Hidden Charges

by Ridley Pearson

  “We go about it in a number of ways.

  “First, we maintain a fairly large uniformed staff, and we make our people as visible as possible. They walk the concourses of the various pavilions constantly. Hopefully if you, as a shopper, stand in any one spot in the Green for more than five minutes, a uniformed officer will pass. That makes shoplifters and others think twice.

  “Mind you, this is not the inner city. We don’t get the kind of violent crime you would in a city. For the most part we have juvenile crimes, disorderlies, a few drunks, a guy peeing in a fountain… nothing major. Shoplifting, paperhangers, and the like present our biggest threats—”

  “Paperhangers?” she asked, struggling again to keep up. “Too fast,” she reminded him. He slowed.

  “Counterfeiters, check forgers, credit card counterfeiting… that sort of thing.”

  “How many uniformed officers?”

  “I’d rather not give exact numbers, if you don’t mind. Specifics only work against us. We have plainclothes guards working as well, male and female. They provide us with our eyes.”

  “What about all this high-tech security equipment that has flooded the market?”

  “Sure. We have a very sophisticated computerized security system we have just recently installed. It’s housed in our Dispatch Room in Pavilion C. From Dispatch we can monitor any number of cameras located throughout the various pavilions. We can run videotape on any of these cameras; we can get an instant printout of a face off any screen for immediate circulation. All the latest stuff.”

  “Printout?”

  “A hard copy. We can videotape any camera. From that videotape we can freeze-frame any image of you and print it out. That gives us a hard copy.

  “Each day our people, both in Dispatch and on the concourses, keep their eyes open for specific faces. Again, our attitude is pro-active. If we suspect someone, we pass out hard copies to all our people, and if that suspect is seen again, he or she is followed carefully, all of it orchestrated by Dispatch.”

  “How’d you learn about all this stuff if you used to work repo?”

  “One of the jobs I had after my repo work was to inspect and test private security systems to make sure they did what they were supposed to. I did the work for an insurance underwriter. The Green needed a major overhaul. High Star had just bought it and they wanted improvements made immediately. It was fun for me because I got to shop around on someone else’s budget and develop the most effective system I could for the money they made available. Then I was able to oversee its installation. I’d never really done anything like that before.”

  “So you must know it inside and out.”

  “Sure. I’ll give you an example of the sophistication.”

  “I’d say tracking people with cameras is sophistication enough.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Naturally.”

  “When High Star bought Pavilion A, the entire complex still used keys. You can imagine how many different keys they needed: masters, sub-masters, individual. Every time a master or sub-master was lost, they were faced with the expense of replacing a few hundred locks.

  “Nowadays, we run on a magnetic identification tag system. Again, this stuffs been around for years, but it’s kind of exciting.”

  “I’m lost.”

  He sounded like a man accustomed to giving tours, which he was not. “We operate off a Chubb computer system. Instead of keys, we issue these.” He unclipped his ID card and handed it to her. The size of a credit card, it showed a picture of Jacobs and carried a magnetic strip on the back. “The nice thing about the card system is that we can program the computer to allow only certain people entrance at certain doors at certain hours. In other words, the ‘keys’ are very specific and the system is intelligent, so a card works only when and where we want it to.

  “We can use the same system to keep track of our patrols at night. Guards punch in at various checkpoints within certain time envelopes. If they fail to punch in, the Chubb alerts the staff in Dispatch that something’s wrong. That way, if a theft involves taking out a guard, we’re alerted to the fact that the guard is late to check in.

  “In other words, it lets us keep track of employees, shop owners, and security personnel. The computer has a record of when I arrived this morning and what, if any, security-restricted areas I’ve entered. If someone’s looking for me, that may help them find me.

  “Another advantage over conventional keys is that if a card is lost we simply issue a new card, and we tell the computer that the lost card is no longer valid. Now, if someone comes along and tries to use the old card to gain entrance, not only will the card not open the door, it will alert the Chubb to an unauthorized attempt. Dispatch can send a guard immediately and apprehend whoever tried to use the stolen or lost card.”

  “That exists right now?”

  “The technology has been around for years.”

  “So to lock up at night, you just push some button on your machine?”

  “That’s the idea, but not exactly. The Chubb locks up for us. Automatically. Each door at every exit has what’s called a mag lock. Many of our inside doors use mag locks as well. A mag lock is a magnetic locking device that works electrically and requires over six thousand pounds of force to be opened. All wires to mag locks are embedded in the cement so that there’s no way to cut them. The entire system is what we call closed. Its default command is to lock the doors. Once locked, even in a power failure our doors remain locked from the outside.”

  “But if you had a fire or something, couldn’t that trap people inside?”

  “Sharp thinking, lady, but the answer is no. Typically, each eight-door entrance has one door that we call an ALL-HOURS door, meaning its panic bar will allow it to be opened from the inside at all times, regardless of the condition the Chubb has set the doors to. If a fire alarm is tripped, or the power goes out, the default setting for the panic bars—that is, the inside default setting—is for the doors to become ALL-HOURS doors. In other words, when the power goes out or our computer crashes, the Green is locked from the outside, but any door can be used as an exit from the inside, thus ensuring safety exits in an emergency.”

  “I follow.”

  “Just to further confuse you, if we want we can override an ALL-HOURS door and prevent its panic bar from working. We use that function rarely: only when we want an exit totally closed.

  “This is the boring technical stuff, I’m afraid. What it boils down to is that in a mall this size security is critical. The better your gear, the tighter your security. Again, we’d rather prevent crime than react to it.”

  “And how much crime is there?”

  “Figures on the national average are available. All I’ll tell you is, we’re well below the national average. We haven’t had a child abducted, never had a rape or a mugging. That puts us in our own league. Not many shopping centers can make that claim. The largest proportion of nonviolent crimes in the Green are committed by employees of the retailers. There’s not a hell of a lot we can do about that. We also have trouble with juveniles, though I’ve been trying to bridge the gap there by befriending some of our repeat offenders.”

  He paused to pull on an entrance to a fire stairs. She handed him back his card, which he clipped to his pocket. Finding the door secure, they continued on.

  “It’s like a combination of Big Brother and Fort Knox,” she said.

  “Between the six pavilions it’s nearly three-point-five million square feet of shopping center. It requires a sophisticated system to keep it all under control.”

  “I can see how it would. It’s either that or a huge security force.”

  “Exactly. In the long run, the technology proves much more economical.” Out of the blue he asked, “Do you think you can get an interview with Russo?”

  She must have expected the question. “I already have. Tentative. Tomorrow afternoon if all goes well.”

  “You work fast.”

  “You told
me we only had until Saturday.”

  “I’m nervous about the opening, is all. We have an awful lot to juggle. The opening would make a hell of a target.”

  “Because of the media?”

  “A number of reasons. An event like this is prime turf for soapboxers like Civichek, that sort of thing. His timing here is anything but coincidental. The Green will receive a lot of press in the next few days. Guys like Civichek are well aware of that and plan around it. The downtown merchants don’t want us opening FunWorld. For all we know they could have some dirty tricks planned to upset the opening.”

  “I hardly think they’d do something like that.”

  “In my line of work you consider all the angles, no matter how unlikely. Again, pro-active. Anticipation. When you don’t, something ends up happening that you quickly regret overlooking. Off the record, one of the biggest concerns of shopping center security forces is terrorists. There’s simply no way to make a mall antiterrorist. And we’re an attractive target.”

  “That’s why all the concern over the bombing?”

  “One of the reasons, sure. No one claimed responsibility. That’s the best news. It makes it seem more like an isolated incident. That’s what you and I are trying to find out.”

  “Back to something you said about Civichek,” she said as they rode an escalator in Pavilion C up toward Administration. “Why can’t he soapbox here if he wants? Isn’t this place considered public?”

  “There’s no Massachusetts law yet governing the way the inside of the Green is seen by government and law enforcement. About half the states have such laws. The rest don’t. In California it’s legal to distribute political leaflets and circulate petitions at shopping centers.

  “In New York, the state Court of Appeals held that shopping centers are not public places. There, you need written consent from the shopping center’s owners to distribute leaflets. A 1980 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which had previously ruled that the Constitution did not protect free expression on private property, leaves it up to the states to decide for themselves. Connecticut, North Carolina, and Michigan have followed New York’s lead. Civil libertarians are throwing a fit. Massachusetts hasn’t made up its mind. A couple of bills are pending right now. So we’re kind of treading water here.”

  “Which way would you like it to go?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Sure.”

  “Private. If we go public we’re going to have one hell of a time enforcing any kind of order. You’ll see what I mean this Saturday. The cops and an outside security company are handling security for the cash lottery prize. We handle security for the pavilion. If you want to see a real zoo, be here Saturday. All chiefs and no Indians.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said, stopping at the top of the escalators and checking her watch. “Speaking of chiefs, I have a meeting with one of Russo’s former accountants up in Braintree in an hour. Thanks for the tour. Got to go.”

  “Be careful,” he yelled, suddenly worried for her.

  She waved from the escalator and then, changing her mind, playfully blew him a kiss.

  As she turned around, riding the escalator down, he followed her with his eyes until he lost her in a swarming crowd. He felt tempted to run and catch up to her.

  15

  The man inhaled off the cigarette, fiddled with his thick glasses, and went back to work with the scissors. In front of him on the small table lay a stack of newspapers and magazines. He wore disposable plastic surgical gloves.

  His apartment was dingy. The oddly shaped carpet remnant in the center of the small room was soiled by spilled soda and fast food, evidence of which was spread around the room in discarded Styrofoam trash. Newspaper clippings mentioning the mall hung thumbtacked on the wall.

  He snipped out the last letter he needed and pasted it onto the sheet of paper. He’d been working on the message for an hour. At first he had thought that sending a note might spoil things. He had listened to the tapes and was well aware of the efforts under way to find him. He had all the pieces nearly in place. He saw no way they could stop him. Now it was a matter of adding the element of threat to the game. It was time to start them guessing. There was no contest if both sides didn’t have a chance. Each letter he clipped came from a different paper or magazine, each of which had been bought on local newsstands in the last six months.

  The note read:

  He took a swig of soda and studied the page again. It would be enough to confuse them. Just enough to tease. He lit up another cigarette, one still burning in the clamshell ashtray, a long gray ash creeping toward the filter like a dormant snake. On the wall he had pinned several maps of the Green, one of which had been drawn commercially for tourists, as well as several sets of blueprints. He had marked eight red Xs, each representing a strategic stress point in the eight supporting columns of the new wing.

  He studied the floor plans carefully, though he had committed them, and everything on them, to memory long ago. He cross-checked his list of things yet to be done.

  He couldn’t afford any errors this late in his plans. He unpinned the documents, as he had grown accustomed to doing every night at this hour, and placed them in the back of the open frame lying at the far end of the makeshift desk—an old door propped up on milk crates. He sandwiched the plans between the back of the painting and a stout piece of cardboard, twisting the catches in place to hold all the layers firmly together. Then he returned the framed copy of artwork to the wall.

  Still wearing his plastic gloves, hands sweating, he folded his letter carefully and slipped it inside a postage-guaranteed return envelope from the Green’s promotion department. He crossed out the printed department number and used his left hand to write the appropriate number for Security and Safety. He wanted this delivered to Jacobs. He licked the envelope.

  He swept the clutter of magazines and newspapers off the desk into a cardboard box and added scissors and paste. He then tucked the box into his closet.

  He sat down on the saggy bed and sighed, polishing his thick glasses carefully with a clean, soft cloth sold specifically for this purpose. With his glasses off he squinted into the dimly lit room. A few more days.

  He flicked off the light, set his glasses on a chair by the bed, and lay back, head on a lumpy pillow, staring blindly toward the ceiling.

  A few more days and the job would be over; he would be rich beyond his wildest dreams.

  Thursday

  August 20

  1

  Toby dragged himself to a sitting position on the edge of his bed and rubbed his eyes. He looked down at himself, annoyed by the small roll at his waist which seemed impossible to shed.

  The apartment—a large rectangular loft with hardwood floors, an east wall of windows, gray-painted funnel lights suspended from the ceiling—had once been a sweatshop.

  He spooned four heaping tablespoons of coffee grounds in a saucepan, covered them with a mugful of water, and turned the heat on high.

  He ambled over to the gurgling aquarium and fed his fish. “Morning,” he croaked in a groggy voice, brushing his dark hair out of his eyes.

  Why would anyone want to kill fish? How could his father spend his life dragging nets in the ocean and killing fish?

  He turned the aquarium’s light on and checked the thermometer. A salt-water aquarium, he maintained it at 65 to 70 degrees. His Four-eyed Butterfly passed him with the flick of her tail. She had been sick for the last few days but looked better this morning, which meant the sodium carbonate was finally doing the trick.

  On his way to the shower he turned the heat on the coffee to low and added half a mug of water.

  Morning had its own ritual. Once in the shower, his thoughts strayed to Susan Lyme. He’d been trying not to think about her, which only meant he thought about her all the more. Same as anything else.

  He toweled dry and combed his hair over the thin spot. He strained the coffee into the mug and sipped on it as he waited for a pie
ce of pink Portuguese bread to toast. The bread was a holdover from childhood; its sweet flavor and light texture made it the perfect breakfast snack when toasted and buttered. He scribbled reminders while he ate the toast and coffee.

  On his way out the door, he stopped to have a look at the Angel. He glanced back and forth between the partially completed ship-in-a-bottle and his fish in the aquarium, thinking, You can take the boy out of the sea, but not the sea out of the boy.

  Rather than leave, he took the tweezers in hand, strung a piece of black thread through the hole in the balsa-wood spar, ran it through a hole in the mast, and then tied it off.

  A step he had attempted many times, unsuccessfully; it had seemed so easy just now. He placed the tweezers down amid the clutter and stared at the Angel, wondering why some things seemed so difficult at one time, so easy the next.

  He grabbed his hat and headed for the door.

  He filled the twenty-minute drive to the mall with local radio news: the dollar was falling in overseas markets; the Red Sox were two games out; soap opera stars and the governors of three states would be at the opening of the new wing at Yankee Green on Saturday…!

  He yanked the car to the curb and left it running while he ran into Bowman’s Pharmacy for a copy of the Hillsdale Herald. The article about the mall was page one. The byline read, SPECIAL TO THE HERALD. A free-lancer. Susan! He tugged his tie loose and shoved his hat back on his head. When he pulled out into traffic, he slammed the pedal to the floor.

  As he approached the entrance to the underground parking for Pavilion C, Susan appeared out of nowhere. She was the last person he wanted to see. She had promised to keep the news of the governors’ participation in the opening ceremony out of the papers. He felt betrayed. It would make his job on Saturday next to impossible. It was impossible enough without this—he had $200,000 in cash to worry about, a possible record attendance, and a dozen major celebrities to protect from adoring crowds. If some crackpot came after a governor—