Hidden Charges

by Ridley Pearson

  “Ticklish,” he said.

  “Yes,” she lied.

  “Here we go,” he said, slipping the sandal over her foot and running the strap behind her ankle and then across her arch. He fastened the small buckle and sat up on his stool.

  Laura noticed the salesman to her left, who seemed perplexed. The salesman took her glance as a cue. He approached and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Shole, the strap’s twisted,” and dropped to one knee to fix it.

  “I’ll get it,” said Shole. He grinned at Laura and shrugged. “I’m new at this. Only been in the business seven years.” He smiled shyly. “To be honest, I’m out of my league. That’s why the funny looks from Henry. This is his turf.”

  “Why the special treatment?” She felt stronger.

  “Take a guess.” He paused fixing the strap. “You’re a special woman.” He set her foot down. “How’s it feel?”

  Laura nearly said, “Wonderful.” But that would hardly describe the sandal. “New,” she said. And even that held a special meaning to her.

  “The other?”

  “Why not?”

  He moved his stool a matter of inches and repeated the procedure. His touch felt equally stimulating. When the second sandal was on, Shole said, “Got the strap right that time.”

  “You always were a fast learner.”

  “So were you,” he said, his reference having nothing to do with academics.

  She felt herself blush. She was beside herself. “Perfect fit,” she mumbled, wondering if she meant the sandals. “Exactly what I’m looking for.” She suddenly felt like buying another pair. Anything to keep her here. “Well, I guess that’s that,” she said, leaning forward to unbuckle the sandals. “They’re perfect.” He leaned forward simultaneously, and their faces were close.

  “Allow me,” he said. She acquiesced.

  He removed both sandals and slipped her back into her shoes. She was thinking of Cinderella.

  “We carry… these, too,” he said. “Which isn’t to say you need a new pair—”

  “They’re a disaster. I know.”

  “It’s the businessman in me. Always looking for a sale.”

  She couldn’t believe she said, “If I buy them now, I don’t have another excuse to come see you.”

  Without so much as a pause he followed with, “Sure you do. How about lunch tomorrow?”

  She stuttered. “Sh-sh-sure.”

  “Twelve o’clock sharp. We’ll meet by the fountain downstairs. Sound all right?”

  “I don’t know….”

  “No fair reconsidering. We’re all set.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Good.”

  She paid at the counter. She started to pay by credit card, but then decided on using a check. Her checks had her phone number on them. And her address. She wondered if he had noticed her changed decision.

  “Twelve noon. See ya,” he said.

  As she was halfway out the store, he caught up to her. “Don’t forget these.” He handed her the box containing her new white sandals. “I still think you’re a red or a blue.”

  “Maybe tomorrow.” She shrugged. She could still feel a tingle between her toes.

  16

  The little man reached the far end of the utility tunnel and paused to listen for any movement below. Hearing none, he switched off his headlamp and peered out of the tunnel’s exit and down into the cement room below, a room filled with the dark shadows of racks of telephone switchers, snaking cables carefully laid out and color-coded.

  Seeing no one, he switched the headlamp back on and descended the series of hand grips. The room, a cement vault, echoed his movements. Pavilion C had been built several years before, so much of the telephone equipment was of the older variety, despite the bank of new switchers that had obviously been installed recently, as additional phones had been added.

  He checked the schematics he carried in his toolbox and moved over to the third rack of switchers, each rack housing dozens of pairs that provided phone service to the hundreds of stores and offices. He propped open the hinged, gray metal cover to the electromechanical switching matrix. His headlamp lit the maze of relays inside. He checked his schematics, removed the telephone handset from his pack, and hot-wired the appropriate relay, one of the five active relays that led to the Security Dispatch Control Room high overhead.

  He had personally requested the two lines from the phone company himself, claiming to be a new businessman at the mall, giving mall addresses of two empty spaces in C. Everything was all set.

  He dialed the first number from his hot-wired phone and watched for the tiny electromechanical switch to connect. It was three relays away. The sound of a ringing line filled his receiver.

  He smiled. He dialed the second number and the next relay connected. Again he heard the line ringing in the handset. Again he smiled. It was all so simple, he thought: a dialed number, the tiny pulse of electricity, a switch thrown, an explosion.

  Simple.

  Climbing back up to the utility tunnel with the toolbox in hand was awkward. He moved a few yards down the tunnel and set the box down. Contorting his body, he slipped around the overhead pipes here. Carefully he moved back toward the room he had just left, but this time he entered the false space between the hung acoustical paneling and the true cement ceiling above. He had to lie prone and crawl carefully, using the pipes for support. One slip and a foot would go through the paneling. At the far end of this dead space he reached three small cassette recorders. All three were the same model, voice-activated recorders made by Sony. Tiny wires ran from boxes that looked like transistor radios to the cassette recorders. A single extension cord, spliced into a power line overhead, furnished the electricity.

  The man removed the three cassettes and replaced them with blank tapes, depressing the RECORD buttons on all three. Now, when someone spoke, the hubs would turn, the tape would roll and all would be captured on tape.

  He pocketed the recorded tapes. Later tonight, as he worked in his apartment, he would listen to what was being said in the overhead offices. Intelligence, he knew, was ninety percent of the game.

  17

  Toby’s feet ached—they always began to ache around midday. His job required constant movement throughout the complex. He was still upset about the trouble at the Safeway and Knorpp’s orders to arrest the kids. It was true that the kids had provoked their share of trouble at Yankee Green lately. But the kids also had their ears to the ground. On several key occasions they had supplied him with inside information that allowed him to prevent gang brawls on the premises. Now he had paid them back by having them arrested.

  The threat of violent crime was a constant worry at the Green. Nationally, shopping centers were epidemic with juvenile violence and crime. Babies were stolen from their mothers, purses were snatched, elderly people mugged. The challenge to keep these three and a half million square feet free of violent crime never ceased. It was what made the well-paid job interesting.

  Jacobs had been extremely lucky thus far, and he knew it. The Green had had just one attempted child abduction (foiled by an alert guard at an exit) and one armed bank robbery. No rapes. No assaults. But the odds were against the Green. Statistics implied that it was long overdue for a wave of serious crime. It was what kept Jacobs working late, working Saturdays, worrying.

  He looked outside through the drizzle, where a pair of uncomfortable city cops stood guard over nine tons of thawing fish. He had no idea why the cops had been posted there, but trying to figure out the local police was an exercise in futility. Sight of the truck reminded him to ask Knorpp to nudge the insurance companies. It had been several hours, and still no one from either company had showed.

  He pushed through the door and out into the drizzle, driven by curiosity. He walked over and introduced himself to the cops. A minute later he opened the back door of the large trailer. The smell of fish overpowered him.

  As a child, he had often gone out with his father and uncle on their tr
awler. By day’s end the two men would be drinking beer and singing songs in Portuguese, the tangy smell offish and salt water permeating the air. The smell of this truck took him back. He could see the bow of the ship splitting the swells of the sea, could hear the slippery sound of the dead fish shifting in the open hold, the occasional final slap of a tail fin as a defeated cod surrendered. He could smell the beer on his father’s breath and recall almost word for word the dirty stories of whores the two men would tell each other, thinking young Tobias did not understand. The stench in the trailer reminded him of how long ago it had been.

  The trailer was dark. Frozen fillets sat on milky ice. They wouldn’t last long; in the absence of refrigeration, the August temperature was making quick work of the ice. Jacobs wondered about the liability, knowing that of all the problems the Green’s management faced, insurance was at the top of the list. A trailer this loaded with fish didn’t come cheap.

  A strike by fishermen in his home town of New Bedford had left New England without fish for twenty-two days. Restaurants from Stamford, Connecticut, to Bangor, Maine, were having to truck their seafood in from New Jersey and points south. He wondered how the strike was affecting his father and uncle.

  He jumped down from the trailer and called Dispatch on his walkie-talkie. “Dicky, this is Jacobs. Check with Administration. Have someone over there call a company called Interstate Transport,” he said, reading from the door of the cab, “and find out who is responsible for the fish in this trailer. Most of it’s still frozen, but it’s going to go fast. Find out if it’s our responsibility or the shipping company’s. What’s the estimated value of contents? Can the company send another refrigerated truck and offload the fish? Something has to be done immediately. Okay?”

  “Got it,” said the confident voice of Dicky Brock.

  The bell of one of the trolleys sounded as it passed. A motorcycle roared down the street in the distance. The drizzle continued.

  Jacobs noticed an old man beneath the stairway. He laughed privately to think that the only job the two cops had was to keep the curious away from the accident, and here was someone poking around. Jacobs walked over and interrupted him.

  Marty Rappaport’s aging face spun around, his dull-green eyes penetrating. “Hello there, son.”

  “Are you with the police?”

  “Me? Hell, no.”

  “Insurance?”

  Rappaport shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Just exactly who are you?”

  “Marty Rappaport. How ‘bout yourself?”

  “Toby Jacobs, Yankee Green Security. I’m afraid this is a closed area.”

  “Take a look at this.” Rappaport held a chunk of the broken concrete in his hand.

  “It’s a closed area, sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

  “I’m doing harm, I suppose? And here I am trying to help. Look here.” Rappaport pointed to the large chunk of cement that had broken away from the underside of the stairway in the collision. “That’s a hell of a lot of damage, even for a rig this size.”

  “That’s why it’s a closed area.”

  “You’re missing my point. A truck this size shouldn’t have caused this kind of damage. At least I don’t think it should have. I won’t be absolutely certain until I’ve pushed a few numbers around.”

  The man looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps one of the early morning walkers. Jacobs heard the banging. He turned around to see a blue-haired woman pounding on the safety glass of the doorway to Pavilion C. Rappaport obviously saw her too, because he was off toward her in a hurry, a dog with his tail between his legs. Jacobs smiled.

  “Excuse me?” said a high, smoky voice from behind.

  Slowly he turned his head around.

  18

  Susan Anne Lyme wore a peach windbreaker and peach sweatpants. The pale blue leotard stretched tightly around her torso was damp with a large orb of perspiration between her modest breasts, a telltale sign of the level of activity she had been engaged in for the past hour. Her hair was pulled back and held off her face by an Adidas sweatband. The exercise had pinked her cheeks and whitened her eyes, giving her a wholesome, vital look. Toby was a sucker for wholesome, vital women. She was remarkably put together, the exercise obviously paying off. Her face was lovely, but not classically beautiful. Pink lips, white teeth, and dimples.

  The raindrops drummed loudly as she managed to pop open an umbrella. She stepped boldly forward, reaching to hold the umbrella over the two of them. She was considerably shorter than he was.

  Well aware of the large overhang only a few yards away, he made no mention of it. Standing out here was more fun.

  “Toby Jacobs?” Her tiny hand released the hooked handle of the umbrella as she switched hands. They shook. “My name’s Susan Lyme. Pardon the appearance.” She glanced down at herself and seemed suddenly embarrassed. She fumbled with the zipper of her windbreaker, which was partially zipped up but now jammed as she yanked at it one-handed. Jacobs reached down, took the zipper in his fingers, and ran it up the length of her jacket. He stopped and looked into her eyes. Both stood silently beneath the umbrella. “Thanks,” she finally managed to say softly.

  “My pleasure.”

  “I was in class. Aerobics class. Someone said something about a bomb going off in your new wing.”

  “You’re a reporter.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Writer’s bump,” he said touching the middle finger of her left hand. “A southpaw reporter at that.”

  “And you must be Sherlock Holmes.” She hesitated and altered her tone of voice to imply he might already know the rest of this. “Free-lance, these days. Used to work for the Times.” Noting his inquisitive look she offered, “It’s a long story.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s a busy day, Miss Lyme. It is Miss, I hope?”

  She chewed on her tongue. He couldn’t tell if it was a nervous habit or an attempt to suppress a smile. She nodded. “The bombing?”

  “Too soon, Miss Lyme.”

  “It’s Susan, Mr. Jacobs.”

  “It’s Toby, Miss Lyme.”

  “It’s Susan, Toby.”

  “Too soon, Susan. ‘The dust has barely settled,’ I guess you reporters might say.”

  “Actually, we good reporters try to avoid clichés,” she said more distantly.

  Oh, no, Toby thought. She’s feminine and she’s tough. He felt a sudden urge to run, like a married man who can sense an affair long before it begins.

  She had the tiny nose of a mouse and the large gray eyes of a wildcat. He could see the strength of her personality in the hard line of her jaw, and the tender girl in the faint freckles that bunched on top of her high cheekbones.

  He said, “You’ll want our public information office.”

  She continued undaunted. “No, it’s you I want,” she said deadpan. “You’re head of security, aren’t you?”

  “Director of Security,” he corrected. “Our public information office is in Pavilion C, on the third floor.”

  “Can’t you tell me anything?”

  “I just did.”

  “No need to be a prick, Mr. Jacobs.” Rain continued to drum on the umbrella.

  After a long pause, he apologized. “No, I don’t suppose there is. I’ve been trained to distrust the press,” he said by way of explanation.

  “And I’ve been trained to distrust cops.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “I’m not the press. I’m free-lance, remember?”

  “The Times.”

  “I used to work for the Times.”

  “Right.” He smiled. “Got it.”

  “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well. Then it looks as though we have something to work on, doesn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. It really is a bad day.”

  She had long legs and a high waist.

  He added, “A detective by the name of Shleit is in charge of the investigation. You m
ight try him.”

  “Shleit?”

  He spelled it for her. “No one knows anything at the moment. Their lab people have been going over the room all day.”

  “A man was killed—”

  “Yes, a worker. An electrician.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. Detective Shleit may be able to tell you more. Otherwise, I’d try our public information office later in the day.” He had read once that people make final judgment of other people within the first five seconds of their initial meeting. He had never really believed this until now.

  “Please? Five minutes. I’ll even buy you a cup of coffee as a bribe.”

  “I can’t accept bribes.” He wanted to accept.

  “Please.” She grinned. “I won’t take much of your time. Promise.”

  “Maybe later.” He wanted her to take much of his time. Feminine but strong. Like a lioness.

  “Dinner? Good!” she said not waiting for his answer. “Dinner it is.”

  The penetrating look in his eyes caused her to take a step back, and in doing so, the runoff from the umbrella poured over his head and down his neck. He jumped back and took advantage of the sudden opportunity. “Nice meeting you.” He ran toward the door and hurried inside, glancing one last time over his shoulder. She looked somehow vulnerable, standing in the rain.

  He thought he saw her lips mouthing the words “Damn you.” Susan Lyme was clearly used to getting her way.

  19

  The house was perched high atop a hill, overlooking downtown Hillsdale. The lawn smelled of being recently mowed. The gardens surrounding the one-story sprawling home were perfectly manicured, though many of the flowers seemed to be struggling. Detective Doug Shleit announced himself at the gate to the estate and was immediately allowed inside.

  He drove the unremarkable sedan around the loop in the driveway and parked in the shade of a towering elm. At the front door, he was greeted by a uniformed maid and a moment later was ushered to the pool, where Robert Russo’s trim abdomen collected the sun’s rays. The cement was still drying from the showers that had passed over less than an hour before. The pool was large, its water still.