I kept my back turned to the customers as
I rummaged through the clothing table.
Assigned to laundry detail at
Taycheedah, I’d worked with Victoria Jean Otto—aka Vicki Jean the
Boosting Queen. Vicki Jean had explained the trick to filching merchandise.
“You got to dress up for the job. You don’t look up to check if the spy cameras
are watching you because that makes you look sneaky. You leave your regular
clothes in the dressing room and walk out wearing the new stuff and a Miss
Fuckin’ America expression on your face.”
I’d
have been a complete failure as a shoplifter. I’d never taken anything that
didn’t belong to me in my life. I was the type who went back to the grocery
store and pointed out the error on a receipt if they’d undercharged me. Then
I’d apologize and pay the difference.
You
can see what an insufferable goody-goody I was. I
deserved
to be in
prison for being so damn stupid and trusting. I couldn’t even lie—my ears
would turn red and give me away, so I’d blundered through life telling the
truth and getting myself in trouble.
Prison had
straightened that out. In the Big House, it’s lie or die.
I held a pair of
black sweatpants against my waist and decided they might fit. I skulked behind
a purple-flocked Christmas tree—a bargain at nineteen bucks—stripped
off the hideous boxers, kicked them under a table, and pulled on the sweats.
Too snug—I looked like I was smuggling hassocks—but the meter was
ticking away here. Someone might have recognized me on the street and already
have phoned the police. No time to try for a better fit. Bypassing the fuschia
silk Donna Karan blouse shrieking
pick me,
I chose a
boring-as-rice-pudding white long-sleeved T-shirt, zipped out of the hoodie,
and zapped on the T-shirt in twenty seconds flat. The other bargain hunters,
arms loaded with Barbie dollhouses, board games, and the other kids’ stuff that
always gets scooped up right away, were too intent on their shopping to notice
me. I snatched up a pink baseball cap, pulled my twig-strewn hair into a ponytail,
and yanked it out through the oval at the back. Rolling the hoodie into a lumpy
tube, I tied it around my waist, figuring it might come in handy sooner or
later. The days were still hot, but September nights could be cool, and I might
wind up sleeping outside again. Assuming I lasted that long.
What
else did I need? I found myself drawn to the appliance table, crammed with the
kind of dreck kids give their mothers for Christmas, tossed in the junk drawer
by New Year’s Day. A plastic gadget caught my eye. It was called
The
Octo-dog,
and it was shaped like an octopus, with bladed tentacles designed
to slice a single wiener into eight skinny segments. Tempting, I had to admit.
It was kind of cute. And if I had to take a hostage I could use it as a weapon.
Throw down your guns or the kid’s finger gets sliced into eight exactly
equal pieces!
Then I remembered
Vicki Jean’s warning: you take what you need, but you don’t get greedy. You
don’t stop to grab the shoes on the way out of the store. In forty years of
shoplifting, Vicki Jean had never been busted for boosting. What had landed her
in prison was assault and battery on her cheating boyfriend. She’d tied him to
his bed while he was drunk and super-glued his magic wand to his stomach. This
had earned her a three-year prison term, but Vicki Jean said it was worth it.
Sure, she was in the slammer, doing time with a bunch of criminals, but her
ex-boyfriend had to pee toward his belly button.
Now, how did I
get out of the garage without paying for the goods? Time for another Academy
Award performance. Heart slamming against my ribs, I casually sauntered toward
the door. “Back in a sec,” I chirped. “Left my purse in my car.”
Nobody stopped
me. The garage sale women were dickering with a customer over the price
stickered on a Fry Daddy. As soon as I was out of sight of the garage I broke
into a trot. Ms. Suburbia goes jogging. It was nine thirty on a Saturday and
people were out in their yards, mowing their lawns or cleaning up storm damage.
A sweating, red-faced man was washing his car in his driveway, listening to the
boom box he’d set out on his lawn. The radio was tuned to a news station.
“
. . .
believed to be in the Fond du Lac area,”
the radio announced.
“Maguire
,
serving a life term at Taycheedah for the murder of her husband, is the
object of a massive manhunt. She is described as being five feet three inches
tall, brown-haired and blue-eyed, with no known scars or tattoos
. . .”
A
whapping noise made me look up. A helicopter was approaching, flying low and
lazy across the sky. Either the governor, taking a gander at the tornado
damage, or a spy chopper, hunting the escaped felon. I voted for the spy
chopper. I could feel someone up there, scanning the ground with binoculars
powerful enough to pick out individual wads of chewing gum on the sidewalk.
Were they looking for a woman in a skateboarder sweatshirt? Would the cap brim
conceal my face?
Maybe
jogging looked too much like running away. Slowing to a walk, I detoured onto
the lawn of the nearest house, picked a downed tree branch off the grass, and
hauled it to the curb. Just another homeowner, devastated at the loss of her
prize gingko. The chopper made two more passes, then whump-whump-whumped off
south and began flying a grid pattern over another section of town. I ambled
along for a few more blocks, stopping here and there to haul tree branches off
the sidewalk. Little Miss Civic Pride.
Before
long I could see the interstate just a few blocks away, the traffic already
audible. On the other side of the highway, the city petered out into scruffy
subdivisions and beyond that, into farm fields where I’d stick out like the
prize in a box of Cracker Jack.
I
spotted it then, just a block away: the enormous gray box, the acres of
asphalt, the neon letters large as semi-trailers. The bag of marbles I’d been
hunting for.
Walmart.
Angling
between parked cars, I scuttled through the parking lot, heading for the
store’s entrance. A maroon van suddenly shot out of the traffic lane, zipped
across my path and screeched to a halt, its frame rocking on its shocks. The
driver’s door flew open, nearly knocking me down, and a woman heaved herself
out of the van.
Not
even a muttered
Sorry.
No, that would have required her to take time
away from her cellphone conversation. Without looking at me or ungluing her
phone from her ear, she wrenched open the van’s rear door. Three kids tumbled
out—two little girls and a toddler boy. Still yapping on her cell, the
woman yanked the little boy by his arm and swatted the girls ahead,
interrupting her phone conversation only long enough to scream at them. “You
don’t behave this time, we ain’t stopping at the freakin’ snack bar.”
I
stuck close to them as they headed into the store, hoping that anyone watching
would take me for the Dysfunctional Family’s auntie. Inside, a white-haired
woman in a vest spangled with medals shoved a shopping cart at me.
I began wheeling
around in a shopaholic stupor, overwhelmed by the staggering overabundance of
stuff.
Eventually I broke out of my trance, recalling what Vicki Jean had told me
about surveillance cameras: the big boxes had spy cams everywhere, watching
their customers’ every move. Some sharp-eyed security troll could be zeroing in
on my face this very second. I tugged my cap brim farther down until I could
barely see, reminding myself that I was supposed to be running for my life, not
scoping out the toaster ovens.
Maybe
I could hide inside the store when it closed, raid the snack bar for food, and
stretch out on a sleeping bag in the sporting goods department. This idea had a
certain appeal, but no doubt security guards were wise to it.
I
meandered into the electronics section. Row upon row of plasma-screen TVs, all
tuned to the same channel, were running the Dangerous Escaped Felon story. My
photo flashed on thirty-two screens.
“.
. . five-thousand-dollar reward now being offered for information leading to
the apprehension of the fugitive Mazie Maguire,”
a voice squawked over a
close-up of my face.
Five measly
grand? Kip used to spend that much on a golf cart!
“And live from
Florida right now,”
the television anchor chirped,
“we have our very own
Kim Peters live on the scene, reporting live from the residence of Maguire’s
parents.”
They couldn’t,
the filthy vultures!
But they could
and they did. There was my mother, Edith Maguire, looking confused and harassed
as reporters swarmed around her, thrusting mics and cameras in her face while
she walked to her garage. She looked tired and pale. Despite the fact that my
parents live in Tampa, she hardly ever gets outside. My dad has panic attacks
if she’s gone for more than ten minutes.
My dad was
injured in a farm accident ten years ago when the rear hatch of a hay wagon
unexpectedly sprang loose, knocking him unconscious. He was in a coma for two
months, and when he came out of it, he didn’t recall the accident. He didn’t
recall much of anything. Dad’s internal circuit breakers were scrambled. He had
transient global amnesia, which meant he could recall the distant past with
perfect clarity, but the part of his brain that told him he’d had breakfast or
had already tied his shoes was damaged. He tried to return to farming, but he’d
attempt to milk the cows five minutes after their last milking or start to gas
up the tractor twenty times a day. It soon became obvious that he could no
longer work the job he’d dedicated his life to. My brothers took over the
family farm, while my parents moved to an assisted living facility in Florida.
Now I watched
helplessly as reporters hounded my mother.
“Mrs. Maguire—have
you heard from your daughter?” yelled a female reporter.
“No,” my mother
snapped.
Because Mama
Maguire didn’t raise no dummies. You think my girl doesn’t know about tapped
phones?
She didn’t say
that, of course, but I could feel her thinking it even over a distance of
fifteen hundred miles. Edith Maguire is a thoughtful, sweet-tempered woman who
compliments her hairdresser even when her perm comes out looking like burned
Brillo pads, says
excuse
me when she bumps into a department store
mannequin, and never uses stronger language than
darn,
but now she
snatched a microphone away from a reporter and started yelling into the camera.
“Margarita, if you hear this, I don’t want you to give yourself up! Stay out
there, stay free as long as you can! Your dad and I both know you’re innocent!
Love you, baby!”
Feeling a fierce
swell of longing for my mom, I leaned forward and kissed the TV screen, tears
blurring my mother’s image.
That’s when
another face appeared on the screen. A face with a taut jaw, axe-edge
cheekbones, sharp dark eyes, and a skimp of mustache. Expensive suit and tie,
raincoat slung over arm. Lettering at the bottom of the screen identified him
as U.S. Deputy Marshal Irving Katz.
Marshal?
What
was this, Dodge City? Where was the hat, the horse, the six-shooter? Last night
a couple of county cops had been half-heartedly tracking me, now a federal
marshal had been sicced on me? High-octane stuff for one measly convict. But
then I remembered that the guy who’d been chasing Richard Kimble was a U.S.
marshal, too. Apparently fugitive apprehension was what marshals did. I felt a
tiny flicker of pride. I’d eluded the locals long enough to have the feds come
after me!
My little flicker
fizzled as the marshal spoke.
“The escaped
convict, Mazie Maguire Vonnerjohn, is just a scared young woman,”
Irving
Katz said.
“She’s unarmed. She’s not going to break into your house and
shoot your dog or steal your car.”
He sounded east
coast, maybe New York. I’d seen enough
Law & Order
reruns to pick up
on the eclipsed
r
’s; car came out
cah.
“The fugitive
is hungry, cold, tired, and without friends or family nearby to assist her. I’m
confident that my team and I will have her in custody by the end of today
.”
Irving Katz did
not look hungry, cold, or tired. He looked smart, alert, and extremely competent.
He looked like a man who made good on his promises. When he said he expected to
have the fugitive in custody by the end of today, I believed him. He scared the
hell out of me.
Suddenly I felt
watched on all sides. This place wasn’t safe. Fleeing to Walmart had been a
dumb idea, a perfect example of why I was so lousy at chess: I never planned
more than one move ahead. Wheeling my cart around, I trundled through the Back
to School
display, the Cheap Ugly Clothes
aisle, and the towering
stacks of toilet paper about to fall on your head area. I found myself drawn to
the snack aisle, wishing I had the guts to shoplift.
When
Vicki Jean the Boosting Queen was short of money, she fed herself and her four
kids in the aisles of supermarkets without spending a cent. Cherries, apples,
and pears from the produce area, pizza slices and sausages on a pretzel stick
from the sample lady, doughnuts from the glass cases in front of the bakery.
Supermarkets were do-it-yourself smorgasbords as far as Vicki Jean was concerned.
If they didn’t want you to help yourself, she argued, they wouldn’t make
everything so inviting.