All Sales Fatal

by Laura Disilverio

  I stopped short of rolling my eyes, but I thought he was laying it on a bit thick. The receptionist apparently didn’t agree, because she giggled, smiled, and said, “Dorothy.”

  “A lovely, traditional name,” Grandpa said. “If you would be so kind as to tell Mr. Silver I’m here?”

  “Certainly, Colonel Dickinson,” she said. She rose and glanced at me. “And you are?”

  “My driver.” Grandpa waved away the question as if I were of no importance. “Alas, in my declining years, my gout has slowed me down somewhat.” He pointed his cane at his slippered and bandaged foot.

  “I’ll bet you were a wild one when you were younger,” Dorothy said flirtatiously.

  I bit back the “You have no idea” that sprang to my tongue and instead simply smiled as Dorothy ducked through a door to the right of the reception area. She returned a moment later and motioned us to the same door. I offered “Colonel Dickinson” my arm to escort him into what I assumed was William Silver’s office. Grandpa thrust his hat at me and I took it.

  A tall, ruddy-haired man with a snub nose rose to greet Grandpa, holding out his hand and pumping Grandpa’s. He was as tall as Grandpa Atherton, but broader, with a small potbelly and a roll of flesh above his shirt collar. “Colonel Dickinson. A pleasure to meet you. William Silver.”

  Dorothy positioned a blue leather club chair for Grandpa and exited. I helped him sit, then retired to a ladder-backed chair along the wall.

  “So,” Silver said, “I understand you’re looking for a company to destroy some guns for you. You’re with the Columbia Police Department?” He returned to his chair, which squished down with a puff of air when he sat. His smile never slipped, but his gray eyes were shrewd and watchful.

  “I’m the founder of the Friends of the Columbia Police,” Grandpa corrected, “a nonprofit set up to fund those items that might help our men and women in blue do their jobs better and safer, but that the taxpayers might not be able to finance.” He winked. “For instance, last year we bought the latest in bulletproof vests—full Kevlar, NIJ level IIIa protection, capable of stopping a .44-Mag—for every sworn member of the force.”

  “Impressive,” Silver said, steepling his fingers.

  “We’re Chief Washington’s ‘special fund,’ you might say.”

  “You don’t mind if I check your bona fides with Chief Washington, do you?” Silver asked, reaching for the phone.

  “Dial away, son, dial away,” Grandpa said, relaxing back into his chair. “Tell Fred I’ll get my revenge on the golf course as soon as this damned gout subsides.” He pasted an indulgent expression on his face as Silver dealt with a secretary or aide before, apparently, getting Chief Washington on the line.

  My muscles tensed, but I concentrated on looking bored as Silver had a brief conversation that ended with, “We’ll certainly do what we can to help, Chief.” He hung up and gave Grandpa a more relaxed smile. “It seems that the chief is grateful for the help your organization has given his force with acquiring protective gear and new technologies for his SWAT team. And your project now is—”

  “Getting weapons off the street. We want to institute a gun amnesty program to encourage the good citizens, and the not so good ones, if you get my drift, to turn in their weapons. We’re going to offer fifty dollars for every gun relinquished, regardless of type or if it’s even in working condition. Every gun off the street makes our men and women in blue that much safer. But, then, of course, we need to dispose of them permanently, and that’s where you come in.” He smoothed his fake mustache with his left hand, one side at a time, and I wondered if he was making sure it was still glued in place.

  William Silver launched into a polished sales pitch, talking fluently about how his company disabled guns, destroyed them, and recycled the metals, yada-yada. I tuned out until I heard Grandpa ask, a sharper edge in his voice, “Forgive me for asking, sir, but what guarantee do we get that the guns are actually reduced to scrap metal? I believe I’ve read about cases where guns turned in to amnesty programs end up back on the streets. That would be unacceptable to the fine folk of Columbia. Just recently, I heard about the Mantua Police Department, right across the river here, having a problem…”

  Silver gave Grandpa a long look. “I’d be interested to know where you heard about that. It hasn’t received much publicity.”

  “I do my research,” Grandpa said, not flinching.

  Neither man spoke for a moment, the negotiator’s version of “chicken,” I supposed.

  Silver broke first, explaining his company’s precautions. “I’m sure that if you investigate some of these atypical cases where amnestied guns are used in new crimes, you’ll find that the problem lies with the receiving police department, not the company contracted for destruction.”

  Wham. Nothing like putting all the blame on the other guy.

  “I’m sure you’d be okay with it if we had an observer present for destruction, wouldn’t you?” Grandpa asked. “Someone from our organization who keeps tabs on the guns from the moment they’re turned in until they’re certified destroyed?”

  “Of course. We’d welcome that,” Silver said after only the briefest hesitation. He bared his teeth in a smile. “So, we’ve got a deal?”

  Grandpa beckoned to me, and I hurried forward to help him rise. “In due course, Mr. Silver, when I’ve finished my inquiries.”

  Silver took it with reasonably good grace, extending his hand for Grandpa to shake. “Of course. It was a pleasure meeting you. Let me know when you’ll be up here next, Colonel, and we can spend an afternoon at the ballpark, watching the Phillies. But you said you golf… I can put together a foursome at Northampton Valley.”

  He escorted us to the door where Grandpa said a fulsome farewell to a blushing Dorothy, and then we were in the parking lot, a fresh breeze tossing my hair. I helped Grandpa into the car with great solicitude and backed out carefully, waiting until we were halfway down the block before asking, “So, what did you think?”

  Grandpa peeled off his mustache. “That thing itches,” he said, tossing it in the backseat.

  “How did you get Chief Washington to vouch for you?” I asked, scanning overhead signs for the interstate on-ramp. “I presume that was Chief Washington Silver talked to?”

  “Of course.” Grandpa grinned. “Fred was a marine before becoming a peace officer in his home town. We were in Beirut at the same time. You might even say he thinks he owes his continued existence on this planet to me.”

  “Ah.”

  “Our friend Mr. Silver seemed awfully eager to point a finger at the Mantua Police Department,” Grandpa observed.

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Which doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

  I tapped my brakes to avoid rear-ending a Toyota going forty-five miles an hour on the highway. “I just wish I could find a connection between either Allied Forge Metals or the Mantua PD and Woskowicz or the Niños Malos. Without that, we’ve got no way to explain how the gun that killed Celio Arriaga ended up in a file drawer in what is now my office.”

  We cobbled together a few theories, none of which had any more believability than one of Ethan’s action-adventure movies, then tacitly agreed to abandon the topic for the rest of our journey. We stopped for lunch at a seafood place outside Baltimore, including the ice cream Grandpa had promised me, and I dropped Grandpa off a bit before three. “I’ll see if I can’t come up with a way to approach the Mantua Police Department,” Grandpa said as he got out of the car.

  I looked at him in alarm. “Don’t even think about it. I don’t want you going anywhere near an actual law-enforcement agency that could get through your cover with a single phone call.”

  “I once passed myself off as an officer of Romania’s Securitate for the better part of a month. They never suspected—”

  “You had the CIA behind you back then,” I said. “And technology wasn’t—”

  “Pooh,” he said, closing the door. He went whistling up the sidewa
lk to his door, kicking the slipper off his “gouty” foot and catching it in midair.

  I grinned reluctantly, tooted the horn, and drove away.

  Twenty-three

  Mike Wachtel surprised me the next morning by walking into my office—I’d already started thinking of it as “mine,” I realized—shortly before the mall’s ten o’clock opening. I looked up from compiling some stats about my time here I could use at my interview this afternoon to see him standing in the doorway, holding the jamb to balance against the weight of the cast. His face was a lurid blend of blues, purples, and greens, a three-year-old’s watercolor effort doused with enough water to make the colors run.

  I stood and started toward him. “Mike! Should you be here?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve got a store to run.”

  I couldn’t imagine that his stitched face and bruises were likely to sell a lot of stuffed animals, but I kept my mouth shut, merely pulling a chair forward for him to sit. He did so awkwardly, using both hands to lift the casted leg and edge it into a more comfortable position.

  He adjusted his new glasses, a slightly more rectangular pair than the broken ones, and gave me a level look. “I came to say thank you. Glenda told me you’re the one who found me and called the ambulance.”

  “Thank Glenda,” I replied. “She’s the one who sent me to search for you.”

  “I did. She left me,” he blurted. His voice was raw with emotion, and I could tell he was biting the inside of his cheek to hold back tears. “Everything I did was for her and the kids!”

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t too surprised, not after the way she’d been on the drive to the hospital and the confrontation I’d seen. “She got tired of the gambling?” I asked. I’d put the pieces together: Mike’s talk about sports, the phone conversation I’d overheard—he’d said it was his brother-in-law, but I bet he was placing bets with his bookie—the broken leg, the gun he carried, the enforcers in the garage.

  “How did you know?” He went perfectly still except for his eyes; they darted this way and that, like those of a rat seeking a way out of a cage. Understanding came over him. “Glenda told you.”

  “No, I guessed.”

  His mouth tightened. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Normally, I’d agree. But it becomes my business when your… extracurricular activities threaten the safety of shoppers and merchants at my—Fernglen.” It was hard not to call it “my mall.”

  “Bullshit!” Mike surged to his feet but wobbled and had to grab the back of the chair. “Those guys last night were only after me. Boris sent them to—they weren’t a threat to anyone else.”

  “What if they’d used guns instead of baseball bats, or whatever they beat you with? What if you’d gotten off a shot at them? Bullets aren’t very discriminating.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this. I came to say thanks and you give me grief. Just like Glenda! You women are all alike.” He made a disgusted face and turned toward the door. “I’m only trying to get a bit more for our kids, so they can go to a decent college and do something with their lives besides pump fluff into stuffed animals for a bunch of demonic brats.”

  “You own a store; you’re your own boss,” I pointed out. “That’s the American dream for a lot of people.”

  He turned toward me with an abrupt movement that sent him staggering. “I cater to a bunch of spoiled kids and their spoiled parents all day long. I accept returns from people who say the stuffed animal was defective when it’s perfectly clear they’ve let the pedigreed Goldendoodle chew on it or they’ve run over it with the Lexus. I smile and nod and try to figure out how I’m going to pay my suppliers next week, not to mention the outrageous rent this mall demands. I’ve had to let employees go, so I’m on my own weekday afternoons and evenings. Do you have any idea how stressful it is to own a small business in this economy?”

  An old joke flitted through my mind: What’s an addict’s favorite river? Da Nile. Denial. Mike had a good line in rationalization and denial, and I figured he’d practiced it on Glenda more than once. I knew whatever I said would only anger him further, so I kept my mouth shut. Mike was practically shimmering with anger, and I was wondering how to get him out of my office when Joel appeared in the doorway.

  “Everything all right, EJ?” he asked. His usually soft brown gaze landed on Mike and he looked surprisingly stern.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said with a pointed look at Mike.

  “Ducky,” he spat, shoving past Joel to get out of the office. He step-clomped down the hall, and I winced for him, knowing his leg must hurt terribly. I’d spent more than my share of time in leg casts.

  Joel looked questioningly at me, but I shook my head. I didn’t know how—or even if—I could handle this, but gossiping about Mike’s gambling problem was not on the agenda. I wondered if Woskowicz had known and, if so, whether it worried him that some bookie’s enforcers, as Edgar called them, out to encourage Mike to pay up or teach him a lesson—whatever a bookie’s enforcers did—might harm an innocent mall customer.

  “He seemed pissed off,” Joel observed, trying to get me to comment on what had just happened.

  “He stopped by to thank me for finding him and calling the ambulance,” I said calmly.

  Joel gave me a skeptical look. “If that’s his version of ‘thanks,’ I don’t want to be around when he gets annoyed.”

  “My interview is today,” I said to distract him.

  His eyes lit up. “Knock ’em dead.”

  “That might be counterproductive.”

  He laughed.

  “Hey, isn’t tonight your date with Sunny?”

  Joel nodded, anticipation lighting his face. “Yeah. I can’t swim today ’cause I’m going home right after work to get ready.”

  I couldn’t imagine why a man would need more than half an hour—shower, shave, and dress—to get ready for a date, but only said, “That’s fine. I don’t know if I’ll make it to the Y either; it depends on how long the interview goes.”

  “Should I take flowers?” Joel asked, scrunching his face anxiously. “Roses?”

  “Not on a first date. You’ll look like you’re trying too hard. Just be on time, don’t talk about ex-girlfriends—”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “—and let her choose the movie. Believe me, that’ll be more than enough.” If I’d had a kid brother, instead of a condescending, teasing, sometimes aloof older brother who’d had girls calling the house at all hours from before he was thirteen, that’s the dating advice I’d have given him. “And don’t spend the whole night worrying about whether or not to kiss her when you drop her off.”

  “EJ!” Joel flushed red and I laughed.

  The phone rang in the front office, and Joel dashed to get it. I followed more slowly, planning to patrol for a while and touch base with shop owners and managers as they opened their stores, before they got too busy. I stopped when Joel flagged me down, waving his free hand wildly.

  “We’ll have someone there in just a moment, ma’am,” he said into the phone. Covering the receiver, he said to me, “This is the clerk at Starla’s Styles. She says there’s a catfight going on and wants a security guard to come break it up.”

  “Oh, please.” I hurried to the Segway.

  “I’ve never seen a catfight,” Joel called after me. “Can I come?”

  I could hear the yelling as soon as I rounded the corner into the Pete’s Sporting Goods wing. It was muffled, but the anger underlying the incomprehensible words was palpable. Parking the Segway outside, I walked into the store. Mayhem reigned. Starla was running clockwise around a rotating clothes rack spinning so fast that blouses, tank tops, and camis billowed out. Aggie Woskowicz chased her, a look on her face that made me glad she didn’t have a weapon, while a salesclerk cowered behind the counter, trying to summon help via the phone. Clothes dotted the floor or draped haphazardly over racks, the settee, and an expressionless mannequin. Starla’s hair winged out
to one side, as if someone had grabbed it, and Aggie was missing a shoe; I saw the loafer kicked half under another rack of clothes.

  “You sicced the police on me,” Aggie yelled at Starla, doing a quick one-eighty so Starla almost ran into her before spinning and running counterclockwise around the rack. “I know it was you. You told them I killed Wosko, that I was pissed off because he preferred you to me.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Starla said, blowing a straggling lock of hair off her forehead with an upward puff of air.

  Aggie growled low in her throat and spun the rack so hard one diaphanous blouse went sailing. “Home wrecker!”

  “Like Dennis wasn’t married when you took up with him.”

  Aggie flung the b-word and the s-word and even the c-word at Starla as I stepped forward, pitching my voice at a soothing level.

  “Ladies, let’s calm—”

  Starla turned her head toward me, and Aggie took advantage of her distraction, diving under the clothes carousel to grab at her ankles. Starla staggered backwards and, as Aggie popped up, thrust a palm-heel strike at the younger woman’s face. I had the dubious satisfaction of realizing I must be a pretty good teacher; the heel of Starla’s palm connected squarely with Aggie’s nose, and she clapped a hand to her face as blood spurted.

  “It worked!” Starla turned to me for applause, which gave Aggie the opportunity to tackle her. Woskowicz’s stocky ex-wife ploughed into Starla, wrapping both her arms around the woman’s plump waist and dragging her down.

  “You boke by doze,” Aggie growled as the two women fell to the floor. Luckily, they landed on a pile of clothes, so no bones were broken.

  “You’re bleeding on my stock!” Starla cried, trying to wiggle out from under Aggie, who was, indeed, dripping blood from her nose onto a silk blouse and a chiffon dress. “That dress just came in yesterday!”

  Leaning forward, I grasped Aggie under the arms and hauled her up. As Starla wiggled free, she kicked at Aggie, her foot getting tangled in the folds of a velour skirt.