Hit and Run

by Norah McClintock

  We hung out there until a cop car swung down the road that cut through the park. The people in the houses facing the park had probably complained about the noise. They always did.

  We followed a path that led under the railroad tracks and walked along for a while until we hit the 7-Eleven. Vin had some money. We bought some Cokes and headed back up to Danforth. It was nearly midnight, but none of us felt like going home.

  “Hey,” Vin said. He thrust an arm across my chest as he came to a stop. “Check it out.”

  It was a delivery truck. A bakery delivery truck parked on a side street just south of Danforth. The back of the truck was wide open. Vin approached it and peeked inside. I followed at a distance, glancing around to see if anyone was looking because, if they were, they might think we were planning to grab stuff, which we weren’t. At least, I wasn’t.

  “Look at all that stuff,” Vin said.

  There were boxes of two-packs of cupcakes—chocolate, vanilla, strawberry swirl—and doughnuts. Packages of brownies and chocolate chip cookies. There were coffee cakes, lemon cakes, lemon tarts, butter tarts. There was angel food cake and devil’s food cake. There were miniature apple pies and cherry pies and chocolate-coated chocolate cakes with cream inside.

  Vin stared at the stuff, then backed away a few paces and glanced around.

  “Where do you think the driver is?” he said.

  What difference did that make? It was quiet on the street where the truck was parked and just as quiet on Danforth. Music drifted out from one of the bars down the street, but all the stores nearby were closed.

  “Maybe he’s taking a leak,” Sal said.

  Vin looked around again. Then, before I knew what he was doing, he jumped up into the back of the truck.

  “Catch,” he said, and threw a box of something at Sal. I looked around nervously. “Vin, I don’t think—”

  He chucked another box at me. I caught it by reflex. Cream-filled chocolate cupcakes with squiggles of vanilla icing on top. Supper was a distant memory by this time, and just looking at the cakes was making my mouth water and my stomach rumble. I could almost taste those squiggles of vanilla. But just to take the stuff?

  Vin jumped down out of the truck with a third box tucked under his arm. “Come on!” he said as he ran down the street and ducked into an alley.

  I glanced at Sal, who was looking in disbelief at the box in his hands. Then he shot off after Vin. I hung near the back of the truck for a moment, staring at all the boxes inside. Then, as I sprinted down the street, I told myself that no one would even miss what we had taken. Halfway down the block, a voice popped into my head. What would your mother say …? It sounded an awful lot like Riel’s voice. I slowed and threw the box over a fence into someone’s yard.

  Vin and Sal were way ahead of me. I turned on the speed to catch up. We wove through alleys and down side streets—“just in case,” Vin called back breathlessly—before ending up in Vin’s backyard to see what we had. Vin’s box was filled with little single-serving apple pies. Sal had brownies. They both looked surprised to see that I was empty-handed.

  “I tripped coming down Logan,” I said. A lie. “I dropped it.”

  “Let’s go back and get it,” Vin said. “They were cupcakes.”

  “You crazy?” Sal said. “What if someone sees us?”

  In the end, we didn’t go back. We gorged ourselves on pies and brownies. Well, Vin and Sal did. I don’t know why, but I had trouble swallowing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I took my history assignment to the school office first thing the next morning and asked one of the secretaries to put it in Riel’s mailbox. Riel had it in his hand when he walked into history class later. He had read it and marked it. He came down the aisle and dropped it on my desk. D-minus.

  “Would have been a solid D if you’d got it in on time,” he said. He wasn’t smiling, so I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. In fact, he wasn’t even looking at me. Something outside seemed to have caught his eye. He walked over to the window and looked out. He stood there for so long that kids started to fidget and whisper. What was going on? Was the new teacher zoning out on us?

  Finally he turned and walked to the front of the class. He opened a file folder, took out some paper, and started to lecture us about the settlement of Canada’s west. It was about as exciting as watching wheat grow. There were no shootouts, no Indian wars, no cattlemen-versus-farmers conflicts, no Wyatt Earp or Billy the Kid. There were hardly even any guns. I was thinking about how best to position myself and my book so that I could take a nap when someone knocked on the classroom door.

  Riel paused in mid-sentence. He crossed to the door and opened it. He stepped out into the hall for a moment. When he came back into the room, he beckoned to me. I glanced at Vin as I made my way to the front of the room.

  “You’re wanted in the office,” Riel said.

  Mr. Gianneris was standing in the hall. I tried smiling at him—he’d given me a break—but he didn’t smile back.

  “Come on, Mike,” he said.

  I looked at Riel, who just shook his head.

  Mr. Gianneris didn’t say a word as he led me down the hall and down the stairs. He showed me into Ms. Rather’s office. She wasn’t alone. There were two cops with her.

  “These police officers want to talk to you, Mike,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “I’m Constable Carlson,” the older one said. “And this is Constable Torelli. Have a seat, Mike.”

  He waved me into a chair and then sat down opposite me. Constable Torelli stood to one side of me. He had a notebook open and was writing in it already, even though I hadn’t said anything yet. Ms. Rather stood just inside the closed door, watching and listening.

  I waited for an answer to my question.

  “What grade are you in, Mike?” Constable Carlson asked.

  I told him.

  “You a good student?”

  I shrugged.

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “What’s your favorite subject, Mike?” Constable Carlson asked.

  Boy, I had to think about that one. Favorite and subject weren’t two words I generally thought of in the same sentence.

  “Music, I guess.”

  “You play an instrument?” He sounded like he really wanted to know, but I knew that couldn’t be right. He hadn’t come here to discuss my grades or interests.

  “Sax.”

  Constable Carlson smiled. “You can get a nice sound out of a sax. You play in the school band?”

  I shook my head. “But I was thinking of trying out this year,” I said. It was true. Auditions were the week after next. I was pretty sure I’d have a shot at it.

  “That’s good,” Constable Carlson said. “We want to ask you a few questions, Mike, about something that happened last night. A robbery. You don’t have to make a statement if you don’t want to. But if you do decide to answer our questions, anything you say can be used as evidence. Do you understand, Mike?”

  They wanted to question me about a robbery? Jeez. Stay calm, I told myself. Stay calm.

  “We’ve asked your principal to call your uncle. He’s your guardian, isn’t that right?”

  I nodded.

  “You have the right to talk to a lawyer and to your uncle before you answer any questions, Mike. Do you understand that?”

  I said I did. I noticed that Constable Torelli seemed to be writing all of this down in his notebook.

  “Do you want to wait for your uncle, Mike? You can also choose to have Ms. Rather act in the place of your uncle, if you want. That way we can just clear this matter up right now. Would that be okay, Mike?”

  I looked at Ms. Rather.

  “It’s up to you, Michael,” she said.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked.

  “You want to tell me where you were last night, Mike?”

  Stay calm, stay calm.

  “Last night?”

  “
Yeah. What did you do last night, Mike?”

  “Homework,” I said. Which was true, up to a point.

  “Where did you do your homework?”

  “At home.”

  “Did you do anything else last night?”

  I didn’t know what to say. For sure they thought I had done something or they wouldn’t be here. Had someone seen what happened with the truck? And how come they had just asked for me? Vin was in my history class. How come they hadn’t dragged him down here, too?

  “Mike?” Constable Carlson said. “What else did you do last night?”

  What should I say? What could I say?

  “Come on, Mike,” Constable Torelli said. He didn’t sound nearly as friendly as Carlson. “Make it easy on yourself. Tell us exactly what happened.”

  I heard a sound behind him, then a voice.

  “What do we have here, fellas?” the voice said. I didn’t have to turn to realize that it was Riel. “Are we questioning a witness or a suspect?”

  Constable Carlson spun around. It was hard to tell who looked more surprised—him or Riel.

  “John,” he said. “I heard you were teaching school. Didn’t know you were doing it here, though.”

  Riel half-shrugged. “He’s a minor,” he said. He meant me.

  Constable Torelli stood up abruptly. “This has nothing to do with you, Riel,” he said. He was right; it didn’t. So what was Riel doing here? “Why don’t you go back to your chalk and your blackboard erasers?”

  “I believe we have the situation under control, John,” Ms. Rather said.

  Riel looked right past her and Torelli. He focused on Constable Carlson.

  “If you’re going to question Mr. McGill, first you have to inform him of his right to counsel and his right to have a parent present or any other adult he chooses. He has a right—”

  “Relax, John,” Constable Carlson said. “He’s been informed of his rights, and he has chosen to speak to us. Isn’t that right, Mike?”

  Riel turned to Ms. Rather.

  “Did Mr. McGill specifically ask you to be here?” he said. “Or did you just offer?”

  She shifted uncomfortably.

  “We’re going to handle this by the book, John,” Constable Carlson said. “I just thought it would make it easier all round if we had a little chat first.” Then he sighed, stood up, and touched me on the shoulder. The next thing I knew, he was telling me I was under arrest for stealing goods from a truck, and he was telling me again that I didn’t have to make a statement or say anything, and that I had the right to contact a lawyer and my guardian. He kept asking me if I understood what he was telling me. The whole time he was asking and I was answering, Constable Torelli was writing furiously in his notebook.

  Riel listened to everything that Constable Carlson said. If he was surprised that I was being arrested, he didn’t show it.

  “The most important part, Mike, is that you don’t have to answer any questions if you don’t want to,” he said. “You understand that, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You want me to call your uncle for you?” he said.

  “It’s taken care of,” Ms. Rather said. She didn’t sound happy.

  Billy wasn’t going to be happy about this either, but I’d rather deal with him angry than with everything else alone.

  When they led me out of the school and put me in the back of a police car, I glanced up at the building and saw faces at the windows. Inside of five minutes, everyone in the whole school would know that I had been arrested. Jen would know.

  Billy definitely wasn’t happy about getting called away from work. He said missing time for any reason, especially a stupid-nephew reason, made his boss mad. The truth was, if Billy didn’t show up late so often after partying hard the night before, his boss might have been more understanding. But I didn’t think it would be smart to point that out, under the circumstances.

  Billy didn’t look comfortable walking into the police station. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t exactly feel right at home myself. They took us into the ugliest room I ever saw. There were no windows and no pictures on the wall. The furniture consisted of three chairs and a small table against one wall. They told me to sit in one of the chairs. Constable Carlson sat in another one, close to me. Billy sat to one side of me and a little bit back from me, so that if I wanted to look at him, I had to turn my head. Constable Torelli leaned against the table with his notebook open. They told me that they were going to videotape the interview. They told me again that I didn’t have to answer any questions, but that whether I answered or not, I was still under arrest. Then they told me that anything I said could be used as evidence against me. They asked me again if I understood what they were saying.

  “Shouldn’t the kid have a lawyer?” Billy said. He sounded mad, probably because he knew that this was going to be a gigantic hassle that might end up costing him money.

  “If you want to contact counsel, you’re certainly free to do so,” Constable Carlson said. He looked directly at me, not at Billy. “I have to tell you, though, Mike, that we have a pretty good eyewitness on this one.”

  Someone had seen us. I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up.

  “What eyewitness?” Billy said.

  “A shopkeeper in the area,” Constable Carlson said. “He saw you, Mike. Gave us your name, told us what school you go to and where you live. Picked your photo out of your school yearbook.”

  I could feel the sweat sticking my shirt to my under-arms. I tried to think how many shopkeepers knew that much about me. Quite a few, I decided. I had lived in the same neighborhood forever. My mom had shopped regularly at the same stores. She had even known most of the cashiers by name.

  “This isn’t going to go away, Mike,” Constable Carlson said. “The company has been robbed before, and they’re fed up. They’re pressing charges. Why don’t you just tell me what happened on Monday night?”

  I felt like saying maybe they should tell their drivers to lock up when they left the truck, but didn’t think the cops would appreciate the suggestion. I wanted to tell them that I had thrown the stuff away, that I hadn’t eaten it. But what difference would that make? I had run with the box. Whoever had seen and identified me had probably seen me with the box. I had even choked down one of the pies Vin had taken.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t say anything,” Billy said. “Maybe we should get some advice.”

  Constable Carlson looked at me. “You can call a lawyer, Mike. You can have a lawyer present when we talk to you. You and your uncle want to talk about it?”

  Billy nodded and the two cops left the room.

  “I just want to get this over with,” I told Billy. “I want to go home.”

  “Yeah, but if we can get you off—”

  “Billy, someone saw me. They gave the cops my name. How am I going to get off?”

  “You can say it was mistaken identity.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “Jeez, Mikey!”

  When the two cops came back, Billy said we’d decided against a lawyer. They asked me if I agreed with what Billy said. I said I did. Then Constable Carlson asked me again what I had done last night.

  “I did my homework.” I said. “Then I went out for a walk.”

  “Where did you walk?”

  I shrugged and stared down at the floor. “Just around. Around the neighborhood.”

  “What about that bakery delivery truck?” Constable Carlson said. “You want to tell me about that?”

  There was no point in denying the theft. From what Constable Carlson had said, I had been nailed pretty good.

  “We saw this truck,” I said. “The back of it was wide open and, I dunno …” I really didn’t know. Jeez, what had we been thinking? Why had I let Vin go in there? Once he was in, why hadn’t I yanked him right back out again? When he threw that box of cakes at me, why hadn’t I just thrown it right back into the truck instead of taking off with it?

  “You dunno?” Constab
le Carlson said. He didn’t sound mad or anything. Mostly he just sounded curious. “What happened when you saw the truck, Mike?”

  “It had all these cakes and pies inside,” I said. “We didn’t think they’d miss a couple of boxes.”

  “What did you do, Mike?”

  “We took a few things. That’s all. We just took a couple of boxes.”

  “You and your friends?”

  I nodded. I still couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at Billy, either. How could I have thought we wouldn’t be seen? Vin hadn’t even bothered to drop his voice.

  “What exactly did you take?” Constable Carlson said.

  “A box of cupcakes. A box of brownies and one of apple pies. But that’s it.”

  “Three boxes?”

  I nodded.

  “You understand that by telling us this, you’re admitting that you stole those cakes?”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Where can we find your friends?” Constable Carlson said.

  I opened my mouth, ready to say, Vin should be in math class right about now, and Sal should be cruising into Spanish class—the one class he aced. Then it hit me. They wouldn’t be asking me that question if they knew who had been with me. Whoever had identified me knew me, but either didn’t know Vin and Sal or hadn’t got a good look at them. So if I didn’t say anything, the cops couldn’t do anything.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Constable Carlson shook his head. He still didn’t look mad. “I guess they’re pretty good friends, huh, Mike? You don’t want to rat them out, right?”

  I stared at my feet.

  “Look, Mike, if you didn’t do this by yourself, why take all the blame by yourself?”

  I kept my mouth shut. Constable Carlson sighed.

  “It’s your call, Mike,” he said. “You don’t want to tell us anything, it’s up to you.”

  “I don’t want to answer any more questions,” I said.

  I had to sit around some more with Billy, who was fidgeting by then. Finally Constable Carlson gave me a piece of paper and explained that I could go, but that I had to promise to show up at court on the date written on the paper. If I didn’t show up, he said, I’d be in even more trouble. Then he gave me his card.