Wheels (55 page)

"Hey
.”

Pierre said. "Don't be mad
.”

He reached under the bedclothes for
her, but she evaded him and slipped from the bed, taking her clothes to
the bathroom to dress. Earlier in their relationship, Pierre would have
scrambled after her, seized her, and forced her playfully back to the bed,
as had happened once before when they quarreled. Now he didn't, though she
had been half-hoping that he would.
Instead, when Erica came out of the bathroom, Pierre was dressed too, and
only minutes
later they kissed briefly, almost perfunctorily, and parted. He seemed
relieved, she thought, that their leave-taking had been accomplished with so
little trouble.
Pierre drove away in his car, reaching speed with a squeal of tires as he
left the motel parking lot. Erica followed more slowly in her convertible.
Her last glimpse of him was as he waved and smiled.
By the time she reached the first intersection, Pierre's car was out of
sight.
She drove another block and a half before realizing she had not the
slightest notion where she was going. It was close to three in the afternoon and was now raining drearily, as the forecast said it would. Where
to go, what to do? . . . with the rest of the day, with the rest of her
life. Suddenly, like a pent-up flood released, the anguish,
disappointment, bitterness, all of which she had postponed in the motel,
swept over her. She had a sense of rejection and despair as her eyes
filled with tears, which she let course down her cheeks unchecked. Still
driving the car, mechanically, Erica continued through Birmingham,
uncaring where she went.
One place she did not want to go was home to the house at Quarton Lake.
It held too many memories, an excess of unfinished business, problems she
had no capacity to cope with now. She drove a few more blocks, turned
several corners, then realized she had come to Somerset Mall, in Troy, the
shopping plaza where, almost a year ago, she had taken the perfume-her
first act of shoplifting. It had been the occasion on which she had
learned that a combination of intelligence, quickness, and nerve could be
rewarding in diverse ways. She parked the car and walked through the rain
to the indoor mall.
Inside, she wiped the rain and the tears together from her face.
Most stores within the shopping plaza were moderately busy. Erica wandered
into several, glancing at Bally shoes, a display of F. A. 0. Schwarz toys,
the colorful miscellany of a boutique. But she was going through motions
only, wanting nothing that she saw, her mood increasingly listless and
depressed. In a luggage store she browsed, and was about to leave when a
briefcase caught her attention. It was of English cowhide, gleaming brown.
It lay on a glass-topped table at the rear of the store. Erica's eyes
moved on, then inexplicably returned. She thought: there was no reason in
the world why she should possess a briefcase; she had never needed one,
nor was ever likely to. Besides, a briefcase was a symbol of so much that
she detested-the tyranny of work brought home, the evenings Adam spent
with his own briefcase opened, the countless hours which he and Erica had
never shared. Yet she wanted the briefcase she had just seen, wanted it
-irrationally-here and now. And intended to have it.
Perhaps Erica thought, she would give the briefcase to Adam as a parting,
splendidly sardonic gif t.
But was it necessary to pay for it? She could pay, of course, except that
it would be more challenging to take what she wanted and walk away, as she
had done so skillfully the other times. Doing so would add some zest to
the day. There had been little enough so far.
Pretending to examine something else, Erica surveyed the store. As on
other occasions when she had shoplifted, she felt a rising excitement,
a heady, delicious combination of fear and daring.
There were three salespeople, she observed
a girl and two men, one of the men older and presumably the manager. All
were occupied with customers. Two or three other people in the store were,
like Erica, browsing. One, a mousy grandmother-type, was examining luggage
tags on a card.
By a roundabout route, pausing on the way, Erica sauntered to the display
table where the briefcase lay. As if noticing it for the first time, she
picked it up and turned it over for inspection. While doing so, a swift
glance confirmed that the trio of salesclerks were still busy.
Continuing her inspection of the case, she opened it slightly and nudged
two labels on the outside into the interior, out of view. Still casually,
Erica lowered the case as if replacing it, but instead let it swing
downward below the display table level, still in her hand.

She looked
boldly around the store. Two of the people who had been walking around
were gone; one of the salesclerks had begun attending to another customer;
otherwise, everything was the same.
Unhurriedly, swinging the briefcase slightly, she strolled toward the
store doorway. Beyond it was the terraced indoor mall, connecting with
other stores and protecting shoppers from the weather. She could see a
fountain playing and hear its plash of water. Beyond the fountain, she
noted, was a uniformed security guard, but he had his back toward the
luggage store and was chatting with a child. Even if the guard saw Erica,
once she had left the store there was no reason for him to be suspicious.
She reached the doorway. No one had stopped her, or even spoken.
Really
!
-it was all too easy.
"Just a moment!
"
The voice-sharp, uncompromising-came from immediately behind. Startled,
Erica turned.
It was the mousy grandmother-type who had
seemed to be engrossed with luggage tags. Except that now she was neither
mousy nor grandmotherly, but with hard eyes and thin lips set in a firm
line. She moved swiftly toward Erica, at the same time calling to the
store manager, "Mr. Yancy
!
Over beret" Then Erica found her wrist gripped
firmly and when she tried to free it, the grip tightened like a clamp.
Panic flooded through Erica. She pr
otested, flustered, "Let me go!
"
"Be quiet!
" the other woman ordered. She was in her forties-not nearly
as old as she had dressed herself to look. "I'm a detective and you've
been caught stealing
.”

As the manager hurried over, she informed him,
"This woman stole that case she's holding. I stopped her as she was
leaving
.”

"All right," the manager said, "we'll go in the back
.”

His manner, like
the woman detective's was unemotional, as if he knew what to do and
would carry a distasteful duty through. He had barely glanced at Erica
so that already she felt faceless, like a criminal.
"You heard," the woman detective said. She tugged at Erica's wrist,
turning toward the rear of the store which presumably housed offices out
of sight.
"No!
No
!
" Erica set her feet firmly, refusing to move. "You're making
a mistake
.”

"Your kind of people make the mistakes, sister," the woman detective
said. She asked the store manager cynically, "Did you ever meet one who
didn't say that
.”

The manager looked uncomfortable. Erica had raised her voice; now heads
had turned and several people in the store were watching. The manager,
clearly wanting the scene removed from view, signaled urgently with his
head.
It was at that moment Erica made her crucial
mistake. Had she accompanied the other two as they demanded, the procedure
following would almost certainly have fitted a pattern. First, she would
have been interrogated -probably harshly, by the woman detective-after
which, more than likely, Erica would have broken down, admitted her guilt
and pleaded for leniency. During the interrogation she would have revealed
that her husband was a senior auto executive.
After admitting guilt, she would have been urged to make a signed
confession. She would have written this out, however reluctantly, in her
own handwriting.
After that she would have been allowed to go home with-so far as Erica was
concerned-the incident closed.
Erica's confession would have been sent by the store manager to an
investigative bureau of the Retail Merchants Association. If a record of
previous offenses was on file, prosecution might have been considered.
With a first offense-which, officially, Erica's was-no action would be
taken.
Suburban Detroit stores, especially those near well-to-do areas like
Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, were unhappily familiar with women shop
lifters who stole without need. It was not the store operators' business
to be psychologists as well as retailers; nonetheless, most knew that
reasons behind such stealing included sexual frustrations, loneliness, a
need for attention-all of them conditions to which auto executives' wives
were exceptionally vulnerable. Something else the stores knew was that
prosecution, and publicity which the court appearance of an auto industry
big name would bring, could harm their businesses more than aid them. Auto
people were clannish, and a store which persecuted one of their number
could easily suffer a general boycott.
Consequently, retail businesses used other
methods. Where an offender was observed and known, she was billed for the
items taken, and usually such bills were paid without question. At other
times, when identity was established, a bill followed in the same way;
also, the scare of being detained, plus hostile questioning, were often
enough to deter further shoplifting for a lifetime. But whichever method
was used, the Detroit stores' objective, overall, was quietness and
discretion.
Erica, panicky and desperate, left none of the quieter compromises open.
Instead, she jerked her wrist free from the woman detective and-still
clutching the stolen briefcase-turned and ran.
She ran from the luggage store into the mall, heading for the main outer
door by which she had come in. The woman detective and the manager,
taken by surprise, did nothing for a second or so. The woman recovered
first. She sped after Erica, shouting, "Stop her
!
Stop that woman
!
She's
a thief!
"
The uniformed security guard in the mall, who had been chatting with a
child, swung around at the shouts. The woman detective saw him. She
commanded, "Catch that woman!
The one running
!
Arrest her
!
She stole
that case she's carrying
.”

Moving quickly, the guard ran after Erica as shoppers in the mall stood
gaping, craning for a view. Others, hearing the shouting, hurried out
of stores. But none attempted to stop Erica as she continued running,
her heels tap-tap-tapping on the terrazzo floor. She went on, heading
toward the outer door, the security guard still pounding behind.
To Erica, the ghastly shouts, people staring as she passed, the pursuing
feet, now drawing closer, all were a nightmare. Was this really hap
pening? It couldn’t be!
In a moment she must
wake. But instead of waking, she reached the heavy outer door. Though she
pushed hard, it opened with maddening slowness. Then she was outside, in
the rain, her car on the parking lot only yards, away.
Her heart was pounding, breath coming hard from the exertion of running
and from fear. She remembered that fortunately she hadn't locked the
car. Tucking the purloined briefcase under her arm, Erica fumbled open
her handbag, scrabbling inside for car keys. A stream of objects fell
from the handbag; she ignored them but located the keys. She had the
ignition key ready as she reached the car, but could see that the
security guard, a youngish, sturdily built man, was only yards away. The
woman detective was following behind, but the guard was closest. Erica
realized-she wouldn't make it! Not get inside the car, start the engine
and pull away before he reached her. Terrified, realizing the
consequences would be even greater now, despair engulfed her.
At that moment the security guard slipped on the rain-wet parking lot
surface and fell. He went down fully, and lay a moment dazed and hurt
before he scrambled up.
The guard's misfortune gave Erica the time she needed. Slipping into the
car, she started the engine, which fired instantly, and drove away. But
even as she left the shoppers' parking lot a new anxiety possessed her:
Had her pursuers read the car license number?
They had. As well, they had the car's description-a current model
convertible, candy apple red, distinctive as a blossom in winter.
And as if that were not enough, a
mong the items spill
ed from Erica's
handbag and left behind, was a billfold with credit cards and other
identification. The woman detective was collecting the fallen items
while the security guard, his
uniform wet and soiled, and with a painfully sprained ankle, limped to a
telephone to call the local police. It was all so ridiculously easy that the two policemen were grinning as
they escorted Erica from her car to theirs. Minutes earlier the police
cruiser had pulled alongside the convertible and without fuss, not using
flashing lights or siren, one of the policemen had waved her to stop,
which she did immediately, knowing that anything else would be insane,
just as attempting to run away to begin with had been madly foolish.
The policemen, both young, had been firm but also quiet and polite so
that Erica felt less intimidated than by the antagonistic woman detective in the store. In any case, she was now totally resigned to whatever
was going to happen. She knew she had brought disaster on herself, and
whatever other disasters followed would happen anyway because it was too
late to change anything, whatever she said or did.
"Our orders are to take you in, ma'am," one of the policemen said. "My
partner will drive your car
.”