Disclaimer: The characters in this story are entirely fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The following story involves graphic descriptions of sexual encounters. If such things offend you, please read no further. For everyone else, I hope you enjoy the story.
"Alice's Restaurant"
"She shoots, she scores," whispered Alicia to herself after another successful pick. She had snagged both a wallet and pocket-watch of her mark after doing the old "accidental bump" ploy. It was a little ham-handed for a pickpocket artist such as herself, but it was getting late and she was getting hungry.
Alicia had been working that area of town since she was fifteen years old. At the time, she was a product of a child-fostering government system that had long since broken down. The foster family she had been placed with were a bunch of drunken louts at the best of times, and she had run away when she felt the father's eyes undressing her everyday and his fingers started trying to roam.
So she had been living on the streets for six years now, and she had become one of the most successful pickpockets and cutpurses in the city. Thieves were a highly territorial bunch, and the ones that worked the streets all had areas staked out for themselves. Alicia liked her little corner of the world. She worked a street filled with restaurants and pawnshops. Most people assumed she worked the clients coming out of the shops. While she did lift from them occasionally, she preferred the restaurant patrons. This area wasn't too upscale but neither was it a slum. This was the place uptown businessmen brought their lady-friends for lunch or dinner, but took off their wedding rings first. It was a place where small-time hoods could pretend to be big-time players. It was a place for people who weren't likely to call the cops when their wallet wound up missing. As long as Alicia stuck to cash and left credit cards alone, people tended not to look too hard for the culprit.
Alicia's favorite place to hang out was an Italian restaurant called "Luigi's Place." But people in her profession had taken to calling it "Alicia's Place," and then "Alice's Restaurant." This was the place where Alicia could always count on a good score. Cheaters, boozers, swindlers and the lonely came here, and it was easy for Alicia to get to any of them. The owner wouldn't let her in the front door anymore, and all of the staff had been shown her picture. No matter how many times she changed her hair-color, they always recognized her and stopped her at the door.
At the moment her hair was shoulder length, and was purple on one side and green on the other. She wore torn up jeans or denim shorts most of the time, and neon-yellow fishnet stockings underneath. She had chosen the shorts today because of the heat. She was wearing a bright green, pastel tube-top that displayed her 36-inch, C-cup chest magnificently, and her knee-high stiletto boots gave her tight little ass just the right amount of swing. Even with her bizarre clothing, she was an attractive girl and she knew. She knew it, and so she used it. She used it to get close to the lonely and the lecherous ones. There was many an occasion where she had a forty-year old man's hand on her ass while her hand was in his pocket. She would slap him for his affront, and then wander off with his money. And by the time he knew what had happened, she was long gone; back to her small apartment and her color TV and her cat named Seven. She had named the cat Seven because that was how many lives she figured he had left when she got him.
Alicia was sitting on the stairs of a shop that was closed, and was staring through the windows of her restaurant, planning the night's heist. It seemed like the usual crowd with two exceptions. She had seen a woman go in alone. A man going in alone wasn't unusual, but she didn't see too many single women, particularly as beautiful as this lady was. She appeared to be in her early thirties and had a phenomenal body. She had an hourglass figure that made Alicia almost drool, and her red hair was pulled up in a bun. She had on blue jeans that seemed almost a size too small, and appeared to be wearing a snug white tee shirt underneath her jacket. Her jacket? It was a little warm for a jacket, however stylish. The woman just sat at a table for one, nibbling on her spaghetti and staring and the candle.
The other exception was a sleazy-looking though somewhat handsome man in his late thirties who was also sitting alone. He had hit on redhead as soon as he had walked in, but she was having none of it. So the man sat down in a corner booth with his greased back hair and seventies-throwback shirt and just waited. He just sat there. He ordered water and an appetizer. That was what was strange. If he wasn't there for the food and if he wasn't going to put more effort into prowling for tail, what the heck was he doing? Finally a man of oriental persuasion joined him. Suddenly the sleazy exterior was gone, and Alicia could see the man was all business. The two men exchanged something under the table, but she couldn't see what it was. Then they got up and headed for the door. The man took one last lingering look at the redhead and then they walked out onto the street.
It was at that point that Alicia violated one of her primary rules, which was to always leave the oddities alone. She normally stuck with people who were so ordinary they wouldn't be trouble. But something about that man offended her. She realized with a sense of embarrassment that it was how he looked at that woman in the restaurant like a side of beef. "She's too classy for a prick like you." Why had she said that?
Alicia decided to go for the old booty-grab play. She ran down a back alley that allowed her to get ahead of the man. She crossed the street, put one foot up on a doorstep and acted as if she were securing the laces on one of her boots. She made sure her shorts were pulled up so just a little bit of cheek was exposed underneath. As the man passed by, he did what all pigs did and gave her ass a quick grab. And as any "honorable" woman would do, she defended her honor. She rose up to slap him in the face. But this guy was surprisingly quick, and he grabbed her hand.
"You really, REALLY don't want to do that, you little bitch."
She became genuinely nervous, and she let it show on her face. He twisted her wrist a bit before letting her go and continuing on his way.
"Actually," she said a bit smugly to herself as she opened up his stolen wallet, "I do." She started moving down the street, sticking the wallet into her purse. As she was passing the alley right next to Luigi's, she felt hands on her shoulders pulling her into the darkness. Suddenly there was an arm around her neck and a hand clasped over her mouth.
"Don't move," came a distinctly female voice. That was strange. Alicia realized this wasn't a rape attempt and didn't seem to be a mugging. What the hell . . .
Then she heard footsteps outside on the street, hard and fast like someone was running. The person behind her pulled her deeper into the shadows, and Alicia felt strangely complacent. Then she saw the man she had just robbed run by, and he looked furious. Worse, he looked dangerous. After he had passed by, the person . . . the woman who was holding her pulled a hand-held radio out of somewhere and talked into it.
"Okay guys, I need someone to get this guy calmed down and away from here. He didn't make me specifically, but we have a new problem that just added itself to the mix." Alicia got the feeling that "a new problem" referred to her. Then they heard sirens down the street, and the man wandered back by, oblivious to their presence in the alley. He seemed to be trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. An "all clear" message came over the radio, and she felt the hands around her loosen their grip.
A van pulled up and parked outside the alley and she was pushed gently but firmly inside. Once seated, she looked back and found herself face to face with the redhead from the restaurant.
"That," started the woman with a very stern look on her face, "was monumentally stupid." The woman took off her jacket and tossed it on one of the seats. There were two guys up front and another in the back, and all of them were looking nervous as the door closed and the van started up. Alicia had become very afraid. She looked back at the woman. Alicia realized her priorities were a little screwed up when the first thing that caught her eyes was the woman's ample chest. It wasn't quite as big as Alicia's, but it was perfect on the woman's rock-hard body. Then something really got her attention. It was a 9-mm pistol at the woman's side.
"Who the hell are you people? This is kidnapping! I know my rights!"
"I suspect you do. You've probably had them read to you on a number of occasions." The redhead pulled out what Alicia initially thought was a wallet. It wasn't. It was a badge. "Agent Carrie King, FBI. You, young lady, just stumbled into something you really shouldn't have."
Alicia remained speechless for the remainder of the ride. They pulled up into what she thought was an abandoned warehouse. But inside were several vans, a large recreational vehicle, tons of equipment and dozens of people. The warehouse door closed behind them with an eerie sense of finality.
