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  Larry rolled his eyes. “And you’re not expecting to gather much moss, if that’s supposed to hold it. That’s for hikes, not real camping. Used to use it on picnics, in college days: couple bottles of wine cooler, going out. Coming back, it would be carrying another pair of panties for my extensive collection!”

  Now Donna’s reaction was negative. “Oh, Larry. What a way to talk in front of your brother.”

  Larry laughed with a flash of extra-bright front teeth. “He’s a grown-up, isn’t he?” He grinned at Lloyd. “She makes you sound like some kinda sissy.”

  “No she doesn’t,” Lloyd said levelly, turning away before he would be tempted to go further and attract her disapproval from Larry to himself. “I can use the pack. Can I have it?”

  The three of them stood at the open door of the garage. Larry toed the ex-liquor carton on the blacktop apron behind the car. “Anything else you want? I keep telling her if you call the Salvation Army to come pick up stuff, they give you a blank estimate form you fill out yourself for the IRS. But you don’t get a deduction at the Goodwill bin: you’re anonymous.”

  “Look at this collection,” Donna said, gesturing with a flowerlike hand. “I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask for a write-off.”

  “That’s because you don’t have to pay the bills.” Larry tossed his big head to emphasize his exasperation. He sought support from his brother. “She never made any money even when she worked!” He winked. “She never made the most of the assets she has. I tell her it’s still not too late, but it’s not going to last forever.”

  Lloyd certainly did not cooperate in this ugliness. He hung the pack on a shoulder and looked away.

  Donna shrugged good-naturedly. She wore a loose gray sweatshirt over baggy white dungarees of the housepainter type. This was her trash cleanup outfit, and both garments were shapeless. She looked like a dream to Lloyd. He preferred her this way, without makeup, and not all fancied up, her natural coloring being what it was, and he preferred not to see much of her body, either in the form of bare shoulders and legs or snug-fitting apparel from the waist down. Larry on the other hand, in what had to be perverse in a husband, was always urging her to show more flesh, buy a strap bikini, wear miniskirts, and was capable, after a few drinks, of getting downright disgusting, at least in front of Lloyd, on the subject of underwear. “Black garter belt and mesh stockings! Put a little zing in your dull life!” He would shake his head at his brother. “But no, not Little Miss Muffet there, in her pantaloons.” Donna of course would have turned maroon by now. But on the few occasions when Lloyd protested against this treatment, it was she whom he offended, not Larry, who never took him seriously in any event, yet always urged him to drop around to the house.

  It was while filling the backpack now that Lloyd consciously remembered the scene at the liquor store, and immediately thrust it back into the labyrinth of mind in which he stored such material. He had not committed the robbery nor done the mayhem, nor did he know either perpetrator or victim. He had shoplifted the whisky, but also he had reported the greater crime to 911. He had done the right thing when it was required. Maybe this was an odd pretext by which to feel a sense of accomplishment, and one perhaps too complex to explain to anyone else, but at least it was not another failure.

  Afterward he must have gone home and drunk scotch until he passed out. Or so it seemed. What was hard to understand was why he could not find the big bottle this morning. Could he have thrown it out the window at some point? Perhaps in the direction of the barking dog that could be heard every early morning from somewhere beyond the trash-filled areaway on which his only window looked down. And at one point he had cut himself shaving. But why had he shaved in the midst of an orgy with the bottle?

  The whole thing had begun when he realized he needed a drink before going to see Donna. It was absurd when you thought about it: he had required solace after a bad morning that began with the accident with the electric shaver, which in effect got him fired, and then with no money he could not buy liquor, so he stole the bottle, narrowly missing being either shot by the robber who had gunned down the clerk or arrested by the police, and when he finally got home after that ordeal he drank so much of the whisky as to lose consciousness, but revived, at least dimly, to shave and cut himself with the throwaway razor, only to collapse again and piss the bed before waking.

  The longer he had been up, the more ill he felt. It was the kind of empty-stomach sickness that could not be relieved by puking. Something to eat and a cup of coffee would no doubt be the best medicine, but he was no less broke today than he had been yesterday. All the fight had gone out of him. He now regretted having gone to the supermarket to alienate his boss further. If he had apologized to the man, he might at least have been able to collect the wages due him. Maybe, if he had been pitiful enough, he would not even have been discharged, though that approach had never been known to work with a male superior. With women bosses, of whom he had had a couple thus far in life, counting an after-school job, it was effective if they were old enough to feel maternal. If one was near his own age, forget it: she was even worse than a man.

  Should he swallow his pride and go see Donna in his current condition, get a free meal and a sympathetic ear? At least he had never asked her or Larry for money, and he would not do so now. Nor had he ever gone to their house without a little gift for Amanda. He could not break that tradition, which was all he had left.

  5

  Patrolmen Jack Marevitch and Art McCall were en route to the variety store where the shoplifter was being detained.

  Marevitch asked his partner, “Are you old enough to remember the real five-and-dimes?”

  “It wasn’t that long ago, was it?”

  Marevitch was driving the unit. “The one down at Mulhavill and Sixth even had a pet department, at least for birds and goldfish. I loved that place when I was a kid.”

  McCall chuckled. “Now, the pets were before my time.”

  Marevitch swung the car into the parking lot for the strip mall, which was two miles northwest, same road, of where the liquor-store killing had occurred the day before.

  “That’s it,” said McCall. “There in the middle: Just Nickels. That’s a chain, you know. Guy who founded it was really named Nichols. Bet you can’t buy much there any more for five cents.”

  Marevitch stopped in the zebra-striped no-parking zone directly in front of the store. The Just Nickels show windows were all vidéocassettes on one side, assorted novelties on the other.

  A fiftyish man with very dark hair on top but gray sideburns, the latter looking more synthetic than his scalp, awaited them impa-tiendy just inside the door. He wore a plastic name tag on which was printed MR. SAWYER, MANAGER.

  “Back here.” The store was empty of customers. He led the of ficers, past some gawking female salespeople, behind a partition in the rear and on to a large storage area, only about a third of which was stacked with cartons. Under a hanging light bulb, the only illumination in the windowless place, stood a husky black man in a security guard’s uniform. He was unarmed, so far as could be seen, but he was conspicuously powerful-looking, tall and wide, with biceps that made blue sausages of his shirtsleeves. A young man much smaller than he in every dimension stood next to him, presumably detained only by the implied threat of what the guard could do to him, for he was under no physical restraint. Stores had to be careful in such matters. They were vulnerable to lawsuits, and not only on the part of those unjustly accused. It was the fashion for professional criminals to sue those who legitimately nabbed them in the act, and not at all unusual for today’s juries to award them hefty damages as victims of brutality.

  Marevitch was prepared to stare narrowly at the security officer: it was not unprecedented to recognize such an individual as a felon you had collared within recent memory, and then you had to decide whether he had really turned his life around or was planning to rob the place from inside. But he knew who this man was.

  “Hi, Winston.” He put
his hand out. “Jack Marevitch. I saw every game you played in.”

  The big man shook hands with a very gentle grip. “Thanks a lot.” His voice was a high tenor, incongruous given his size.

  “Meet my partner, Jack McCall. This is Winston Merryweather. He was—”

  “You don’t have to tell me about Winston Merryweather!” McCall cried with enthusiasm. “It’s an honor, Winston. You’re still the best linebacker ever played for the Bulldogs.”

  Merryweather had been a high-school football star a decade or so earlier. He went to State on an athletic scholarship but got badly hurt in his first practice scrimmage and never played again.

  “What you got here, Winston?” Marevitch asked, looking at the smaller man.

  Mr. Sawyer broke in. “I stopped him at the door. Here.” He showed the officers what the accused had been about to leave the premises with, sans payment: a little rubber duck, yellow of body, red-beaked and blue-eyed.

  “What have you got to say about this?” Marevitch asked the youth. “Did you steal this toy?”

  The young man had a long scratch on the right side of his face, but it was not fresh enough to have been received in the current encounter. His eyes were slightly bloodshot but very defiant. “I didn’t leave the premises. That’s not shoplifting.”

  “It’s been a long time now that a shoplifter doesn’t have to actually leave the store. If he picks up something and heads for the door without showing any intention of paying, then the presumption is theft. You ought to know that. What’s your name?”

  The suspect hesitated. “Uh, Bob. Bob Masters.”

  The first name might have been the real one, but the last was obviously false.

  Marevitch drew the manager aside and murmured, “Is that toy worth the trouble? You’ll have to come down and testify. How about if he pays for the merchandise, and we promise if we see him again, it’s an instant bust?”

  Sawyer made a scowling pout. “I’m getting sick of this stuff, Officer. It’s happened once too often, for my money.”

  “With this same individual?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t catch everybody. I got missing inventory you wouldn’t believe. I want to get the word out that if you shoplift here, you go to jail.”

  “Well,” said Marevitch, “see, that’s up to the judge, Mr. Sawyer, and take my word, this kid won’t do time unless he’s got a sheet already, and I just doubt he has if a rubber duck is all he grabbed, when you got those calculators and radios and all.”

  Marevitch went back to the suspect, who was flanked by the security guard and McCall, who were talking sports. McCall was six feet and weighed one-ninety; Merryweather was as much larger than he as Art was larger than the so-called Masters.

  Marevitch shook the toy animal at the youth. “You might offer to pay for it, and then we’ll see what happens.”

  The young man shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I don’t have the money.”

  “Well, now, that puts a different complexion on it,” Marevitch said gravely. “Turn your face that way again. How’d you get that scratch?”

  “Shaving.” The youth was getting more sullen by the moment.

  “Nobody touched him here!” Sawyer cried. “He can’t get away with that.”

  McCall grinned at the big security guard. “He wouldn’t of just been scratched if he took Winston on. He would of got his head handed to him.”

  The ex-linebacker shrugged but retained his heavy-eyelidded, impassive expression. He had habitually worn it on the field, and some people even called it sleepy—admiringly, for he could strike with the speed of a panther when need be.

  “You got some ID, Mister Masters?” After all these years, Marevitch still could not stomach calling lawbreakers Mister, but that had now for years been regulation, and included junkies rolling in their own wastes, those who raped children, and someone who had just shot a cop in cold blood: they were all to be addressed, at least in public, as gentlemen.

  The suspect shook his head silently. McCall read him his rights and, having taken him to the nearest wall, had him lean forward, two hands against it, while he searched him. He found something immediately and asked, “What’s this?”

  The youth turned his head to the side to look at what the officer held over his shoulder. “A box cutter. I use it at my job.”

  “Which is what and where?”

  “The Valmarket.”

  “The one on Seventeen East?”

  “Yeah.”

  McCall had finished the search without finding anything else but a few squares of toilet paper folded into a pad, probably a makeshift handkerchief. He turned “Masters” around. “What’s this for?”

  “Wiping my nose.”

  “Got a problem there? Been putting something up it?”

  The youth shook his head.

  “You’re right about having no money. Why’s that?” He returned the toilet paper to its owner but held on to the knife.

  “I got fired.”

  “Which explains why you’re here, stealing this man’s merchandise, instead of being at work. Is that right?”

  Masters maintained a sullen silence. “Where you living?”

  The young man’s chin came up. He gave an address in a seedy part of town, but said he was hitting the road to look for work elsewhere.

  “What’s the duck for?”

  “To give to a girl I know,” Masters said. “As a joke.”

  “You don’t go around looking for little kids to pick up, do you?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” the youth said in disgust. “Look, it’s a little rubber toy. I didn’t get out the door with it, and I didn’t run or resist when I was asked to stop. I could have, and nobody here could have caught me, because the big guy was in back. But I faced the music. Can’t I work it off? Do something here in this storeroom? That’s what I’ve been doing lately, stacking or opening cartons and so on at the Valmarket. I’m no criminal.”

  Still crowding him, McCall asked about the knife. “It’s not just a box cutter, though, is it? You loosen the screw and extend the blade, and you got quite a weapon, wouldn’t you say? It’s a utility knife, really, isn’t it? You don’t use that in fights or anything, do you, Mr. Masters? Or maybe to hold up stores not guarded by big fellows like that?”

  “I told you what it’s for. If I wanted to use it in a fight, I’d have to carry a screwdriver too, to open the blade.”

  “Or a dime,” said McCall, grinning. “Just a dime.”

  “Or just a penny,” said Marevitch, who had come up to them. “But you don’t have one, do you?” He smirked at the youth and went back to where Sawyer and Merryweather remained standing. “Mr. Sawyer,” he said in an undertone, “of course if you want us to arrest this kid, we’ll do it, but in my opinion he won’t come back here again if you let him go this once. It’s gonna take a lot of your time if you prefer charges, and in view of the value of the merchandise, he’ll certainly walk. They haven’t got cell room for all the real bad guys.”

  Winston Merryweather suddenly said, in his tenor, “He’ll be welcome to come to my church program for kids like him.”

  Sawyer said, smiling benevolently, “Winston’s a preacher. He just moonlights here.” Thinking of this apparently put the manager into a more conciliatory mood. “All right, Officer. I guess you know what you’re doing.”

  “See,” said Marevitch, “it would be different if a lot of big-ticket items had been boosted.”

  Mr. Sawyer had another, bleaker thought. “What’s the latest on the liquor-store killing?”

  Marevitch nodded soberly. “They’ll get ‘em, you’ll see.”

  “Does it look like the same gang who’s been doing it to all those others?”

  “I tell you, that’s not my department, but I know the detectives will nail it down soon. They always do.” He did not mention that he and his partner had been first on the scene of the Howland murders, for he did not want to discuss the case with Sawyer. As to the liquo
r-store robbery-killings, they had all taken place in other precincts than theirs.

  “It’s just been the liquor stores so far,” Sawyer pointed out, “but you worry they might change to other retail businesses one of these days. They come in shooting, don’t they? Winston’s unarmed. You know they won’t let security guards carry guns.”

  “City ordinance,” Marevitch said. “I tell you, the kind of people on the city council, you’re lucky the police can carry weapons. But don’t quote me on that, Mr. Sawyer. Now let’s take this villain off your hands.” He smiled at the big black man. “Great to meet you, Winston. Or is it Reverend Merryweather?”

  “Either,” Merryweather said. “But just remember I got that youth program. We like to get the youngsters into sports and away from crime. We got hoops, we got boxing equipment, all equipment donated by local merchants like Mr. Sawyer here.”

  “But most importantly of all, they got you, Winston. I’m still a fan.”

  “Open to all colors,” the ex-football player said.

  Marevitch joined his partner and the young punk who called himself Bob Masters. He took the utility knife from McCall and tapped its end lightly against the back of his left hand. “I’m not even going to measure this blade to see if it violates the concealed-weapon ordinance. You lucked out this time. It’s too much trouble for all concerned to run you in. My advice is not be seen around these parts again, or your ass is ours.”

  The young man stared. “You’re letting me go?”

  “Don’t boast about it,” McCall told him.

  They escorted him to the doorway. “Now,” said Marevitch, “you walk straight down that aisle there and right out the door and don’t look left or right. If you stop for a second, we’ll change our minds.”

  Customers had reappeared, either new ones or those who assumed the threat was over. A place of business was usually quickly cleared out by anything that suggested crime. This had changed, in Marevitch’s memory, from the old days when for many curiosity took precedence over fright. Nowadays, for good reason, everybody was scared. Winston Merryweather’s escorting the shoplifter to the back room had probably been enough to empty the store, even though in this case the burly, menacing-looking black man represented virtue.