Hidden Charges

by Ridley Pearson

  “If you can think of a way to approach those kinds of numbers, I’m with you. There is a lawyer I want you to check out. He busted into Haverill’s office yesterday and evidently made some strange remarks. His name—” Jacobs flipped through a pile of loose papers and came up with one—“is Roy Walker. He’s about twenty-eight or thirty. The local bar association might have something on him.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’ll look into downtown merchants.”

  “That’s a possibility?”

  “They’d have the most to gain from problems out here. And I’m going to try and follow up on past employees. Someone might be holding a grudge.”

  “This is a lot of work.”

  “Yes, it is. And to make matters worse, we need to figure this out by Saturday. Call it intuition, whatever. I have a feeling that bomb was somehow connected to the grand opening of Fun-World.”

  “Will you go ahead with the opening?”

  “It depends on the events of the next few days. The ultimate decision will be Haverill’s. He’s a reasonable man. By the same token, to call off the opening now would hurt us badly, as you and I just discussed. It would also cost us somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars to reschedule.”

  “Good God.”

  “And there are some intangibles. The governors of all three states—Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut—are planning to attend. To cancel now would hurt our public relations badly. Incidentally, none of what we’ve discussed is for print. Not yet. The last thing I need is for the papers to get hold of the fact that the governors are going to be here, so keep that in confidence, okay?”

  “Agreed.”

  “It’s bad enough that Knorpp has pushed publicity on this lottery drawing. I don’t know who came up with the idea of two hundred thousand dollars cash, but it isn’t making my job any easier. We have to coordinate security with an outside firm and the police. It’s a real headache.”

  “You know, when you walk around this mall, you don’t think of any of this. You don’t think about security, or garbage, or cleaning, or servicing. When you get right down to it, this place is a small city, all contained in six or seven gigantic buildings—”

  “Eight, including the stadium.”

  “One thing I should tell you,” she said cautiously. “I made a few calls this morning. After meeting you yesterday, it occurred to me that security at a mall might make interesting reading. I put out feelers at the Globe, the Times, and the Wall Street Journal. I think the Journal’s the best shot. They run these kinds of pieces from time to time. I’m going to follow up this afternoon. If I get a nibble, would you grant me an interview? Explain how security works here? I realize you probably don’t have the time—”

  “That’s my only consideration—”

  “But maybe we could get together some evening or something.”

  “I do rounds twice a day. Takes about ninety minutes. You could join me on one of my rounds and we could review any progress you’ve made on your research, and I could explain the security. It would be easier on rounds anyway, because you’d be able to see what I’m talking about.”

  “That sounds perfect. I should know by this afternoon if anyone’s interested in the story.”

  “I do rounds at eight in the morning and five in the afternoon. Either of those would work fine.”

  “Perfect,” she said.

  That was exactly what he was thinking.

  10

  He had been a frogman in the Navy until the accident. Being in Yankee Green’s utility tunnels reminded him of the claustrophobia he used to feel under the water in a wet suit. As a Navy SEAL he had become an explosives expert—a skill that now, finally, was paying off.

  He debated sending notes. He had it all planned out what to say. There was a quotation from the Bible that would work perfectly. The Battle of Jericho seemed perfectly symbolic with the walls crumbling down and the army invading and killing every last man, woman, and child. Thousands dead.

  Just like Yankee Green.

  He left the wires only inches apart, having run several coils to reach this location. Behind him, far away, the elevators that serviced the west side of Pavilion C continued like yo-yos, up and down, up and down. On Saturday he would have to make some final adjustments, but these would only require a few minutes. Then he would be ready.

  He was about to become a very rich man.

  He still got lost occasionally inside the utility tunnels and shafts. They all looked incredibly similar. When he became disoriented he used the small compass he carried in his pocket, though this was often thrown off by the abundance of steel in the shafts.

  It took him twenty minutes to reach the utility tunnel that ran behind the walls of Security’s Dispatch Room. Like the cassette machines he used to record conversations in the bugged administration offices, he had rigged a similar listening device here. When he reached the pile of electronic gear, he stopped to clean his glasses on his shirttail. His glasses fogged up when he overexerted himself.

  He had discovered the device in the NanoByte section of Byte magazine. The article referred to yet another article in a West German magazine that explained how, for eighteen dollars, a person could modify any television set to eavesdrop on any computer that used a cathode ray tube, a picture tube—which meant just about every computer made. The only ones that didn’t use CRTs were the lap portables, and the Chubb computer inside Security’s Dispatch Room was no lap portable.

  He had studied the Chubb and knew it well: knew its control codes, how it accessed its memory, how it wrote to disk, how its real-time controller worked. And now, thanks to the computer eavesdropping device he had discovered in Byte, he knew the Security director’s master password. Each night, while listening to the cassette tapes, he watched the videotapes that had recorded the day’s activities on the Chubb computer. Two weeks ago he had gleaned the master password. He now had total access to the brain of Yankee Green’s security system. As an added precaution, he continued to run his video machine, taping the activities on the Chubb in case the password was changed or something showed up that might require his attention. He didn’t sleep well anyway, and watching the videotapes had become an enjoyable ritual for him.

  The modified television set was such a simple device. Each computer emits its own radiation, a low-level radio wave that can be received by the modified television set just like a standard set receives a network signal. All you needed was the right tuner. The eighteen bucks went to purchasing some electronic diodes and transistors which, once installed, changed the frequencies the television’s tuner received.

  Getting the gear into the Green had required several trips, but one month ago he had finally tried it out inside this utility tunnel and it had worked like a charm. It was just as if he were reading the Chubb’s screen. His final stroke of genius was to connect a video cassette recorder to the television set so he didn’t have to baby-sit his gadget. He put a fresh videotape in the machine every day, went home, and watched the tape all night. He knew all the commands necessary to perform his job. Everything in order.

  He continued to run his eavesdropping equipment and VCR each day, gleaning sensitive security activity information. Two days ago he had gotten a juicy tidbit: maintenance had requested special security clearance to clean the utility hallways in the new pavilion after hours. Without that warning he might have been caught. As it was, he had changed his schedule.

  The man smiled in the darkness, his thick glasses glowing from the light of his headlamp. He switched tapes, pushed PLAY and RECORD simultaneously, and the video machine whirred into action.

  On the other side of the wall, Dicky Brock punched in a computer command code. The video machine recorded it all.

  11

  Tenth Street looked like the back lot of a Hollywood studio in default, blank gray facades of partially empty buildings rising from an oil-stained pockmarked road. Several parking meters had been stolen, leaving behind purposeless steel pi
pes rooted in cracked concrete.

  Marty Rappaport had completed his morning walk at the mall with Jessi and had dropped her back at home. Ever since her coronary he watched over her like a mother hen. Marty had trouble expressing his emotions. He had not vowed his love to his wife in years—not in a way that counted. And if the truth be known, he would be lost without her. She meant the world to him. Life would not be worth living if she passed on.

  Standing there on Tenth Street he daydreamed back to a time years before when they had first met. The passion, the romance, the fire flooded into him, and he wrestled with tears. Oh, God, it was hard to imagine what it would be like with her gone. And she had come so close to leaving just a short while ago. Despite his harsh attitude toward Yankee Green, deep down he was thankful there was a place for her to take her miles, for the doctor had made it quite clear that without exercise his Jessi would not last another year, and without the mall she would have been confined to a treadmill in the bedroom, a shut-in, kept from the outside world by the heat and humidity of the summer and the chill of winter.

  Seeing this street in disrepair, he realized that five years earlier it would have taken him ten minutes to find a parking space. An American flag snapped overhead in the light wind. The harsh summer weather gagged him. He spat onto the sidewalk.

  Wednesday morning and nothing doing downtown. He couldn’t believe it. Now he understood why the merchants were moaning about the Green. Many of the same people who now shopped the Green had once shopped the streets of this town. Many of the stores here now sat empty. The blank, pitiful street held nothing but heat waves and bits of trash. The clock over the bank read 9:20, which was wrong; it was 10:47 according to Marty’s digital watch. Why spend money fixing a clock when there’s no one to read it?

  He pushed open the large, heavy door to Wingate Engineering, announced himself, and took a seat in the tiny reception area where an air-conditioner’s clattering fan roared through what had to be its last days. The ashtray to his right was pitted with cigarette scars. He leafed through a Time magazine he had already read, studying photographs he had already seen.

  Ten minutes later a portly woman called his name out as if he were one of many waiting for service. He wrote her a check and received a signed sheet of paper, which he reviewed carefully.

  He had left the piece of cement off ten minutes before closing the day before. Now, reading the lab’s report, he sighed heavily and thanked the woman, whose glued-on fingernails clicked against the typewriter keys noisily.

  Across town, on Williamson, he waited again, this time in slightly better furnishings but under the ruckus of another noisy air conditioner.

  They kept him waiting a full thirty minutes. Finally he was admitted to the manager’s office, a tastelessly decorated fifteen-foot-square room cluttered with paper, its wall crowded with certificates.

  Larry Glascock’s triple chin reminded Rappaport of a cow’s swollen udder. The loose skin of his neck, raw from a battle with a dull razor, hung over his unbuttoned collar. His checked jacket hung in the corner. Big orbs of sweat stained his thin white shirt, despite the air conditioning. “What can I do you for?” He sounded like a candidate for an iron lung.

  Rappaport introduced himself. “Your company is listed down at the building inspector’s as being the one that did the testing on the concrete for the new wing of the mall.”

  “What’s it to ya?” wheezed Glascock.

  “It’s fraud, as far as I can tell.”

  Glascock’s eyes were red. “Come again?”

  “A truck smashed into a stairway out at the mall yesterday. Tore a good-sized chunk of concrete loose. I pushed some figures around on it, and they didn’t add up. The truck did too much damage. I took a sample of the busted concrete and ran it by a competing lab. Got the test results a few minutes ago. There’s no way that concrete should have been certified. I just came by to put you on notice.”

  “I see.” Glascock worked hard to inhale. A faint smile parted his lips. He had a bright pink tongue and gray teeth. “So what can I do you for, friend?”

  “The pour obviously never fully cured.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s my guess. I’d say the C-Three-A has been affected by salts, and the result is a weak compound. It’s a blatant light pour. A first-semester graduate student could have seen that. Someone in your lab falsified a report.”

  “I’d be careful about making accusations, Mr. Rappaport. I appreciate your concern, but this lab tests every sample we receive very carefully, as I’m sure you can well imagine. Remember, sir, that just because you have discovered an alleged problem spot, there are any number of possible explanations. We only test the cylinders we are supplied. Right? There’s certainly no reason to infer that the entire structure is at fault.

  “I read in this morning’s paper that the truck knocked out a supporting post, maybe damaged a second, and we both know those posts are critical to mass support and load—”

  “Still—” Rappaport interrupted.

  “Still, nothing. Those supports are critical. The load of that stairway could have stress-fractured the sample you had tested. It may not be as cut and dried as you think. My point is, Mr.… Rappaport”—he groped for the name—“that it was a big job out there—is a big job. We don’t want to jump to any conclusions before running additional core sample tests.”

  “Will you call for such tests?”

  “Now that you’ve alerted me to a problem, of course. I assure you I’ll contact the sub and we’ll get to it soon.”

  “Because I’d like to know. I’d like to have a look at those tests. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Glascock, some pretty conclusive tests need to be run here.” He looked at the fat man. “Doesn’t it bother you in the least that that building might be structurally unsafe?”

  “Now wait just one damn minute. Of course it bothers me that your test doesn’t jibe with ours. But let’s not jump to any conclusions. Why don’t you check back with me in a few days. I appreciate your concern. Not many private citizens would take the time to get involved, much less do something about it. I’ll have one of my men take a few samples.”

  Glascock’s breathing was loud and irregular. It sounded like a cat scratching glass.

  “My secretary will show you out.” Glascock pushed a button on his telephone console, and a moment later the door opened.

  Rappaport left the office in an angry mood. He didn’t like grotesquely fat people. He didn’t like hollow promises. And as he stepped into a tired old elevator that reeked of disinfectant, he decided he didn’t trust Mr. Glascock an inch.

  12

  Mary-Jo opened his office door without knocking. “Hello?”

  “What’s up?” asked Jacobs, looking up.

  “I wondered what to do about your request for public access to our emergency phones. What’s this all about?”

  “We haven’t lost even one child in the last five years. We both know that. Lately, however, we’ve had some frantic mothers making scenes when they lose their kids. That one the other day was screaming that her girl had been kidnapped—”

  “I remember.”

  “If there’s one thing that will kill the Green, it’s mothers thinking their children risk kidnapping here. And it just isn’t true. Our day-care people have a perfect record. And our security is good.”

  “So this is essentially a budget request? Should I route it to the comptroller?”

  “The problem is, when a mother and child get separated, all hell breaks out. Our people usually handle it okay. It’s the parents that fall apart. What kills us is that screaming mother running down a concourse half out of her mind—not that I blame her. Our response time is killing us. It takes us five to ten minutes to respond, and I think our average is something like thirty minutes between the time the child is declared missing and is reunited with the parent. That’s too long. Way too long.” He paused. “What I’d like you to do is type up a memo explaining that if we plac
ed signs above our security phones that read something like SECURITY PHONE—EMERGENCY USE ONLY, something like that, maybe the parent would get on the line, contact Dispatch, and we cut our response time down to about ten minutes total. That’ll draw much less attention. The cost is well worth it. Panic is what kills us here.”

  “Sounds good to me. What are the channels for that?”

  “The usual. If we get accounting to give us a guestimate, I’ll bring it up at our afternoon meeting.”

  Mary-Jo said, “It’s time for a new rotation.”

  “Oh, Christ. How long since the last?”

  “Over thirty days.”

  “Okay. Can you handle it, or should I?”

  “I will.”

  “God bless you, mouse face.”

  She blew him a kiss. “How are the feet today?”

  “I’m growing old. The feet hurt bad, I sleep about as well as an inmate on death row, one of my tropical fish is sick, and I burned a frozen dessert last night at one in the morning because I forgot to thaw it out. Other than that, things couldn’t be better.”

  “You need a foot rub, a back rub, and a microwave.”

  “Are you volunteering?”

  “If we’d met a year earlier I would be.”

  “You’re a tease.”

  “A married tease.”

  “Run the schedule by me before you copy it.”

  “Will do.” She gave him a patented Mary-Jo smile and returned to her desk.

  Most of his security force consisted of previously unemployed veterans plus retirees or dropouts from the police and private investigative agencies. Keeping good people was next to impossible. Much of the security work at the Green involved standing around. Standing around in jewelry stores, department stores, and parking lots. Standing around at entrances. Standing around. Only a few of the guards qualified to carry hand guns. These were the ones who oversaw cash transferrals or highly valuable retail shipments: furs, jewels, and artwork.

  It was a low-paying job with little or none of the supposed romance of police work. One of Jacobs’ main jobs was to keep his people from becoming so bored they missed the few crimes that took place. It involved rotating them often and constantly playing cheerleader. The former proved to be a scheduling nightmare, the latter a pain in the ass.