The Getaway Man by Andrew Vachss Page A

it was used for.
    She asked me a lot of
    questions. And she talked a lot, too. I guess I got lost in the sound of her
    voice. The sky outside got dull, then it turned dark. I didn’t
    care—there was nothing for me to do until at least the next day. Nobody
    was waiting for me.
    “Is this all yours?” I asked her.
    “This apartment?”
    “Yeah.”
    “All mine. Would you like to see the rest of it?”
    “No, I was just … wondering.”
    “If I was
    married?”
    “No. How come you … ?”
    “What, Eddie?”
    “You have this place. And that
    car. And you dress so good. You’ve got a great job, right?”
    “I don’t have any job,” she said. “What I have is a
    trust fund.”
    “A trust fund?”
    “Money
    that was left to me. I can’t spend it all, but I can spend a
    lot.”
    “You don’t have to work?”
    “No,” she laughed. “I never have to work. What difference
    does that make?”
    “It doesn’t, I guess. Only, with all
    this, how come you … ?”
    “What?” she said
    again. Only she sounded annoyed that time.
    “How come you boost
    stuff?”
    “Boost? Oh, you mean … in the department
    store.”
    “Yeah. What you took, it couldn’t have cost
    that much.”
    “What
did
I take?” she said.
    “Let’s see.”
    She got up and went over to where she
    had tossed her pocketbook. She brought it back, opened the top, and spilled it
    all out on the couch.
    “Hmmm.…” she said.
    “You’re right. This is all very tacky.”
    “Daphne.…”
    She came over and sat real close to
    me. “Want to hear a secret,” she said, very soft.
    “If
    you want to—”
    “Ssshhh,” she said. She slid into
    me. I put my arm around her. “Don’t look at me,” she
    said.
    It was real dark in there by then, but I still closed my
    eyes.
    Her voice was soft, but I could hear every word. “When
    I’m in a store … not all the time, but only sometimes …
    when I’m in a store, sometimes, I get … excited. It’s like
    there’s this pressure inside me. Stronger and stronger. I get very
    anxious. Tense. I don’t think about anything else. I know, as soon as I
    take something, it will be like a … release. All the tension will be
    gone.
    “But, after I leave the store, I never want what I take.
    Just looking at it makes me feel bad. Guilty.
    “I wish I could pay
    for what I take,” she said. “Not with money. I could just buy
    things, if I wanted them. Before, when you told me I was being watched, I felt
    like I wanted to die. I don’t know what I would do if I was ever
    caught.
    “I mean, I
have
been caught, but not
    caught-caught. Once, a detective stopped me, but I was still inside the store,
    and I told him I was going to pay on my way out. They couldn’t do
    anything. And once a store girl was watching me in the changing room. They had
    a little camera in there, can you imagine that? She saw me cutting the security
    tag off a dress and putting it in my bag. She knocked on the door of the
    changing room. I let her in, and she told me what she saw me do. All in
    whispers.
    “But she let me go. All she wanted was a kiss. That
    kiss, kissing her, it felt like a punishment to me. And that made me feel
    … good. Because I deserved it.
    “I had this dream, once. I
    was in a store, and a man caught me. He took me back in his office, called me a
    spoiled brat, and gave me a spanking. I was crying. He made me promise to never
    do it again. But I knew I would. I knew I would come back to that very same
    store.”
    She was quiet for a minute, like she was waiting for me
    to say something. I do what I always do when I can’t figure out the right
    thing to say.
    “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
    she said. “Taking chances? I always do that. Look at you. I don’t
    know you. I don’t even know if your name is a real one. You seem like
    some kind of a criminal to me. A dangerous man. Are you a dangerous man,
    Eddie?”
    “Only behind the wheel,” I said, thinking of
    that judge, from when