Stealing the Game

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  “That’s for my comics,” I said. “If something goes wrong in my comics I can make up crap so it works out. Give the cops a flat tire. Create a jamming device that doesn’t really exist. If something goes wrong tonight, you’ll end up in prison.”

  “I’ll be fine. Just give me the plan.”

  I leaned back in the desk chair and closed my eyes. This was too real. The thing with my comics is that I’d never actually finished one. I had lots of half-written stories and drawings, but because I hadn’t fully thought through Master Thief, I couldn’t figure out how to end anything. The comics always stopped after a successful heist. But then what happened?

  I tried to picture what would happen tonight. Even if Jax broke into Angelo’s and stole whatever he needed to pay off Fauxhawk, how would he make everything better with everyone else? With Mom and Dad? With the store’s owners? With the police?

  With me?

  What if the story ended with Jax getting caught? Wouldn’t it be my fault?

  Then I started to think of something else. Where had Jax been when he was supposed to be at Stanford? What had he been doing all that time? Was it illegal—is that why he didn’t want to tell us? Why wait this long to come home and tell us? Why did he bet so much money on my team when he knew we didn’t have much of a chance to win? Was he that far gone as a gambling addict? Or was he hiding some other secret?

  Either way, he needed to succeed tonight. And he couldn’t do that alone.

  “I’m going with you,” I said.

  He sat up so quickly that the pain in his ribs contorted his face. “No! That’s out of the question!”

  “You’re injured.”

  “You’re not going, bro. That’s final. I’m still your older brother, and what I say goes.”

  MY LIFE OF CRIME, PART TWO

  LOCK-PICKING is not easy, even with the help of YouTube. You need to practice with a tension wrench and a hook pick until you get just the right feel to manipulate the tumblers, like I sometimes did on our front door lock when Mom and Dad weren’t home. It’s not as easy as it looks on cop shows when someone uses a bent fork to enter the Pentagon. It took four months before I was finally able to open the door without using my key. For me, it was just research for Master Thief. I never thought I’d do it for real. Yet here I was, in the dark, smelly, wet alley behind a strip mall, at three in the morning, scratching at the door to the Carpet and Flooring Emporium (“The Karpet Kings of OC!”).

  I had my hood up and cinched around my face, the same way I’d worn it a couple hours ago at the horror film. When I was sitting with Dad in the theater, my hood had been like Linus’s security blanket. It represented my bond with my father and everything he’d ever taught me. Now, kneeling in front of this door, my hood was a disguise against security cameras, which went against everything Dad had ever taught me. I had felt like a fraud when I was with Dad, and now I felt like a fraud with Jax. It was like I had a secret identity. But which was was the real me?

  “Hurry up, SP,” Jax said. He was keeping watch on the alley. One hand gripped a sledgehammer, and the other held a rusty crowbar, which we’d taken from the garage. Not that Dad ever used those tools. In fact, I think he’d borrowed the sledgehammer from neighbors that had moved away a couple years ago. The hard part was hiding them under our hoodies and lugging them from the car, which we’d parked several blocks away to avoid suspicion.

  I kept working the lock, a task that was made harder by the thick orange rubber gloves I was wearing. They were all I could find around the house on short notice. The good news was that the package had never been opened, and I knew Mom wouldn’t miss them. (One Sunday, she’d stared at the toilet with the gloves in one hand and a scrub brush in the other and said, “I don’t think so.” The next day she’d hired a weekly cleaning service.)

  “Maybe we should try a window,” Jax suggested impatiently.

  “The windows are wired.”

  He sighed and bounced on his toes, nervously looking up and down the alley. Sometimes he looked overhead, as if expecting to see helicopters.

  “I thought you said you’ve done this before,” he complained.

  “You wanna try?” I said.

  That shut him up.

  “Got it,” I said, my voice cracking with relief. Let me tell you, picking a lock wired to an alarm is not the same as picking the lock to your front door while stopping occasionally for Gatorade and pretzels.

  We both hurried inside and closed the door behind us. Adrenaline was pumping through my system as if someone had stuck a hose in my mouth and turned on the spigot. I took a few seconds to allow my body to stop vibrating and to remind myself to breathe.

  “You okay?” Jax asked.

  “Fine,” I said, but the word came out like a bird chirp, as if the sound could barely squeeze out of my constricted throat.

  I looked over at the GE Simon XT security box on the wall. The blue screen gave the time (3:07 A.M.) and the security status (ARMED). If we had forced the door open, the alarms would have been blaring.

  I walked through the back room out to the storefront, where all the wood-flooring and carpet samples were arranged in bright displays. This is where people picked what “look” they wanted, but the actual wood and carpets were stored somewhere else in some warehouse. The whole storefront room was about the size of our living room.

  Jax looked around, confused. “Chris, why are we in here? We’re supposed to be hitting Angelo’s, remember?”

  “A place like Angelo’s, with thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise, is going to have a pretty elaborate security system. Something I wouldn’t have a clue about bypassing. But a place like this doesn’t need much security—just enough to discourage vandals. They don’t have anything here worth stealing.”

  “Hate to point out the obvious, but the goal of this mission isn’t just to break into anyplace, it’s to break into a place with stuff valuable enough to take so I don’t get another beating—or worse.”

  I went to the wall and shoved aside a display rack of flooring samples. I knocked lightly on the wall. When I found the stud, I marked the wall with an X.

  “Checking for termites?” he scoffed.

  “This store is only a year old. So is the store next door. Both of these stores used to be one bigger store.”

  “I remember,” Jax said. “A video store.”

  “Yup. Now that everyone downloads their films or rents them online, no more Blockbuster. So they divided that big store into two smaller stores. This place and—”

  “And Angelo’s,” Jax interrupted, smiling.

  I nodded. I knocked again on the wall until I found the other stud and marked it with an X. “Sixteen inches apart. Plenty of room for us to squeeze through. We can break through the wall here and we’ll get inside the pawnshop without setting off their alarms.”

  “What about motion sensors?”

  “Doesn’t need them. The doors and windows are not only wired, but he has metal gates over them. He also has a couple other measures inside.”

  “How do you know all this?” he asked, impressed.

  “I had a story line in one of my comics where Master Thief has to steal a guitar with a safety-deposit-box key hidden inside it. I cased Angelo’s to make my story more realistic, and I figured out exactly how he’d steal the guitar.”

  He grinned. “Best brother ever.”

  We both went to work busting the drywall with the sledgehammer and crowbar. Ten minutes later we were standing in the pawnshop. Video cameras were mounted in each corner, but they were on standby.

  Jax rushed over to one of the display cases filled with jewelry. Three black metal earring trees sat on the display case at one-foot intervals. Each had a couple pairs of sparkly earrings dangling from the metal branches. Jax reached for one of the pairs.

  “No!” I croaked in a whisper-shout.

  He lowered his hand. “What the heck, Chris! This is no time to back out.”

  “I’m not backing
out. I’m just trying to keep you from setting off the alarm and activating the security cameras.” I pointed to the jewelry trees. “Those earrings are just imitations. They’re meant to get you to grab them first, because they’re out in the open. Once you touch them, you move the tree, which activates the alarm and the security cameras, which are positioned to get what’s called a ‘prosecutable image.’”

  “So how are we supposed to get the jewelry? I could smash the front of the case while you hold the jewelry stands.” He raised his sledgehammer over his shoulder.

  “That won’t work either,” I said. “The inside of the case is wired so that if the glass breaks, it triggers the alarm.”

  “Great!” He lowered the sledgehammer. “So, what’s the plan?”

  I pointed at the far corner. “Bring me one of those vacuum cleaners. The Dyson DC41.”

  He gave me a strange look. “You know the make and brand of vacuum cleaners?”

  “Part of the job, dude. As legendary UCLA coach John Wooden said, ‘Failure to prepare is preparing to fail.’”

  Jax shrugged and retrieved the vacuum cleaner. “Holy crap, this thing is selling for three hundred bucks.”

  I took it from him and placed it next to me while I knelt in front of the display case. “They retail for six hundred and seventy dollars, so that’s a real bargain.”

  He chuckled. “Again, bro, it’s scary that you know that.”

  “Just plug it in,” I said. He did. “And pull down your ski mask, just in case this doesn’t work.” He pulled ski mask over his face. I did the same, then pulled my hood on top of that.

  I dug into my backpack and removed the Silverline circle glass cutter I had found on eBay. I fastened the suction cup to the front of the display case. It works just like a compass you use to draw circles, only instead of a pencil on the moving arm, there’s a glass cutter. I cut a four-inch circle into the case, popped out the glass, and stuck the Dyson hose through the opening. I started the vacuum, and its 235 air watts began sucking up every earring, bracelet, necklace, brooch, and watch in the case. They all went into a purple plastic bin with a .55-gallon capacity. (See how much detail you have to know to be Master Thief?) In less than two minutes, we had thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise. I removed the bin from the vacuum and emptied the jewelry into my backpack.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Jax stood there a moment, staring at me. Suddenly he pulled up his mask to show me a big smile of awe and respect. “Dude, you did it! That was all so clever. Breaking in next door, using the glass cutter and the vacuum. Man, you are Master Thief!”

  “Yeah, maybe we can celebrate when we get home.” He couldn’t see my face, but under the mask I was grinning a little at his praise. Plus, I was shocked that my plan had worked. Just like I’d written it in my comics. “Now put your mask on and let’s go.”

  We started for the hole in the wall to make our escape back through the carpet store.

  “Chris, I’m so grateful, dude,” Jax said. He was reaching to pull his mask back down as he followed me toward the hole. “You really—”

  Then everything went wrong.

  Starting with the alarm.

  PRESENT

  COPS “R” US

  “WHY do you think Officer Crane brought you to my office?” Principal McDonald asked. His sharpened pencil hovered over his notepad, ready to etch my every word into a permanent record that would follow me throughout my entire life. Especially to Stanford.

  Ever arrested, kid? Any criminal record?

  “Yeah,” Officer Crane said. “Why did I bring you here?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “There have been a lot of garage break-ins. Are you questioning everybody in school to find out if they’ve seen anything?”

  Officer Crane sneered.

  Principal McDonald said nothing. He just stared at me, tapping his pencil eraser on the blank paper like a metronome.

  This is a classic technique, kids. Every authority figure from a cop to a parent to a teacher uses it to break his victim. Few people can endure prolonged silence without feeling an internal itch that is only satisfied by vomiting up a bunch of words. Silence seems to grow in a room until it squeezes out all the air and leaves the poor victim gasping for breath.

  But that wouldn’t work on me. Silence and I went way back.

  To fill the time, I imagined Principal McDonald’s pad of paper to be a ravenous wolf anxious to be fed with my words. The tapping eraser was just teasing it, poking the wild animal into a slathering frenzy. It was growling for words, snapping at the air in front of our mouths. But I wouldn’t feed the rabid beast. I’d starve it with my silence.

  Maybe there was a comic book villain in there somewhere.

  The silence stretched like Mr. Fantastic’s elastic body.

  Officer Crane coughed. He shifted nervously. He was starting to sweat.

  Principal McDonald ignored him, keeping his icy gaze on me.

  I read his T-shirt again:

  “THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING.”

  EDMUND BURKE

  I was good at doing nothing and saying nothing. Did that mean I was responsible for all the evil in the world?

  Last night I had done a lot. I’d picked a lock, broken through a wall, and robbed a pawnshop of almost fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry.

  Not to mention what I did to the cops. I guess you could call all that evil.

  “There was a robbery last night, Richards,” Officer Crane finally blurted. I’d predicted that he’d be the first to crack.

  “Another garage?” I asked innocently.

  Principal McDonald laughed. “Oh boy, Chris. You are really entertaining me today. More surprises than I’ve had in the last five years. And that includes last year when Mr. Cooper, in front of his horrified and delighted drama class, bent over to pick up a script from the floor, ripped the seat of his pants from stem to stern, and had to rush home to change.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was funny.”

  Principal McDonald stared at me again, his leathery face grim with accusation. His beard looked like the prow of a ship ready to ram me.

  That got to me. After all, I liked him. He was a cool guy who really cared about us. When the band couldn’t raise enough money through their car wash to go to some regional competition, he kicked in eight hundred dollars of his own money. He’d never bragged about it either. I only found out because my dad had kicked in the final two hundred bucks himself, even though I wasn’t even in band.

  I looked down in embarrassment, thinking about how good Principal McDonald and my dad were. And what a criminal I was.

  “Talk to us, Chris,” Principal McDonald said softly. He rubbed his eyes wearily, as if all this accusing was taking a toll on him.

  I looked up at him, not sure what to do. I could remain silent, no problem. But just the thought of telling him everything made me feel like I’d be shrugging off a five-hundred-pound backpack that had me hunched over and crawling on my knees. I’d be able to walk again. Feel light. Breathe.

  Then again, if I told him, lives would be destroyed. And I’d be betraying my brother. That had to be some major evil, too.

  I stared at him, remembering everything that had happened last night. Especially the part after Jax had tripped the alarm.

  I still don’t know how it happened. Jax and I were heading toward the hole in the wall and a clean getaway when he somehow bumped into the display case. I looked back just in time to see one of the jewelry trees topple over and clatter on top of the glass counter. Instantly, lights started flashing, an alarm started blaring, and the security cameras clicked on, the red lights turning green. I yanked Jax’s ski mask down, but I didn’t know if I was too late.

  Did they now have a “prosecutable image” of his face?

  We scampered through the hole out the back door of the carpet store. The whole time I was wondering how Jax, the most athletic per
son I’d ever met, could bump into a wired display case. Was he drunk? On drugs?

  Or was I right about his secret? His real secret.

  Too much was going on for me to figure it out right then.

  By the time we were running down the alley, we heard the sirens of two police cars heading our way. Jax grabbed me by the arm and yanked me backward into the shadows. We crouched behind a Dumpster overflowing with cardboard boxes.

  A cop car screeched in from the opposite end of the alley. Another appeared in ahead of us and pulled up next to the other one. They parked, each pointing in the opposite direction.

  I know what you’re thinking: we should jump into the Dumpster, burrow down to the bottom, and wait until the police cars leave. Cops have seen the same movies as you, so it was just a matter of time before they began searching each Dumpster.

  So, we waited.

  Two cops jumped out of each car. The four of them discussed their plan of action for about twenty seconds. Then two cops removed their guns and flashlights and headed into the carpet store. The other two ran in opposite directions down the alley in search of us.

  My planning hadn’t taken into account being trapped behind a Dumpster with armed cops chasing after us. In my comic book, Master Thief got away before the cops arrived. But then, he didn’t have a brother setting off alarms and getting his picture taken.

  The back of the alley was lined with an eight-foot chain-link fence. On the other side of the fence were a stand of trees and a mobile home park. At least there wasn’t any razor wire on top of the fence.

  “Let’s make a run for it,” I said. “We can climb the fence and get away through the park.”

  Yeah, desperate, but it’s all I could come up with.

  I started to get up to run, but Jax held me back. “They’ll hear us,” he said.

  “Not with those alarms blaring.”

  Just then the alarms went silent. Perfect.

  “The cops know that if we got out of this alley, we’re long gone,” Jax whispered. “So they are only going to run to the end of the alley. Then they’ll turn around and come back, searching every nook and cranny and Dumpster on the way back.”