Fields Where They Lay, page 28
Wally said, “And?”
“And also, no coverage of the doors into or out of Gabriel’s. And yes, I remember, Gabriel’s had its own system of cameras, another perfectly good reason for the lack of coverage. So no one could say that the camera coverage was contrived to hide the mechanism through which the shoplifters were sent into the right stores at the right time, or any of the ancillary activities. But that pattern of video coverage, which you know better than anyone, Wally, it was taken advantage of when all this was being mapped out. It shaped the whole plan.”
“What plan?” Wally said. “You saw the reports. High rates of theft. You saw the graphs. No correlation between the crowds and the rate of theft.”
“Which just poses the inevitable question, doesn’t it?”
“Um,” Wally said. “What question?”
I said, “Who’s lying?”
Wally looked down at his console.
“I’m assuming we can leave out the off-site security people who chart the losses. They’re independent contractors, not answerable to you. So that leaves us with you, Wally, and the people who own the stores. And look, here we are, with one person from each group: you, representing you, and Wink here, representing the shop owners. Has iShop been stolen from, Wink?”
“Well,” he said.
“It’s on the record,” I said. “The amount you’ve reported as stolen.”
“Since you put it that way.”
“But you didn’t report the thefts in the weeks in which they took place, in the weeks the crowds filled your stores, did you? You waited until—”
My phone began to ring, and I pulled it out and looked down at it. “Guess who,” I said to Wally. “Mr. Poindexter is going crazy to learn what I’ve figured out. In fact, my deadline to tell him is tonight. Christmas Eve, of all nights. Does he strike you—or you, Wink, if you know him—does he strike you as a particularly forgiving person?”
“He, ummmmm,” Wink said. To Wally, he said, “Can I have a chair?”
Wally didn’t even glance at him. He cleared his throat. “I represent his interests,” he said to me. “Mr. Poindexter’s.”
“Really,” I said, “I doubt he’ll share that view. I mean, there’s no one else in this place who knows exactly where the holes in the camera coverage are, is there?”
His face was expressionless but once again, I could hear him swallow.
“Well,” I said, “Christmas is coming, so let’s get it all on the table. I’m not particularly interested in handing you to him.” I looked over at Wink. “Neither of you, actually. So maybe you can help me figure out how not to.”
Wally said, “You don’t know enough to—”
“Oh, but I do.” I felt like I had a weight on my chest, and I sighed to loosen it. “In fact, I know almost everything except the thing I want to know most, the second of the two questions I mentioned, which is who killed poor, sweet Bonnie. Listen, why don’t we all sit down? Roll that chair over here, would you?”
My phone began to ring again: Louie. I hit reject and said. “Mr. Poindexter is assertive, isn’t he?” Wally got up and pushed his chair to me. He sat in the one I’d used, and Wink gave me a resentful glance and perched on the edge of the console.
“Okay. Once there was a mall, right? Not a very nice mall, not a very successful mall. Malls are failing all over the place anyway, and the ones that stay in business all have something special. The one I’m talking about . . . well, it doesn’t.”
Wink said, “No kidding.”
“It lost its anchor stores and replaced them with a discount outlet and a flea market. Neither of those attractions is particularly appealing to people with a lot of disposable income, who are the customers malls need. Some of the mall’s shops went under, and when they did, they were just allowed to sit empty because who’s dumb enough to move in? Empty stores are not attractive. They’re the ruins of failure, not conducive to the kind of suspension of reality that makes people in a good mall forget things like bank balances and rising mortgage rates, so they can get in the spirit to spend. And spend.”
Wally was watching me as though I weighed three hundred pounds, had eight legs, and was flexing all of them at the same time. Wink was biting his nails.
“And now, if you don’t count Boots to Suits, all the mall has left is small businesses, and they’re all—or at least most of them—in trouble. Given half a chance to escape with their tail feathers intact, most of them would close up, go home for good.”
After a moment, Wink said, “But?”
“But two things. First, everyone knows that the guys who own this place are not gentlemen. Everybody knows they’d take every last penny they could get, if they were in a position to do so. And second, as soon as someone tries to pull out, those owners will be in a position to do so. Right?”
Wink said, “It’s your story.”
“They’d be in a position to take everything, practically down to your socks, Wink, because you all signed the same contract. You can’t get out without giving two years’ notice, and if you try to go anyway, you owe the mall a major pre-set financial penalty, in addition to—what was the phrase? Whatever other demonstrable damages the management may see fit to assess. We saw what happened to Gabriel’s, didn’t we? In addition to however much they were sued for, they had to leave behind hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of fixtures, display units, counters, changing booths, even business machines.”
Wink said, “Assholes,” and I didn’t think he meant Gabriel’s.
“So the merchants can’t make any money and they can’t shut down without leaving everything behind and then being at the mercy of management who, as we’ve said, are not nice guys.” My phone rang again, and I said, “Hold that thought,” and answered it, holding it away from my ear. All three of us could hear Vlad screaming.
I covered the speaker outlet and said, “Nine-thirty tonight.” He stopped so suddenly he might have been corked, and then, when I moved my finger aside, he was saying “—that late?”
“Because that’s how long it’ll take me to finish,” I said.
“Finish what?”
“For Christ’s sake,” I said, and Wally unconsciously rolled his chair back a few inches, “you want it right or you want it sloppy?”
I had the phone at my ear again, and Vlad said, “What can you tell me now?”
“I know how the stuff is being stolen,” I said. “I know by whom. But I don’t know all of it, so leave me alone and meet me at nine-thirty, when I will.”
“Where?”
“This place closes tonight at eight,” I said. “It’s Christmas Eve, so everyone should be gone by nine. Why not give the slowpokes an extra half hour to get out of here, and meet me in the parking lot. It’ll save me a drive, and I can show you a couple of things here.”
Wally began to swivel back and forth in his chair as though he had to go to the bathroom.
Into the phone, I said, “Nine-thirty. North end, okay? Oh, and hey, it’s not that I don’t trust you, but you’re going to be bringing me a wad of money and I don’t want to see anyone with you who might encourage you to change your mind about paying me.”
“Satisfy me,” Vlad said, “and I will pay you.”
“If I’m right,” I said, “you will be satisfied in every regard.” I disconnected. They were both looking at me wide-eyed, and Wink had a sheen of sweat on his forehead even though the room was, as always, cool.
“I can see why none of you wants to rely on the better angels of his nature, as Lincoln put it,” I said, “because he doesn’t have any.”
“Get to the point,” Wally said.
“So there is a way to avoid being ruined, isn’t there? See, in return for your rent and for observing the terms of your lease, the owners guarantee you—”
I was interrupted by Wally’s sigh. He was kneading his face with the knuckles of both hands.
“In exchange for all that, et cetera, they make you a few guarantees of their own, don’t they? They guarantee you that they’ll do a certain amount of advertising on the lessees’ behalf, including that big, ugly sign out there; and they’ll pay for, publicize, and supervise a number of seasonal promotions like Shlomo and what’s-his-name, Dwayne. They also guarantee that they’ll keep the building in acceptable condition, that there will always be adequate parking, and they guarantee a certain level of security. Security against what, Wally?”
It took him about twenty seconds, but then he said, “Theft.” He was watching the screens on the wall.
“Right,” I said. “And the failure to prevent that theft has what effect?”
Wink said, as though the words were being dragged from him by pincers, “It invalidates the lease.”
“There we are,” I said. “An escape clause.”
Still watching his screens, Wally said, “So that’s why I’m in this conversation? You think I’ve been lax in security? I’m surveillance, I don’t control the guards. They’re a different company. I don’t install or maintain the alarm systems.” He dragged his eyes away from the screens as though I were interrupting the last at-bat of a perfect game. “So how am I—”
“Don’t disappoint me,” I said. “You’re in this conversation because this whole dodge was planned around your damn cameras.”
He said, “Anyone who’s been here long enough—”
“And also because Wendy Straub says hi,” I said. Wally was motionless, his face frozen. I said, “You know, Des Moines? Mul-T-Key? That Wendy Straub?”
Wally began to chew on his lower lip.
“Keys,” I said, “that are interesting if for no other reason than that they open a murder scene. But that’s not the only reason they’re interesting, is it?”
“You tell me,” Wally said.
“Well, let’s frame it this way. Would you want old Vlad to know about them?”
“Who?”
“Sorry. Mr. Poindexter or whatever he calls himself. Because, come on, Wally. You have a role in all this.”
The room was so silent I found myself wishing the monitor screens had sound. My phone chimed and then chimed again, and I saw that Aphex Twin 1 and Aphex Twin 2, aka Anime and Lilli, had sent me attachments, almost certainly the iPhone movies of the crowd in motion. Now all I needed was a chance to put them to use.
“Okay, let’s cut to it,” I said. “Everybody’s guilty.”
Wally raised a hand. “Everybody who? And of what?”
“Wally,” I said. “You’re not spotting the shoplifters on your screens in here. I suppose you could say it’s because of the crowds. But Wally—Wally, why haven’t any of the shop owners snagged some of these thieves? There’s really only one logical answer to that, isn’t there? They don’t want to catch anybody, they’re in on it, they’re the ones with the motive, right? What do you say to that, Wink?”
Instead of answering, Wink nodded at Wally, a silent go ahead. Wally drew in most of the air in the room and said, “First of all, it’s not everybody, okay? It’s sixteen shop owners.” He closed his eyes. “Fifteen now that Bonnie’s gone. And second, all they’re doing is stealing from themselves. Last I heard, stealing from yourself wasn’t a crime. And the crowds? Okay, all the owners nominate eight or ten people each, friend, family, neighbors, every day we pull the scam. Relatives, girlfriends, and boyfriends, I don’t know. Sometimes different people, sometimes the same people.”
The kid with the Frida Kahlo unibrow popped into my mind’s eye.
“But jeez, it’s not hard to get them; they want to come back. They get to hit three or four stores a day, and in every store they’re told to hit they get a freebie they’re allowed to keep. Helps with the Christmas shopping.”
“And those things have already been separated from their alarm tags.”
“Well, sure. So the crowd shows up in, say, Wink’s place.”
Wink emitted a barely audible moan.
“They buy something for cash,” Wally said. “Wink messes around in the register because he’s on camera, remember? And it’s his store because, like everyone else in this deal, he’s the owner and the operator. So he hands their money back to them as change. If they give him a card, he slides it along the terminal, but he keeps it just under the slot. And then he slips whatever they’ve ‘bought’ into a bag, which already has two or three extra things in it, already in a little bag. That’s the other reason for the crowd, the shops need to be ready on the days they’re scheduled. They have to have the extras all bagged up and ready to go. So the people in the crowd, they get to keep the item they chose, and before they leave at the end of their day, they drop off the bags containing the other stuff at a different store. Sounds complicated, but it’s not. They’re told which day to show up, they get three or four texts telling them which stores to go to for free stuff, and the only thing they have to remember is which four stores they can drop the extras in. Because it was all explained to them when they were asked if they wanted a bunch of free stuff. And not that week, but a week or so later, all of it, the things they kept and the things we slipped to them, get reported as stolen.”
“And the stores where they drop the extras off are all next to Gabriel’s,” I said.
Wally looked at his screens again, as though he’d never seen them before. For a long moment I didn’t think he’d reply, but then he said, “Yes.” He glanced at Wink, and then back to me. “What tipped you off?”
“First, the minute I arrived, on my first day, the crowds were bigger than I thought they should be. In this neighborhood, I mean, in this mall. Even Shlomo noticed. More kids, more people. Second, the, ummm, vigilance against shoplifting seemed way down. I’ve never shoplifted in my life, I’m a rank amateur, but I was waltzing into stores with empty pockets and out with full ones. Not in all the stores, but most of them. Third, the patterns of movement on the ground floor. And, finally, when I found those fancy keys last night, they were all, except for KissyFace, in shops next to Gabriel’s. So, as you were saying, everyone, all the fake shoplifters, they drop off the stuff when they leave.”
“Sure,” Wally said. “That way, they go home with all the stuff they picked for themselves, and the other stuff gets left where we can get to it later.”
“So just as I thought, that’s the stuff that gets dropped at the stores that are next to Gabriel’s. Those are everybody’s last stop. And at the end of the day, the owners of those shops use their Mul-T-Key to open the doors, which are out of camera range, and take all the stuff someplace inside. My guess is that it all winds up in the loading dock that’s been closed off since Gabriel’s split, down below the ground floor. The one with the broken elevators. The cops haven’t turned the stuff up yet—but.”
“Cops are back.” Wally was looking at a screen. “They’ve got lights up on the third floor now.”
“What about those elevators?”
“So you’re not so smart, are you?”
“They’ve been monkeyed with,” I said. “How is just a detail.”
“It’s a fake plate,” he said, sulking slightly. “It’s snapped over the real plate with the real buttons. You pop the plate off with a screwdriver, use the buttons underneath, and then push it back when you’re finished.”
“So at the end of the day,” I said, “no actual loss. I mean, the shopkeepers are out a few bucks for the stuff people took home, but that’s still the cheapest way they’ll ever get out of their leases. And they get the other stuff back.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, although they locked eyes, and then Wally said, “If you say so.” Wink looked at the ceiling.
“Fine, okay, so there are still a few things I don’t know,” I said. “But the important thing is that I will know, and soon. And the reason I’m going to figure it all out has fuck-all to do with you and this scam. It’s about learning who killed Bonnie.”
Both of them were squinting at me like tourists face-to-face with a native in the Valley of the Liars.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s all of it. I don’t really care about the dodge people like Wink here are doing to get out of their leases. In fact, I salute their ingenuity. But I am going to find out who killed Bonnie.”
Wink started to say something, stopped and thought about it, and then said, “So you’re on our side?”
“He was hired by—” Wally began.
“If there are sides in this nonsense,” I said, “I suppose I’m on yours. Unless you had something to do with Bonnie’s murder.”
“I was crazy about Bonnie,” he said, and Wally said, “We all were.”
“So back to Gabriel’s. What was Bonnie doing up there?”
“Nobody knows why she was there,” Wally said. “Or at least nobody admits that they know.”
“I was here all night,” I said. “I went over Gabriel’s pretty well except for the only part of it I couldn’t reach, which is to say, the loading dock. Do you know about the word that was written upstairs?”
My phone rang again, and it was, once again, Louie. This seemed like a good time to let them think for a moment, so I said, “Yes, Mr. Poindexter?”
“And merry Christmas to you, too,” Louie said. “Lavrenty Barkov.”
