She tossed the hat at him. He caught it and slammed iton, pulling it low on his forehead.
“Let’s go,” Gus suggested. “It’s not worth pissingthem off.”
Frankie and Gus turned toward my dad and the rest ofthe crew, stalking off down the alley already playing the part of obnoxiouskids without supervision.
Sayer started to walk after them, but I grabbed hisforearm, unwilling to let him enter into this unprepared. “Make them realizeyou’re valuable,” I told him quickly.
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything.
Not knowing if he got it or not, I went on. “If youwant food or a place to stay you have to earn it. And if you don’t, they’ll letyou get caught.” I glanced over my shoulder toward my dad and his associates.“Or worse.”
When I turned back to Sayer, those freaky blue eyeswere glued to me again. “Why are you telling me this?”
I shrugged. I didn’t really have an answer. “You’d dothe same for me.”
His head tilted. “No, I wouldn’t.”
His honesty made me smirk. “Now you will.” I leanedin, dropping my voice to a whisper. “You owe me a favor.”
His eyes widened and his lips pressed into a straightline. I was too pleased with myself not to smile, so I quickly turned aroundand hurried to catch up with my friends.
“Let’s go, kid!” Jack shouted after Sayer. He steppedforward, out of the alley and into the confidence game that would irrevocablychange his life. The confidence game that would change us both forever.
I didn’t know what happened to Sayer until later thatnight. Frankie, Gus and I did our thing. We walked into the electronic storeand cased the joint for an hour. We never intended to steal anything, but weacted suspicious as hell until all of the store employees had their eyes on us.Just when the manager made a beeline over to kick us out, I pulled out pocketsfull of crumpled one dollar bills and with tears in my eyes, asked what I couldbuy my dad for his birthday.
He took me over to a display of watches and feelingsufficiently guilty, he gave me all his attention. Frankie and Gus crowdedaround when he bent over to pick one up for me and I pickpocketed his walletjust for fun.
I had a bad habit of taking something for myselfwhenever I was on a job. Frankie called them my trophies. But it wasn’t like Iwanted to remember the job or show off or anything. It was more like insuranceor collateral. I needed to start saving for the day my dad stopped taking careof me or got himself killed.
I paid for a cheap watch with a black cuff and madesure to sniffle in gratitude at the counter. Frankie, Gus and I left the store.The alarm rang just as we stepped on the sidewalk.
A delivery truck driver came sprinting around thecorner, shouting after his truck that was speeding off down the street, alreadylost in traffic.
After driving another block, the truck would pull intoa parking garage that happened to have no working security cameras, where itwould quickly be unloaded into another truck and abandoned for the feds to find.
Sirens blared through the afternoon bustle of downtownDC and two cop cars screeched to a halt in front of us. Frankie, Gus and Istared at the entire scene with wide-eyed fascination—like ten-year-old kidswere supposed to do. We moved out of the way when asked, but hung around whilethe cops took statements and talked to witnesses and tried to figure out whathad happened.
Turns out the security cameras had been turned offduring the heist. And the delivery driver had been somehow locked in thedumpster behind the building. Nobody saw the thief or realized anything waswrong until the driver had been able to get free of his trash prison. Nobodycould even identify the driver since it hadn’t seemed that anything was amissuntil after the truck was gone.
The manager of the store was dumbfounded. The driverunderstandably furious. And the cops totally befuddled.
They even asked us if we had seen anything. To whichwe replied, “No, officer, we were just buying a birthday present for my dad.”
“Why don’t you get on home then,” they suggested. “Youdon’t need to be hanging around a crime scene.”
We nodded solemnly and headed off down the street. Ourjob was over so we had the rest of the day to kill. We decided to grab pizza atour favorite place.
Later that night, my dad would tell me what a greatjob I did and hand me fifty bucks for being such a good girl. I would ask himhow much his cut was and he would smile slyly at me and say, “Don’t you worryabout it, baby girl. Just know that we don’t need to worry about anything for awhile.”
That was always his answer. He was obsessed with thisidea of not worrying about anything.
The irony was that because of his job, I worried abouteverything all the time.
But we didn’t get caught today. So at least there wasthat.
And neither did Sayer Wesley.
I wouldn’t know what happened to him for a couple ofmonths, but I would think of him every day until then.
