The story you are about to see is true

The police found it several days after it had disappeared, ignobly dumped in the parking lot of a Santa Ana apartment complex about 10 miles from where I live.

There it was, my beloved metallic gray 1987 Toyota Camry, a mere 265,000 miles into a long and fruitful life I’d hoped would reach at least 300,000 -- its stereo ripped from it like an organ donor’s spleen. The thief is long gone, but I can’t stop trying to penetrate the psyche of the criminal genius who pulled off this caper.

The actual detective assigned to the crime apparently had bigger fish to fry. There wasn’t a speck of fingerprint dust inside or out, despite evidence that the thief was hardly the glove-wearing type.

He -- a pronoun I choose because I can’t bring myself to believe a woman left behind what I found when the Camry and I were reunited at the impound yard -- dropped any number of clues. A soiled T-shirt. A crumpled Coke can. A broken watch. A cigarette butt. My checkbook -- surprise! -- but missing the check register. (Could someone be out there trying to balance my account?)

“Yes,” I told the dentally challenged guy who escorted me through the tow yard, “that’s my car.” I felt like one of those characters you see on “NYPD Blue” treading down the hallway at the county morgue.

The thief snatched not only the CD player -- a birthday gift from my wife five years ago -- but about a dozen CDs I’d had in the car.

Now, if he’d done a clean sweep, I could have put the whole matter out of my mind. But two CDs were left on the floor: an Edith Piaf collection, and not just any Piaf collection, but “The Very Best of Edith Piaf.” As the title of one of the songs says, “Mon Dieu”!

Clearly we can rule out any suspects known to frequent cabarets.

He also turned up his nose at the latest album by Old 97’s, an alternative country group. (Yet he boosted the new album from mainstream country singer Joe Nichols. Obviously we’re dealing with someone more attuned to the neo-traditionalist camp of country music than its edgier, boundary-stretching proponents.)

We can conclude that he’s not entirely uninterested in pop music history. He took a compilation from seminal Mexican songwriter Agustin Lara.

I started to imagine that I was being taunted. I could practically hear him sneering “We don’t need no stinking Piaf!” as he hit my CD player’s “repeat” button for another chorus of Lara’s classic “Granada.”

A friend who heard my tale of woe had a similar story: Her friend’s car was stolen, along with every CD in it -- except for actress-singer Nia Peeples’ first album.

Whatever happened to honor among thieves? Do they have no idea of what Peeples might feel if word got back to her about this snub?

I started having flashbacks about a couple of previous breaches of automotive security.

There was the Springsteen incident, when burglars ripped the stereo out of a car I’d parked on the street outside the L.A. Sports Arena while seeing the Boss.

That time, I couldn’t decide which hurt more: that they lifted the trusty Swiss Army knife I’d kept in the glove compartment for emergencies or that they didn’t walk away with several mix tapes of my own creation, vastly superior, in my humble opinion, to 99.9% of the prerecorded variety that they did steal that night.

Then there was the terrible evening a few years later when I was in Hollywood for a Gipsy Kings concert and someone managed to pop open my trunk and make off with one of my most prized possessions: my accordion.

It’s said that if you want to make God laugh, try telling him your plans. By the same token, if you want to make a graveyard-shift cop’s night, try calling in at 2 a.m. and requesting that they be on the lookout for a 1950s Universal squeezebox in red simulated mother of pearl.

As for the Camry, the last time I saw it, there it sat, gathering dirt, at a local body shop. I felt the urge to pay final respects to the car that had transported and entertained me so well lo these last 17 years. My insurance company deemed it a total loss and is supposed to be sending me a check based on its current market value.

I figure that’ll just about cover the cost of replacing the heisted CDs.

For now, I’m driving my wife’s 1989 Jetta, fully equipped with -- sigh -- a cassette player.

And whatever car I get next, I’ll be sure to get all the latest theft-prevention technology: an in-dash 8-track unit.

Randy Lewis can be reached at randy.lewis@latimes.com.