Black Violet

by Alex Hyland

  ‘He told me about San Diego,’ she said. ‘The islands. Tell me.’

  ‘The islands,’ I said.

  ‘You rented a boat. What kind?’

  ‘Seventy-foot sloop,’ I said. ‘Sailed it up the coast. Just the two of us.’

  'Yeah? Did you swim? He said you met a couple of girls. What were their names?’

  I couldn’t remember. I just pictured Jon and me on the boat. Jon laughing as he gazed up at the brilliant white sail, his sunglasses flashing against the cobalt sky. The two of us singing when we saw the lantern light on the sea that night. Sharing tequila with the yacht that drifted by.

  A perfect postcard of a memory. And it tore me like paper.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt him, Ella,’ I said.

  She nodded.

  I gazed emptily at her. ‘Some roads...you just can’t turn around on them, you know.’

  And I tried to remember. My brother. I hadn’t meant any harm.

  I was nineteen when I started stealing. I’d like to say it was desperation that drove me to it, but it wasn’t. I did it for the joy of it, pure and simple.

  Not that life had been easy going for me up until then. Uncle Harry had kicked me out of the house that year – which was no huge surprise to anyone. We’d been arguing a lot, mostly about what I was doing with myself. Jon had just graduated in law and been offered a job at the Washington Post – but me? I’d dropped out of high school, and had done little since except drink, get into fights, and lose one stupid job after another. Car wash. Video store.

  Then that March I got arrested. Nothing serious. I got drunk one night, broke into a warehouse and spent two hours driving forklifts around until the police showed up. I don’t even know why I did it. Harry gave me hell for it. Jon too. Normally Jon cut me a lot of slack, but after the arrest, all his frustrations with my drinking and my indifference came pouring out.

  ‘You know how heartbroken mom and dad would have been to see you now?’ he said.

  I nodded and poured myself a glass of whiskey. He slapped it from my hand.

  ‘You’re not stupid, Michael! Why are you like this?’

  I stared at him. Anything I could have said would have just made things worse.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with you,’ he said. ‘You want me to turn down this job? Is that it? You want me to stay here?’

  ‘Do what you want. Just leave me alone.’

  I picked the glass up from the floor and poured myself another drink. He watched me for a moment, then grabbed his jacket and left.

  It’s hard living in someone’s shadow. Harder still, when you love that person – when you want them to achieve the greatness that you know is going to leave you in the dark. And Jon cast a dark shadow. At school, at sports, with girls – he was always the guy who could. I knew it. Mom and dad knew it. It wouldn’t have been any surprise to them that Jon was at the Washington Post. Straight out of the gate, he’d landed a job at one of the biggest dailies in the country. It was typically Jon. Brilliant.

  I moved out of Uncle Harry’s that March and got myself a job at a dry cleaners in the city. Found a shitty little apartment in the Mission – a damp basement that looked like it had bruised walls. But it was fine. I worked most days. Got drunk most nights. I hardly knew I was there. I just rolled through the days – no direction, no meaning – in a drip-fed haze of cheap whiskey and dry cleaning fumes. If you’d told me then that I’d be clearing three grand a week in less than a year, I probably wouldn’t have even had the energy to laugh at you.

  But it was coming sure enough. Life rolls like a truck, but it can turn on a dime. And it turned for me one weekend at work.

  Sure Mac’s Dry Cleaners was owned by this nervous, buttoned-down guy named Frank McLaren. He was in his forties and a little on the heavy side – not really fat, just kind of soft and doughy-looking. But he was sensitive about it. He’d go to the gym every morning before work, then get so depressed that nothing had changed, he’d pound down a box of donuts. I swear, I heard him cry once. It was a shame. He was a decent guy.

  But we had this regular customer – a pug-nosed thug in his thirties named Benny. Silk suit. Black Porsche. About as charming as a broken ankle. He’d peel cash from sweaty rolls of bills, and talk about all the girls he’d fucked like he was Brad Pitt or something. Ugly motherfucker. He could have driven a Ferrari full of Perrier through Ethiopia, he wouldn’t get laid. But Frank would listen and smile, be polite – Benny was a paying customer. Then one morning Benny came in wearing a skintight vest, and Frank cracked some joke about his weight and how he could never wear stuff like that. Benny saw this as a green light. From then on, every time he came in, he’d make some stupid joke about Frank. Every time. Not even funny jokes, just nasty. You could see Frank buckling under the weight of this idiot. I just wanted to hit the fucker – and there was one morning when Benny saw that I was close to it. He eyed me for a moment, then started talking about how connected he was. That he knew Sid White, this local hood – like it was meant to scare me. Like I gave a shit. Frank stepped in and told me that it’s fine.

  After that, Frank would send me out the back whenever he saw Benny’s Porsche pull up. I’d do as he asked – I’d stay out of sight. But Benny knew I was there, and he’d just crack his stupid jokes even louder.

  I did nothing about it, and had no intention either until Linda came to visit me one Saturday. It was the first time I’d seen her since I’d moved out of Uncle Harry’s. We spent the day in bed, then decided to head out to the G-Bar in North Beach. It wasn’t really my kind of place – a lot of Swiss watches and over-priced drinks – but some blues band that Linda liked were playing there.

  The bar was packed wall to wall that night – and although I didn’t see Benny at first, I recognized his self-important howl cutting through the clamor. He was sitting at a table, laughing around with a bunch of meat-heads. On his lap was some blonde wearing the heaviest make-up I’d ever seen – it looked like she’d drawn a cartoon of herself on her own face. I stared coldly at Benny as he took out his wallet and ordered champagne for the table.

  Linda glanced at me. ‘Who’s that?’

  I shook my head. ‘This client at the store, doesn’t matter.’

  I grabbed a couple of Jamesons from the bar, then dragged Linda as far from Benny’s table as I could. We found a little corner and made ourselves at home.

  The band played. Crawling Kingsnake. Heavy blues, but they got the crowd going. I was never much of a blues hound, but Linda loved it. As she got up to dance, I went to get us some more drinks. I squeezed through the crowd, then slowed. Benny and his buddies were propping up the bar ahead of me. I guess I could have waited, gone to some other part of the bar – but I didn’t.

  I squeezed through and handed the barman a twenty. ‘Two Jamesons please.’

  Benny turned to me and laughed.

  ‘Laundry boy!’ he said. ‘Hey, this guy cleans my shirts!’

  I nodded.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Good,’ I replied.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘How’s that fat fucking boss of yours?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ I said.

  It was strange – I wanted to make some smart-ass comment, but I just gazed at him. All I could think about was the wallet that I’d seen him take from his jacket. I’d done a lot of magic as a kid, sleight of hand. It fell away from me after Mom and Dad died, but my hands were itching as I stared at Benny. He turned to his friends and cracked some dumb joke about Frank being the size of an elephant. As he did, I glanced at his inside left pocket, and wondered how I’d do it. He was standing close, but not close enough. Better he approached me, than the other way around.

  ‘Elephant?’ I said.

  He turned to me. ‘Yeah. You got a problem with that?’

  ‘It’s just there are three-year-olds who could come up with something smarter than that.’

  He leaned in close to me. ‘Watch yourself,’ he said.

&nb
sp; His jacket hung open right in front of me. It was almost disappointing how predictable he was.

  I smiled. ‘I didn’t know stupid came in so many flavors.’

  He grabbed me by my neck. As his friends restrained him, I slipped my fingers into his jacket pocket. I felt his wallet brush against my fingertips, but I let it go – he was paying for all the drinks that night, he’d miss it in a second. Plus, I could already feel the serrated teeth of his car key.

  His friends pulled him off me.

  ‘The guy’s not worth it, fuck him,’ said one of them.

  ‘You’re nothing!’ Benny said to me. ‘Fucking laundry boy!’

  I did my best to look scared – no confidence here.

  ‘Motherfucker!’ he said.

  He reached into his jacket and took out his wallet. He threw a couple of bills onto the bar, then headed back to the table with his friends. I watched him for a moment, then slipped his car key into my pocket.

  I couldn’t believe the thrill of it. A rush like I’d never felt. Like I was invisible – standing right in front of him, and he couldn’t see me.

  I grabbed Linda. ‘Want to go for a ride?’

  Linda laughed as we raced down Columbus in Benny’s Porsche. The turbo growling under my foot.

  ‘You’re sure he won’t think it was you,’ she said.

  ‘Laundry boy? Come on.’

  I turned on the radio – dance music filled the car.

  Linda smiled. ‘So where do you want to go?’

  I eyed her for a moment.

  ‘Hunter’s Point,’ I said. It was a disused dock in the south of the city. ‘We’ll dump the fucking thing in the bay.’

  She clapped excitedly, and I hit the accelerator.

  We reached the abandoned warehouses at Hunter’s Point, then pulled up by one of the docks. As Linda slipped the car into neutral, I grabbed it by its rear spoiler. It’s funny, you’d think that rolling a Porsche off the end of a dock would be a moment to remember – that watching the water swallow it up would be some kind of marker. But it felt strangely muted to me. The car splashed, then bubbled into the bay, but all I could think about was the moment that I’d lifted the key. That invisible second amid the chaos of the bar. The thrill of it.

  It changed everything.

  A single degree doesn’t sound like much, but it’s the difference between ice skating and drowning. I felt like I was above the water for the first time in years. Like I could breathe.

  Benny turned up with his laundry a few days later. He didn’t mention the car – he just cracked his stupid jokes, but I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t care about him, nor Frank. The only thing I was interested in was getting back out there and finding that thrill.

  I started spending my lunch breaks drifting through the crowds in Union Square. Brushing past people and taking their wallet. Asking for the time and lifting their phone. It’s amazing how close a stranger will stand when they’re giving you directions – like the words ‘second turn on the left’ don’t mean anything unless they’re squeezed shoulder to shoulder with you, pointing it out.

  Wallets, watches and phones, they just flowed. It was incredible. I hadn’t done any sleight of hand in years. Aside from an uncanny ability to make girls happy behind the gym building, I hadn’t given the dexterity of my hands much thought at all. But the touch was still there.

  I felt like this force on the street. Invisible. Unstoppable. The one rule I set myself was to only lift from people who looked like they could afford it. I wasn’t interested in making some struggling guy’s day even worse. And so I’d looked for the Rolexes and the Tags. The guys with the expensive shoes and the pretty girlfriends.

  It might have been crime, but I’d found something that made me feel alive. It’s weird – criminals often say that they fell into a life of crime, but for me, it felt like I rose into it. Like I blossomed. Pickpocketing had all the beauty of magic, but with a twist of danger. A garden on a cliff edge. I was at home there.

  On a good day, I’d make more money in one hour that I would in a whole week at the dry cleaners. I handed in my notice to Frank, and two weeks later I stopped working completely. I was a professional thief now.

  Needless to say, I didn’t mention anything to Jon. His career was moving at the Washington Post, and I didn’t want to mess around with that. He’d been in DC less than six months, and was already pissing off congressmen and getting the stories into print – he loved it. If I’d told him what was happening with me, he’d have just quit, come home and tried to set me straight – be the responsible big brother that he’d always been. And he’d have resented the hell out of me for it. So I told him that I’d left the dry cleaners like it was nothing. Like I’d lost another stupid job. He’d sounded concerned – but losing jobs was par for the course for me, and he knew it. I’d always seemed lost to him, but for the first time since mom and dad died, I was anything but.

  I hadn’t intended to lift Benny’s car key that night, but the move proved prophetic. A year later and I was regularly stealing luxury cars and selling them to David Kesari, this hood who worked out of Golden Gate Park. My cover story was that I’d got a job selling used cars. But by the end of that year I was making way too much money for some grunt on a used car lot – three or four grand a week, sometimes more. I wasn’t spending much, but even so, I needed a better explanation.

  I called Jon and told him that I was thinking about starting my own business. That I’d made a few contacts, and had this idea to ship luxury cars to Europe. He’d sounded over the moon to hear it. I’d been in the ‘used’ car business for about a year at that point – as far as Jon was concerned, I’d found a career. Setting up on my own was the logical next step.

  ‘You’ll make a success of it,’ he said. ‘You’ve got it in you, Michael, I know it.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Anything I can do to help?’ he said. ‘I’ve got twelve grand put aside.’

  ‘Jon...’

  ‘I’m just saying. If you need it, it’s yours.’

  I stayed quiet. My trusting brother trying to pull me out of his shadow. I felt like shit. Stealing Ferraris from bankers? Who gives a fuck. But deceiving my own brother like that?

  Lying to Jon was definitely the worst part of it all. I started distancing myself from him – canceling trips to see him. We always tried to spend at least one weekend a month together, either in San Francisco or DC. But I just found it too hard to face him and answer questions about my new business. Everybody lies – it’s the oil that keeps the engine running smoothly – but this was different. This was going to be a whole production that I’d have to maintain for God knows how long. A constant stream of deceit – he wouldn’t even know who I was.

  And for what reason? Money? I didn’t care about it that much. It was the thrill of the steal that I couldn’t let go of. But what did that mean? Can criminal life even have any meaning? I’ve never seen an identikit that’s smiling, I’ll tell you that. I might have found my feet, but it was as if there was nothing beneath them.

  I tried to stop lifting, but I just kept slipping back. I’d see some opportunity, and before my moral compass even began to twitch, I’d have the keys in my hand. That sense of power flowing through me. I kept setting myself targets – I’ll stop next week, next month – but they were as useless as new year’s resolutions. Even if they’d been UN resolutions, I doubt they’d have worked – a bunch of peacekeepers following me around, I probably would have ended up stealing their jeep. It was an addiction and it wasn’t going to let go of me any time soon, I knew that.

  I decided to tell Jon the truth and just let the chips fall. I knew it might cost us our relationship – at least for a while – but with no meaning to what I was doing, it just wasn’t worth the heartache of lying to him about it.

  I decided to tell him after his birthday. Jon’s twenty-fifth was just around the corner, and I didn’t want to ruin that for him. Birthdays had always been important to us, and that ye
ar I was flying us both out to London for the Wimbledon tournament. Jon was a huge tennis fan, and I’d bought us center court seats for the men’s final – six thousand dollars a ticket. Ill-gotten gains, but fuck it, they were already paid for. Not that Jon knew we were going to London, let alone Wimbledon – I just told him to pack a bag.

  We spent a week in London. Clubs. Restaurants. I rented a ‘67 Bentley and drove us to Glastonbury for a night. I really laid it on thick – storing away every smile on his face before we returned home and everything turned to shit.

  Then the evening before the men’s final, we ended up in a pub on Baker Street. I hadn’t mentioned the tickets the whole week, I wanted to keep them a surprise – a grand finale.

  As we sat drinking, I glanced at the cloudless sky.

  ‘We really lucked out with the weather this week,’ I said.

  Jon nodded and took a deep mouthful of beer.

  ‘Actually, I was going to ask you,’ he said. ‘Is there a plan for tomorrow?’

  I eyed him carefully. ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘It’s the Wimbledon final. They’re setting up a screen in the hotel bar. I thought we could watch it before we headed out.’

  ‘Oh man, I wish you’d told me. I’ve already arranged something.’

  ‘No, that’s cool,’ he said. He flashed his eyes at me. ‘So what have we got lined up?’

  I stared back at him for a moment. I hadn’t intended on telling him then, but the tickets were burning a hole in my pocket. I couldn’t resist it. I reached into my pocket and placed the tickets on the table in front of him.

  ‘Happy Birthday,’ I said.

  His eyes widened. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Men’s final. Court side.’

  He just gazed at the tickets.

  ‘I...I don’t know what to say, Michael.’

  I smiled.

  A kid sitting at the next table then leaned toward us. Neat blond hair, he was maybe twelve years old, sitting with his dad.

  He stared at the tickets. ‘Are they really for tomorrow?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘The real deal.’

  ‘Could I just...?’