could see him as he got into the Ferrari. Doug quickly hopped in the other side, and Mitch found the keys and fired it up.
“Keep your head down,” he told Doug, as he put it in reverse. No clutch pressure at all, the gears just seemed to slide into each other, and the steering wheel was equally smooth. I guess there’s a reason why you pay all this money, Mitch thought as he shifted into first and hit the gas. The car pushed forward, and he felt the power, increased the acceleration, and burst out of the parking lot. A puff of flying snow and smoke followed them.
“Yee-haw!” Mitch screamed. As he’d roared past Kevin, who was making conversation with the two valets, he had seen them notice the flying Ferrari screaming off into the night. He had caught a glimpse of the Italian kid spinning his head back to where the car had been just moments before. Then the scene had disappeared behind the trees and the driveway had opened up before them.
“Shit,” Doug said. “We gotta wait for Kevin. He knows where we’re going.” Kevin had arranged for them to take the Ferrari to a garage that was less than two miles away, but Mitch and Doug had never thought to ask for directions. The plan had always been to follow Kevin, who was supposed to be waiting in the street.
Mitch pulled over in the darkened, tree-lined driveway, waiting to see Kevin’s lights behind him. Nothing. Apparently, when Kevin had seen them steal the car, he had just sat there, idling, and continued talking to the valet. Mitch rolled the window down, stuck his head out, and peered back down the driveway, as if that would somehow hurry Kevin up.
“Shit, the cops are going to be here in two or three minutes. What the hell is he doing?”
Doug sat in the passenger seat, petrified. They could hear the idling of the Ferrari’s powerful motor and felt the fresh, cold air of the woods in winter. Silence. No Kevin.
“He does know we just stole a car, right?” Mitch spat. “I mean, does he realize this is against the law?” Mitch was aware of sweat breaking out on his forehead despite the cold.
Doug said nothing. He was staring straight ahead.
Finally, Mitch saw headlights as Kevin’s truck came out of the parking lot, speeding toward them. He felt pressure lifting from his chest and was aware of being able to breathe again. The truck went flying past and Mitch gunned the Ferrari and fell in behind it.
Kevin didn’t even stop when he reached the road, just spun right, throwing up a cloud of dirt and sticks, which bounced off the front end of the Ferrari. Bet the dude who wanted his car parked away from all the others wouldn’t have been too happy about that, Mitch thought with an evil laugh. Kevin had his gas pedal to the floor; they were climbing up to ninety miles an hour. The Ferrari was in fourth gear and barely feeling it. Mitch started screaming.
“Whooooooohah!” he yelled, and looked over at Doug, whose face was contorted in worry, or misery. “This baby can fly!”
“Just… just watch the road,” Doug said, his voice shaky. “Ice.” He was trying to fasten his seat belt, but couldn’t find the end of it, and he was wriggling around in his seat. It was annoying Mitch.
“Dude, just sit still!”
Doug said nothing but, mercifully, did sit still. Up ahead, Kevin put on his turn signal, and a few seconds later, they turned onto a small road, then took another turn, and then Kevin pulled up another tree-lined driveway deep in the woods. This was a nice long one too, and at the end was a large shack big enough to be a two-car garage. There was a light on inside.
They had come up the dirt-and-gravel driveway so fast that smoke and snow and debris filled the air as Kevin jumped out of the truck and ran up to the door of the garage. He rang the bell, and as he waited, Mitch could see his breath puffing up into the air. He was panting.
“Dude,” said Doug. “I wanna get out of this car.”
“Go ahead,” said Mitch. “Ask Kevin where he wants me to park it.”
Before Doug could move, a burly man in coveralls with a handlebar mustache answered the door. He was holding a welding torch in one hand and looking around the parking lot as he greeted Kevin. He saw the Ferrari and put the torch down, and came over to greet Mitch.
“Wow,” he said, his feet crunching across the snow. “This one’s a beaut. A 599.” He turned to Kevin. “You took the LoJack out, right?”
Kevin froze. Mitch froze. Doug got out the car and said, “Hey.”
LoJack. Mitch and Kevin both knew what it was. Until that second, it had never occurred to either of them that the Ferrari might have an antitheft device that might need to be disabled, a device that at that moment was probably madly signaling to anyone who cared to know where it was.
LoJack, Mitch thought. Well, I’ll be damned. He could see by Kevin’s expression that he was thinking much the same thing.
“No,” Mitch said finally when it became obvious that Kevin was too thunderstruck to answer.
The burly guy jumped back from the Ferrari as if it had tried to bite him. “You gotta get this thing outta here,” he said.
Kevin nodded.
“NOW!” the guy screamed. “Go!” He began waving his arms frantically, backing away from them. “There’ll be cops crawling all over me in ten minutes! Get the fuck outta here!” He ran back inside his garage and slammed the door.
Mitch was still sitting in the idling Ferrari and he looked up at a downcast, deflated Kevin standing over him. “Where do you want to take this thing?” he asked.
Kevin stared at his shoes for a second before snapping out of it. “We gotta dump it somewhere,” he said.
They stared at each other, the forest quiet except for the sound of the idling Ferrari. A feeling of calm control came over Mitch as his inner commando took over once more.
“I got an idea,” he said, aware there was no time for debate. “We passed a steep hill on the way here. Those hills have truck ramps that lead off into the woods. You know, for when trucks lose their brakes? We park the Ferrari on one of those escape ramps and get the hell out of here.”
Kevin nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Doug, you ride with Kevin,” Mitch said. “No use in both of us getting caught in this thing.”
Doug, who had no problem with that, was in Kevin’s truck before Mitch had finished his sentence. Mitch peeled out down the long driveway, slamming into potholes and flying over ruts. Screw it, the Ferrari was doomed now. If he couldn’t sell it, what difference did it make if it got beaten up? He pulled out onto the road, which was still dark and lifeless. No other traffic, the only good thing about this night so far. Less than half a mile down the road, Mitch saw the first escape ramp, a patch of sand that ran off behind some trees. He stopped, turned around, and drove as fast as he could into the sand, grounding the Ferrari. He had gotten at least a hundred feet into the trees, concealing the Ferrari from the road.
Mitch shut the car off, leaped out, and slammed the door, then ran over to Kevin’s truck, which was idling at the end of the truck ramp. He jumped in and Kevin peeled off in the same second. Mitch pulled the wildly swinging passenger door shut.
There was total silence in the truck. After a few minutes, Kevin eased off the gas and drove normally. A few seconds after that, two police cars, with their lights flashing, sped past them in the other direction.
“Shit,” Kevin said. “LoJack. Who woulda thought?” No one spoke, so he added, “I told you guys I wasn’t a car thief. Dude, I told anyone who would listen that I wasn’t a car thief.”
“They’ll sure believe you now,” said Mitch.
After a few more minutes, Mitch put his head in his hands and said, “Shit, what a disaster.”
“Coulda been worse,” said Kevin.
“A whole lot worse,” said Doug.
“That’s the spirit,” said Kevin. “Coulda been worse. Coulda been worse.” He began repeating it like a mantra.
As they neared Wilton, the pumping adrenaline had ebbed and their lives began to seem normal again. None of them wanted to talk about the botched Ferrari job and Kevin, determined to talk about something positive, said to Doug, “Dude, I might have a job for you.”
“Walking dogs?”
“No. I don’t have enough dogs for three people. Dealing pills. Interested?”
Ordinarily, the answer would have been no. But business opportunities were scarce and clearly car-thieving wasn’t going to be as lucrative as promised, so Doug said, “Awright.”
“Do you know a lot of people who like pills? Because I can keep you busy. This guy I know, he’s got tons of ’em.”
“Awright,” said Doug, who just a few weeks ago had been thinking of becoming a chopper pilot and just a few hours ago had been imagining himself a famous children’s book author, and who was now realizing that the most realistic career choice at this point was felony trafficking. “I’m sure we can work something out.”
Kevin pulled up to Mitch and Doug’s apartment. He and Mitch briefly reviewed the dog-walking schedule for the next day.
“Wanna come in and smoke a bowl?” Mitch offered.
“Nah, I can’t. Linda thinks something’s up already. I gotta get home.”
They said their goodbyes and Mitch and Doug went in and sat on the couch. No Ferrari, no money. Doug was partly relieved, Mitch knew, but he himself felt nothing but failure and rage. LoJack. He should have known better.
He folded himself into the couch, turned the TV on, and stared at it blankly.
CHAPTER 8
“WHERE DOES KEVIN keep going? I figured I’d ask you,” Linda said cheerfully. She had picked him up that morning to take him to meet a restaurant manager who was looking for a sous-chef trainee, a contact she had made at the dress shop. Doug sensed she had made solving his unemployment problem a personal project, which was good, because his work search so far had involved daydreaming over the classifieds and listening to Kevin pitch a job selling pills. Which, to be honest, sounded better than working as a sous-chef, whatever that was. Despite having worked for four years as a corporate restaurant grill cook, Doug couldn’t
