The Malfeasance Occasional Read online

  * * *

  They were gone.

  That morning, at 2 a.m., I broke into Gretchen’s email for the first time. I didn’t want her online when I did my stuff.

  There was a dry, electric taste in my mouth. I admit I was nervous. Cyberstalking the mother and daughter on Facebook and Twitter wasn’t even a misdemeanor; they’d put it all out there for the world. But this was real multiple-felony territory.

  I pushed the troubling thought away; I imagined myself again as a gentleman jewel thief in a movie.

  I was not powerless.

  I was not hired and fired at whim by some bitch.

  I was a villain.

  I was the big antihero of the whole damn show.

  * * *

  Forgot password? YES.

  To protect your privacy, please answer one of these security questions. (dropdown menu):

  What is your mother’s maiden name? MOONEY.

  Thank you!

  Would you like your new password texted to your number on record? NO.

  Create new password now? YES.

  As an additional security precaution, please answer a second security question (second dropdown): What high school did you graduate from? CUMBERLAND.

  Thanks, Gretchen! Please enter your new password below.

  I was in. Thanks, Gretchen, indeed.

  I figured she would discover she had the old, wrong password some time later today (long after I had come and gone from Castle Metz), but wouldn’t assign any importance to it; there are always temporary bugs in the internet, right?

  I searched within her mail for “alarm system” and found a couple of old “renewal reminders” from Brexton Alarm Systems, which included the identifying account number; the lady didn’t delete anything.

  Next, I visited the Brexton Alarm site, armed with that helpful account number.

  Forgot your alarm code? Brexton takes your privacy very seriously. To prove your identity, please answer one of the following questions:

  “Your pet’s name!” I roared so loud that I risked waking up people in adjoining apartments.

  TIGER. There hadn’t been any since then because little Amber developed allergies.

  Thank you. We will email your passcode to you.

  It arrived almost instantaneously in her inbox: 061102.

  Hah!

  * * *

  I stood inside one of the neatest homes I have ever been in. With a working mom and a spoiled teenager, they had to have a maid taking care of this. Not enough money for a PR guy to grow your business, but plenty for maids, huh?

  My second thought was more practical: Watch for the cleaning service.

  I made a mental note to pass myself off as a relative. I had put on a shower cap and rubber gloves before I walked through the door. If I heard somebody coming in, I’d rip those things off and shove them in my pockets before they saw me. (The skeleton keys I’d used for the conventional lock were already back in my car. No way to explain a ring of those on your belt.) Probably illegals anyway; if I looked like I belonged there, they’d just smile and go about their business.

  Smart, see? Thinking. I was an evil genius. I savored my own ability to improvise like that. The electric taste of fear in my mouth was gone, replaced by a satisfying buzz.

  I looked around. Where would mama Gretchen’s home office be? I checked the various bedrooms.

  I walked into one, realizing I was in the daughter’s bedroom. Pink bed spreads. Three different e-picture frames, scrolling through predictable shots of Amber mugging with all of her friends from high school.

  I guess I should have felt some kind of forbidden thrill at being in a 16-year-old girl’s room, but I was surprised by a sudden sense of tiredness. Middle age was beckoning.

  Where were the posters? I’d had Pearl Jam, the Spin Doctors, Stone Temple Pilots. Did kids not have posters anymore? Did they do everything onscreen? And I’d had disorganized stacks of CDs, even a few cassette tapes. She’d probably taken every bit of music she owned with her on a one inch square MP3 player. Did teenagers not have sloppy rooms anymore? What had the 21st century done to them?

  I pulled open a drawer. I suppose a true villain in the creepy-home-invader horror movie vein would want to mentally violate the girl by looking through her panty drawer, I saw neatly folded panties and rolled socks; there was also a hairbrush, some curlers, and a backup inhaler in with the clothes, and I realized she’d probably folded and put everything away herself. All I could really think was, Gee, she’s a good kid.

  An odd thought for a supervillain bent on industrial espionage.

  I sighed and walked down the hallway.

  Gretchen Metz’s bedroom was a little more cluttered. There was a large desk with paperwork ringed haphazardly around her computer’s printer; she was maybe 10 years older than me, so she still used paper. I smiled in warm recognition when I saw a CD case of a Lenny Kravitz album that I’d also had.

  Then I remembered my business and poked around looking for that prototype.

  No, this wasn’t where it would be. She had some of her work here as a side business to watching Jimmy Fallon or whoever while she waited to fall asleep. She wasn’t going to keep the prototype here in a shoebox, taking it out and twirling it on her index finger while she lay on the bed.

  If this place had a basement, that would be her workshop. But it didn’t, which meant it was probably another bedroom.…

  Bingo. Next bedroom down had been stripped of carpet and overlaid with imitation parquet wood. Two long metal work tables, overhead fluorescent lights, precision hand tools put up on their pegboards just so. There was even videoconference equipment—professional, secured stuff, not a cheapee webcam.

  A tall safe (it came up to my nose) stood next to the bench. It had to be in there.

  Hah! Forget about spinning dials and listening to tumblers with stethoscopes. It had a raised keypad above the handle.

  Oddly, I didn’t panic. I didn’t have a moment of doubt. I had mined so much personal data from Gretchen and her daughter that I felt somehow I could guess the combination. The daughter’s birthdate was on her own Facebook page. But first, I tried 061102, the alarm combination.

  It worked.

  I opened the safe and saw the gun lying in a bed of black felt. There were also printed schematics, thumb drives, and a laptop. Clearly, all the proprietary data that had not yet been patented. Gretchen Metz had been careful to never put this stuff on the open internet; yet my being here was proof that her attention to security was … uneven. Heh, heh, heh. I could take it all to Castle Bastion Arms—

  From down the hall, I heard the front door open.

  “Gretchen! Amber! Where are you!” A man’s voice.

  I grabbed the gun and shoved it deep into my pocket. The gloves and the hairnet followed. I closed the safe as quickly as I could without making a metallic slam. I’m a family friend, who are you? I thought. I’m a family friend who came over to—shit, I should have rehearsed this better! Who was out there in the living room? It didn’t sound like a maid service, although I suppose men could work as house cleaners. But it was someone who addressed them by their first names.

  My car was parked out front under those sheltering trees, and no doubt there was another car next to it right now. I wasn’t sneaking out of here; I’d have to bluff my way past whoever was there.

  Nearby neighbor come to check on them, maybe?

  There was no broken glass, no shattered door listing awkwardly in its frame; this surely didn’t look like any damn burglary. I could make it. Step step step. The person was pacing around rapidly out there.

  Pasting a grin on my face, I went down the hallway. “Hello, who’s there?” I said. “Are you the neighbors? I think Gretchen said somebody would be checking in—”

  I stopped in the living room. The man glaring at me was in his 40s, with wide blue eyes. His leather jacket and blue jeans had seen better days. His shaggy brown moustache half-hid his gritted teeth.

&nbs
p; “Who are you!” He strode rapidly toward me.

  I tried to be calm for the both of us. “I’m a friend of the family—”

  He grabbed my collar and slammed me against the wall. I felt one of my ribs crack.

  “Where’s my wife and daughter!” He slammed me into the wall again.

  I put up my hands to defend myself. He landed a haymaker to the side of my head that sent me to the floor.

  Before I could say anything else, he started ranting: “Are you screwing her! Are you with my wife, you bastard! Keep away from her! Keep away from my daughter!”

  He kicked me. I drew up my legs to protect my groin.

  “She’s divorced!” I screamed. “I thought she was divorced!” It was a stupid thing to say, in context.

  “We have a family! It’s our anniversary! And I come into our home and find some punk like you—”

  He continued kicking and stomping me. A couple of realizations flashed at me:

  Amber Metz had sat on her uncle’s lap when he was dressed as Santa Claus. They weren’t a Jewish family.

  Today was their wedding anniversary. It was a mere coincidence that this was Rosh Hashanah.

  Every year on their wedding anniversary, Mr. Whoever Metz (who was so loathed that there were no mentions or pictures of him on either Facebook account) must come by to pester her, or try to. I could smell the whiskey on him now, like a miasma. How many years running now had Gretchen Metz taken her daughter out of state so she wouldn’t be anywhere near this jealous, violent jerk?

  I had given him a generous, unintended present when he came here today and found the front door unlocked and the alarm off.

  “Tell me one thing you little bastard! Were you sleeping with her before June, 2002? Were you screwing her when she was legally mine?”

  061102. A number she loved. The date of her divorce. Oh God, oh God.

  I heard my lower right leg bone crack before I felt the pain.

  I pulled the gun out of my pocket and pointed it at him.

  I knew now why Gretchen Metz’s entrepreneurial thoughts had run toward keeping a safe, reliable gun at hand.

  He gasped, but didn’t look any less enraged.

  I pulled the trigger. But it did not give. It didn’t move a hair. My fingerprints were wrong. It wouldn’t unlock.

  Metz turned away and grabbed a cast iron figurine of a horseback rider off of an end table. He came closer.

  I lay on my back, bearing down on that trigger with both index fingers.

  I realized two final things:

  One, Gretchen Metz was a hell of an engineer.

  And two, I had had no real idea of what being a villain was all about. None at all …

  ERIC CLINE was born in Independence, Missouri, a city saturated with memories of and monuments to President Harry S. Truman. It was in an Independence thrift store that Eric’s mom purchased him children’s science fiction books by “Paul French,” a.k.a. Isaac Asimov. Eric went on to devour all of the books in the Mid-Continent Public Library. Eric holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English, and once considered teaching as a profession. He has waited tables at a total of three restaurants. He was at the last restaurant after he got his master’s degree, which gave him some indication of how well teaching would pay. He now works in an office and writes on evenings and weekends. After a fitful original attempt to write, Eric turned his attention to reading, work, and study, before returning to writing with a vengeance in 2007. He, his wife, and his three dogs live in Maryland.

  Mad Women

  by Patricia Abbott

  “Come along this way, Miss.”

  Like Paul Winchell, the ventriloquist on television, the security guard’s lips hardly moved at all. The man had come out of nowhere, schooled in the art of being non-conspicuous perhaps but definitely in charge. Had he spotted her activities on a closed circuit television?

  “Don’t want to make a fuss now, do we?” His head swiveled toward the crowd of shoppers threatening to engulf them as they stepped away.

  Eve Moran appraised potential avenues of escape and then, head down, went along with him. The man’s grip on her arm bordered on assault. She wondered if the Belgian linen of her pink suit jacket would bear his fingerprints forever.

  The uniformed operator in the elevator shot her a sympathetic glance as the machinery delivered them to the top floor. Her capture played out efficiently because the man in control of her arm probably detained shoplifters and miscreants every day: women who couldn’t keep their hands off the merchandise; agile men who picked pockets; scoundrels of both sexes with stolen charge plates; boys who broke things, then ran; teenage girls who sneaked into dressing rooms and came out looking like polar bears, females who ransacked makeup counters, dropping tubes, pencils, and nail polish bottles down their blouse or into their pockets; teams of professional boosters who made a science out of defrauding stores. It was 1962 and theft was becoming more professionalized.

  No one spoke or even glanced at Eve as they passed down narrow hallways, walking up a final flight of narrow, uncarpeted steps. He showed her inside a gloomy office, holding the door open without uttering a word. The room was dark and tiny, windowless save for a slit of light. A battered walnut table, two chairs and cheap paneled walls awaited her. It smelled of tobacco, burnt coffee, Dentyne chewing gum, sweat. It was not the sort of room where suburban women were coddled, pitied or forgiven. Not a place where sympathetic gestures were offered; nor where men in off-the-rack suits looked the other way if a pretty face looked back at them.

  Eve couldn’t think of how to turn this situation around. Her brief detentions with inexperienced clerks in shops in South Carolina or Texas, back in the days when Hank and she lived on military bases, were no preparation for the security staff at John D. Wanamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia. She had no leverage to use here, no husband wearing bars or stars on his chest on a base a mile away to offer up excuses, bribes, smiles.

  “I think you misunderstood what happened … downstairs,” Eve finally got out. “I fully intended…”

  “Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t say those words to me,” he said, motioning to a chair. “Tells me that they were gonna pay for it all—in just a minute. That I misunderstood. That they have relatives in high places.” His eyes fluttered toward heaven and his hand waved dismissively.

  “I’m sure I have the necessary receipt somewhere in my bag.” She began to reach for her handbag, but he didn’t hand it over.

  This man, this security guard who looked like the M.P.s who dogged her on the bases., had heard or seen it all from the look on his face. She couldn’t think of anything to offer him—anything that would charm him. He looked far too tired and bored with her to trade his amnesia for a grope or a kiss. There was some relief in this information though, in knowing she’d been out-maneuvered and could await her sentence without discussion.

  He gestured again toward a wooden chair, and once she was seated, he proceeded to remove the items from her bag, one by one, shaking his head at the variety of store tags: Gimbel’s, Lit Brothers, Strawbridge’s, Wanamaker’s—the four grand dames of Philadelphia shopping—finally saying with a hint of a chuckle,

  “You went wild, didn’t you? Had to have yourself a memento from every store. Was it a dare?” She was silent. He tossed her hard-won booty back in the bag. “Half of your haul is junk, Lady. A dish probably selling for $2.99? Crissake, there’s dust in it. It’s a display piece.” He held up his dirty finger, and she felt heat rising on her face. The bracelet from Wanamaker’s still lay on the table. “This is something a twelve-year old girl buys. Not a woman like you.” He fingered the dice charm. “Kind of a sign. You like taking chances, right? Have to have your souvenirs even if they’re worthless.”

  He wrote a sentence or two on his pad, then picked up the stolen goods and headed for the door.

  “Part of the kick, isn’t it? Seeing if you can get away with it? Guess what?” She looked at him blankly. “You c
an’t.” He shut the door behind him.

  His suggestion that seeing if she could get away with it was part of the kick was ridiculous. She sat for a long time wondering if they’d called the police yet. What the fine or punishment might be. Could she cover it herself?

  How would Hank react? She could picture his red face—though it turned purple whenever she crossed swords with him. Maybe he could be kept out of it. How much money did she have with her? She hadn’t planned on needing more than enough for a quick sandwich at a counter—or the automat. She reached for her purse.

  Something similar to this—an incident where things had spun out of control—happened when she was fifteen. She’d taken a lipstick from Woolworth’s makeup counter. Well okay, a couple of tubes of lipstick and some eye shadow on the theory “in for a penny in for a pound.”

  The clerk caught her, grabbing her wrist as she reached for a third tube. The woman—only a few years older than Eve, which somehow made it more galling—summoned Eve’s father after demanding his phone number in such an authoritative voice that Eve couldn’t refuse, couldn’t help but fumble in her wallet until she found his number on a yellowing piece of paper.

  The clerk had then dumped all the purse’s contents on the counter, attracting the attention of a number of shoppers as items crashed on the glass. Cheap, worn-out possessions, which looked ridiculous on display—a comb that needed cleaning, used tissues, bus tokens, and a torn makeup case. The whole incident might’ve been forgotten if her purse’s interior hadn’t branded her as shabby.

  Her father came after what seemed like hours. Grim-faced, stoop-shouldered, scuffed-shoed Herman Hobart, hat in hand. Leaving his cubicle as an accounting clerk at the Philadelphia Naval Yard to travel across the city, he paid the dime store clerk with nickels and dimes and quarters for her theft, as though he didn’t have a real bill in his pocket.

  “I guess that’ll do,” the clerk said doubtfully, finally scooping Eve’s things up from the counter and, after making a face, returned her pocketbook. Her father hadn’t spoken to her once on the bus ride home. Her mother, who never knew what to do or say to Eve, wouldn’t have mentioned it, so she could never be sure whether he had told her.