Every outfit needs a getaway man. It doesn't matter how smooth the job goes; if you don't get away with the money, it was all for nothing.
I learned that when I was just a kid, when I first started getting locked up. Once that happens the first time, it's like that's your destiny. They let you out, but they know you're coming back, and you do, too.
Inside, some guys get tattoos, so that when they get out, other guys will know where they've been. I never wanted one. I figured people can always tell, anyway.
Every time they sent me to the kiddie camps, it was for stealing cars. I never stole cars to keep; I just wanted to drive them. I wanted to learn how to do that more than anything. The only reason I took the cars was so I could practice.
When you're in one of those places for kids, guys always ask you what you're in for. The first time I went in, before I learned, I told them the truth.
I found out quick how dumb that was. When I told other guys, that first time, why I took the cars, they said that wasn't even stealing, it was just joyriding. That's what a kid does with a car, joyriding. A man wouldn't do that.
It sounds weird, but the worst thing you can be in the kiddie camps is what they call a "kid." The word means something different in there. Something very bad.
Right after I told the truth that first time, I had to fight a lot. So I wouldn't get taken for a kid.
By the next time I went in, I was smarter. I knew nobody would understand if I told them I took the cars so I could practice my driving. So, after that, when they asked me, I always said, "Grand Theft Auto." I wasn't some little joyrider; I was a thief.
A thief steals cars to keep. To sell, I mean. The really good thieves, they get a reputation, and people hire them to steal certain cars. Like ordering food in a restaurant, and the parking lot is the menu.
It's good to be known as a thief when you go Inside. It's even better to be known as a killer, but only a certain kind. Like if you killed someone in a fight, that would be good. Or if someone paid you to do it.
It's pretty unusual, to be in one of the kiddie places for a killing like that, but I know one guy, Tyree, who was. A drug dealer paid Tyree to shoot someone, and he did it. Everyone respected him for doing that. It was something a big-time criminal would do.
But not every killing got you respect. The sick-in-the-head kids, they were nothings. Nobody was afraid of them. Like the one who chopped up his mother with an ax. Or the one who went to school with a rifle, and shot a bunch of other kids who were bullying him.
After that kid got locked up, he still got bullied, only much worse. The kind of bullying they do in here.
Sometimes, a killing happens right where they have us locked up. The one I most remember, it was a little kid who did it. Devon, his name was. A bigger kid, Rock, had done something to him.
After Rock did what he did, he told everyone that Devon was his kid.
Everybody knew what had happened, but nobody said anything, even the ones who weren't scared of Rock.
After Devon got out of the infirmary, he got a shank -- that's a piece of metal you sharpen into a knife. One day, he came up behind Rock in the cafeteria and stabbed him in the neck. Everybody saw it.
We knew Devon had stuck him good, because they didn't send Rock to the infirmary -- they called for an ambulance.
The guards charged in and locked us all down, so we couldn't see what happened after that. But, later, we heard that Rock died before the ambulance came.
If they had let Devon stay in there with us, he would have been all right after that. Nobody would have tried to do anything to him anymore, even with him being so little. But they took him away, to the prison for grownups.
I didn't actually know Devon. Just his name. But I hoped, wherever they sent him, he found another shank real quick.
Copyright © 2003 by Andrew Vachss
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From the bestselling master of modern noir comes this novel that pays tribute to the origins of the hardboiled genre. Eddie starts stealing cars long before he's old enough to get a license. But it is only after a stint in prison that he discovers his true calling. Eddie is the perfect getaway driver--a job that requires skill, concentration, and the fierce loyalty that keeps you at the curb, with the motor running, even when things have gone to hell inside the bank. Now Eddie is driving for J.C., a big-time heist artist, and J.C. is looking to pull off that one huge job every con dreams of ... the Retirement Score. The road looks clear until Vonda, J.C.'s voluptuous girlfriend, lets Eddie know she needs a getaway man of her own....
