Read Online Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) by Laurence Gough - Free Book Online

Golf shifted on its springs. Hail on the roof. No, Garret’s knuckles.
    “What the fuck’s taking so long, man?”
    “Fuck off!” hissed Billy.
    He popped open the glove compartment. A road map of the city, registration papers. Kleenex. He passed the radio and CD player and Sony amp to Garret, climbed out of the car and eased shut the door. The Golf’s interior light went out. They hurried down the alley.
    Billy slipped behind the Pinto’s wheel. He paused to light a cigarette, knowing the delay would drive Garret crazy, and then turned the key in the ignition. The Pinto’s dinky four-cylinder engine coughed twice and then caught, spewing a cloud of burnt oil at the mountain ash. Billy put the car in gear and drove to the end of the block and hung a right, turned on the headlights.
    Garret, starting to relax, leaned back in his seat and rested his boots on the Pinto’s scaly dashboard.
    Billy ran a stop sign, not even bothering to check for oncoming traffic. He felt flat, depressed. Let-down. He could remember when busting into a car gave him a nice little buzz, really got him pumped up. But he’d done it too many times. It was like playing the same record over and over and over again. Or spending too much time with the same girl. Didn’t matter how crazy about her you were when you got started, after a while nothing much was happening. You were bored. He blew a lungful of smoke at Garret’s surly profile.
    “Fuck off,” said Garret.
    Billy laughed.
    It was Tuesday, three o’clock in the morning. The graveyard shift. They’d been doing business since a little past midnight, scoring Porsches and Golfs and the odd Mercedes. The way they worked, their modus operandi , Billy would pick a neighbourhood and then cruise around in the Pinto, looking for cars parked in unlit driveways or unlocked garages. He had a little penlight he used to make sure the car had a decent radio. He was quiet, but not too quiet. If the car owner was an insomniac or it turned out there was a couple of pit bulls tucked away on the back porch, forget it. Billy kept a baseball bat in the car, but it was only for self-defence, in case some asshole pushed him too hard.
    If there was no problem, everything looked good, Billy wrote down the address on a piece of paper. When he had maybe a dozen cars lined up, he arranged the addresses in order so they could go from one place to another as efficiently as possible. The radios, as they bagged them, went into a cardboard box in the trunk of the car. Usually, they’d hit seven or eight cars out of twelve. The other cars wouldn’t be there or something about the situation wouldn’t be quite right.
    It wasn’t a bad way to make a buck. A bit on the risky side, but they’d usually come away, in the space of two or three hours, with anywhere from two to four grands’ worth of electronics.
    From the fences, of course, they’d be lucky to get twenty cents on the dollar. Still, it was a lot easier than shovelling hamburgers at McDonalds. And there was always the chance of catching a bonus. One warm summer night in July, Billy had busted a Porsche and walked away with a hundred grams of coke. Garret had wanted to deal it but Billy said no. His argument was they didn’t know shit about dealers or dealing, might put somebody’s nose out of joint without even realising it. End up in some back alley garbage can with a couple broken legs. “Let’s don’t fuck with luck,” was the way Billy put it. So they had a couple of girls over and got all bright-eyed and snuffled. Had a pretty good time, all in all.
    Garret said, “You hungry, wanna grab something to eat?” Billy shook his head. He sucked on the cigarette, flicked ash at Garret’s lap.
    “Steal some more radios? I know where there’s a Jag, guy keeps it…”
    “I ripped my fuckin’ hand wide open. Look at that, for fuck’s sake.”
    Billy thrust out his hand. They passed under a streetlight, and in the sickly blue glow Garret saw the