What system? I don’t get a chance to ask because a low-rider blasting rap music stops beside the park. It’s Rat. Hanging one elbow out the window, he lays on the horn. Henry laughs and gives him the finger. “C’mon, you can ride with me. Those guys are on their own.” He nods his head at the guys by the fountain. I catch Jonny staring at me. His boney face twists with jealousy.
So I walk out of the park with him, like he’s the king and I’m the prince. Rat raises an eyebrow when I get in the back seat, but doesn’t say anything.
Henry slides his hand over the dash of the car and whistles. “You do good work, man,” he tells Rat.
“Wait till you see the engine. V8, 220 horsepower.” They talk about cars in a language I don’t understand, so I tune them out. It’s nice being in a car and not walking. The tinted windows keep it cool. I take my hat off and let the a/c swirl around my head. Feels good.
We turn the corner, and the piece Koob did last night jumps out at me. It’s a sweet piece. I lean forward to point it out to Henry and then stop myself. He’s got no love for Koob. Seeing his graff writer name splashed up on a building isn’t going to impress him.
Henry twists around in his seat. “School starts today,” he says.
I shake my head. “Next week.”
“Not for you.” Rat pulls into a small parking lot on Mountain Ave. “Al’s Automotive Repair” is written in faded blue letters across the front of the building. There are a couple of beaters and some rusted-out car parts along the side of the building. “Wait here,” Rat says and goes to open the building. Henry and I stand in the lot. The ground is covered in crushed rock. I kick at it with my toe and a cloud of dust rises up, making my shoes all chalky, hiding the drips of spray paint. There’s spilled oil stains in a few spots. Big, dark splotches that look like dried blood.
Rat rolls the garage door up, sheet metal clinking on the rail. Inside, there’s a car on the hoist. Half the engine is on the garage floor. Tools and shelves filled with chemicals line the walls, and a layer of grime coats the metal chairs that Rat scrapes across the floor to us.
“This is where the magic happens.” Rat taps a smoke on the back of the package. He lets it dangle from his mouth as he cups his hand and holds the lighter up to it.
“What magic?” I ask.
Rat gives a crooked smile. A trail of smoke floats out between his lips. He looks to Henry.
“After a car gets lifted, we bring it back here to the chop shop. Rat switches out the plates.”
Rat turns his head and horks up a wad of phlegm. He spits it on the ground, but when he grins at me, a string of saliva stretches from his yellow teeth to his scruffy chin. He wipes it away on his sleeve and I almost puke in my mouth.
“Come on. You’re gonna practise.” Rat takes a putty knife and a long rod off its hook on the wall and we walk back outside to a blue car with a rusted-out body and smashed-in tail lights.
“You look like you’re gonna wuss out on me.” Henry narrows his eyes.
I shrug like I’m totally cool with it. “I’ve never boosted a car before, that’s all.”
Henry shakes his head, disappointed. “By the time I was your age, I was stealing three or four a week.”
“Till you got caught,” I mutter, too low for him to hear.
Rat jimmies the putty knife between the door and car and then slips the rod in. In five seconds, he’s pressed the unlock button and he’s sitting in the driver’s seat. “Hot wiring’s a bit trickier. Everyone’s getting these immobilizers now.” He frowns. “Older cars you can do the old-fashioned way.” I climb in the passenger side to watch. “You gotta break the steering lock to get at the switch. Once you do that, connect the wires and …” The engine sputters to life.
“You try.” Rat and I get out and he locks the car. It takes me a few tries, but I get the car open. The hot wiring is trickier. My fingers don’t know the shape of things and fumble around.
Finally, I get it running and Rat high-fives me.
“The easiest way is to just wait till someone leaves the car running. Happens all the time,” he says, like he’s some Jedi warrior of car thieves. “Bump and snag works, too.”
I laugh at the name.
“You pull up behind someone and tap their car, just give it a little bump. When they get out to check the damage, the second guy hops in and takes off in the car.”
Rat pulls some beers out of a fridge in the back. A question’s been lodged in my throat. “But no one gets hurt, right? What if there’s a kid or something in the back seat?”
Henry kind of snorts and shakes his head. “You’re not some kind of hippie, are you? Hanging out with the Polish kid made you soft. You’re not a faggot, are you?”
You were the one in jail, I want to say, but I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut around Henry.
I shake my head, careful not to get too uptight about it. If he knows I don’t like it when he talks about Koob, he’ll just do it more.
“Hey, Rat, are you gonna use all that spray paint?” I ask. Cans of it sit in rows on a workbench, some isn’t even opened.
He shrugs. “You could take a few cans. Al won’t miss it.”
Koob will be pumped when I show up with some free cannons. “We done for the day?”
Henry nods. “We can meet up tomorrow, give you some more practice. Here,” Henry says and pulls something out of his pocket. “Little present for good behaviour.”
The train yards smell like grinding metal, rust, and oil. Like dirt and gravel and black gunk that gets stuck under your fingernails. I let my pack drop to the ground and unzip it. Koob leans over to take a look. He gives a low whistle as I line up the cans of Rusto. “Where’d you get all that? That’s like $50 worth of paint!”
“Didn’t even have to steal it or nothing. One of Henry’s friends gave it to me.” I don’t say nothing else, not what I was doing with Henry or where we were. If he finds out Henry wants me to steal cars for him, he’ll lose his shit.
The street lamp turns the ground orange. Insects buzz around the bulbs. Masses of them. A lot of the train cars have tags. It’s like a train graveyard at night. Quiet. In the daytime, wheels grind on tracks and machines are so loud you have to yell to be heard.
This is where Mr. K hurt his leg. Koob told me he couldn’t hear the guys shouting at him, warning him about the load that was about to come down. Too late, he tried to run, but not all of him made it. I think that’s why Koob likes to paint the cars. A “screw you!” for hurting his dad.
I hold a small bag up, dangling it in front of Koob’s face. “Look what else I got.” Four joints, expertly rolled.
“I don’t want to be high when I paint,” Koob says, shaking his head.
I
