The End of Marking Time Read online

  The End of Marking Time

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  The End of Marking Time

  C J W e s t

  Smashwords Edition

  © Copyright 2010, CJ West

  All rights reserved.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to the following address: Permissions, 22 West Books, P.O. Box 155, Sheldonville, MA 02070-0155.

  The following is a work of fiction. The characters and events are of the author’s creation and used fictitiously. This book in no way represents real people living or dead.

  Cover design by Sarah M. Carroll

  To my many champions

  for their support and encouragement.

  Frank Cinnella

  Marla Cukor

  Sherry Davis

  Dale Arnold

  Jady Babin

  Keith Boggs

  Vicky Buonasaro

  Courtney Clift

  Patty Flood

  Terri Streetman Krause

  Joey Mitchell

  Patrick Moore

  Kerilynn Newman

  Toni Osborne

  Alynn Parr

  Brenda Rodrigues

  Cindy-Lee Samuel

  Adrian Smith

  Sue Violette

  Stephen Welch

  Patti Whitney

  Punishment brings wisdom; it is the healing art of wickedness.

  Plato

  He that is taken and put into prison or chains is not conquered, though overcome; for he is still an enemy.

  Thomas Hobbes

  CHAPTER ONE

  I wasn’t surprised when the Plexiglas partitions shot up out of the floor and locked me in front of this window. I had seen the breaks in the tile floor and I knew what was underneath because Wendell has done this to me before. I know this time is different. I’m not going to pretend I’m not scared to face your decision. If you were on this side of the glass, you would be scared, too. You can tell yourself you’re too good to end up where I am. That you’re not like me. But how different are we really? I wish I could see you, to see the difference for myself, but I understand why Wendell is hiding you. You probably have a steady job, a house, and credits in the bank. You could never imagine doing the things I’ve done. All you want is to get this over and go back to your life. You might even be ready to push the red button and get on with it, but put yourself in my place. For the next few hours I’m going to tell you my story. I hope you’ll give me a chance.

  It was my destiny to be trapped in this tiled hallway with you watching me through the one-way window. Maybe not from birth, but certainly from the time I opened the can of peaches I stole on Longmeadow Drive. I had been on my own five years by then and I was at the top of my game. I was cocky, but I had good reason. I chose my targets well and I moved like a ghost when I worked. I hadn’t been arrested in three years, not even a close call. Maybe that’s why I watched Leno from behind the couch while the middle-aged fat guy drifted in and out of consciousness right in front of me. He snored one minute and laughed at some politician’s latest gaffe the next. I watched the show, ate my peaches, and wondered how this buffoon afforded such a huge place all by himself. It wasn’t just him. The whole street was full of little kings and I couldn’t imagine there were so many kingdoms in America. Don’t get me wrong. I was glad to have them around because I worked my way through the royal suburbs week after week. I should have been paying attention instead of wondering why someone with so much money lived by himself. Unlikely he had a mother like mine. Or maybe he was just like my father.

  Usually I cleaned up after myself so well that my marks weren’t even sure they’d been hit. Plenty of them blamed the shifty-eyed kid next door or raged against a child they suspected of buying drugs. Normally I would have cleaned the fork and put it back, then rinsed the can and left it with the recycling, but that night I left the can on the end table, the fork leaning down into two inches of syrup. I knew I could never come back. I had been through half the houses on this street, pinched a wad of cash here, a diamond necklace there. After I slipped out with the Mercedes that night, the neighbors would take a closer look around their houses and the emails would start flying. There would be meetings with the police, talk of a neighborhood watch, a few of them would even buy guns. Sometimes when I was done with a place like this, I’d tip off a real bungler, a smash-and-grab type hyped up on drugs, and send him stumbling into a hornet’s nest of nervous housewives and angry husbands. Sometimes the druggie barged in and out so fast he got away the first time, but eventually he would end up cuffed in the back of a cruiser. That satisfied the neighbors and covered my trail nicely. Everyone was happy except the guy forced to detox in a six-by-nine.

  I should have sent one of them in my place, but I wanted the Mercedes. It took me five minutes to creep out of the living room and up the stairs to the master bedroom. The keys to the Mercedes were right on the bureau in plain sight, as was his wallet with five credit cards and six hundred forty in cash. Who carries that much cash anymore? I left him twenty for breakfast and took all the plastic. If he had more cash lying around, I couldn’t find it. I checked the sock drawer, then felt under the bureau and along the back edge with no luck. He might have had a safe behind one of the oil paintings, bu
t I couldn’t risk taking them down with him in the house. I was sitting at the desk in the corner with his checkbook in my hand when he decided he’d had enough of Leno and lumbered upstairs. The room was massive, but there was only one way in and one way out. I gambled. I could have headed for the door and whacked him when he came in with his eyes half open, but that wasn’t my style. I slipped to the floor, crawled into the opening under the desktop, and pulled the chair in behind me. He topped the stairs, trudged past me, and flopped face first on the bed without even looking in my direction.

  It took him ten minutes to start snoring regularly. I got back up onto the chair, reassured by the irregular nasal bursts. My gamble paid off. There in the top drawer I found a two-sided sheet of paper that listed every credit card, bank account, and Internet site logon the guy had, complete with passwords. I had his debit card and his PIN, but I wasn’t stupid enough to walk into an ATM and use it. I could find some kid I’d never seen before and split the max withdrawal with him, but that was risky. The magic was the plastic. Since I had his list of customer service numbers, it’d take him a day to contact the banks. All I needed was a few hours and he’d be asleep longer than that.

  I stopped at the bedroom door to look back and wonder if I’d ever own a place like this. With an eighth-grade education, probably not, especially where I went to school. But for the next thirty minutes, I’d be driving a top-of-the-line Mercedes with a pocket full of cash and plastic.

  The garage door opened smoothly. I drove out and hit the remote like I lived there. I was pretty full of myself when I made the corner out of the neighborhood without a soul to see me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the fat guy would do when he woke up. He might not notice his wallet was lighter, but he’d definitely be pissed when he couldn’t find his keys. He’d have a fit when he went down to the garage looking for them and realized the Mercedes was gone.

  The whole thing would sink in then. He’d call the cops and he’d stomp around the house looking to see what else I’d taken until they got there. It would really hit him when he found the empty peach can on the end table. Eventually he’d remember hearing the fork tap the bottom of the can. He’d turned around once but hadn’t really been looking. He felt safe in his home until that night. All people did. They had to. Otherwise they’d go nuts jumping at every noise and shadow. They knew there were criminals out there, but not in their houses, not while they were home. The poor guy wouldn’t sleep for weeks.

  He’d turn the night over and over in his mind until he realized he’d picked up the clicker just a few feet from where I was hiding in the shadows against the wall. He’d be terrified then. He expected criminals to be violent and unpredictable. He never expected someone like me. I never panic. I know the cops take twenty minutes to get most places and that’s more than enough time to disappear if you’re not in a rush. I always plan two exits, a hot one and a cool one. I always keep my head and most of the time, like that night, I glide along the cool road home, careful not to get stopped.

  Unfortunately, I had no idea who I’d just hit or the shit storm I was about to set off when I sold those credit cards.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I dialed the numbers from memory when I was twenty minutes from the drop site. “Hey,” I said into the phone. “I could really use a ride.” I didn’t boost many cars anymore, but my familiar voice was enough to get me a meet. Cars were my living when I hit the street at fifteen years old. It was the easiest and safest way for a kid to survive. Double taught me to open doors and start cars without doing any damage. I crashed a few learning to drive, but in three years I’d never led the cops to the drop point, never got busted, and never led anyone back to the factory. They kidded me about moving up the ranks when I started breaking into houses, but they respected my skills and were glad to snap up what I had whenever I dropped by.

  “Ok,” was all that came from the other end.

  It was one A.M. by then, prime time for a drop-off. Some people might be sleeping at this time of night, but I knew my old friend had been waiting for someone like me to call and he’d be ready to go in minutes.

  Later, I turned the corner onto a quiet street with a balance of apartment buildings with protected parking lots and single family houses that jostled for on-street parking. No one lived here long enough to get protective about the neighborhood. There were enough boyfriends visiting so that an extra vehicle hanging around for a few days or even a week went unnoticed. Crusher made sure no one in the know boosted rides from this street, and since cars weren’t disappearing, the cops never had a clue how many cars traded hands here or how long we’d been doing it.

  When I parked halfway down, Double came up alongside in a BMW 530i. He waddled out big as ever. He got the name Double back in school because like most of us he got free meals, but he always took double lunch. He was eight years ahead of me, one of those guys we looked up to as heroes. Back then he was the biggest kid for seven blocks, so he was recruited by every gang around. When he made his choice, the balance of power in the neighborhood shifted. He was big enough to avoid the gangs altogether. He told me so a year before my mother chased me out. He was twenty-two and had been busted four times for selling drugs. I could tell he regretted what he’d done, but by then he was trapped. He’d dropped out of school in ninth grade. He was committed to the gang and even if he could get out, who would hire a guy with an arrest record three pages long? Even now, six years later, he was still working for the guy who convinced him to join his gang all those years ago. They’d moved out of drugs and into cars, but I had little doubt Double was going to spend serious time in prison. Crusher had a good system, but so many cars disappearing couldn’t go unpunished forever.

  After my talk with Double, I started acting like I was Swiss. I knew who was jumped in to which gang, who the leaders were, and what they were after. I couldn’t bring them together and work out a treaty or anything, but I didn’t care about that. I just wanted to stay neutral and make enough friends inside to get myself out of trouble if I offended someone. Trust me, these guys got offended real easy. I only worked in the suburbs, far from their turf and that’s how I stayed in one piece. Double was the best mentor I ever had. What he told me kept me safe for a long time, but he couldn’t protect me from what was about to happen.

  I flashed the keys as Double finished his walk around the Mercedes.

  “Couldn’t make the payments?” he joked.

  He bounced back into the street and nodded toward the kid getting out of the BMW. I tossed him the keys and took his seat as Double squeezed behind the wheel against the desperate pleas from the shock absorbers.

  Double fanned four hundreds in my direction.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You know the rate.”

  “Not for this car. It’s worth eighty grand.”

  “That’s not up to me. You know that.”

  “Let’s go see the man.”

  Double gave me a second to reconsider. When I shut my door, he took off with the kid in the Mercedes right behind us. Most guys were afraid of Crusher, but I knew he got his nickname crushing beer cans and not gang members. The name was even more apt now. He bought totaled cars from insurance companies and swapped the VIN to an identical stolen car, then he crushed the evidence and sold it for scrap. Ironic, the insurance guys saw him as a good business partner because he paid top dollar for the cars he wanted, while he made a fortune off their losses.

  Crusher told me you’ve got to be patient to get rich. A lot of what I do is modeled after him. He takes cars off the street and hides them in an underground garage for two years. That gives him time to dig out the anti-theft devices and gives the hot cars time to drop to the bottom of the insurance company lists. Even the victims have stopped looking for their cars by the time Crusher sells them. It took me a long time, but I learned to do the same with a safe deposit box and stolen jewelry. The cops only worry so long about stuff taken in a house break then they give up. I’m carefu
l not to take anything too unique or possibly sentimental, and by the time I bring my stuff into the pawnshops it has long cooled. The way things were going for me, I could have taken a year off and it wouldn’t have crimped my style a bit.

  Double parked out front and I followed him through the dark office and downstairs. The basement was one huge room glowing with neon light from every corner. I walked around the couch and stood halfway between Crusher and the car chase playing on a sixty-inch plasma. He loved car chase movies, watched them over and over. He ignored me, intent on the action. I couldn’t help but smile. He had this narrow little beard under his chin that hung straight down like an extra finger. One day I imagined that it continued up, joining the short mustache and matching eyebrows, like a dragonfly had landed on his face. Since then I couldn’t look at him without connecting his eyebrows, his nose, and that goofy beard into an insect. To top it off, he framed his face with narrow blond braids. The guys around him were too frightened to tell him he looked ridiculous. I could probably get away with it, but I wasn’t into taking unnecessary risks. I kept my smile to myself.

  When he finally looked up, he smacked my hand. “What’s up, hero?” He flashed a look at Double and said, “You’re not getting greedy on me?”

  “I brought you a Mercedes SL six hundred.”

  He leaned forward on the couch. “And four hundred doesn’t quite cover it?” His eyes lit up knowing how much he was going to make. “If you had the balls, you could sell it for ten grand. It’s worth a hundred.”

  Ten grand would save me a lot of night work, but I didn’t want to look too interested. I didn’t even want to think about a hundred grand on one score. Infringing on Crusher’s business wasn’t a good idea, even for me.

  “You don’t want to do that, do you?” he asked softly. Then he raised his voice with a decisiveness that required a response. “What’s it look like, Double?”