Page 86 of No Romeo
Didn’t mean he had to be such an ungrateful asshole. “You steal a car. He gives you money, obviously.”
“Any car?”
“Yeah.”
“That sounds shady as fuck.”
Hendrix was the definition of shady. I slammed the book and glared up at him. “Because stealing cars in the first place isn’t shady as fuck?”
“There are fifty shades of shady as fuck, Lola.” He stole some change from my dresser and started for the stairs. “Come on.”
“Come, where?”
“To take a car to the guy you might know.”
Like he expected to just snap his fingers and I’d follow. I waited for a second, groaning when I realized how badly we all needed the money. “The guy Idoknow…” I said, jogging down the steps.
“Whatever. I saw a car when I was over by the Home Depository. It should get us a good chunk of change.”
The streetlights flickered on, casting an electronic glow over the empty Dollar Lobby parking lot.
“How much do you need for the roof?” I asked, following Hendrix across the cracked asphalt.
“I don’t know. Zepp thinks about five grand.”
Shit. That was a lot of cars.
I picked up my pace when he disappeared around the brick side of the building. As soon as I stepped around the side, I stopped. Hendrix popped the lock of a white Firebird with a golden eagle stenciled across the hood. Only two kinds of people owned a car like that in Dayton. Pimps or drug dealers.
Before I made it ten steps, he had his ass behind the wheel, fiddling with the wires in the steering column.The engine roared to life, headlights flickering over the parking lot. Jesus Christ, he was fast. I’d still be picking the lock.
My door had barely closed before Hendrix took off in a screech of spinning tires.
“Do you need to call him or something?” he said over the loud rock music blasting through the stereo.
“No.” Willy was always there.
Hendrix gripped the stick shift, his tattooed forearm tensing when he shifted gears. “Again,” he said. “Shady as fuck.” Then he floored it.
Chapter32
HENDRIX
Lola’s guy–Sweet Willy– was an old redneck in overalls and a camo ball cap with a tattoo of Betty Boop on his flabby arm. And he paid like shit.
I snatched the cash from his outstretched hand and then told him to go fuck himself before I stormed past the stacks of beat-up cars littering his mosquito-infested yard.
Three hundred and fifty bucks. For grand theft auto!
I almost got back into the stupid car, thinking I’d get more satisfaction from sinking it in a lake than letting him bend me over the barrel.
“Three-fifty is a hundred bucks more than I usually get…” Lola’s voice came from behind me, breaking the chirp of crickets.
And that was the last turd in my boiling bucket of shit.
I spun around so fast my head spun. “You’ve been stealing cars—” I jutted my chin toward the crazy man’s compound hidden in the dark. “And bringing them to Willy Van Ripoff for two-hundred and fifty bucks?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “I guess it’s scrap?”
