Chapter 21 ~ Guest
May 1, 2010
They had all gone home, all the worker bees and copy-cat wannabes.
These offices weren’t anything close to those of lower Manhattan hot-spots; this was Wall Street painted by numbers. So many corporations, so little space. As the island grew more congested, too expensive, they’d relocated over the Hudson. Endlessly structured all staff meetings, talking up the free space of New Jersey, of how they could expand, of how the quality of life would be so much better. In search of the almighty WIIFM. All those empty promises, making it seem the solution for each and every colleague, partner, co-worker, team-mate; using any label but employee. So magnificent the spin that they might even have discovered the promised land.
Then they’d arrived.
And paradise had been no such thing.
I’d read all this in the newspapers when coming out here on previous car hunts, heard it in bars, overheard it in one-sided cell-phone rants. Eavesdropping helped me pass the time.
That evening, the streets were empty save for a passing car or two.
The gas station sat alongside an empty lot bounded by a scraggy chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire; a car park for the financial services giant across the road. Made me wonder what it was that they were trying to keep out of the lot. Or in. The concrete was cracked and patched almost beyond repair; the best that the financial giant was willing to do for its people.
Come to Jersey, where the quality of working life is so much better than the city… Come to Jersey…
The corporate bullshit merchants hid in Manhattan Headquarters, using advertisers on Madison, consultants on Park. High-charging accountants gave them proof of the value equation whenever they asked. Those executives, they knew that Jersey was the right thing for the business – just not the right thing for them. So they’d stayed in the city while the riff-raff were forced out to this godforsaken concrete labyrinth.
Which was how this gas station had ended up here, surrounded by faceless skyscrapers that emptied like an old man’s diarrhoea at the end of every day, spilling into cars and SUVs and trucks and trains and buses and just about any mode of transport that could get them away from here and back across the river, or out into the country as quickly as possible.
This gas station made a fortune undoubtedly, just like the human traffickers who helped Eastern European women escape to the west. Desperate people will always pay money.
Besides, gas was a lot cheaper over here than in the city.
Another great reason to come to Jersey!
I settled into the doorway of a deserted tower, knowing that security wouldn’t be checking outside, that the cameras were being ignored, that the underpaid guards would be busy playing cards or watching porn on the internet.
By eight p.m. I’d watched twenty or so cars come and go through the gas station.
It felt like my lucky night. Six of them left the keys in the car while they went into the station to buy something.
I had almost gone for sixth but it was a Lexus, and likely fitted with tracking. Almost definitely. Too easy for the police to spot once the alert went out.
The regularity of visits was decreasing as the whole of this suburban city, come suburb, come city, come suburb emptied in its daily desertion ritual.
Almost all the rats had left the sinking ship.
The guy in the gas station would be shifting to ‘through the window only’ service within the next half an hour.
I crossed the road, past the chain link lot, where I struck my bad rapper pose: a casual lean against the side of the gas station.
I could feel my heart beating as I lit up a cigarette; smoke clouding my face, filling my hoodie. I saw all of this like I was watching a movie, outside of myself and yet feeling the rush begin.
The Honda C-RV was so inconspicuous that I didn’t really notice it until it turned into the station, pulled up at the pumps, stopped.
The woman who got out had curly red hair, down to the back of her neck. Dressed in a cheap suit, aping perfumed, coiffured doyens of the Upper East. Cheap meat dressed up to look like steak.
For a moment, my first ever mugging flew through my mind, the woman on the lower east, her pearls and evening dress, the way it had felt, and I knew that this would be my mark. Knew it in some instinctive way that got my blood pumping harder.
I smoked more rapidly, so that I could glance through the clouds in front of my face without catching her attention.
She was uncomfortable in her skirt. Kept hitching at it. Looked like she’d been wearing it all day and was just about sick of it. Something had been annoying her all day. Something. The skirt too tight for her. Used to fit her. Used to make her legs look good. Used to make her feel sexy. But now, in the heat, in the humidity, it just made her feel like a fat cow; past it, out to pasture. She was tired of pretending. Tired of playing the corporate game, tired of having to compete. Just tired. Period.
I got all of that from the way she picked and hitched at her skirt.
She didn’t even look at me. Didn’t even cast a glance in my direction.
Hooked the nozzle back into its cradle, grabbed the receipt from the pump and then opened her door, climbing into the car; I cursed my intuition for selling me blind. But the door didn’t close, her foot emerging as she stepped out again, walking across the station’s baked concrete, out of my sight and into the gas station.
My moment.
I was across the forecourt at a loping sprint, maintaining my rap persona, rolling my shoulders, exaggerating my black boy emphasis, making sure the cameras caught stereotype for posterity.
Over to the C-RV, its smoked windows, metallic paint and alloy wheel rims. Opened the door, jumped up into the driver’s seat, turned the engine; this routine, so practised that I didn’t even have to look. Keeping my eyes fixed on the station, watching her through the windows, stooping into the refrigerator cabinet, trying to find a Diet Coke or a Snapple or a Dr Pepper or whatever else it is she hoped would take the heat of a summer’s evening away. So well rehearsed was I that I even noticed the guy behind the desk checking her ass as she bent into the cabinet.
He shook his head; dismissing her.
The engine spun and I pulled the transmission to drive, hitting the gas pedal at the same time, wheels spinning as I pulled out onto the road, turning hard right, heading around the block behind the gas station, immediately putting concrete and glass between myself and my victim.
I knew all this because I was an expert. I’d done this before. I’d learnt how to do this well.
I was almost a professional.
The adrenalin began to rush in and I howled like a wolf, a smile as bright as a death grin slathered across my face. I turned on the radio and punched the roof of the car in time to the music. It was some pop starlet but at that point I couldn’t have cared less; the rush. I maxed the volume, and the whole car shook with sub-bass. It was a good stereo. A good catch.
I wondered if I should head out into the country instead of just back over the river. That only lasted a minute though. Because I knew that the risk was just what it was: a risk. I had a full tank of gas, I had clear roads all the way across the George Washington Bridge, I had the night.
Across the next intersection, I brought the car down to the speed limit so as not to draw attention to myself. That too didn’t last long; needle creeping up as adrenalin coerced my right foot.
Buildings smeared past the windows of the car blurring the speed of light. I saw Subway become McDonalds become Chase Bank become Gap become an intersection, become a cop car…
I prayed. Prayed hard.
But he was looking the other way, must have been because he wasn’t even pulling out to follow me. I looked down and the dash showed me that I was only doing forty miles an hour, and that was why he wasn’t following me. The buzz made my head do loops, made me feel like…
“Yes!” I shouted and punched the roof of the car again.
I’d cleared five miles already.
And the cop hadn’t followed me.
Which meant the alert wasn’t out yet. Which meant, as I eased onto the Garden State Parkway north that they wouldn’t catch me. Not that night.
“Yes!” I shouted, pounding the roof over and over.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”
I pulled out to overtake a truck that was riding the speed limit to the letter of the law.
“Yes!” A little voice from the back of the car.
“Whoa!” it came again, “big truck!”
The car almost went sideways as I turned to look.
But the child was right behind me.
Below my line of vision in the rear-view.
I got past the truck, pulled into the inside lane.
Breathing deeply despite the hammering of my heart.
“Bye-bye, truck,” the child shouted gleefully, compounding my panic, inflating my shock.
“Bye-bye!”
My knuckles were tight on the wheel. Heart hammering. Gasping for air, searing down my throat.
A child! A fucking child!
Pull over.
I should have pulled over.
But my foot stayed on the gas pedal. My eyes did anything but look back in the mirror.
How far back was that cop car? A mile? Two miles? Five?
The GW Bridge was only five miles ahead and I had a clear road; merciful given the usual state of Jersey traffic.
My eyelids fluttered and I felt like I was about to…
