At last, the L.L. Bean Catalog arrived at Mackie Alarie's Post Office Box, which was rented under an assumed name and located several towns away from the place in the mountain foothills where he lived.
His California born and bred convict colleagues in the prison break were not equipped with down jackets, double-layer thermal underwear ("built to last for years of cozy outdoor activity"), and ultra-warm snow boots ("built to take on the harshest winter weather"). Luckily, the man on the outside during the prison break was from the Bronx and had his own winter clothes. Because Alarie had told the Post Mistress that he would be buying winter clothes as Christmas presents for his visiting family, she would not be surprised by the many parcels he would soon receive from Maine.
It would have been much easier if Sido had kept to her original plan of taking the Music Box Book of Hours up the Mississippi on a river boat, Mackie Alarie thought to himself. The Thief could have boarded as a passenger, stolen it, and handed it off to The Fence in Memphis. Or, if the Music Box Book of Hours was heavily guarded, a waterways attack would have been fun, particularly if Caydance was aboard. Mackie Alarie laughed. Diabolically.
But, he thought -- opening up the L.L. Bean catalog -- in winter, a Canadian-Vermont border lodge that belonged to a former 10th Army Mountain Division soldier was a different story. If it had not been already booked full in December, The Thief could have checked in as a guest. But, because no new guests were welcome, Alarie was planning an assault with thug-laden snowmobiles. Yes!
The dastardly removal of his bugs in Sido's house was a planning setback. However, thankfully, while Sido, Memere, and Tyrone were standing on the banks of Lafourche Bayou, Alarie himself had installed a state of the art illegal listening device on Sido's grandmother's phone. Although the trip had been somewhat risky, he had had a good time in Louisiana and was planning to return in February for Mardi Gras.
