Hot Wire

by Carson, Gary

  HOT WIRE

  by

  Gary Carson

  Published by Blasted Heath, 2012

  copyright 2012 Gary Carson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  Gary Carson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by JT Lindroos

  Cover photo: Kevin Dooley

  Visit Gary Carson at:

  www.blastedheath.com

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-908688-26-2

  Version 2-1-3

  SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

  CHAPTER ONE

  My last night on the job started like any other night jacking cars on Deacon's payroll. I checked in at the station around eight, then parked my Dodge behind the Hot Box and walked over to the lot to get our work car – a Jeep Wrangler with clean tags and insurance. Buster, the fat drunk who ran the lot, came onto me while I checked the registration, but he was mostly harmless except for his breath. The papers looked OK, so I climbed into the Jeep and he waddled back to the TV in the attendant's booth, mumbling and scratching his ass.

  I called Arn on his cell phone, then drove over to his dump on University to pick him up for another 12-hour shift. He was late again and I had to circle the block for ten minutes before he finally got his act together, but I was too tired to rag at him about it. We went to work and cruised around the East Bay for a couple hours, checking side streets, driveways and parking lots for cars on our target list.

  We drove through Berkeley into Oakland and hit all the usual spots: shopping malls, apartment complexes, movie theaters, Park-N-Ride lots. It was a tedious business. The Bay Area had millions of cars – one set of wheels for every yuppy and Latte Liberal – but we were looking for specific models like the 2002 Audi and the 1993 Acura Integra, all of them easy to steal, more or less, with a high resale value in Mexico and South America. Deacon, our boss, had scribbled the list on an old Pennzoil invoice covered with doodles, cigar ash and coffee stains. What a slob.

  I was driving. Arn rode shotgun, working a brew, his boots propped on the dash. He was seventeen, a couple years younger than me, but I was so scrawny that witnesses always thought I was a high school chick and he was my boyfriend or older brother. I was like five-two with mousy blonde hair and glasses and I weighed a hundred pounds if I drank a lot of beer. Deacon liked to use me because he figured nobody would take me for a car thief if they saw me lurking around at night. He had a dozen teams, but me and Arn were top producers.

  We drove around at random, prowling the dark neighborhoods, smoking weed, drinking beer, watching for cops and opportunities. The night started off slow, but it picked up after a while and we had some luck at first – good and bad. Around ten-thirty, we called in the wrecker for a Sentry with wheel locks, then, an hour later, we almost got caught trying to start a Camry with an ignition cut-off. That's how the whole mess started. We got away clean, but we were supposed to switch work cars in case somebody had made our plates, so Arn called the station on his cell phone to see what they wanted us to do.

  "That was Deke," he said, putting away his phone and lighting another joint. Lean and slouched in an EverReady T-shirt, ripped jeans and a pair of Doc Martens with capped toes, he looked like a pot-smoking hillbilly. "We're supposed to take it down to the warehouse. Get it off the road for the night."

  "The warehouse? Why not the lot?"

  "They're almost full, I guess."

  "Wonderful." West Oakland after midnight. I couldn't wait. "How do we get back?"

  "Castel's got a loaner we can use, but we got to get it back tomorrow. Heberto's going to call and let him know we're coming."

  "Heberto's at the station?" I clamped down on the wheel. Deacon's new partner was a psychotic Mestizo who thought I should be frying burritos and squeezing out little Pedros instead of jacking cars with his locos. "What's going on?"

  "I think they got a meeting with Jacobo." Arn snickered. "Ten bucks we get another one of Castel's pimped-out Taco Wagons. Remember that Escalade? Jesus Christ."

  Jacobo was Deacon's bag-man on the Emeryville Auto Theft Detail. He was a sleazoid with fast hands, but he didn't scare me like Heberto's crew.

  "They give me the creeps." I shifted into second and blew through a yellow. "I don't like going down there this time of night."

  "Take it easy," Arn said, but I knew he didn't like it any more than I did. "Oh, yeah. You're supposed to stop by the Hot Box before they close."

  "Vincent called the station? What's he want?"

  "Dunno." He took a hit and coughed up some smoke. "Said it was important."

  "Great." Vincent ran the bar across the street from Deacon's station. The crooked old geezer was my best friend next to Arn. "Steffy probably needs a place to crash again and he's got to get rid of her before he closes."

  "That drugged-out leech? I know she's your cousin and all that crap, but why do you have to put her up every time she gets kicked out by her latest pimp?"

  "Somebody's got to keep her off the street."

  "What for?" He snorted. "Screw the stupid twat."

  "You'll have to get in line for that."

  "Not me." Arn yawned, scratching his chin. "I wouldn't touch that skank with a cattle prod and a dozen rubbers. Even if you soaked her down with Lysol."

  "That's not what I heard," I said. "Arnold."

  He gave me a big, dorky grin – the lying Okie.

  "Don't call me that." He came off embarrassed.

  I reached over and squeezed his shoulder, but he just gave me this dead-fish stare and turned away, cupping the joint in his hands and taking another hit.

  "OK, Arnold," I said, clamping down on the wheel.

  #

  We made the highway and headed west towards the Bay Bridge and San Francisco. The traffic was stop and go, four lanes of brake lights and exhaust, and the Oakland Hills glowed like hidden trouble. As we approached the interchange near the toll plaza, the Bay opened on our right and I could see headlights flickering on the Golden Gate Bridge way off in the distance. On our left, crane lights glared over the Port of Oakland and a channel marker flashed on the water. Something was burning over there – a fire in West Oakland, down behind the docks. I could see it against the skyline: a dull glow, pulsing red lights, a haze of smoke drifting over the warehouse district. It was bad news, but I didn't know that yet.

  "Check it out," Arn said, pointing at the fire. "Somebody torched his momma." Whatever that meant.

  "That's down by Heberto's warehouse," I said. "You better check in and find out what's going on."

  "How come I always have to check in?"

  "I don't want to talk to that snake. He doesn't like me."

  "So what?" he said. "I don't like you, either."

  He made the call, but I couldn't hear what he was saying over the noise of the traffic. I was brooding about the Camry we almost got caught trying to start in Oakland. Late-model Camrys were Number Two on our list and this one had looked nice and juicy: a phantom-gray-pearl 2003 LE with halogen headlamps, rear spoiler and 15-inch aluminum alloy wheels. List price: 25 grand. Maybe more, depending on the accessories. We usually got a flat fee – five-hundred per car – but our cut varied depending on the market south of the border. We could've made more working for ourselves, but that meant poaching on Deacon's territory, a good way to get clipped if he ever found out about it.

  Our puny little cut was starting to bug me.

  "OK." Arn holstered his cell phone, belched, then settled back and rubbed his eyes. "It's s
ome place a couple miles from the warehouse, one of those export companies on the west end or something. There's a lot of cops and fire engines, so they locked the warehouse down for a couple hours. We're supposed to come around by West Grand and buzz at the gate when we get there."

  "Terrific." I caught a face full of exhaust from a passing bus. "This just gets better and better."

  The sky flickered over the Pacific and I could smell tide slop and dead fish on the breeze off the Bay. The traffic picked up for a while, then it slowed to a crawl again. Brake lights flashed. Morons banged their horns. I turned on the radio and punched through the channels: Top 40, static, a midnight news recap.

  The news was the same old stuff, nothing but wars and terrorism and the banks ripping everybody off while the President played golf in Hawaii and the corporations took over the planet. The country was screwed, gas prices through the roof, the TSA groping babies at airports, everybody screeching and howling about how we needed more security and more cops and how we needed to invade this or that country before the terrorists set off a nuke in Peoria and all that crap.

  I turned it off.

  Screw Peoria.

  #

  I took the 880 turn-off and followed the overpass for a couple miles, then I missed the exit, took the next one, and we landed in the middle of the ghetto. Bangers shuffled by in do-rags, hair nets and baggy pants, gave us mad-dog stares and groped themselves for the white chick driving by in her Jeep. I made a wrong turn, got lost, and we ended up cruising the Hood for twenty minutes.

  I wished I had the top down. I wished I had a gun. We finally found West Grand, passed under the highway, crossed some tracks, then turned off a couple blocks from Maritime, the main drag between the Port and the old Army base. Trucks rattled through the industrial wasteland. Heberto's warehouse was down by the East Bay Municipal Sewage plant.

  It was dark down there. A streetlight burned over the lot gate. Heberto leased the warehouse through a front, some kind of Limited Liability Corporation with a tax shelter in the Cayman Islands. The warehouse was U.S. Customs Bonded; no telling who he'd bribed to set that up, but it must've cost a fortune. He had an office in Mexico City and a couple bean counters in Oakland, and Deacon had a guy in the DMV to handle the paperwork for the cars, not to mention the pad he was running with Jacobo. The business had changed since Heberto had come on board. It was a lot bigger for one thing. More sophisticated. More dangerous. Vincent kept telling me it was no place for a runt like me.

  Things had changed about a year ago. Deacon was running a hot-car ring and Heberto was a drug wholesaler looking to expand, so they teamed up like any other corporate merger and started hauling in the cash. Millions of dollars. Billions, for all I knew. They smuggled the cars in containers through the Port of Oakland, sold them in Mexico and South America, then used the profits to bring coke, weed and heroin back into the States. It was a sweet operation, or it used to be, anyway, before 9/11 and all the new federal security. Heberto ran his own crew out of West Oakland – real animal types who could barely speak English – and Deacon had a piece of the distribution. I worked for Deacon's ring and I stayed away from the street retail. That was Heberto's turf and it was like the dark side of the moon.

  "You ready for this?" Arn asked when we made the warehouse. "I'll get the gate."

  "Just make it fast," I said. "Don't argue with them whatever you do."

  "You got to be kidding."

  I pulled up to the gate and he got out to ring the bell, glancing around to check the street. The neighborhood looked deserted, but you could never tell if somebody was watching through a night-scope or a telescopic lens. I put the Jeep in first, held the clutch down and kept an eye on the rearview, chewing on the shreds of a nail. Arn rang the bell a couple times, but nobody answered. He rang it again. Stuck his hands in his pockets.

  It was a dark night, uneasy with sirens and big engines. The port glared to the west, hazy and rumbling, and San Francisco glittered on the water like a drag queen in a sequined gown. Channel buoys flashed in the harbor. A foghorn moaned on the Bay. Off in the distance, an oily black cloud drifted over the lights of the city – smoke from the fire we'd seen earlier from the highway. I couldn't see any flames or cherries. They must've got it under control.

  A door opened on the other side of the warehouse fence. Barbed wire glinted and a rectangle of yellow light spread across the lot, glistening on rows of windshields. A couple shadows appeared in the door. They checked us out, bumped heads, then one of them waddled over to the gate with a flashlight. He was huge – a beer keg with legs. The other guy stayed by the door, talking on a cell phone. When he stepped out of the glare, I saw it was Castel, Heberto's crew boss, and I clenched up a little. He was this sneering thug with a glass eye, a nasty, violent greaseball who liked to come on to me just to watch me squirm. I put the Jeep in neutral and got out, shivering in the damp air while something that felt like a big spider crawled down my back. Beer Keg checked the street, opened the gate, then Arn climbed into the Jeep and drove it onto the lot.

  I was alone with Boss Loco.

  Castel swaggered over with a drunken smile, his fake eye glinting under the streetlight. A lanky moreno with jet-black hair, he used to be a coke dealer in Argentina, but he got mixed up with some faction crap and had to leave the country. I heard that a Columbian had tried to take over his territory – put out his eye with a knife, messed him up bad – but Castel tracked him down after he got out of the hospital, raped the guy's wife in front of him, then chopped their heads off with a machete and stuck them on a fence. That was the story, anyway. Heberto got him a green card – they were cousins or something – then stuck him in Zulu, Oakland to run their distribution network. Castel was smarter than the rest of his crew, which wasn't saying much, but he had a hair-trigger temper and you never knew what he was going to do. They were all like that. Crazy Mestizos. None of them had ever bothered me, though. Nothing major, anyway. Deacon had warned them off and they all treated me like a poison toad.

  "Hey, Conchita." Castel showed me some teeth. "I hear you fucked up again and we got to bail you out."

  "You got a car for us?"

  "Yeah, we got a car. A good car. What else? Just make sure you don't wreck it or scratch the paint job like you did the last time, all right?"

  "You want me to go get it?"

  "Your cholo can do it better."

  "Arn's not my cholo, OK?"

  "OK, Emma." His good eye twitched, oozing over my body like a snail. "You want a drink?" he asked, switching gears just to screw with my head. "We're locked down for the fire, but I guess it's done now. The pigs split about twenty minutes ago."

  "We got to get going."

  He nodded, bored, his glass eye lifeless as a marble while his good one flickered over the street. One of these nights, the cops were going to follow a shipment back to the warehouse and stage a mad-dog SWAT assault. It was just a matter of time.

  "You should of seen the fire," he said, cracking his knuckles. "It was a big motherfucker – one of those companies down by the yards. You could see the flames from here. Bunch of pigs, a couple ladder trucks – it was like a war zone down there." He laughed. "I guess somebody couldn't pay their taxes."

  "We saw it from the highway."

  "I love fires, baby." He was staring at the zipper on my jeans. "They give me a big chubby."

  Just then, Beer Keg walked out of the shadows in the lot and came over to where we were standing. He looked nasty under the streetlight: head like a Toltec statue, scars and pockmarks, a snake tattoo down his right arm. He checked me out, his eyes like knife wounds, then his lips split apart in a grin.

  "Emma esta fleteando por las calles hoy."

  Castel snickered, then he got in my face.

  "Heberto's confused," he said, licking at me with his voice. "He can't figure the deal with you. Understand? If something happens, you come see me, OK? I'll take good care of that sweet little bolo."

  He squeezed my arm, g
rinning when I flinched, then he turned away to gabble at Beer Keg in Spanish. A couple centuries dragged by, then Arn came back, driving a black Corolla with tinted windows and California plates. It was about time. He pulled up beside me and leaned out the window.

  "You OK?" he whispered.

  "Yeah. What's going on?"

  "They're fried, man. Twenty or thirty of them back in the warehouse. Let's get the hell out of here."

  "How's the car?"

  "Looks clean, I guess."

  Castel was watching us, hands in his pockets, grinning at me like a lizard. He said something to Beer Keg, then walked over to send us off.

  "Papers in the glove box." He was all business now. "You get pulled over, tell them to call the warehouse and ask for me. Got it? It's registered to the company and insured for co-drivers, but you got to drop it off with Buster tomorrow morning. It's going out on the next shipment."

  "OK." I was more than ready to leave. "Thanks."

  "Try not to fuck it up this time."

  "We'll be careful." I walked around to the driver's side and leaned over to talk to Arn. "You care if I keep driving for a while? We can switch in a couple hours."

  "Knock yourself out."

  He slid over into the passenger seat, leaned back and closed his eyes. I got in behind the wheel, closed the door and locked it.

  "We'll call it in," Castel said, then headed back to the office, Beer Keg lumbering after him like some kind of trained gorilla. Arn opened his eyes again, watching them leave, then he let out his breath like he'd been holding it in ever since we left the highway.

  "Weird guy," he said as we drove away. "That big fucker? Couldn't speak a word of English and he was watching everything I did like I'm going to steal the car again or something. Made me nervous, man. I think he was strapped."