Seventeen
“El Stupido Bandito”
Anne Arundel Hills Mall
Saturday
December 22
11:16
With Hippie back to his “normal” self, never far from Shannon, who he kissed and hugged constantly, everyone was in a better mood. Several malls had opened, and Joe and Angie were doing some Christmas shopping. Presently, Joe was at a counter eating a bacon, egg and cheese hoagie with peppers, mayonnaise and onions. Angie loved him more each day and knew he felt the same way. He proved it by proposing to her one night at her house, presenting her with a full-carat diamond ring. They were happy. But she despised his taste in sandwiches.
The mall was full. Work crews had done serious overtime to clear the parking lot, stock shelves, and make use of their restored power to get out of the red.
Entering from the south, there was a man who could not shop; he had no money. There was plenty of work, people were still shoveling snow and ice and clearing away fallen trees from the White Hurricane, but the Americanos who came to the community center always picked the younger men for work. Jorge Javier Jorge was 40, had a thin but strong build, scraggly hair, and was desperate. Without being chosen to board the van, he let his mother believe he was working while he knocked off jewelry stores, department stores, convenience stores and anything else he thought of.
He carried a beefy Swiss 9mm, but had never once fired it even for practice. He was nonviolent, a devout Roman Catholic, and he deeply regretted the thievery he was guilty of, but he lived alone with his poor mama, who had medical needs. To feed her, pay rent, buy medicines and cigarettes for her, plus beer and Clamato juice, which made him sick–tomato and clam “juice,” he needed steady work. His fence gave him top dollar for everything he could bring except for zirconia crap, so most of the time, he got by.
Despite having a room-temperature I.Q., he did alright.
He did not know what the police in five states called him. Jorge Javier Jorge was wanted by police and the FBI for armed robbery in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
This, despite his having a record, thus a picture of him hanging behind the counters of every check-cashing establishment, department store, jewelry store and dozens of other retail shops in each state.
And if he was spotted and a jeweler happened to press the panic button alarm? Jorge Javier Jorge would know he had minutes to rob the bastard anyway and still get away.
The cops would bitch every time he hit a place in their jurisdiction:
“But he’s stupid,” they would say.
“He doesn’t even bother to wear gloves,” they griped, and “He’s left more fingerprints on glass displays than J. Edgar Hoover ever had in his filing cabinet.”
And, “Fucker don’t even bother with a mask,” bitched another.
“Yeah, he could at least use a old stocking,” they’d say.
And they were right.
But after being busted and doing time in Albuquerque, Jorge Javier Jorge wasn’t going to be taken again. He had moved mama east, and prospered at times.
Today was not one of those times.
Ever since the White Hurricane, he had a problem getting around, and getting around was how he kept his freedom.
Because despite all the bitching the police did, Jorge Javier Jorge could run faster than any of them had ever seen anyone run. Even search helicopters couldn’t find him.
Police officers who aced their PT tests could not catch him. One rookie officer in New York had tried, and he’d been a track star at his alma mater. He failed, and said he couldn’t even see the treads on the thief’s shoes, but he did get off one shot. The rumor was that Jorge Javier Jorge had outrun the bullet.
Perhaps Jorge Javier Jorge wasn’t very bright, and his poor mama had never been, getting knocked up by a rich man who split when she turned up pregnant, breaking her heart and not knowing exactly how to name her bastard baby boy, but he certainly didn’t deserve his nickname, El Stupido Bandito, which pissed off lots of Hispanic cops and told them that stereotypes were never going to go away. They began calling cops who used that nickname “des mierdas,” and when white cops caught on, there were actual feuds that developed. One Mexican American cop took it to the next level and began shitting in the racista‘s cars. He was never caught and the racism in Jersey continued anyway.
Today, as Joe and Angie resumed shopping, carrying bags around, the thief walked right past them and went unseen into the crowds.
His target today was the most expensive jewelry store in the mall, and with a crowd like this, their registers would be stuffed with cash and he’d still have time for a couple of diamonds and rubies.
But he paused at the window beside the entrance. Something was wrong. Finally he saw what it was: a beautiful woman in a black dress was standing at a kiosk in the center of a main aisle, selling e-cigarettes. She was dressed disreputably, showing cleavage, and staring daggers at him.
A witch!
He had never used his handgun, but it was loaded. This woman unnerved him so much that he raised it to shoot her because she hit him with a deep sexuality he found disturbing while also telling him, You ain’t getting none of this, field boy. This, in his estimation, meant she was a witch, a bruja.
Too many people got in the way, ignoring the gunman because their greed to get what they wanted blinded them, and he lowered the weapon and walked into the jewelry store, still shaking with fear and outrage that a bruja like her was allowed by God to live.
Except it wasn’t the jewelry store, it was some half-ass antique shop.
The counterman had seen the gun so it was too late. Against his will and intuition, he was committed.
He saw brass but thought gold, picked up a Hanukkah menorah, and ran out of the store, looked at la bruja and decided to walk right up to her and shoot her. But he lost his nerve because she was so evil that if he missed, she would surely curse him.
She laughed and turned her back on him, and as he walked two steps away in retreat, his machismo overrode every sense he had. He turned again to shoot her.
Finally he turned and fired, but there was no effect. Like she just absorbed the bullet!
He was going to fire again, but Angie and Joe saw the gun and shouted for him to put it down. Angie warned Joe not to fire his cannon in here, she had this, but El Bandito did not see her. He saw shadows, coming from the brightly decorated shops, every shop, hundreds of shadows, all coming for him, screaming, shrieking. He ran and ran; la bruja had summoned devils, many of them, and he was more terrified of them than her, so, on his feet and running, he turned, doubled back and emptied the gun into her at point-blank and she exploded in red showers of blood and pink mist. He made sure that she was dead, leaning over the counter and seeing the mess that he had turned her into. The shadows vanished.
Angie couldn’t get a shot because by now panicking shoppers were running in every direction, and some were even gathering to watch!
Uniformed officers from Anne Arundel were quick to act, but Jorge Javier Jorge was long gone. This Christmas his mama would get nothing, and he would have to boil her catheters to be reused. This caused him extreme anxiety, because he knew she had gotten a “UT” infection that way once, and nearly died.
After the mall section they were in was closed off, and the AACPD began questioning Joe and Angie, and Joe, who had picked up the menorah the bandit had dropped, and handed it to the lieutenant, a sergeant noticed that there was no DB, no remains, no blood and no kiosk. He asked, “Lieutenant, what the fuck are we doing here, anyway?”
There was no crime scene. No crime. Nothing. Even shoppers who were questioned, along with store managers in the nearest shops, denied that anyone had ever had a kiosk in that section because it was too close to a Christmas tree that stood almost as tall as the ceiling. Nobody except for Joe and Angie knew better. Joe had been very different after being in Shock Trauma and having Hippie intervene. He knew something had happened, and when allowed to resume shopping, his temporary holiday cheer was replaced by a sullen silence that even Angie couldn’t pull him out of.
***
“Let it go, Joe. He’s three counties away by now and I don’t think he’s ever going to be caught.”
“Angie, I’m not worried about him. He’s never been violent before. He saw the same thing we did. I don’t know what it was, but this mess is getting scary. Real scary.”
“If it’s any comfort, I’ve seen that bitch before. I only saw her face for a second, but nobody forgets a face like that. I think if I can remember where I saw her, we can do something.”
“Okay, sweetheart, I trust you. Don’t try too hard to remember. It’ll come back to you.”
She loved his gentle way of making her relax. This once- forgotten, out-to-pasture man had transformed her whole life. He never pressured her, never went against her wishes, was never angry at her and lived to love her and help others.
She no longer got spooked when new suits showed up in his closet. She wasn’t one to question miracles. She knew that for him to do the work he was called to do, he first needed to look respectable.
But this mystery was really giving her hell. How could a body so massacred just vanish, along with an entire crime scene?
“Baby, relax. We’re a team, all of us, and God is on our side. Let’s go visit the others and tell them about it.”
MHI HEADQUARTERS
After telling the story, which had Hippie visibly shaken, he asked Robin to put the photo of the woman in the Men’s Health Building up on her screen. “Take a look, Angie,” he said softly.
“That’s her, Hippie. I saw her. She just disappeared. A splattered corpse. Vanished into thin air.”
“It’s me,” Hippie said. “I saw her at the Belvedere when I somehow got sucked through time, and she threw me like a rag doll. She wants my attention and now she has it. I just don’t know why, or who–or what–she is.”
“She can see through time,” Shannon said, “but that means she was alive back when you saw her, and that’s not possible. Unless…”
“Unless she knew about that door and went to Eden and ate more of the fruit than I did.” But she’s not a ghost, so what is she?”
Robin put something else on the screen. An entry from an old English book that had a chapter on faeries, Leprechauns and gnomes. “Shapeshifters,” she said. “We know that faeries Leprechauns and gnomes don’t exist, but what about something that can turn into any of those or even humans? That makes her extremely dangerous, and if she really targeted you, then you have to find her first and kill her.”
“El Bandito saw her and was outraged. I don’t know why, but for the first time we know of, he actually used force. He was desperate to kill her,” Joe said. Our lives just got a lot more complicated.”
“More complicated than that,” said Zelda, coming from the kitchen with a full coffeepot and a stack of paper coffee cups. She set everything on the bar and pointed.
Everyone looked in the direction she was pointing and Joe said, “Impossible.”
It may have been impossible, but there it was: on a shelf that had never been there before, sat the exact same menorah he had picked up after El Stupido Bandito had dropped it.