NaNoWriMo Day 13- The Shoes of Baltimore

They all decided to get two deserts and each got a drink.

Mt. Vernon wasn’t as busy as some of the more touristy sections of the city like the Inner Harbor, so Jamie, DeSean, and Ronald had the whole restaurant pretty much to themselves.

They joked about how dumb the people were for leaving their cars unlocked.

“Yea, I knew some people would leave their cars unlocked and might be able to get a few quarters to try and get something together. But I can’t believe somebody left their car unlocked and left a $20 bill!”

“Yea man,” Jamie said back to DeSean. “I can’t believe they did either. In fact…”

“What?” DeSean asked.

“Well, they had a stack in there. Like a fat stack. Probably around $500 if I had to guess. Might be more.”

“Why didn’t you take it all?” DeSean asked.

“Think about it,” Jamie shot back. “What do you think is worse? Stealing a $20 or stealing over $500. I don’t know what the laws are, but something tells me we would get in a whole lot more trouble for stealing more than $500. And the dude who owns that car, he would certainly notice if all his money was missing. If it’s just one bill, he’s not likely to notice. He saw us which sucks, but we can look out for that car in the future. We just lay low for a while, and let him keep his guard down. If he keeps coming back for O’s games or lives around the neighborhood, we’ll be able to keep hitting his car up throughout the season. Take a $20 here, take a $20 there. We gotta be smart and play the long game on this. We potentially got somebody we can hit up each week. With taking all that $500, he’s gonna report it to the cops. Anybody in that area that might have saw us probably already gave the cops a shout out and let them know suspicious kids are walking around those cars. Taking all that would have been too risky my man.”

“He’s right,” Rodney said. “If any of us got pinched with more than $500, that sounds like bad news. And if that dude had more than $500, it’s gonna be hard to prove that he just lost one bill. He might not even know how much he has. How would the cops be able to positively say he lost just one bill? We could say we had that $20 the whole time and there’s no way they could prove otherwise unless they had some type of video.”

DeSean thought about this. “True. I guess you have a point. But damn man. $500! We could be ballin right now. Forget these sodas, we could get some booze hound to buy us some bottles to pop tonight! Take um to the Monument, chill, and celebrate.”

“That would be tight,” Jamie said. “But tonight probably wouldn’t be smart with the game going on. Too much attention and people walking around. Probably some old ass couple would scold us for underage drinking and might call us in. I can’t wait till March when all the games and shit for both teams are done. That’s when things can really got popping. It will be nice weather, less attention, less tourists, it will be tight.”

Rodney and DeSean nodded their heads. They longed for these brief few months when there weren’t any games going on. They felt like they could get away with more.

They spent the rest of the time joking around. Enjoying the spoils of their victory.

But what they didn’t realize during their celebration was that the bored girl working the counter who Jamie thought was cute was listening to their conversation. And what they also didn’t realize was that she knew the person they robbed. She sent a quick text and let Doug Daniels know that the guy he was chasing was in the restarting right now.

He gave her a quick scheme to come up with. He wanted her to go to her computer, make a quick word document asking about their spending habits in Baltimore. Then he wanted her to have a section where she got their addresses and numbers. He told her to do whatever she needed to in order to get that information.

Before the trio left, the girl called them over to the counter.

“Hey guys, I’m doing a quick survey for school. Would you guys mind taking a quick survey?”

“Yea girl, we got you.”

Jamie was glad for an excuse to get to talk to her.

“How are you doing tonight?” he asked.

“Ugh, so bored. Can’t wait for my shift to be over. How about you guys? What are you getting into tonight?”

“We got school and shit tomorrow. Probably going to call it a night,” Jamie said.

“Yea I hear ya,” the girl behind the counter said.

“Well, if you guys could take this survey, it would really help me out. I was supposed to have finished this last week, but luckily my teacher gave me an extension.”

“I bet he did,” DeSean said under his breath?”

“What?” she asked sweetly, but knowing that he probably made some derogatory remark about her.

“Nothing,” DeSean said back. A huge smirk was on his face. “I’ll help ya out. Let’s see these surveys.”

She handed them to the trio and and gave them pens.

Jamie looked at the questions about where he was spending money and where he was planning to spend money in Baltimore.

“This for tourists? We ain’t tourists,” Jamie said, a little offended.

“No,” the girl said. “This is for anybody in the area. It’s actually better if your local.”

They filled the fake surveys out. When they got to the bottom of the survey, Jamie questioned why she needed their phone numbers and addresses.

“This isn’ for some marketing company or something is it? You guys just gonna send a bunch of shit to my house?”

The girl shook her head.

“No,” she replied. “It’s for my teacher to show it’s legit. They don’t do anything with it. If they think we are faking um, they will just call to see that you actually did the survey. But that’s only if you give um a reason to think you’re just making them up. So you guys will be good, they won’t bother you.”

“That makes sense,” Jamie said.

Normally, he was street smart enough to know that you shouldn’t give a random stranger your number and house address. But since this girl was cute, he wouldn’t to help her out. Plus, he also thought there might be the off chance that she calls him or stops by his house to try and hang out with him. So he put down the information, winked at the girl, and walked out with DeSean and Rodney.

“Did you put your address and number down?”

Rodney and DeSean shook their head no in unison. “I don’t know her,” DeSean said. “Why the hell would I give her personal information like that?” “Did you, lover boy?”

Jamie felt embarrassed now.

But he tried to play it off that he was being a ladies’ man.

“Bro, that survey was bull. She is probably just a freak and trying to get some digits off of dudes. She don’t even care how young we looked. She just wants it. So she’s gonna be hitting me up because you bozos were dumb and didn’t give her any minutes. I’ll Periscope up for ya’ll when we’re smooshing.”

“Please,” DeSean said.

But Jamie could he put some doubt in DeSean’s mind at least. He knew he got him to start thinking about whether or not he should have put down his phone number and address.

“Well if she really hits you up, give her my digits next,” DeSean said.

“Ya’ll are gross. Keep your sloppy seconds,” Rodney said. “I’ll just slide over there if she stops by Jamie’s house and win her over before Jamie gets anything done. Then ya’ll can have your turns.”

They all laughed.

When they got to the Convention Center, they all went their separate ways.

“Okay,” DeSean said yawning. “I’ll see you clowns at school tomorrow. Don’t know if I feel like showing up in time for homeroom, but I’ll at least be in that bitch by lunch.”

DeSean and Jamie slapped hands. DeSean and Rodney slapped hands. Then Rodney and Jamie slapped hands.

“Se ya fellas,” Jamie said.

He walked past the Convention Center, seeing a homeless person with their phone plugged in to one of the street lamps that had an outlet. He always wondered how they got phones. Probably burners. This person was minding their own business and wasn’t asking for any money.

That’s the type of person Jamie would help out if he could. Jamie reached in his pocket and felt around for the pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters he took from the first car that he hadn’t spent. He walked over the man as he was setting up a cardboard shelter.

“Here bro, it’s not much but I hope it helps.”

The man quickly reached out and took the money, putting it in a bag behind him.

“Bless you son, bless you.”

“Take it easy,” Jamie said.

This made Jamie feel good about himself. Almost like a Robinhood. The people he took that money from probably didn’t need it. They had their nice home and car. And since they were tourists most likely, they never helped out the people in the area. If they did, it was probably only once or twice a year.

Since he was helping someone out, he could rationalize that it wasn’t that bad, going into cars and taking a few pennies. He hoped the man he just gave the money to would use it for food instead of beer or drugs, but he couldn’t control that. All he could do was just give him the money and hope he would use it to get something to eat.