The Purse Snatcher
The
brunette stepped out of the cave-like darkness of the
Harry
tossed his half-smoked cigarette butt on the ground and dropped his eyes as she
passed him, slowly stamping out the ashes.
As he looked down, he noticed her shoes – little scuffs at the toe and
heels told him these shoes had some miles on them. His eyes followed her shapely legs up to her
hips, and he noticed her purse was also a little worn, and the coarse woven
fabric didn’t really go with the rest of her outfit. Harry settled back against the wall. “She’s a gold-digger, not a sugar momma.” He
muttered to himself.
Harry came from a
good but poor family that struggled just to meet the bills each month. Sometimes they ate nothing but soup and beans
for weeks because “things were a little tight right now”. His mother raised him as well as she
could. He was taught to always say “yes,
ma’am” and “yes, sir.” He went to church
with his parents all squeaky clean and wearing the same suit that was a little
too small every Sunday, winter and summer, because that was the only nice
clothes he had. The other kids made fun
of his thrift store clothes. He saw how
hard his parents worked just to survive.
His father worked construction during the day, and as a security guard
in the evening. His mother cleaned the
houses of the same kids that made fun of him.
Harry just plain didn’t want to work that hard for that little. So he started taking shortcuts. Like shoplifting a new shirt now and then, or
stealing a nice new car when he wanted to impress a date.
Harry’s
specialty though, was snatching purses.
It was one of those crimes the cops didn’t pursue strongly. It didn’t really hurt anybody – women rarely
carry more cash than they can afford to explain to their husbands. Harry was good at reading people. He had a little game he played – he would try
to guess by a woman’s clothes and how she carried herself how much money she
had in her purse. Then he would grab it,
and see how close he came. It was a job
worth a couple thousand dollars in a good week.
Each
purse told him something about the woman that carried it. One woman was so distracted she practically
handed him her purse. When he opened her
purse, he found a “Dear John” letter and a pregnancy test inside. Harry just made her week a little worse that
day. But he also knew her daddy would
take care of her. She also had two
hundred dollars in cash and a half dozen credit cards, including a platinum
credit card in the name of Sidney Smaltz, Sr. – her father no doubt.
Harry
liked to look for snooty socialites that were cheating on their husbands. He knew it because that is the only reason
these women would be carrying condoms and a change of underwear in their
purses. They were like gold – cheating
wives usually had plenty of cash on hand so there would be no paper trail for
their husbands (or his lawyers) to follow.
All
this knowledge didn’t come without a price.
Harry spent a year in prison for using a gun to hold up a woman
once. Police DO pursue armed robbery
vigilantly. Harry just thought it might
be a little less work to take the purse with a gun rather than snatch it and
run. But that gives the woman too good a
look at your face and guns are hard to get rid of once they’re “hot”. Harry learned a lot in prison from those that
had made all the mistakes before. His
technique was now flawless and he had no reason to use a gun again.
Harry
felt a little weird every time he dumped a purse out. His palms would sweat, and his heart would
race. What would he find? He remembered his mother slapping his hands
for reaching into her purse. “NEVER go
into a woman’s purse!” she’d say sternly.
If she needed something from her purse, he would dutifully go to the
table by the front door where she kept it and carry the whole purse to her,
holding it out at arms’ length like it contained a ticking bomb. He wondered what secrets were tucked away in
the hidden compartments of that worn leather bag. He never worked up the courage to look
inside. Some things you just don’t want
to know about your own mother.
One
cool sunny day, Harry spotted an easy mark – she was wearing a hat and
sunglasses, obviously trying to hide her face as she left a ritzy downtown
bistro that was well known for it’s rich food and shadowy ambiance. She would be carrying plenty of cash if she
was that worried about being caught with her lover. She was headed toward the parking garage two
blocks over. Rich people never park
their Mercedes on the street. He knew where
he could cut between two buildings and surprise her from the alley. Once he cleared the alley, He could go any of
six different ways if someone gave chase.
It’s one of the reasons he liked working this little area.
She
was alone as she came from the bright sun into the shadow of the buildings.
Before her eyes could adjust, Harry darted from his spot, grabbed her purse
strap and gave her a hard shove to knock her down. He knew if she was falling, her instinct
would be to use her hands to break her fall rather than to grab the purse. It worked, as usual. As Harry cleared the far end of the alley,
there was no one behind him. She must
have been too dazed to even look down the alley as he ran. He tucked the purse under his jean jacket and
slowed to a walk. The anticipation was
killing him as the adrenaline rush slowly wore off.
Finally,
he stopped by an abandoned construction trailer and broke the lock so he could
see what treasures lay in that small white purse. He dumped it out – it was amazing how much
stuff fit into the tiniest of purses. A
loud thunk sounded as small change, Kleenex, and a lipstick rolled out on the
table. In the center of the ordinary
clutter was a freshly oiled automatic pistol.
Harry
had not even held a gun since he spent a year in jail for armed robbery. To be caught with one now would land him
immediately back in jail. But he longed
to hold that premium blue steel in his hands for just a while before he brought
it down to Jack’s pawn shop to see what he could get for it. This was not the cheap piece of iron he had
used for his job. This was a 9mm Beretta
Cougar. He drew the slide back and a shell dropped into the chamber. The sound of a dozen precision pieces
dropping into perfect alignment with a satisfying click brought a smile to his
face. He would have to get it out of his
hands as soon as possible.
Jack
gave him $350 for a gun that would could easily sell for $500, but Harry really
needed to get that gun as far away as possible.
The woman was carrying about $90 and some credit cards, so Harry was
glad to get whatever he could for the gun.
Jack
had a soft spot for Harry, who’d always had it rough. When Harry was young, his mother used to
bring a few things in now and then to make ends meet. Jack knew they probably came from one of the
houses she cleaned. The look in her eyes
told Jack that wasn’t the worst thing she’d done for money. So Jack did what he could to help them out,
and she never brought in anything that was likely to be missed. Things only got tougher for Harry after he
did that year for armed robbery. Jack
was sure he would never touch a gun again.
So it did not sit well that Harry came in wanting to dump that Beretta
so bad. He checked it against his “watch
list” of serial numbers that the cops were seeking. Jack did NOT want to sell a hot gun. He would help out, but he wouldn’t risk his
own neck to do it. He would hold onto it
until next month’s list came out, just to be sure. Meanwhile, Jack just hoped Harry hadn’t done
something really stupid.
Two months
later, Harry opened his door to uniformed officers with a warrant for his
arrest in connection with the death of some up and coming lawyer. Seems he was held up at gunpoint near Harry’s
favorite parking garage and killed. The
police had plenty of witnesses that put him in the neighborhood that day. Hell, he was always in that
neighborhood. They also had the Beretta
he sold to Jack with his fingerprints on it.
It was reported stolen 2 days before the crime and it was the gun that
had killed one of the mayor’s favorite legal prodigies…
Through
several years of appeals, Harry was given hundreds of pictures of every woman
that knew the murdered man – none of them matched the woman whose purse he had
snatched. Without someone else to call
to the stand and blame for the crime, Harry had to take the stand himself to
tell his side of the story.
Unfortunately, taking the stand also made his prior conviction for armed
robbery admissible in court. Jury after
jury was sure that if he’d done it once, he’d certainly done it again. Harry told his story over and over again
through the appeals, but no one believed it.
Branded a “career criminal” with violent tendencies, the ambitious DA got
Harry convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection.
Harry
watched the florescent lights pass slowly in front of his eyes as the gurney he
was strapped into rolled deliberately towards the small room at the end of the
hall. There he would die in front of
dozens of silent witnesses watching him through a thick glass curtain. Most would be death penalty protesters who
knew little or nothing about him or why he was being executed. There would also be a few news reporters
looking to capture a dramatic stay of execution or an altercation with the
protesters. They were not there to see
Harry at all, really. Harry wanted to
scream at the top of his lungs that he was innocent. But he knew it would do no good. Nobody believed his story…
The
orderly gave him the first injection – a powerful anesthetic that prevented him
from screaming or struggling. It would
hopefully keep him from feeling any pain when his heart seized up. The next injection would be the deadly
one. As his gaze ran across the small
crowd gathered behind the window, he recognized the lawyer’s wife – arm in arm
with the woman whose purse he’d grabbed.
The real killer knew the man’s WIFE, not him. Were they friends, lovers, or was she some
sort of hired hit man?
As
everything faded to black, Harry wished he had listened to his mother and never
looked inside a woman’s purse…