(Fake cargo)
Quinn maintained a weather eye.
She could operate in the heat of summer. Slip the latch on a frail back door. Cut slits in a screen, detach it, slither inside. In fall, storm windows were screwed on. Winter clothing was too bulky. Spring: mucky, she tracked footprints.
She’d been raised wild, she loved to boast. In the Park Extension district of Montreal, a congested immigrant neighborhood in a French-English city, she’d hear close to a dozen languages on a few treks to the grocer. Portuguese and Italian. Ukrainian. Polish and Romanian. Japanese. Armenian. Yiddish. In the 1970s, Greeks were pouring in. On their heels, Indians and Pakistanis and the first trickle of Haitians. Each group arrived and moved on as they became established, although, as Quinn was fond of saying, ‘Not everybody gets established.’ As each fresh wave arrived and departed, a remnant was left behind.
‘We’re what’s left over from the day before and the day before that. The dregs.’
She was seventeen. She had time to grow out of the place.
Her dad? Less likely. He had his job, his union.
Her mother passed away.
Some people suggested that that was the problem. She thought otherwise.
‘I’m not a thief because my mom’s dead. I’m a thief because I want to be. Because I choose to be. Because I’m alive, you moron twit.’
She went to school although she enjoyed stealing more. Smart in school, she believed she was smarter away from the classroom.
Another beautiful thing about summer: no school.
Growing up, she played in the lanes and on the last of the scarce fields before they were supplanted by apartment buildings. A section of small homes did exist, wartime cottages that had been slapped together and since then reconstituted with this repair and that extension. She grew up in one of these and counted it a blessing. Her friends in apartment blocks kept quiet in their homes. They couldn’t bounce a ball on the kitchen floor or play music loudly. In her home, she ran rampant with impunity, and that’s what she meant by being raised wild.
In winter, if the streets went unplowed, she skidded behind buses, hanging on to a bumper as the stupidest boys did. One lost both his legs above the knees – an event that left a hollow in her gut, although it didn’t stop her. Her dad saw it happen. He was shaken by the incident. Bus bumpers were altered then removed entirely to make it more difficult. She found a way to keep skidding to demonstrate that it could still be done. And then, victorious, she stopped. Secretly, that pair of crushed legs bothered her more than she let on. The way her dad had been affected had left an impression.
Boys considered her a daredevil.
She wore it proud.
Quinn did a stint as a tomboy, primarily due to baseball. She didn’t throw like other girls who, coming from foreign countries, didn’t play the game. She didn’t throw like the boys either but developed a semi-rigid overhand toss that was effective. Her good arm allowed her to play the outfield in pickup games and to be a warm-up battery mate for aspiring pitchers.
At fourteen, she coerced the boys’ team coach into letting her take batting practice; in exchange, she caught for a pitcher who wanted to work on his curve. She made contact, too. A few Texas leaguers. A pair of line drives. One grounder might have made it through an infield. A good day, until afterwards, outside the girls’ washroom as she leaned over the water fountain, the coach casually placed one hand on her bottom and slid the other across her chest. First, she twitched, then jerked up. She cut her lip and nearly chipped a tooth. She knew then why she’d been allowed to take BP. After that, she didn’t catch for the boys officially, only when one promised they’d be on their own. No more coaches. Following that incident she let her hair grow long. Being more like a girl, her father said. He noticed. She kept to herself that if grown men were going to treat her like a girl, and badly, she wasn’t going to spend time in their company as a half-boy. She’d keep her distance. Morons. Irrelevant, it was time. Never her plan to always be a catcher who wasn’t allowed to suit up with the boys in a real game.
Around that time, she started stealing.
Pure accident, the first occasion. The last in a line of old-fashioned gum machines. An antique that stood outside a drugstore during the daytime. Quinn dropped in a dime and pressed the lever down. A wee pack of gum slid onto a tray. She was talking to her friends at that moment, laughing hard about something hilarious that was probably stupid. She forgot to take the gum out of the machine. She pressed the lever again and gum dropped down. She noticed two packs of gum in the tray. She hit the lever again without putting in more money. Gum slipped out. She said nothing to her friends and covertly stuffed the gum in a pocket.
Soon after that she disentangled from her pals on the walk home. Raced back to the gum machine. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Pounding. She pressed the lever down again. Gum came out. She glanced into the drugstore. Then pretended to insert coins repeatedly while pressing the lever. She made room on the tray for more gum by sliding the packs to one side. As the pile built up, she stuffed her pockets. When she had no more room in her pockets, she filled both hands.
That was the best time ever. She felt so freaking alive. She didn’t know why.
She walked down half a block to a hairdresser’s salon with her fists full of packs of gum and, with the bravado of a soloist in an opera, announced, ‘I got gum for sale at a discount! It’s for charity. Seven packs for fifty cents.’
‘What charity?’ some lady with purple-streaked hair under a pair of snapping scissors asked her. Moron.
‘Like I said,’ she told the woman, ‘they’re at a discount.’
She sold three sets. A buck-and-a-half profit. Then scampered away at reckless speed, propelled so fiercely by her glee.
Falling asleep that night, she knew she’d steal again. She liked the feeling all through her bloodstream. She’d been unhappy lately but no longer felt that way. Why she now felt good wasn’t something she could explain. Still, she wasn’t going to knock it. She was going to steal again.
Discovering the flaw in his old machine, the druggist scrapped it. Quinn moved on from there.
The first time she got caught she was adamant that her activity had no connection to her mother dying. She could have used that excuse for sympathy and escaped the pickle she was in, as she was being prompted to do. Quinn was having none of it. ‘Don’t be an idiot moron,’ she advised her accuser.
‘Don’t call me an idiot moron,’ the older woman who had nabbed her warned.
‘What kind of a moron are you, then?’
‘Watch your tongue, young lady.’
‘In my mouth? How? You got a mirror?’
‘Don’t be so damned smart!’
‘I should be dumb instead? Give me a mirror. I’ll watch my tongue if you think it’s so important. Will that be dumb enough for you?’
‘I have half a mind to call the police.’
‘I agree with you. You have half a mind.’
‘The impudence! You’re in trouble now.’
‘Fine. I’m in trouble now. Just don’t blame my mom. My mom dies, and what? I go steal something? Do I look like an imbecile to you?’
A friend of the woman she robbed, who caught Quinn going through her purse, clucked her tongue and spoke up. ‘It’s in her genes.’
Quinn didn’t think she meant her Levi’s. ‘What genes?’ Almost a snarl.
‘Her dad,’ the woman making the point replied. She turned back to Quinn. ‘Isn’t that right, honey?’ Back to her friend: ‘He’s a criminal.’
‘Was a criminal,’ Quinn told the woman, her teeth clenched, her fangs bared. She was quick. ‘Was.’ She used her rising adrenalin to burst past the two women and out of the potential arms of the law, if that’s what they had in half their minds.
Her father received a call that night. He put the phone down after listening respectfully, saying a few words, thanking the caller. Within earshot, Quinn picked up the gist.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked her. He was always tentative with his daughter, not knowing how he was doing as a single parent; if he could handle this, her.
‘She called you a criminal,’ she explained. ‘Yesterday’s news I told her.’
The explanation seemed to settle something. Her father went quiet, more deeply than usual. Two things emerged from the episode. Quinn understood that getting caught was a serious drag, and after that she had no intention of letting it happen again. The second lesson was that stealing from women’s purses at the laundromat was now, like stealing gum, ancient history.
She still got a kick out of it, pilfering. She just needed a bigger, better, buzz.
Quinn broke into an unlocked home. The best time ever.
She repeated the crime often, gaining experience.
Then she pulled off a daring heist.
Kids often climbed up in the few trees that grew in patches of backyards next to the lane. Once up in the branches, climbers were all but invisible. They passed the time there. She calculated that if she could climb higher and shimmy onto a certain limb without it breaking, she could drop down to a rooftop. Once up there, she could walk across the flat roofs of dozens of duplexes, from one end of the lane to more than halfway down the block without facing a gap or a higher wall. In the middle of the rooftop, no one below could spot her.
She had a destination in mind.
Though dexterity was required, it would not be difficult to climb down a pole that supported an upper-floor porch. The porch was not accessible from below, only from an upper-level door to the inside. On a hot summer day, only the screen door was used. She noticed residents come and go without lifting a latch or sliding a bolt. She was positive it was never locked. All she had to do was keep an eye on the front door while the man of the house was off at work, wait for the woman of the house to leave – with her shopping bag would be ideal – then run to the lane, climb the tree, race across the rooftops, slide down the porch pole when no one was looking, enter the house, and steal whatever she could fit in her pockets.
She took money. A small wad of fives and tens. She took cheap jewelry and a ladies’ wristwatch that potentially had value and a pair of porcelain knickknacks. Fragile items she protected within stolen towels. She snitched a pillowcase off a bed and stuffed it with her loot and a case of genuine silverware. Then she monkey-climbed the porch pole again with the sack in one hand, which she slung up onto the roof, cracking a knickknack, and made her escape.
The robbery became the big event in community lore.
Everybody was talking about it.
Even her father, who wasn’t well connected locally and commuted elsewhere to work, heard the story.
Quinn said, ‘Probably some neighbor had it in for them.’
Her father disagreed. ‘Nope. That thief came from another part of town.’
‘How do you know?’ He was wrong, but why did he think that way?
‘Looks professional to me. A professional thief won’t rob in his own neighborhood. Partly for his own protection. If he steals local and someone sees him, he gets recognized. But mostly he won’t do it because it’s not honorable. Thieves have honor. It’s not right to rip off your neighbor. That’s true everywhere in the world.’
Her dad’s words had an immediate effect. She had planned to take the silverware to a pawnshop on Jean Talon Street. Suddenly, the flaw in her strategy hit home: not far enough away. Her dad stayed out of her room; but if he was ever suspicious of her, or if he was sending subliminal messages, he might decide to have a peek under her bed or in her closet. There, he’d not only find the stolen goods from the infamous balcony robbery, but also from a string of break-ins. She had to get the loot out of her room, and the closest pawnshop was the wrong solution.
She checked the Yellow Pages. And began to explore her city.
Way south on the ‘Main’ – the common name for Boulevard St Laurent, a thoroughfare that divided Montreal streets into East and West and was notorious for being gangsterland – she found a nesting area for pawnshops.
Quinn didn’t think it would be difficult. But a teenager walking in with old-world silverware that to a child was worth a fortune aroused a level of suspicion she had not anticipated. She reckoned pawnbrokers wouldn’t care if her goods were stolen. Maybe they’d pay less for hot items, but surely that would be the extent of their concern. An expectation dashed. In three different establishments, they grilled her until she got mad and decamped.
Her presentation improved each time, yet these sad old men behind their counters – gents who so rarely felt a ray of sunlight in their dingy caverns filled with guitars and toasters, gold wedding bands and silverware – seemed to possess an uncanny ability to see right through her. They had X-ray eyes. The third man on whom she tried her shtick chuckled aloud.
Chuckled her right out the door.
Live and learn. She tried again.
Number four also looked sad, lonely, and sun-deprived. He was permanently stooped, with wild tufts of grey hair over his ears and none on top. He had untamed eyebrows, and hair on his knuckles that momentarily threw her off her game. She’d never seen anything like that. Hairy fingers. He greeted her as the other man had dismissed her, with laughter, as though a joke had been shared, then prolonged his good humor with a broad grin. When he spoke, his voice was raspy. ‘Come here, little girl. Follow me.’
She was not little. Taller than him, although half his weight. He was gesturing with two of those hairy fingers and guiding her behind a curtain into a mysterious back room. She presumed he’d try to molest her there. She believed that he underestimated her ability to fight him off. Pummel him, maybe. She half-wanted to do battle. She’d show him. She’d show all these dusty old pawnbroker men. She’d stick him with knives from her silverware case.
She went behind the curtain.
A pale light shone over a small crowded desk. Dust motes hung in the air. The man sat down in shadow. She remained standing. That helped her feel safer. She looked around and saw an array of stuffed boxes and assorted junk.
The man switched a radio on. Tinny violin music gently wafted between them. He raised a hand momentarily, as if waving a baton in time to the music. ‘Show me,’ he said, ‘whatcha got.’ She was pleased that he seemed to mean her goods.
Quinn took out the case of silverware and placed it on top of papers on his desk. He opened it and extracted a spoon to examine under the lamp. Once he had identified the hallmark, he grunted in what seemed a significant way. Then he placed the spoon back in the box, snugging it down into the felt lining.
‘Your family this belonged to?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They died.’ Only half a lie. She still had half-a-family.
‘If someone you loved passed away, I am sorry,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
‘Let me ask again. Your family this belonged to?’
‘I told you. Yes.’
‘The first time I heard you, but in my life I prefer the truth.’
‘You think I’m lying?’
‘That is not a word to use.’
‘Because I’m not.’
He wore a short-sleeved shirt. He held up an arm. As hairy as his fingers. He rotated his forearm in one direction, slowly, then the other.
He put his arm back down on the desk.
When he didn’t explain himself, she asked, ‘Why’d you do that?’
‘I’m sensitive.’
She waited again. ‘Aren’t we all? Personally, I protect kittens, puppies, and little children. So?’
‘Sensitive I am to the truth. What you said about the kittens, that was true.’
She waited for him to tell her to get out. Instead, he turned the music lower.
‘We can do business, yes?’ A whisper. ‘One more time I’m asking you. If this from your family, in the window I can put. If not, then we do this a different way. The last time I’m asking. Your family this belonged to?’
She checked his eyes, how they squinted at her, as though evaluating not what she said but how. She guessed that she also stood in shadow, that he could not see her well. She felt adrift on the music.
‘No,’ Quinn said.
‘You’re a thief. Shall I do business with a thief, I’m asking?’
This seemed a crucial moment in her life. She wanted to very slowly pick up the case and very deliberately put it back into the bag, then run.
Instead, she said, ‘Why not?’ An admission. She felt naked.
‘No reason why not. But I must know. What it is I buy. Who from. Yes?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Good. I saw you down the street walking. To myself I said, that girl has something interesting to sell to me.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Her wariness was easily detected in her tone.
‘I watch as you go in, come out, the other pawnshops. This is what happens to an amateur. Listen to me. What you have here is good. I will take it. I will not pay you what it is worth. Why not, you’re asking me? Because I cannot sell these knives and forks, this set, for what it is worth. I cannot put stolen goods in the window. That would be like putting myself in jail for how long? But still I can help you. If you are a good thief, we can do business again sometime. If you are an honest thief.’
She thought about all that. This seemed like an important day. She could feel the whole of her life opening before her, like a great door to a secret vault.
‘How much?’ she asked, for she also remained wary.
‘One-fifty,’ he said, and wagged a forefinger. ‘For more don’t ask. I could give you a lot less and you would accept it, no? But ask for more, that will not be good.’
She didn’t argue. He paid her on the spot.
One hundred and fifty dollars. She was that rich. She was thrilled.
‘My name is Ezra. Can you pronounce?’
‘Ezra.’ She had no problem with it. Didn’t know why she should. ‘I’m Quinn.’
He paused a moment. ‘More than I need to know. I hope to forget your name soon, Quinn.’
He knew too much, while she was curious to learn more. ‘Knightsbridge. Is that your last name? It’s on the sign outside.’
‘It’s on the sign. Let’s put it this way: I came by it rightfully. I go by it.’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Never hurts to ask. An answer can be painful. Like gout. Gout can be very painful. Answers can hurt like that.’
‘You talk funny sometimes.’
‘That’s your question?’
‘No. It’s not. If you can’t show this stuff in the store, how do you sell it?’
‘This is your lucky day, Quinn. You with the name I must soon forget. Other gentlemen on this street are pawnbrokers. Like me. But it is my fate also to be a fence. Do you know what that means?’
She wasn’t sure. ‘I think so.’
‘If you think so, then you know so. Now go. I will give you an empty box. Same size as this one with the knives and forks. Put it in your bag. Here, I give you a can of beans to make it look heavy. The other brokers, they will see that I sent you packing, like they did. As I should do myself. Be careful when you return. Look around. Check cars. Who is in them? Look in windows. Who looks out? Once in a blue moon, someone is watching.’ He held up his arm again. ‘When you feel a tingling, obey. Do you know what to do then?’
‘Go away?’ she suggested.
‘Do that. Now go. Away. Be good.’
Quinn departed as though walking on air. Blocks from the store she ditched the pillowcase with its fake cargo. She was thrilled. Only later did she realize how thoroughly at ease and how wonderfully safe she had felt in the little room. She wanted to be worthy of being invited back there again.
If she was not going to be a thief in her own neighborhood, she would need to explore other parts of the city. She set out to discover her world.
Her city was on an island, but she only knew that in an abstract way. Its dimensions were unknown to her. Communities could not readily expand outward forever, bound by the circling river, so grew to be congested. She visited Westmount, home to well-heeled English on one side of the mountain, and Outremont, home to affluent French on the other side, and she wandered into the poorest areas of the city below downtown. Poorer than her own district, which was an eye-popper. She was learning that the city was huge. Nobody could walk it. To drive around the island would be an expedition. She’d had no clue.
Quinn became an expert on bus routes.
Stealing in far-flung districts was beset with problems. Was she supposed to carry her loot home on a bus? Or walk with it for miles? A reasonably pretty girl drew unwanted attention to herself; she had to be careful. Taxis cost money, and the cabbie could later be a witness against her. What she needed was a car, except she didn’t have a license or know how to drive. That made her think about acquiring an accomplice. Since she was beginning to think that her life would be easier with a boyfriend rather than being on the loose without one, she might be able to kill two birds with a single overhand heater.
Quinn went out with a couple of baseball players who played for Park Ex, one a pitcher, the other a third baseman. Both had been pursuing her. They seemed to deserve her attention due to their own. That’s how she felt initially. They both had cars. Both were rambunctious. That she was way more serious about crime than they’d ever be didn’t turn out to be the problem. She just wasn’t into them. They were cute, and both were physical specimens. Sex in the front seat with the pitcher was laugh-out-loud funny. With the third baseman in the back seat, exciting initially. Her lack of interest in each of them came over her gradually and it wasn’t only because their ball club was doing poorly. They were just too dynamic in the relationship. She was supposed to be agog, to eagerly spend every passing minute doting on their company. She felt dangled. Some girls went in for that sort of thing and were eager to take her place. She broke up with both guys and wondered, ‘Now what?’ She’d sampled the cream of the crop and found out that the two most desirable boys in the neighborhood didn’t appeal. Holy. Now what?
Thoughtful, Quinn conducted a skull session with herself. She also consulted with Ezra Knightsbridge. He agreed that an accomplice with a car was a sound idea. She went out to a ball game and looked around once more. The centerfielder was skinny and pimply. Someday he’d be a catch. Not now. The catcher was vulgar, in both expression and appearance. They were considered the next best choices. Others who were handsome already had girlfriends, and she wasn’t looking to make a scene. She scouted further afield. She began to check out the shy boys, the geeks rather than the goons, not only strong silent types but also flimsy silent ones. Some guy who’d never take her for granted, because he was agog. One who’d be at her beck and call. The kind of guy who’d be thrilled and even a little shocked to be in her company. All the boy needed to demonstrate was that he was genuinely nice and that he owned a car. If she wanted him for an adventure, he had to be obliging and capable of keeping his mouth shut.
A few might fit the bill. She gave them a whirl.
One, Otto Braup, the fourth candidate she considered, had an excellent chance of becoming a keeper. He was gawky tall. A curved spine gave him away as not being athletic. He didn’t look so bad. Sapling skinny. She guessed he’d probably bend before he broke. He spiked his hair to give himself a quirky look. His head looked tiny for his frame, and his neck was stunted. He was the brother of a girl in her orbit – which is how they met, when the sister brought him to the Friday night dance hall Quinn frequented.
Otto was in engineering. That was not so rare in the neighborhood. The guys were either juvenile delinquents or they were doing what their immigrant dads demanded they do – study engineering at university. Most who entered the program dropped out after a year, unable to handle the math, then did what their mothers wanted: studied to become teachers. An exception, Otto stood out. He was flourishing as a student engineer. Sadly, his social skills were a travesty. He knew nothing about girls. She’d have to buck him up in that regard.
Quinn took him to bed. Not that she was an old pro, but experience fell to her side. This was her first time having sex in an actual bed – her own, something of a thrill by itself. He was both overly scared and overly excited, which induced complications, yet sex could be a whole lot of fun in a real bed when the boy let her take charge.
And then, he was so ridiculously grateful. OK, she determined, I can make this one drive a getaway car. He needed a do-over and he was definitely someone she could do over.
As a bonus, not only did he own a car, he had overhauled the engine himself. ‘I souped it up,’ he told her. That could come in handy.
Poor Otto Braup blew it with her. She didn’t have time to work on the socially doltish side to his nature. When she went back to the Friday night dance hall, she discovered that he had informed the universe of their liaison. The bouncer knew. The cashier knew. Her friends wanted to know what it was like. Those who weren’t her friends snickered. Otto’s sister apologized. ‘Sorry. He’s such an ass.’
By the time she found him, wanting to dance for the first time in his life, she had only one question. Asked loudly. ‘Did you tell everybody how the first time you didn’t last four seconds?’
They were done. Back to square one.
Except that Otto’s revelation created a furor. Boys who previously considered Quinn to be out of their league were stepping forward. If she was willing to bed a neophyte loser, maybe the rest of the known universe also stood a chance. Riffraff were easily dispersed. Her penchant for a slick putdown ruined a few lives. Still, one boy emerged from the morass as a candidate. To Quinn’s mind he was not a total dimwit when it came to girls. He wasn’t a geek. He confessed that he held back from approaching her when she was ‘dating the baseball team’.
‘Hey!’
‘I know when a chick goes in for muscles. Fog between the ears.’
‘You’re a moron.’
But that was the thing. He wasn’t. His name was Dietmar Ferstel, which made her think he was a tractor or a truck, although he was small-boned and on the shorter side. She called him Trucker sometimes. He had lovely blond hair, not so long in the sixties style, although it curled around the edges. Small, he seemed athletic, but preferred books to baseball.
‘Do you own a car?’
‘Will you sleep with me if I own a car?’
‘Buses are inconvenient, I find.’
‘I have a big old Pontiac.’
‘Did you soup it up?’
‘I’m in Social Studies. Do I look like a mechanic to you?’
‘I don’t know what a mechanic looks like. Different than anyone else?’
‘Dirt under the fingernails. Grease on their palms. Look. Me. Nice hands.’
He never imagined she’d do what she did next. Quinn kissed one hand, tenderly, on one side, then the other. He watched. She nibbled his thumb. He nearly fainted. She owned him then, she could tell.
Quinn trained this lad in Social Studies to be her getaway driver.