Anyway, she goes on about how much she’s always wanted a firemist green Caddy, and she asks if any tapes go along with the AM/FM stereo deck, her favorites are Mantovani and Frank Sinatra, though she loves other recording artists, too, and then finally she says, ‘What time do you go to bed?’
‘Well, after the Eleven O’Clock news, usually.’
‘Because I have this friend who’s a mechanic,’ she says, ‘He knows cars inside out and backwards, and if I can get hold of him, I thought maybe I could come look at the car tonight. How long will it take me to get there from Larchmont?’
‘A half-hour,’ he says. ‘Forty minutes? Something like that.’
‘Can I call you back in five minutes?’ Clara says. ‘I just want to see if my friend is free. If he is, we’ll come right down.’
‘Certainly.’
‘Now don’t sell it in the next five minutes, okay?’
‘I promise I won’t sell it in the next five minutes.’
‘I’ll get right back to you.’
So that’s when she hangs up, and comes over to me and sits on my lap or something, and I put my hand up under her skirt or something — you realize I haven’t seen her in two months? Well, maybe she went to visit her mother in Tallahassee who is sickly. Then she calls back the guy and tells him she can’t get a hold of her mechanic friend, but she doesn’t want to lose the car, so she will come down to see it anyway if she can get somebody to drive her into the city. And if the car is as nice as she’s sure it’s going to be, she’ll give the guy a deposit cheque right on the spot, and tomorrow when the bank opens, she’ll go get him a certified cheque for the balance. So the guy hangs up, and since we are only ten minutes or so away from where he lives, we usually make love or something to kill the time, and then we hop into the little Volkswagen and drive up there and start the real pitch.
Now this is where I have to tell you what really happened the last time we pulled this, though it was a freak occurrence and has nothing to do with the beautiful way everything was working before then. We had heisted a total of seven cars in as many states, though of course when they caught me I only admitted to the one I was driving. What happened was that we went through that whole routine with a man who had a 1968 tobacco-brown Mercedes-Benz 280SL with genuine beige leather interior, air-conditioned, two tops, fully-loaded, it was a nice car, I could have got rid of it in New Jersey in thirty seconds flat. The beauty part, you see, is that any of these cars we heisted would not officially become hot cars till the next morning, by which time the serial numbers would be filed off the engine, and the car repainted, and new plates put on it. In other words, by the time the mark realized his goddamn car had actually been stolen, we already had at least a ten-hour lead on the cops, by which time the car was already being driven out to Texas or someplace. That was the way it usually worked, you’ll understand what I mean in a minute if you can stop scratching your ass for a minute.
So the night I got busted, we drove over to see this guy who had advertised the Benz. This was after Clara had gave him the whole pitch on the phone about always wanting to have a Benz with two tops, and all that crap, and about not being able to get a hold of her mechanic friend, but not wanting to lose the car, and so on. So we meet the guy at a garage in the Bronx, it’s underneath a two-story clapboard house, he’s got the Benz locked in this two-car garage, there’s a big padlock on the door. He turns on this little overhead light bulb, and Clara looks over the car and I look at my watch and tell her, ‘Abigail, I’m sorry I have to go, but I’ll be late for work.’
‘But how will I get back to Larchmont?’ she says. We have already established on the phone that she will have to find somebody to drive her to where the car is, you see, and I am the somebody she found to drive her, but I have to get to work now because I’m a respectable hardworking person who is just doing Abigail Hendricks a favour. I am dressed respectable, you know, I am wearing a suit and a tic, and I explain to the mark that I am a bank guard, and that I have to relieve the other guard at midnight, and it is almost that time now. We used the bank guard routine because it made me sound like an upholder of law and order. It always worked perfect. So Clara is worrying now about how she is going to get home to Larchmont, and I tell her that maybe I can let her have the Volks, if she promises to pick me up at the bank tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp which is what time I go off, and usually I am very sleepy by then. I also tell her to be very careful with the car since it is practically in mint condition though it is a 1963 model, and it is here that we establish Clara has never had an accident in the fifteen years she’s been driving. I have to tell you that Clara looks as if she’s never had an accident. She is wearing a brown suit, and her hair is pulled back in a bun, and she is wearing little gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and she looks like her own maiden aunt who lives next door to her mother in Tallahassee. So I give her the keys, and she asks me how I will get down to the bank, and I tell her it’s okay I’ll catch a taxi, and then I leave her with the mark, and I know in about an hour or so I am going to have myself a nice 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280SL to drive over to New Jersey and sell on the spot to this man who will file off the serial numbers and paint it red or whatever.
So Clara goes to work on the mark.
She tells him she just adores this car, this is the car she’s been looking for all her life, and it is certainly the frivolous kind of car that will help her get over her recent bereavement, a year is a long enough time to be mourning a husband, doesn’t the mark think so? Yes, the mark thinks so. But she’s worried, you see, about whether the car is in good running condition, she just wishes her mechanic friend had been able to come down there to the Bronx with her, would it be all right if she drove it around the block a few times, just to see if it worked and all? So the mark and her get in the car, and she drives it around the block three or four times, and then they come back to the garage, and she says. ‘Well, it seems to be all right, but I’m just not sure.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘why don’t you come back tomorrow with your mechanic friend?’ It is now almost midnight, and the guy wants to go to bed, right? He can’t stand there all night trying to convince this nice lady she should buy his car.
‘Yes, but by that time you might have sold the car,’ Clara says.
‘That’s a possibility,’ he says.
‘I just love the car.’
‘Yeah, well,’ he says, ‘what can I tell you, lady?’
‘Oh, I don’t care,’ she says. ‘I’ll buy it!’ She gives a nervous little giggle which is, supposed to convince the mark she’s never made such a big business decision in her life. And then she says, ‘I still wish my mechanic friend could look it over though.’
‘Well, then, come back tomorrow,’ the mark says.
Now this is the moment of truth. This is when the mark can get away completely, wriggle off the hook, this is where Clara can blow the whole thing if she’s not careful, and if she’s not a very good actress, which of course she is. You have to remember that before this night, we had successfully swiped a total of seven cars in seven states, without running the risk of getting shot at in the street by some cop anxious for a promotion.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ she says, ‘I’ll leave you a deposit, would that be all right? That way you can hold the car for me, and when I get a chance to have my mechanic friend look it over, we’ll close the deal. Would that be all right?’