music class.”

“You can sing in the car. Now grab your stuff and let's go.”

That was the day I stopped trusting my mother. After that, I was always careful not to tell her too much about school or my classmates. Is that crazy or what? If I couldn't tell my own mother about my life, then who could I tell?

No one, that's who. And here's the thing about lying: not only is it exhausting to keep a thousand stories and fabrications in your head, it's also incredibly lonely. And I hate being alone. Not to sound overly dramatic, but I left a major chunk of my heart in that elementary school on the day we moved away. I've been trying to get it back ever since.

The only positive thing about my predicament was that I got to keep my textbooks, and by the time my mother got around to enrolling me in a new school I had them
memorized. Math, science, and spelling, I knew them backward and forward.

No more classes with dumb kids for me
, I told myself. This time it's going to be different.

And for a while it was. I made a point of not telling my mother about school, and on the rare occasions when she did ask, I was careful not to reveal too much. I'm sure my mother knew something was up, but she was a little fuzzy in the head from the grapefruit and tuna fish diet she had started the month before. My mother was always trying some crazy diet, and this one turned her into a complete space cadet. Unfortunately, she zoomed straight back to earth on the night my second grade teacher called.

“What did she want?” I asked when my mother hung up the phone.

“Get packing.”

“What?”

“You heard what I said. And if you ever do something like this again, I'll break your arm.”

“What did I do?” I asked as tears filled my eyes.

“Your teacher said you were the best student she's ever had and wants to put you in a class for gifted students.”

“But that's good, right?”

“No, it's
not
good. Gifted students stand out. People remember them. Use your head, Sonny. Two years from now this lady could see your picture in the paper, and we could all wind up in jail.”

“I didn't think about it that way.”

“Of course you didn't. That's what school does—it makes you stupid. From now on you get only Cs and Bs, and the only exceptional thing I want to hear about you is that you're exceptionally average.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Now let's get out of here before the National Honor Society tries throwing a car wash in the living room.”

I was thirteen years old when I finally had enough, although it wasn't for the obvious reasons. Yes, I was sick of the lying, and the loneliness, and the constant moving around. Yes, I was sick of my mother, and my family, and the never-ending stream of disgusting apartments. Yes, I was sick of acting stupid, and conning my classmates, and throwing tests. I was sick of it all, but I would have kept on going because it was the only life I knew.

My mother always said ordinary people were stooges—chumps and goody-goodies who slaved away at crummy jobs, had no hope, and owed their souls to the credit card companies. She said we were above all that. We lived where we wanted, did what we wanted, and took what we wanted. We were free.

But were we really free? Between the lies, and scams, and never-ending fear of getting busted we put in as many hours as the next guy, except we had a lot less to show for our effort. Think about it. Here I was thirteen years old, and I'd never played Little League baseball. I'd never joined Boy Scouts. I'd never had a best friend, or slept on
the same mattress for more than a couple of months. It was crazy. The only taste of real life I saw was in the empty apartments of the people I robbed. It was pathetic.
I
was pathetic, and I yearned for something better.

The opportunity came, like everything else in my life, through a jimmied window.

One of the most common residents in every apartment complex where Mom and I lived was the newly divorced dad. Growing up, I saw literally hundreds of them shuffling down hallways and carrying bags of Chinese takeout and convenience store beer. They rarely had anything worth stealing—alimony and child support took care of that—but I still enjoyed breaking into their apartments and pouring stale beer down the back of their TV sets. Yes, I knew this was a really mean thing to do, but I couldn't help myself. There was something about these losers that made me so incredibly angry. It must have been because they had everything I wanted out of life—a real house, home-cooked meals, birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese—and threw it all away. It made absolutely no sense to me.

All that changed on the afternoon I slipped into some ex-husband's apartment and came across what can only be described as a
shrine
to Wheaton Preparatory Academy. I'm not exaggerating when I say the entire place was covered, floor to ceiling, with every type of pennant, banner, and poster imaginable, as well as dozens of photos of football, baseball, and lacrosse teams. Creepy doesn't begin to describe it, and right in the middle of this sea of
crimson and blue—like it was the single greatest achievement in this poor schnook's life—was his Wheaton diploma. In eight years of breaking into apartments I'd never seen anything like it.

My first impulse was to tear the place to shreds. Just yank every piece of Wheaton memorabilia off the walls and rip it into teeny-tiny pieces. Except I couldn't. It would have been like cutting out the man's heart.

Instead, I slipped out the window (without touching the TV, I might add) and headed straight to the library to find out about this Wheaton place. It was dark outside when I was finished, and my eyes burned from having read so much, but I was sure of two things:

1. I really wanted to go to Wheaton Academy.

2. I'd have to run away from my family to do it.

W
E
WERE
THIRTY
MILES
SOUTH
OF
ALBA
NY
WHEN
THE
STATE
trooper's lights appeared in the rearview mirror.

“We have a visitor,” I said, gripping the steering wheel tighter.

Uncle Wonderful glanced out the back window. “So we have.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What's our play? Is this car stolen?”

“I can't seem to remember.”

“Stop messing around,” I said. “I'm using my good name here.”

Uncle Wonderful yawned. “You're a big boy. You figure it out.”

This was why Uncle Wonderful had wanted me to drive,
I realized. It was a test. I eased the car onto the shoulder and held out my hand.

“Okay,” I said. “Give me your insurance card and registration, and if you try anything funny I'm telling the trooper you abducted me. I'll say I was getting money from a cash machine, and you put a gun to my head. There are at least ten people at Wheaton who will vouch for me, and two of them are retired judges. Who's going to vouch for you, Uncle Wonderful? Your parole officer?”

The grin dropped from his face, and he handed over the registration and insurance card without a word. The paperwork said the car belonged to a Mr. Phillip Boylan of 421 Leprechaun Lane, Sayville, New York. The print job looked real, but the address was a joke. Leprechaun Lane? Why didn't he just put down Impossible to Believe Lane?

I eyed the sideview mirror as the trooper climbed out of his cruiser. Normal mothers tell their kids they have only one chance to make a first impression; weasel moms tell theirs they only have one chance to size up a mark. The trooper put on his hat, and the first thing that struck me was his air of regimented formality. This said ex-military. More than that, his back was so straight you could have used it to draw a vector in geometry class. This said ex-Marine, and I knew my play. When the trooper got within a few feet of the car, I turned to Uncle Wonderful and yelled, “I don't care what you say! When we get home I'm heading straight to the recruiting office and signing up!”

It took Uncle Wonderful less than a second to catch on. “The hell you are,” he yelled back.

“It's what Dad would have wanted!”

“But your dad's not here anymore, is he?”

I waited until the trooper was next to my window and said, “That's right. He gave his life for this country so bums like you can criticize the people who put their very lives on the line for it.”

“License, registration, and proof of insurance, please,” the trooper growled.

I whipped my head around and shouted, “What?” The trooper's eyes doubled in size, and before he could say another word I clapped a hand to my forehead. “Oh my God! I'm sorry, Officer. My uncle and I are arguing about me joining the Marines, and I kind of lost my head. Was I speeding or something?”

“License, registration, and proof of insurance, please.”

I handed over the paperwork, and the trooper marched back to his cruiser to run it through the computer. I figured the odds were fifty-fifty I'd be eating dinner in a jail cell.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked.

“You broke your mother's heart. It's only fair.”

“Fair? And it's fair that you people won't leave me alone?”

“You people?”
he replied in disgust. “We're your family, Skip. We're all you've got.”

I thought about Claire and the life I'd created at Wheaton and said, “No, you're not. You're not even close.”

I glanced in the rearview mirror and tried to visualize what the trooper had seen when I handed over my license. Did he see the youngest member of a family of thieves, or just some skinny kid with a chipped front tooth and hair in need of a trim? I was hoping for the latter.

“Who's Phillip Boylan?” the trooper asked, returning to the window.

“That would be me,” Uncle Wonderful replied.

“Do you know you have a taillight out, Mr. Boylan?”

“I'm sorry, Officer. I lent the car to my nephew here so he could drive girls around at the fancy school he goes to in Schuylerville.”

“Wheaton Academy?”

“That's the one.”

The trooper looked at my license. “Seventeen years old. That makes you, what? A senior?”

“That's right,” I said.

“And you'd rather join the Marines than graduate?”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked me up and down and said, “Joining the Corps is no picnic, son. It's a major commitment.”

“I know. My father told me all about it.”

“Where did he serve?”

“A bunch of places: Haiti, Honduras, Djibouti. But he died in the Korangal Valley.”

“Afghanistan?”

I nodded. “Five years ago next month. He was a hero.”

“I'm sure he was.”

The trooper handed back the paperwork. “Good luck with your decision, but if you want the advice of an old Marine, I'd finish school first. The Corps will still be there in June.”

“Yes, sir.”

He glanced at Uncle Wonderful. “And you get that taillight fixed.”

“You got it, Officer.”

The trooper headed back to his cruiser, and Uncle Wonderful laughed. “Djibouti? Where the hell's Djibouti?”

“Africa.”

“Never heard of it. How'd you know that guy was a Marine?”

“His posture. Only Marines move like that. And ballet dancers, but he didn't look like a ballerina to me.”

Uncle Wonderful nodded. “You always were fast on your feet, Skip.”

“So? Did I pass the test?”

“With flying colors.”

“Good.” I adjusted the rearview mirror and said, “Damn, that trooper's coming back.”

Uncle Wonderful turned to look and when he was halfway there I punched him in the jaw.

“Son of a bitch!” he screamed.

“Don't talk that way about my mother,” I said. “And the next time you try something when I'm using my good name you'll get a lot worse than that.”

• • •

So, what's a good name? A good name is an escape hatch. An emergency exit. A ticket out. In other words, it's the cleanest, safest, most bulletproof fake identity there is. My Grandpa Patsy used to say that if a good name came in a box there'd be a sign on the front reading, “Use only in emergencies.” But good names don't come in boxes. In fact, good names don't come anywhere anymore. The computer-controlled, interwoven world we live in has taken care of that, and soon the only name you'll ever have is the name you were born with. Law enforcement types sleep well at night knowing this is the case, but I find it sad and even a little un-American. This country was founded on the possibility of new beginnings, and guys like me have been using good names since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

My good name is Cameron Michael Smith—Cam to my friends. The real Cam Smith was born on April 26, 1995, and died nine months later from a lung infection. That would have been the end of him, but Grandpa Patsy knew a guy in the Schenectady County records office who was in charge of scanning death certificates into their fancy new computer system. For a hundred bucks and a bottle of Bushmills the guy accidentally forgot to scan Cam Smith's death certificate, and it was like the poor kid had never died. After that, we applied for a passport and Social Security card in Cam Smith's name, and just like that I was a whole new person. This was a very popular technique back in the day, and for years our family picnics were filled with dozens of relatives with unscanned birth certificates who
were making a nice living cashing checks from every state and federal agency there was. But like I said, computerized record-keeping has put an end to all that.

Good luck and vigilance is the key to every good name. Or, in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Bradley Smith, bad luck and vigilance. Not long after the death of their only son, the Smiths were killed in a car accident. Mrs. Smith was behind the wheel, and the police listed the cause of death as driving while intoxicated. But I think Mrs. Smith died of a broken heart. On nights at Wheaton when I couldn't sleep, I sometimes wondered if the Smiths were looking down on me. If they were, I hoped they were proud because
I was
taking excellent care of their son's legacy: I had a 3.92 GPA, averaged 1.4 points per game in lacrosse, and wrote smart and funny pieces for the
Weekly Wheatonian
. Plus, I'd just been accepted to Princeton University. I don't mean to brag, but thanks to me Cam Smith had a very bright future ahead of him. Or at least he did until my family came along and messed up his life.

Or should I say, messed up
my
life.