GTA

Circa 1994: Jersey City

The realization that your car has been stolen hits you like a Dodgeball in Gym class. It burns. Emotionally, it makes the same THWANG as when the rubber hits your skin. I had walked up and down the block several times, second-guessing myself, convinced I had parked it down the street from my apartment. “…Is it on the next block?” And so, to the next block I walked. Up and down. Several times.

To be fair to myself, it had been a few days since I last drove it. I lived in a city. It was easier to take public transportation than find parking, and everything I needed was within walking distance. It also wasn’t my car; it was my sister’s. My car was a 1968 Pontiac Lemans, Corvette yellow with a black top, and very easy to find. But I hit a pothole on the entrance to the Pulaski Skyway from Jersey City. The car wasn’t fragile. It was a beast. A metallic rattle indicated something was obviously broken or had come loose. Fortunately, I was on my way to visit my parents, and my Dad was mechanically inclined.

“I’ll take a look at it over the weekend,” my Dad said, handing me the keys to my sister’s silver, 1986 Toyota Corolla. He had just given it a tune-up. “She’s got the Nissan; she can use it for a few more days.” The Nissan was a spare car for situations like this. While my sister claimed the Toyota, it was still registered and insured by my Dad. Inevitably, she’d have a problem with me driving “her” car, but she’d have to take it up with him. 

I walked up and down the block, scrutinizing every silver car I saw. I didn’t know the license plate. I knew it was a silver Toyota…something, possibly four-door. I peered in windows, hoping to recognize the interior. I had only been inside the car twice, including that drive home. That distinct sinking feeling set in.

The car was stolen.   

I walked back to my apartment. I’d need all the info on the car to report it stolen, which meant I had to tell my Dad. I already knew how the conversation would go down, but hoped for the best.

“You left the keys in it!?” My Dad’s Italian temper went from 0-60 before I even finished my sentence.

“No, I didn’t leave the keys in it! I have the keys!” I jingled them next to the receiver.

“Then you left it unlocked!”

“No, Dad. I locked the car.”

“Then how did they steal it?” This was the story of my entire childhood. Nothing could just happen. There were no accidents. Someone had to be held responsible. There were four kids in the house, and yet everything that broke, went missing, or was damaged, all fingers immediately pointed to me. I existed, therefore I was guilty.

I interrupted his lecture, “I need to report it stolen, so whenever you’re ready, can I get all the information on the car?”

“I’m so glad I put all that time and money into making it run great for the thieves.” His sarcasm bit through me as he rustled through papers. I heard my Mom walk into the room. “Kristine left the Toyota unlocked, and it got stolen,” my Dad angrily reported.

“Way to go, Kristine,” my Mom hollered from wherever she was in the room.

“Jesus Christ! I locked the fucking car! I lock my car when I park it. Why would I suddenly forget to lock her car?”

“You just put me in a tough spot,” my Dad snapped. “I only have liability on the Toyota. Theft isn’t covered.”

I should have taken the train. Even walking the 30 miles home would have been less exhausting.

“I’m gonna have to call you back. Your sister has the registration card,” he said, followed by a loud punch to my eardrum from the receiver being slammed down.

I stood in my bedroom, looking at my phone, in emotional and physical limbo. I had to wait for my Dad to call me back with the info, so I couldn’t leave my apartment. I didn’t know whether to be angry or sad that he didn’t believe me, or amused that I, even briefly, had entertained the idea that our conversation might have gone differently.

Before I could settle on an emotion, my phone rang. That was fast. I braced myself as I picked up the receiver. It was my Dad, as expected. “A Detective just called me. They found the Toyota. He wants to talk to you, and I gave him your number.” That was all he said before hanging up.

Okaaaaay. It seemed odd, and I thought back to all the cop shows I had ever watched, trying to remember if Detectives investigated stolen cars. That question was answered when my phone rang a minute later.

“This is Detective Cashio. We found your Dad’s car this morning.” He sounded like every Detective on TV and in movies. “When did you last use the car?”

“Um, three days ago, when I drove it back to my apartment from my parents’ house. I was going to bring it back to them this morning. That’s when I realized it was stolen.” Scenarios played out in my head. They found it stripped somewhere in the Bronx. It was taken for a joyride and sustained extensive damage before being abandoned in an alley somewhere in Newark. “Where did you find it?”

“It was left running in a parking lot in North Bergen.”

“It was running?”

“It was also used as a getaway car in an armed robbery of a liquor store last night. The clerk was shot and killed. You know anything about that?”

I felt a twinge at the back of my skull. “Wait. What?”

“One of the assailants was described as a tall woman, 20s, with dark hair. I’m looking at a copy of your license, and you fit the description to a T. It says you’re 5’10. That’s pretty tall for a woman around here.”

It was as if all the air left my bedroom. “Wait. WHAT?”

“Where were you last night?”

“Um…uh…,” I had to think, what did I do last night? “I had the night off. I was home.”

“You didn’t go anywhere?”

The one night I had off from the bar I was too tired to do anything. “No. I stayed in. I watched TV until I fell asleep.” I ran through the programs in my head. Please don’t make me admit I watch Melrose Place.

“Can anyone verify that you were home all night?”

“…No.” Scenes from more cop procedural shows ran through my head. Not having an alibi was always a problem. Innocent people without them went to jail or were interrogated for hours.

“Did you have any friends in the car, or lend the car to anyone?”

“No.” As absurd as it was, I had to ask. “Am I in trouble?”

“This is a homicide investigation, Miss Bottone. This is a very serious situation…”

The shock suddenly evaporated, and my outrage/audacity/sarcasm kicked in at full throttle. “You’re telling me that you actually think I dropped my car off at my parents’ house in South Plainfield, drove my sister’s car back to Jersey City, and used it to rob a liquor store where someone was killed, ditched it five towns over, and then, what? Took the bus home? No, wait, I took a cab because I had money.”

Evidently, the Detective didn’t see the scenario as ludicrous as I did. “Did you just confess?”

“…What? No! Oh my GOD! I didn’t do any of that! I bartend at Texas Arizona in Hoboken! That place is packed all the time! I make a ton of money! I don’t need to rob a store!”

“I see.” The Detective took a long pause. I had hoped he thought my exasperation was amusing and would tell me he understood, and I was in the clear. Instead, he said, “I’ll need you to come in for a line-up. I’ll call you.”

If it wasn’t for the authoritative tone of the Detective and my Dad making me promise that I didn’t knock over a liquor store, I would have thought the whole thing was a bizarre joke. I walked around in a daze after the Detective’s call. In the meantime, my sister left several scathing messages on my answering machine, accusing me of leaving her car unlocked and listing the items she had left in it, demanding that I replace them immediately.

I never heard back from the Detective. But a few days later, my Dad called and said the Police were releasing the car from impound. Evidently, when they dusted the interior, they got prints from the assailants. The same prints were found in other vehicles abandoned in the same way and tied to other armed robberies. The result was anticlimactic, but I was in the clear, and that was good enough for me. I picked up the police report and bummed a ride to the impound yard.

Once at the impound yard, an employee escorted me to the car. I was expecting it to be trashed, with a broken window and a shredded steering column. I was shocked to find it pristine, except for the black powder coating the interior. The intact windows silently gaslit me. “I know I locked the car! How did they get in?”

“The same way they started it, without jacking up the steering column. They used a key,” the guy said.

“But I have the keys.”

The guy shook his head, amused. “Some of these older Toyotas have similarly cut keys. They must have had a Toyota key and went around trying doors until one opened. And if it opened the door, it could also start the car.”

“Get the fuck outta here!” I looked at the keys in my hand. “And they left it running so someone else would steal it,” I concluded.

“Not necessarily. The key got it started, but the mechanism might not have let it shut off the engine. So they pulled out the key and left it running. A running car without a key is too suspicious to steal.”

“Ah, good to know,” I laughed as I signed the paperwork. I tucked the very interesting but useless info into the corner of my mind and drove the car back to my parents’ house.

I was astounded that most of the things my sister claimed were in the car, CDs, designer perfume, and a gold-plated watch were still there. I suspected the other items were never there to begin with, and she, true to form, was trying to profit from the situation. Even the gas level was only a little under half a tank down from the three-quarter mark I started with. I considered myself extremely lucky. It was a different kind of luck, but it was still luck, nonetheless.

I exchanged sets of keys with my Dad, few words spent between us. I suspected the Detective told him about the universal key theory because the accusations of my leaving the car unlocked ceased. I was vindicated by someone outside the family, but he’d never admit it. I knew, on some level, it burned him. Even without an apology, I took it as a win.

Later that day, my sister called. I let my machine pick it up. I stood there, listening and smiling, as she screamed about how I hadn’t wiped off the black fingerprint powder. That. Was. Everywhere.