“Hit it,” said Marcel Wentworth. That was the moment the wheels came off completely.
Success seemed to be only just beyond his reach.
The heist couldn’t have been simpler, at least not with Marcel involved. He was an inveterate over-planner and worrier and the last guy you called when you were putting together a string if nobody else cared enough to play the game. But he showed up; some days that was enough.
When the call went out that cold day in early January—Billy Jamerson had a score—some mouths in the know started to water. But when word got around the score was personal, they dried right up. And that’s how Jamerson and Marcel wound up meeting on the sidewalk.
There in front of Edna’s Greasy Spoon, they stood nonchallantly and looked variously at the sky, the gutter, the clouds, and their shoes. Muttering out the sides of their mouths, Jamerson got Marcel up to speed.
De Angelis, the firm hand on the rudder of most extracurricular acquisitions north of 7th, had come into possession of something that belonged to Jamerson. He wouldn’t say what, but it was small enough to hold in one hand and it wasn’t valuable to anybody else. De Angelis had a habit of keeping personal trophies—and this was personal—out where any visitor could see them, but where control could be maintained if anybody tried to get handsy.
Marcel saw the line. Whatever Jamerson’s sore-spot score was, it was in there with a bunch of other things De Angelis had acquired, and that people wanted, bad. And Marcel was the kind of rat to keep a shiny thing or two around, and maybe a little incidental cheese might come his way as a friendly fee.
It was a pretty simple layout. The score was off Maple, next to a city park. Marcel would head to the park and make a bunch of noise to draw out the De Angelis ire while Jamerson snuck in the side entrance. Then, giving pursuit the slip, Marcel would head around and meet Jamerson to grab the goods. The way Jamerson explained it, it seemed like there weren’t too many variables. They’d make a trial run to test it out first, on a Sunday morning when there shouldn’t be many people around. They’d walk the whole process through, case the physical plant, and make sure the getaway route was clear.
The getaway, of course, was key. Jamerson had a line on a buggy in a driveway at a residence near the park. He could maneuver it into place for the trial run, give it a spin, and they’d put it back with nobody the wiser for a full run Monday morning.
They put on dark blue jackets—Jamerson’s idea—and walked the sidewalk, discussing the best way to draw attention in the park. Marcel though he could probably just start shouting loud enough to draw attention, but Jamerson thought a little finesses was in order: maybe some good, loud singing would be easier to explain if everything went wrong. It was the first week of January, after all, still in the Christmas season, and the snow that had fallen over the New Year was still on the ground. The polar winds cut across the sidewalk and the park, and blew away most of the goodwill that had accumulated in the neighborhood, but they could gin up enough fake to really belt out some loud carols. And, if they did a little practice run today, it wouldn’t seem outlandish if there was another song-related disturbance tomorrow.
It wasn’t just early January, though. It was Epiphany. Ten years ago, there was that wreck on Epiphany—neither Jamerson nor Marcel knew the actual details, but word got around sometimes—so De Angelis was always home on the anniversary. When Jamerson and Marcel started singing off-key carols in the park, there was De Angelis on the porch, swinging her cane and shouting blue blazes.
Marcel panicked, but Jamerson was always the coolest guy in the room. He saw his in when she stepped off the porch and onto the sidewalk. He faked left, then dashed around her to the right and squirted through the door into her living room. There on the credenza was a gleaming pile of everything De Angelis had collected. Jamerson shot out his hand like a snake, snagged the prize, then turned in time to see De Angelis darkening the doorway. He dived between her legs and slid down the porch steps.
Marcel was already in the buggy when Jamerson shot past him and into the back yard of the house.
“Hit it,” said Marcel to himself, then punched the release pedal on the brake and the front axel snapped cleanly in two. The body of the soapbox car hit the pavement with a sickening thud. Through the tears blossoming in his eyes, Marcel saw a watery vision of De Angelis closing in behind him.
A week later, Marcel’s desk was empty in homeroom. Word got around that De Angelis caught Marcel breaking into her house, and that he stole something. She hadn’t seen his face, but she recognized his jacket. She called the cops and his parents and, word was, he was going to another school now. A military school. It seemed unfair because he didn’t have anything on him when they searched him.
If Jamerson knew anything about it, he wasn’t talking. He just rolled his prized World Series ball in his mitt and smiled an unnerving smile.