They talked while he worked. She said she was a lawyer, and he said, “You’re too smart to be a lawyer.”
She thought that was funny. “The fellow who represented you wasn’t that good, eh?”
“I’ll tell you about my lawyer,” Frank said, fighting with the lug nuts. “He’s a guy, his necktie is in his soup.”
“What was the charge against you?”
“Burglary.”
“How solid was the case?”
“Walked out the front door of this house in Michigan Heights, carrying a wall safe, straight into two beat cops with flashlights.”
“Carrying a wall safe?”
“That’s the way to do,” Frank explained. He threw the dead tire on its hub into the trunk, wheeled the spare along the verge beside the car. “A wall safe is a metal box stuck in a wall. You dig it out, takes no time at all, carry it home, work on it at your leisure.”
“Was that the first time you were caught?”
He looked at her, not answering, letting her drink him in, until she laughed and said, “Sorry, you’re right. Stupid question. Okay, next time, I’ll represent you. But try not to be caught quite so red-handed.”
He looked at his hands, pitying them. “Black-handed, this time.”
“I have towelettes in the glove compartment,” she said. “When you’re done.”
A car or a truck went by from time to time, but nobody stopped to see if any help was needed. It was clear that Frank was doing the job. And the lady lawyer wasn’t afraid of him any more. That’s all it took, a little conversation, spend some time, see what Frank Hillfen’s really like. Not a nice guy, maybe, not pretty, but not dangerous.
She said her name was Mary Ann Kelleny, and he told her he was Frank Hillfen, and she said, “Frank. Good. That fits you.”
“I don’t know about that Mary Ann stuff,” he said. “How can a lawyer be named Mary Ann?”
“Why not?” she asked him. “There’s lawyers named Randolph, aren’t there?”
“Yeah, that’s true.” He tightened the last lug nut.
“What was your attorney’s name?” she asked. “The one with the necktie.”
“Gower.”
She smiled and spread her hands. “I rest my case.”
He hadn’t known what she meant when she said “towelettes,” but they turned out to be those folded wet paper towels in a packet that restaurants give you after you eat the lobster. He used three of them from her glove compartment supply; a well-prepared lady. He would have thrown the towelettes away into the weeds but she pointed at the plastic trash bag she’d hung from the dashboard cigarette lighter. “You’re a good influence on me,” he said, and disposed of his trash properly.
The bus stop was less than a mile farther on, at an intersection containing two gas stations, a diner, and a squat modern one-story “professional building”: the professionals were a dentist, a real estate agent, and a stockbroker. Down the road to the right were a few houses, new but shabby, as though for a town that hadn’t quite happened. Up to the left was a long, wide, gray two-story factory building with very few windows. TEXTECH in blue was along the blank wall facing this way. Frank said, “What’s that?”
“Clothing,” she told him. “Sweaters, T-shirts. Sweatshirts that say Property of Alcatraz.”
“I never saw a sweatshirt like that,” Frank said. He couldn’t help it, his mouth was pursed in disapproval. Property of Alcatraz; that was bad taste.
“They don’t sell them in America,” she explained. “Only overseas.”
“Where?”
“Asia. Europe.”
“Property of Alcatraz.” Frank saw a teenager in Tokyo, walking down a crowded street, wearing a sweatshirt that says, Property of Alcatraz. Doesn’t speak ten words of English. Was the kid somebody’s property in Alcatraz, wouldn’t last a day. People wearing the words, don’t know what they say. Don’t know what they mean.
“The global village,” Mary Ann Kelleny said.
“Yeah,” Frank said. “But do they get it? I don’t think so.”
“Does it matter? As long as they’re happy.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “I’ll bite. Are they happy?”
She glanced at him as she drove, curious and amused. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Because they don’t know who they are,” he said. “They don’t know who anybody is. They mostly sound bewildered.”
“I don’t follow,” she said.
“You put your clothes on,” Frank told her, “they’re your flag for the day. The public announcement, who you think you are. What we all do. You gonna walk into court with words on you? Property of Alcatraz?”
She smiled and gave him another look. “So you’re dressed as the humble workman,” she said. “Is that it?”
“I’m dressed like I just walked out of prison,” he answered. “When I get a couple of dollars, I’ll dress a little different. Like a guy ready to party.”
She’d stopped smiling when he mentioned the “couple dollars,” and now she said, sounding fatalistic but worried for him, “You’re going back, aren’t you, Frank?”
He pretended he didn’t know what she meant. “Back where? A life of crime?”
“The wrong crime,” she said. “So back to prison. You’re an intelligent man, Frank, you know it yourself. There’s a rubber band on you, and the other end is still in your cell.”
“I’ve learned stuff,” he said, trying to sound competent and confident. “Whatever happens, I’m not gonna be that easy to find.”
“Oh, sure you are,” she said.
He hadn’t expected this conversation with anybody but himself, and he sure hadn’t expected it with a good-looking woman lawyer in an air-conditioned white Saab doing sixty down the highway. He said, “What do you mean, the wrong crime?”
“Little stuff,” she said. “Burglaries. Breaking into houses and stealing wall safes, for heaven’s sake.”
Defensive, he said, “What’s the complaint? Wall safes, that’s where they keep the valuables. That’s what I’m after.”
“How much in valuables?” she demanded. “What do you mean, valuables?” She must be a pretty good lawyer. She said, “Are you talking about three or four thousand dollars? Jewelry, and what do you get from your fence? Ten percent?”
“Sometimes more,” he muttered.
“You can live a week, or a month if you’re lucky, and then you have to go out and do it again. Every time you do it, you’re at the same risk. Every time. It doesn’t matter how many times you don’t get caught, because they don’t count in your favor the time you do get caught. So the odds are against you, and sooner or later you will get caught. That’s the only way it can end, cycle after cycle.”
“Okay, then, I’ll reform,” he said, bored with the conversation, and looked out the window at the passing scenery: trees, farms, trees.
But she wouldn’t let it go. “You won’t reform, Frank,” she said. “You’re who you are, and you know it.”
“Habitual,” he said, like the word was a joke.
“But you could retire,” she said. “That’s not the same thing as reform, you know. If you reform, you have to get a job somewhere, live in a house somewhere...”
“No can do.”
“I know, Frank, that’s what I’m saying. If you do a burglary and you make five thousand dollars on it, you don’t go right back out the next night, do you?”
“No need to.”
“Exactly. You retire, short-term. Then, when the money’s gone, you come out of retirement.”