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—
In his shop office, Gabriel Mariano stood with his hands on his hips while looking at the clos
ed door to the garage.
I could kill that little shit for pulling that stunt, he thought.
You know what? Screw him!
Mariano pulled open a desk drawer, reached in, and produced one of the three old cellular telephones that he had inside. He held down the phone’s on button, and when the screen blinked to life, he angrily stabbed at the keypad with his index finger, punching in 911.
The voice of an adult woman, calm and professional, answered, “Philadelphia Police Nine-One-One. What is your emergency?”
“Yeah, some Puerto Rican punk with a gun just carjacked a VW Jetta in Frankford, on Torresdale near the Harding Middle School. Silver four-door with Jersey plates.”
The female voice repeated the information back to him.
“That’s right,” Mariano said.
“Was anyone hurt?” she said.
“Looked like it. But they sped off. You’d better hurry.”
“I need your name and—”
Mariano did not listen to the rest of her reply.
He turned over the cell phone, pulled off its back cover, removed the battery, and tossed all the pieces back in the desk drawer.
—
Ruben Mora’s mind spun as he drove down Torresdale Street. His first thought was that he had to get rid of the car and its contents. And rid of it now. But then he got mad, and thought he should drive to Kensington and get his two hundred dollars back.
That jacked-up bastard! he thought as he slowed for a traffic light that was changing to green. I shoulda known Reggie sold this cheap for a reason!
He hit the turn signal. But just before he made the turn to go back to Somerset, he realized that his first thought was best. He really had to get rid of the car. He had known that right away at the garage without really thinking about it, because that explained why he had automatically grabbed the dirty shop rags and paint thinner.
He made a hard right, then drove slowly, trying not to draw attention while he looked for the right place.
Two blocks later, after turning onto Hayworth Street and rolling past a yellow NO OUTLET sign, he came to the dead end of the street. Twenty yards ahead was the tall chain-link fence that ran along the Amtrak rails. He pulled to the broken curb in front of an abandoned row house and turned off the car.
He looked in the rearview mirror and then out the windshield. There was no one around. He leaned over and picked up the cans off the floorboard. He opened the one labeled TOLUENE. It felt a little more than half-full. He emptied it on the fabric of the backseat, then tossed the can to the floor.
The harsh odor of the chemical quickly filled the car, and he started to get a headache.
He opened the door and stepped out. He deeply inhaled the fresh air, then reached back inside the car for the acetone. The can was almost full, and he poured about half of that can onto the front seats and floorboard. Then he took two of the shop towels and soaked them with the acetone. He put the now half-full can on the driver’s seat and threaded all but a third of one of the shop towels in its mouth. He moved the can to the floorboard of the backseat, then reached for the second chemical-soaked shop towel.
Again, the fumes started to overwhelm him, and he quickly stood and took another deep breath of fresh air.
He glanced around the immediate area as he did. He thought he saw movement, and froze just as a stray dog, a short-legged brown mutt with a drooping spine, ran across Hayworth. Far beyond it, on Torresdale, a taxicab flashed past the intersection.
He quickly turned back to the car and pulled from his pants pocket the disposable butane lighter, then grabbed the shop towel he’d wetted with acetone. When he thumbed the lighter, its flame immediately found the fumes—a soft Poof! sound coming from the rag as it was set ablaze. The heat instantly became intense, and he reacted by slinging the lighter and the rag inside the automobile.
They landed on the driver’s seat, which immediately flashed up in flames.
He smelled burned hair, and suddenly saw that when the flames had flared they burned his left hand. The cuff of his sweatshirt had also caught on fire and he immediately realized that acetone must have somehow splashed on it.
Frantically, he waved his hand faster and faster, trying to extinguish the fire. But that served only to make the flames worse.
