BOSTON. The Christmas buying season is in full swing right here, and the same old crush of workplace staff on the streets of Boston is made worse by suburban moms and youngsters on the town to see the “Santa’s Workshop” show within the Clark’s division retailer window. However there’s one other, extra ominous addition to the standard workday crowd–further safety guards, employed to reduce shoplifting losses that may eat away at retailers’ important December revenues.
Da Sistahs
Most put on standard-issue rent-a-cop outfits, however two stand out from the tasteless crowd; Sister Mary Joseph Arimathea and Sister Mary Clarus, who put on the gray, white and black habits of the Little Sisters of Stock Loss Management, the one spiritual order in Christendom whose mission is to guard the slender revenue margins of America’s retailers.
Bob Duffy, Clark’s Director of Safety, says he introduced the 2 nuns on board final yr after seeing their handiwork throughout the road at Sheehan’s Church Items, Boston’s main supplier of spiritual artifacts and provides. “Some child tried to spice up a pack of Higher Deck All-Star Martyrs Playing cards,” he remembers wistfully. “The sisters have been throughout him like an inexpensive swimsuit. When he walked in he had the face of an angel, and after they obtained by way of with him he seemed like he wanted Accutane.”
“You maintain him — I’ll hit him.”
The 2 obtained their begin as a tag workforce dealing with a tough crew of boys who moved by way of Sacred Coronary heart Grade College in Sedalia, Missouri, like a rat by way of a snake’s digestive observe. “That gang, they have been despatched to us from hell,” Sister Mary Clarus remembers with disgust. “Dick Waljek tried to knock my wimple off someday, and Scotty Lilja drew an image of St. Agnes in a Speedo for his fifth grade artwork undertaking.”
“You’ll by no means take me alive, Sister Joe!”
The 2 moved on from these humble beginnings to work safety for Pope John Paul II throughout his American tour within the fall of 1979. “There have been at all times groupies and lepers making an attempt to get backstage for blessings after gigs,” says Arimathea, recognized to these she has collared as “Sister Joe” for her no-nonsense strategy, modeled after Sgt. Joe Friday of the “Dragnet” tv present.
“Put down the holy water and no person will get damage.”
The 2 stand a watchful guard over the Winter Avenue entrance to the shop, leaning again in opposition to an Elizabeth Arden tub oil bead show to make themselves inconspicuous.
“Our job isn’t to attend till hassle occurs,” says Clarus. “Our job is to cease it earlier than it begins.” As she finishes, she casts a jaundiced eye at Tiffany Uxbridge, a twenty-something secretary who’s introduced her Starbucks peppermint mocha into the shop together with her. Sister Joe nods her head, says “Let’s roll,” and the 2 make a bee-line for the perp.
“Excuse me, younger girl,” Clarus says. She grabs the elbow of the arm that isn’t holding the cup, an incapacitating martial arts maintain that she first used on Con Chapman, a second-grade spelling champ, to maintain him from a lifetime of crime that was about to start with the misdemeanor of speaking in line throughout a fireplace drill. “Aren’t we forgetting one thing?” Sister Joe says as she units a decide straight in entrance of Uxbridge.
“I’m going to want to see an ID.”
“What?” the lady replies, not eradicating her ear buds.
“Your espresso, dingleberry!” Clarus shouts, rising offended on the lady’s obvious indifference. “If it don’t say ‘espresso store’ on the skin, it ain’t a freakin’ espresso store.”
Some consumers decelerate to stare on the stop-and-frisk that follows, whereas others give the trio a large berth, hoping to keep away from hassle.
“These are my denims — I wore them into the shop!”
Arimathea writes the lady up with a warning and escorts her to the exit. “Take your rattling buying checklist to Filene’s,” she says with a sarcastic snicker, referring to a competing division retailer subsequent door that was demolished. “Possibly they’ll need your small business.”
The 2 take a flip right down to nook, the place the shop’s again entrance faces a much less savory streetscape. “Isn’t that D’Angelo?” Arimathea says, referring to a younger man with low-slung denims and a flat-brimmed New York Yankees cap.
“The identical,” Clarus replies, and like birds flying in formation they fall in behind a dropout from St. Columbkill’s Excessive College in Brighton, a suspect who has eluded the sisters thus far.
They watch as he walks by way of the glass doorways, and be aware a curious departure from his ordinary method; he removes his ever-present hat and arms it across the anti-shoplifting machine. “One thing’s not proper,” Arimathea says, and the 2 transfer in for the kill.
“Hel-lo D-Angelo!” Clarus says as she applies her vise-like grip to the person’s elbow. “Good to see you doff your hat if you come to go to us.”
“I ain’t carried out nuthin’,” the person says. “You possibly can’t arrest me coming in to your retailer.”
“Why don’t we do an instantaneous replay,” Arimathea says as she steers him again to the doorway. “Let’s simply ‘go the hat,’” she says as she removes the person’s baseball cap and holds it between the transmitter and receiver antennae of the anti-shoplifting machine.
A loud “BLONK” sound is heard, and Clarus brings her 12-inch metallic edged ruler down on the thief’s proper ear.
“Ow!” he screams and falls to the ground. Arimathea strikes in, slaps handcuffs on the younger man and begins to recite his rights.
“You’ve the precise to burn in hell without end,” she says, studying from a plastic card that she pulls from the entrance marsupial pocket of her behavior. “You’ve the precise to endure in purgatory till the tip of time. You aren’t entitled to a lawyer if you happen to can’t afford one.”
Accessible in Kindle format on amazon.com as a part of the gathering “Enjoyable With Nuns.”