Katie walked along the street, trailing her fingers along the sides of car after car. She marked them off in her mind in a business-like fashion as she walked, keeping her ears pricked up for the sound of police sirens. The only ones she heard were distant, which didn't surprise her. The cops didn't come to this area. Nobody cared about anyone here, especially not some little black girl like her. Going to a bad neighborhood meant pickings were a little slim, but she could usually find something that H-Dawg would buy from her, no questions asked.
She strummed her fingers along the roof of a worn-looking '72 Chevy Impala...nobody would buy that one, but she considered taking it for a joyride just to feel the thrum of the engine around her...the big cars always had a certain mystique to them, she thought. She passed a '67 Beetle that someone was driving far past its sell-by date, and she idly flashed her penlight over the odometer. 72 thousand, she thought. Sure, maybe after it had rolled over once or twice. Still, the little bugs were durable as all hell...had to admire that. She slipped by an Oldsmobile--'84 or '85, she wasn't sure which--and admired the curve of its bumpers in the same way some women might look at a nice tight ass on a construction worker. She loved cars. It was just that simple.
Then she spotted it. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a flash of red in a nearby vacant lot, spotlighted by an old streetlight as it sputtered and died. She blinked, unable to believe that she'd actually seen what she thought she'd seen, and ran over to the lot like she was trying out for a track team.
She couldn't believe it...she actually pinched herself, just like in the stories, to be certain she wasn't dreaming. There, in the shadows of the vacant lot, was a brand-spanking new 2001 Porsche convertible, cherry-red, with nobody inside. She stroked its glossy door idly, staring at it as though lost...H-Dawg would give her more money than she'd ever made in a night before for this one car...and that was after giving it a spin, putting it through its paces, seeing it run, feeling it all around her...
She pulled out a few simple tools, and popped the lock in five seconds. With practiced ease, she slipped inside the car (no, she thought. Car was too simple a word for this one; something this beautiful had to be called a Porsche...) and took a moment to look around. Inside, it was a little tacky...the seats weren't coated with leather, but with some sort of slick vinyl. Still, H-Dawg wouldn't mind that; the car itself would be worth the money. He could use seats from another car. She noticed, with a measure of distaste, that the owner had replaced the standard gear shift with one of his own--a stylized representation of a man's penis. Probably some rich guy's pussy magnet, she thought as she pulled off the driveshaft cover, feeling underneath for the ignition wires...he's off looking for some hooker or something, and he's gonna come back and find his ride gone. That's life, baby...
The door slammed shut beside her, and suddenly she could hear a loud wailing, first ascending, then descending, then ascending again. Shit, she thought as the dome light flickered on and off and the dashboard started flashing red and green, there must have been a car alarm in there. Still, in this neighborhood, who's gonna listen? She reached back into the workings, feeling for the wires...
