The Saint(25)
Eleanor glanced around the garage while she waited. Bad night. Everybody working like demons. She’d never seen the garage looking so dismal or so frenzied. A great furnace boiled with flames in one corner casting heat but no light. The whole place smelled of smoke and sulfur. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.
Finally her father pulled in the back entrance and got out of the Camry.
“One down,” Eleanor said as he glanced first at the car and then at her. “Four to go.”
A convertible driven by her dad’s friend Tony pulled up outside the back entrance to the garage. Eleanor threw herself inside.
“Where to?” Tony asked as he peeled out and onto the street.
“Find me some rich bitches. They keep their cars cleaner.”
“Gramercy Park it is then, ma’am.”
On 23rd Street, she nabbed a Mercedes. Too easy. They hadn’t even locked the fucking thing.
Canal Street netted them one BMW, silver. It handled like a dream. Such a pretty car it broke Eleanor’s heart to scratch the window with the coat hanger. She didn’t want to think about the thousand different parts it would be chopped up into by tomorrow morning.
On union Street she spotted a high-end Acura, bright red, parked outside a restaurant. The owner had probably tipped the hostess to keep an eye on it. The hostess was probably off getting stoned in the kitchen.
“Four down, one to go,” she said to her dad as she tossed him the Acura’s spare keys. The genius owner had left the set in the visor. She didn’t even have to wire this one.
“Be careful,” he called out as she headed back to the street.
She flipped him off on her way out the door.
One more car and it would be done. One more and she could go home to bed. With all the adrenaline surging through her body, she knew she’d crash hard the second she got home and wouldn’t wake up until noon.
As Tony drove her into SoHo, Eleanor kept her eye out for a nice American car. American manufacturers were arrogant, and that made them shit at security. No Ford or Dodge had ever put up much of a fight.
“Nice …” Tony purred as he spotted a car in tiny ten-space paid-parking lot.
She saw what he saw the second after he saw it. A Shelby Mustang. Looked like a 1966 to her, not that she’d bet her life on that. She knew make and model on sight, but she wasn’t enough of a nerd to bother with all the years. She’d leave that to her dad.
“It’s mine,” she said. Tony wolf whistled his agreement.
“Go for it. See you back at the shop.”
Eleanor hopped out of the car and sidled over to the lot. She saw a few people milling around but no one seemed to notice her. She probably looked like some drunk preppy waiting for her friends to come out of a bar.
Let them think that. Let them think anything they wanted as long as they didn’t notice her standing with her back to the driver’s side window, a bent coat hanger behind her back. She dug under the latch and lifted up, popping the lock with ease.
Ten seconds later she and her new friend Shelby were already on the street.
Done. She’d jacked five high-dollar cars in one night. One night? She’d done it in four hours. A sense of relief flooded her. In no time she’d be back in her bed at home dreaming of Søren. Good thing she’d finished her job early. The skies had opened up and rain exploded from the clouds. The temperature, unusually warm the past week, turned frigid in minutes. The rain fractured the city lights and set everything in her rearview mirror alight with a blue glow.
Blue?
“Fuck.” In a panic Eleanor glanced behind her. A police car, blue lights ablaze, nestled in behind her. It hadn’t turned on its sirens and the silence of the car menaced her far more than sound.
She knew she had about two seconds to decide what to do. She could gun it and run. The second she lost the cop car she could dump the Mustang and disappear. But this wasn’t the highway or the interstate. This was Manhattan after midnight. Narrow streets. Pedestrians. Her foot hovered over the pedals. Accelerator on her right, brake on her left. Eleanor looked around for an escape route. She saw no alleys. No easy exits. And up on her right loomed a church, its ancient spire casting a cross-shaped shadow onto the shining streets.
Eleanor hit the brakes and prayed for a miracle.
8
Eleanor
FOR TWO HOURS THE COPS KEPT HER IN THE BACK of the squad car while they asked her questions and talked on their shoulder-mounted walkie-talkies. She did her best to stick to her story. I’m sorry. I wanted to drive it around the block. You know—joyriding. But for some reason the cops didn’t quite buy it. Apparently joyriders usually borrowed cars they had the keys to, not cars that had to have their locks popped and their ignitions hot-wired.