Wheels by A. Hailey (an excerpt)

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 up 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 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.O. 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 gift.

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 lavel, still in her hand. She looked boldly around the store. Two of the people who had been walking around were gone; one of the salesclerk had begun attending to another customer; otherwise, everything was the same.

Unhurridly, 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 splash 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 sore 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 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 here.” Then Erica found her wrist gripped cfirmly and when she tried to free it, the grip tightened like a clamp.

Panic flooded through Erica. She protested, 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 shoplifters 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 questions. 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, panicly 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.

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