Spree (14 page)

“Stan,” Nolan said, “I appreciate you getting together with me. I missed last month’s Mall Merchant Association meeting.”

“I know,” Stan said, smiling, “and we met at
your
restaurant!” He was grinning, as if he’d pointed out the biggest irony of them all. This guy was harmless, Jon thought, but a jerk. If a jerk can ever be harmless.

Nolan said, “What I wanted to talk to you about was mall security.”

Jon squirmed in his seat.

Stan put on an exaggerated “oh no” look, shook his head. “Not that again. Are you singing the same old song, Nolan?”

“I think security here is lax, Stan.”

Stan’s expression turned somber. “Nolan, I appreciate your concern. And as a merchant yourself you have every right to voice your opinion. But I wish you wouldn’t denigrate our fine staff.”

“I’m not denigrating anybody. On the other hand, I didn’t want to embarrass anybody, either. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, one on one. Not at a meeting.”

Stan nodded, appreciating that.

“Virtually every store out here, including the bank, is tied into the same security system,” Nolan said.

“A-1 Security,” Stan said, smiling tightly, nodding some more.

“They’re a good outfit. But did you ever stop to think that all of our alarms are carried on one phone line? All it would take is for a thief to snip that one phone line and he could have carte blanche.”

Stan smiled wide now, shaking his head, waving a hand as if to quiet a child. “That’s not the way alarm systems work, Nolan—if the wires are cut, the alarms are activated—at both the A-1 office and the police department.”

“It’s possible to jump the alarm, Stan.”

“Jump the alarm? You mean, cross the wires to bypass the alarm?”

“Yes.”

“Wrong again, Nolan. This just isn’t your area.”

“How am I wrong?”

“Well, this is going to get a little technical. But bear with me.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“A-1 tells me that if their alarm is jumped, the ‘pulse rate’ of the current flowing through it will set off the alarm.”

The waitress put Nolan’s chicken fried steak platter down in front of him; it included a generous portion of mashed potatoes with brown gravy, and Jon, whose Coke she also delivered, thought it was no wonder Nolan was getting a belly on him.

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Nolan said, cutting a bite of meat. “But I’d like to put another alarm system in, at the restaurant—not just a silent one, connected to A-1, but something nice and loud.”

Stan lectured with a pointing finger, friendly but firm. “Check your lease. We don’t allow any audible alarm systems.”

Jon couldn’t stay out any longer. He said, “Why not?”

Smiling, Stan looked at Jon patronizingly. “It’s been our experience, in our other malls, that when such alarms go off during business hours, by accident, as they sometimes do, it can be very unnerving, alarming, if you will, to the shoppers.” He stopped to chuckle at “alarming.”

“With our location, on the edge of the city, with so little else around, who would hear such an alarm after hours, except the burglar himself, who would beat a hasty retreat? A silent alarm, on the other hand, which A-1 assures us that it can react on within minutes, will keep the burglar there and unaware.”

“What’s wrong,” Jon asked, “with scaring him away before he has time to take anything or do much damage?”

Stan shrugged matter-of-factly. “What’s wrong with capturing him? The five minutes it would take A-1 to dispatch a car, not to mention the police who may well be there just as soon, isn’t that big a deal.”

“Okay,” Nolan said, his chicken fried steak eaten, just starting his potatoes, “you’ve convinced me. But one thing you will never convince me on . . .”

Stan laughed softly, shaking his head in friendly frustration. “You still think we should have a security man on duty twenty-four hours a day.”

Nolan nodded, swallowed a bite, said, “I think you should hire four more men, and two should stay on night shift. Patrolling inside and out.”

“That’s simply not necessary. The corporation has malls all over the Midwest, and security measures in those malls are exactly like those here. When was the last time you heard of a robbery at a mall?”

“Hell,” Nolan said, grinning, which was something Jon had rarely seen, “maybe I’m just paranoid.”

“Well,” Stan said, finishing his coffee, “at least you didn’t suggest our security guard be armed, for pity’s sake, like you did at that one merchants’ meeting.”

“I just suggested that for after hours,” Nolan said. “And by the way, that kid you have on the job just doesn’t have the experience.”

“He was an M.P. in the service.”

“You should hire some retired ex-cop to work with him.”

“How is some paunchy old guy going to do going up against the young punks who cause problems in a modern mall?”

Nolan pushed his clean plate away from him. “If you had a young guy plus an old pro, you might come up with a winning combination.”

“It would never work,” Stan said. He glanced at his watch. “Got to run. Have a meeting with the marketing director at three.” He got up and out of the booth, shook Nolan’s hand, thanked him for his concern, shook Jon’s, smiled, said it was nice meeting him, left.

“Jesus,” Jon said.

“His father is vice-president in charge of personnel for the home office, by the way. Not that security would be any better around here if somebody competent were in his job.”

“No armed guard at night?” Jon said, dumbfounded.

“No guard at all, after ten P.M. One maintenance man, who’s a woman, who mops and does windows. Who could
Windex
a ‘burglar,’ if she ran into one, I guess.”

“What about that ‘pulse rate’ business?”

“He’s right, but it can be got around.”

“Are you saying this is going to be easy?”

“No. There are plenty of problems. But problems can be solved. That’s what our business is about.”

“Are we back in that business?”

“Yeah. Just in time for Christmas, too. Come on. Let’s walk.”

They walked the mall, tinsel and plastic greenery all around them. Hickory Farms. Record Bar. Ann Taylor.

“Comfort called this morning,” Nolan said.

“Yeah?”

“He told me some of the people he has lined up. I know two of them. Pete-man named Roger Winch, who usually works with a locksmith named Phil Dooley—Comfort didn’t mention Dooley’s name, though, and I didn’t ask if he was a player; and an electronics guy name of Dave Fisher. Good people. That may make the difference for us.”

“Well, good.”

“I told Comfort that getting Sherry back wasn’t enough. That I had to be in for a full share. And you, too.”

“Well . . . uh, why did you do that?”

“I want him to think I buy into the notion that all he wants out of this is my help on the heist.”

“And you don’t?”

“Of course not. I’m convinced Comfort intends to keep Sherry alive only till after the job goes down. You see, I told him I wouldn’t play unless I talked to Sherry on the phone right before the heist happens. That keeps her alive till Thursday, anyway.”

“Damn.”

“We’re going to try to find her, Jon.”

“I figured as much.”

“Because once we’ve helped Comfort, he’ll kill her. And me.”

“Don’t say it.”

“And you.”

“I asked you not to say it.” Muzak played “Jingle Bells.” Jingle all the way.

10

ANDY FIELDHAUS
, forty-five years old, five ten, balding, slightly overweight, wearing a leather bomber jacket under which was a pale pink shirt with a leather tie, co-owner and manager of the Haus of Leather at the Brady Eighty mall, was enjoying the happiest—and most frightening—days of an existence that (save for his glory years as a high school quarterback of some local renown) had largely been a disappointment.

What made his days happy was his girlfriend Heather.

What made them frightening was his wife Caroline.

Heather was twenty-two years old, and his assistant manager at the Haus of Leather. Heather had a lot of frosted brunette hair and large breasts and a small waist and nice hips and a good head on her shoulders, in every sense of the word: a good head containing an above-average brain; a good head on the front of which was a pretty face consisting of big green eyes and a small nose and a small mouth with small very white teeth that made for an enchanting, childlike smile; and, last but not least, a good head capable of giving good head. Very good head.

She had been a cheerleader in high school, and in junior college too, before she had dropped out to get married to a basketball hero. She had divorced her fading-jock husband, who had turned to drinking when he got laid off at John Deere, at which time he began beating her. They’d had one child, before she dumped him, a sweet little girl named Tara, who was now two.

Andy liked the little girl. It reminded him of when his two girls were small; he liked the energy of little kids, how unquestioningly loving they could be. Heather was young enough herself to take him back, to make him feel young again. He hated being forty-five years old, but if he had to be forty-five years old, let him be forty-five years old with a shapely, sexy young girlfriend.

Caroline, who had once been a shapely brunette with large breasts herself, was simply large now. Oh, Andy knew he wasn’t perfect himself—while he still possessed his square-jawed ail- American good looks, he also carried the usual middle-aged spare tire, and his hair was thinning. But ever since her first pregnancy, so many years ago, Caroline had really let herself go; eating was her only hobby—eating and soap operas. Her idea of a good time was an evening in front of the TV with a box of caramel corn in her lap. He no longer loved this woman. He didn’t hate her. He just didn’t feel anything much toward her at all, except repulsion during sex.

He would have left her five years ago if the inheritance from her grandfather hadn’t gone into the Haus of Leather. She was co-owner of the store, though she rarely set foot in the place, and a divorce settlement would be ungodly expensive. She might even end up with the store itself; or so had said the attorney friend he’d quizzed on the q.t.

Once a week, Saturday night usually, they would make love. Making love to this obese woman, who had once been so lovely (though the image of that version of her was fading in his mind), was a nauseating chore. But when she clung to him in the darkness, the voice was the voice that went with the not completely faded image of a lovely shapely twenty-year-old he’d married a lifetime ago, and he felt a pang of something—guilt, remorse, longing, something.

The joy he felt in Heather’s arms, however, overwhelmed such pangs. What they did not overwhelm was his fear—the fear that Caroline would find out that the long hours he put in with the store were frequently not at the store, but at Heather’s apartment, the other employees covering for him if she called; that he was invariably accompanied by his pulchritudinous assistant manager on his various buying trips and, of course, the annual leather convention in Fort Worth; that on those evenings when he was doing inventory and working on the books at the store itself, he spent most of his time in the office in the back room, with Heather, where they were frequently on his couch, which oddly enough was covered in vinyl.