Stolen Me by K. Michael Washington (read with me .TXT) 📕

Before the bus’ engine had faded completely in the distance, the sounds of our caravan drowned it. We sat idling in the darkness of that garage. Every driver knew the score. Get in your car, start your car and wait. Nicky was coolly hunting for something on the radio, I was sweating more and more by the second. It was like we were waiting to get caught. Then right before I was going to ask Nicky what the fuck was going on. Someone started gunning an engine, everyone followed suite. Nobody within miles of that garage could have missed this. The sound was bright as daylight. We started to move. One by one in complete darkness the cars exited following each other closely. As planned, not once did a single driver use the brake pedal as we made our way swiftly through a few turns taking us off the grounds of the now empty garage. The lights came on and the engines roared. Before I knew it we had reached seventy miles per hour, seventy-five, eighty, ninety, one hundred.

“Quit gawking at the speedometer! We need your eyes on the road, heat is coming for sure.”

“How long are we going to stay like this Nicky? We’re gonna get nabbed for sure as a moving car show.”

Slightly maneuvering the wooden steering wheel, he turned to me. A strip of moonlight landed across his face, he was trying not to smile. He looked back at the road and must have floored the gas pedal. I felt a light tug as the car accelerated. The engine was growling now, Nicky spoke over it. “The guy you met tonight is a fucking genius. He’s some king of legend or something. Big time crook, back from the dead pulling off one more heist. Movie shit. My old man did some time in the joint when I was a kid.

“Was it for grand theft auto?” Nicky took my question as rhetorical, but I really would have liked to know. He took a moment to make some maneuvers jumping three spots in the caravan.

“Look man, all I know is whenever my Dad talked about getting locked up he always said it wouldn’t have happened if he had listened to Freeman Braddock.”

Then the car launched into outer space and I was weightless, cold, and couldn’t breathe. I thought aloud. “How is this possible? Why am I doing this?

Empathetic but unenlightened Nicky gave his penny, while racing paste several more cars. “What, sitting shotgun in a stolen car? For the money muthafucka.”

The caravan had turned into a dogfight, but before I questioned my safety with Nicky behind the wheel I questioned my morality. Denial blazed through my thoughts like a wildfire. “I was supposed to be something Nicky! Do something with my life, they were giving me opportunity.”

The faster and harder he drove the smarter Nicky seemed to get. “You’re already something man. People like you and me change the world. A lot more people would live the criminal life if God had handed out balls as often as he did ability.”

This was his father’s rhetoric.

Nicky explained. “Everybody in America knows that you can claim the front passenger seat of a motor vehicle by calling shotgun. Why do you think they call it that? Some badass loner thug muthafucker with a big ass gauge would jump in his car after pumping slugs in some punks and toss his only friend and protector across the seat next to him. That’s why who ever is “shotgun” in any situation, your right hand man has to be solid, whether you’re legal or illegal. You need to get your mind together and start being my shotgun. You don’t want to be one of the ones that get caught do you?”

Nicky meant everything he said. He had been indoctrinated into this life, but somewhere encoded in my D.N.A. there was a need to be the same. The thoughts and fears of following in my father’s footsteps morphed into memories of the lie that stole me from him. No longer cold, rage blazed through me. The bitterness I felt for not knowing my pedigree was the ashes. Then I heard it. Over the thoughts, over the engine, I heard it, the faint and distant, but unmistakable sound of sirens. “Nicky the cops are coming! Get the fuck out of here, I hear the fucking cops!”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?”

“Nobody is gonna split until the cops show up. Back on these roads we wouldn’t even know what direction there coming from.”

“I know.” I said, almost to myself. Something about the maps flashed in my mind. “Three main roads ran parallel southwest to northeast, same as our goal! Between main road one and two is a maze of curved roads separating it! But between two and three, it was built like a ladder, one with a lot of missing rungs. You could see a cop coming from miles. The roads don’t curve.”

“One problem!” Nicky says. “Where are we now?”

“I thought you said you had it down?”

Now he played dumb. “Had what?”

“You looked at the damn map for a few seconds and all cool and shit you said “I got it down.”

“Yeah, because I do! Follow the boss, duh.”

“Doesn’t matter Nicky, where heading north. I got it now.” This whole time I’ve just been riding shotgun. It wasn’t arcades machines or car stereos, but it all lead to jail just the same if you get caught. If I was gonna get caught, it wouldn’t be because of someone else making the wrong move. “Turn right first chance you get and stay east as long as possible. We’ll know when were there. There’ll be a lot of open space. Maybe corn farms or something. We get to that road and make a left and it will take us all the way to the river.” At that very moment Nicky drops gears and hugs a tight right turn leaving the pack and the sound of sirens behind. After a few turns we managed to find our first straight road. We road it until it met main road number three. Which, appropriately enough was State Route 3. As we sped away, the flashing sirens were more like Christmas lights sparkling out the driver side window in the distance. We both quietly wondered how many got away. An hour later we knew. Only two cars made it, him and us. Never needing to turn Nicky got us to the river in quickly. Finding our dock was another story. After a few wrong turns and a little spat, Nicky and I pulled onto Pier 23 just in time to catch my father making his get away.

FATHER

When I gave up looking for my son, this pain, that I had felt burning inside of me smoldered out. Hope in all forms can be extinguished by reality. I would never find my son. I looked for solace in the fact that he was somewhere alive, but found little. Impossible to forgive, I instead just tried to forget, but some anger would always lay in wanting, dormant, inside of me. My child was kidnapped and the way I saw it, things wouldn’t be truly right until whoever took him paid. No time to obsess though, least about that. It was time to go to work.

With the money I had, I got myself set up with a place to stay, under the name Jeff Searcy. I rented an aged Navy Blue Ford Contour that some local mechanics used as a loaner car to keep my name off paper and using the dealer plates to keep me from being hot on the road. I had been out of prison for six months now and the only money I had made was the fifty bucks that was in Jeff Searcy’s wallet when I picked his pocket for his I.D. I didn’t even plan on boosting his wallet, but the guy looked just like me. I had to get him. The fifty bought me a great steak and a bottle of whine at a little place on The Hill. I thanked Mr. Searcy by using his I.D. to rent my house and then quickly giving him his identity back by permanently disposing of his belongings.

The Hill was the nickname for a historically Italian neighborhood in St. Louis, named appropriately for the elevation. I felt criminally cliché looking for work in the Italian part of town. I wish it were as simple as going to the mob for work, but that’s movie shit. I just knew a guy. A guy named Nicky. Nicky Petronelli. Way back when I was just getting my feet wet, he did some time behind a string of robberies. Funny thing was he only did three of the ten he was charged with. He copped to all ten for a shorter sentence and to avoid a trial. The last robbery was a sting by half ass local cops. Nicky put up all the fight his six-shooter allowed him, allowing them to wave an attempted murder charge in his face. I told Nicky it was way to hot to be working the stations when I bumped into him casing one. What I didn’t tell him was that I had just robbed seven gas stations in two days and the cops were holding the news back playing catch that crook. Even back then, I knew the lack of publicity on the stick-ups meant the cops were setting up a sting. But far be it from me to break the news and warn my next victim. So I couldn’t give Nick more than a little guidance. He writes off the advice as scared talk since I was at least ten years his junior. He says “Thanks kid.” like he’s blowing me off. The guy left a wife and kid behind when he went to the joint. Somehow, his jail house advertising of me being right got to someone important and landed me a few big money jobs over the years while he was locked up. I hadn’t seen him since that day, but I had heard he inherited a real nice bar on the hill in St. Louis when his Uncle Tony passed away. Nick was a third generation gangster, and a lifetime criminal, just like me. No matter how many legit dollars we get, we can’t stop looking for loot. So I knew he would at least be able to point me in the right direction and I could trust him to be quiet about it.

I slipped into Tony’s unnoticed, and found a place at the bar. The St. Louis chamber of commerce listed the place as being owned by one Nicky Petronelli. It only took me one phone call to find him. I had become very resourceful when it came to locating people in the hunt for my son. The place reminded me of a speakeasy, only one visible way in or out. The bar extended the length of the room adjacent to several privacy booths. Tables and chairs littered the rest of the floor. Two doors that must have led to the bathrooms were in the back. The dark wooden floors seemed to give birth to the furniture and the walls. The wood paneling ran halfway up. The smoked stained formerly white walls finished to a matching ceiling. I recognized Nicky sitting with a group of well-dressed men at a table lit by candle almost in the back of the bar. The years hadn’t been kind to him. Except his hair, he still had a great head of hair not single one was out of place. Once I saw Nicky stomp a guy half to death for trying to cheat him at dice. His hair got messed up, but one swipe of the hand and the guy was ready for Sunday dinner. I ordered a scotch from the really made-up woman who looked like someone’s grandmother who had rediscovered life after being widowed. Both her jeans and shirt complimented what curves she had left. I took my drink and made my approach