Fields where they lay, p.6
Fields Where They Lay, page 6
So I granted Vlad his life, for the time being anyway, and the fist that was squeezing my heart eased off a bit.
All he wanted me to do was find out what was going on—why the amount of theft had tripled and who was behind it. My emotions aside, I figured I’d handled situations that were more complicated.
What Vlad would do to that responsible person, while undoubtedly operatic in scale, wasn’t really on my side of the net.
So I got up from my porcelain seat and noted the lack of toilet paper. The bare cardboard tube seemed so totally symbolic of Edgerton Mall that it probably should have been on the logo.
It wasn’t quite eight yet, so my little nervous breakdown had taken less time than I’d thought. I rode down to the second floor and took a hallway marked no public access to a big room behind the food court that had been set up to give employees a place where they could eat and say all the things they hadn’t said to the customers. The doors to the right of the room, each labeled, led into the kitchen areas with the name of one of the food concessions. I went to the door marked tito’s, opened it, and inhaled the fragrance of Tito’s Tortilla Heaven, the best-smelling place at the mall. Getting an inquiring look from the woman whom I’d seen behind the counter, I said, “Whatever you’ve got with pork.”
She smiled. “How many?”
“Two. And a Diet Coke.”
“Have only Diet Pepsi.”
“In that case,” I said, “a glass of asphalt.”
Her brow knitted and she said, “¿Qué quieres?”
“Just water, okay?”
“Two anything with pork y agua,” she said with a smile broader than that menu warranted, and I gave her a thumbs- up and closed the door.
The big room was mostly empty. There was a trio of frazzled-looking saleswomen from Doris’s Duds, one of the mall’s bigger stores, down on the ground level. One of them was conspicuously pregnant and had told me that her first child would have a birthmark reading “Winter Wonderland” if she heard the song one more time. I nodded at her, got a wan, who-is-that-man smile, and headed for a table in the back, waving at Bonnie, who had her nose buried in a much-creased paperback edition of The Pickwick Papers and had no idea I was in her century, much less the room. Just beyond the station where we were supposed to get our utensils and napkins and minuscule packets of seasoning, I caught a glimpse of red, something that looked like a collapsed crimson blimp edged with white fur. I gave him a squint and saw that it was Shlomo Stempel.
He looked like he’d spent his day as a crash test dummy. His head was hanging down, his shoulders were slumped, and he was rubbing his face with both hands. I went over and said, “Mind if I sit down?”
“Long as it’s not on my lap,” he said. He looked up at me, clearly refocusing. Something had been on his mind that required most of his attention. “And you are?”
“Junior Bender,” I said, pulling out a chair.
“Ouch,” he said, raising a hand to wave the name away. “Terrible name, terrible.”
“And hello to you, too.” I sat. Up close, he was in his late sixties and feeling it. His skin was sallow, he had deep circles beneath his eyes, and his Adam’s apple protruded from his narrow neck so sharply it looked like it was trying to signal for help. He could have blown me backward by wiggling his ears.
He nodded. “Yeah, well, names. I’m Shlomo Stempel, and when you’re a kid with a name like Shlomo and there’s not enough Jews in your school to make up a minyan, you get a little sensitive to names. You know that ‘bender’ is British slang for gay?”
“It’s been brought to my attention.”
“I bet,” he said. “What’s ‘Junior’ disguising?”
“Nothing. It’s my name. As long as we’re clearing things up, what’s a minyan?”
“Ten people,” he said. “The quorum—the number necessary for group worship. All ten have to be Jews, all over thirteen years old. The word minyan actually means ‘number.’” He had a steaming cup of coffee with a little dusting of powdered creamer floating on it and a bowl of some kind of soup in front of him, chicken noodle, maybe. He’d picked up a spoon and was stirring the soup slowly without looking down at it. “So who are you, aside from being Junior Bender?”
“I’m a freelance consultant,” I said. “I got hired here to evaluate things like shoplifting and make recommendations about it.”
At the word shoplifting he dipped the spoon into the soup and brought it up full but rested it on the rim of the cup instead of raising it to his mouth, and it seemed to me he was searching for something to say. What he came up with was, “Kind of background does that take?”
I shrugged. “To catch a thief . . .”
He trained the tired-looking eyes on me. They contained a surprising amount of energy. “Well,” he said, “that’s candid.”
“I watched you with the kids,” I said. “They trusted you.”
He nodded. “They pay me that honor, yes.” He pushed his chair back an inch or two, hesitated, and said, “So tell me, you steal from the rich and give to the poor?”
“Once in a while. But mostly I steal from the rich and sell to my fence.”
“But you don’t steal from the poor.”
“What have they got?” I said.
He grinned, baring teeth that looked like they’d been marinated in coffee. “Tough guy,” he said. “You fancy yourself sort of like the good thief?”
“The good thief?”
“In your part of the Bible,” he said. “You know whatever you believe about the Bible, it’s an interesting book to have been written by a bunch of semiliterate late Iron Age tribesmen who hardly ever left an area about the size of New Jersey.” He tasted the soup and cocked his head sideways, making up his mind, then dipped back in. “Your part was written later, of course.”
“But who was the good thief?”
“Crucified with Jesus, right next to him. Thieves on either hand, the final irony of his life.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember. One of them gave him a hard time and the other one said essentially, hang on, Jack, we’re nailed up here because we stole stuff but this guy didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Good,” Shlomo said. “And then he asked Jesus to put in a favorable word with his father when Jesus got, you know, up there.” He dipped the spoon again. “And the thief hadn’t been baptized.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but Jesus had clout.”
“I don’t think that’s the meaning you’re supposed to take away from it.”
“What it means to me is that thieves can get a pass if they’ve got a good enough lawyer. Maybe not avoid crucifixion, but, you know, later and all. If you believe in later.” I stretched, my hands balled into fists, to try to unknot some of the tension in my back. “Are you religious?”
Shlomo leaned forward and rested his chin on his free hand, the other still holding the spoonful of soup, which appeared to have slipped his mind. “I’m a good Jew in the sense that I pay attention to the Commandments, most of them anyway, give a little money to the right charities. I’m obviously not a zealot, or I wouldn’t be wearing this outfit. But Jews, we don’t think so much about what we’ll be doing after we die. We think about what we should do while we’re alive.”
“Well, then, what are you doing? When you’re not being St. Nick?”
“Nothing for money. I’ve got enough money. Not so much but enough. But I’ve been here three Christmases now. Just for the kids.”
“The kids,” I said. “They really like you.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re good with them.”
He smiled down at his spoon, which was brimming, and then put it into his mouth. When he’d swallowed he said, “All I do is listen. Kids don’t get listened to much. Mostly, they’re on the other end. When you see a parent and child and you hear the words, ‘Now you listen to me,’ it’s a good bet it’s not the kid talking.”
“It might be, between my daughter and me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “How old?”
“Fourteen.” I sat back, struck by an idea. How often do you get to ask Santa for advice? “What do you think would be a good present for a fourteen-year-old girl?”
“Oh, boy,” he said. “You haven’t got anything yet?”
“Well,” I said.
“If she was three or four, I could tell you what she wants. Even statistically, I could tell you. But fourteen-year-olds, they’re not allowed to sit on my lap. Insurance company.”
“What’s with the Santa who wants to kill everybody?”
“Dwayne? Hung over. Every day, hung over. Guy’s breath is forty proof. Some of the kids, getting off his lap, they wobble.” He pushed the bowl away, having eaten almost none of it, studied the powdery surface of his coffee for a moment, and pushed that away, too. “So he comes across a little like the Japanese version, Santa Kurohsu, who’s got eyes in the back of his head so he can spot the bad kids in all directions. No Ho! Ho! Ho! from him. But he’s an okay guy, Dwayne, wouldn’t hurt a kid, even though he scares them half to death.”
“So you’ve been here for a few years. Anything different about this year?”
He gazed at me long enough to make me think he wasn’t going to answer me, but then he looked down at the surface of the table and said, “More people. More kids. They got both of us, Dwayne and me, going nine hours a day this year. Year before last, it was eight hours, sometimes less. Last year it was only me.”
“More people,” I said, “even with this economy?”
“What can I tell you?”
“Anything else?”
“For example?” He was looking at his soup, not me.
“People who don’t look like they should be here. Outside the normal kids and parents range.”
“You mean like gang kids? Thugs in Lone Ranger masks?”
“I guess.”
“Uh-uh. Just the usual, but more of them. Maybe twenty-five, thirty percent more.”
“Kind of odd, don’t you think, with all the talk about how malls are tanking?”
He shrugged. “Hadn’t thought about it. Yeah, I suppose it’s odd that business dropped off last year and this year they had to put both of us out there. They didn’t even think they needed me the first day this year, got a panic call about four p.m., Get in here. Maybe it’s just that the place is cheap. Times aren’t great unless you’re in the one percent, you know.”
“Could be.” I looked over at the door to Tito’s Tortilla Heaven, wondering where my food was.
“Listen,” Shlomo said. He was leaning forward to stir the cold soup he’d rejected, and he was giving it all his attention. “What it sounds like to me is that you really are the good thief, in a manner of speaking. You’re kind of a crook, but you also play detective sometimes.”
I weighed it for a moment. “I guess.”
“Well, suppose I’d had something stolen . . .” He watched the spoon make circles in the soup.
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. I noticed it wasn’t where it was supposed to be three days ago, but it could have been gone for months. It’s not something I look at all the time.”
“Stolen from where?”
“Mmmmm,” he said.
“Let me guess. Your home.”
He nodded. Then he cleared his throat and said, “Yes.”
“Anything else taken?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Valuable?”
“To me. Not worth a nickel to anybody else.”
“Was it in plain sight?”
He closed his eyes. “Not even close.”
“So,” I said, “someone takes from your house something hidden that was important to you but that’s not worth any money, and nothing else.”
“That’s it,” he said. He looked back over at me. “Think you can figure it out?”
“Depends on how afraid you are of learning who did it.”
“Yeah,” he said. He swallowed, and the big Adam’s apple took a little bow. “Sort of has to be . . .”
“Someone in the family.”
In the silence that followed, the door opened and the counter woman from Tito’s came in with two big plates. She waved me to sit back so she could put it all down.
“I have to think about it,” Shlomo said.
“Hot sauce,” the waitress said, pointing at one of two identical little paper cups. She indicated the other. “Sissy sauce,” she added gaily. “I’ll be checking out your choice.” She gave me a wide smile and headed for the door.
Watching her go, Shlomo said, “You get much of that?”
“Not as much as I used to. My charm is pretty much limited to waitresses.”
“What’re you, thirty-five?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“A baby, you’re a baby. She really is watching.”
I looked up, and the door closed quickly. “Thanks for the warning. I’d hate to disappoint her.” I poured the mild sauce over the carnitas and then switched the two cups so she wouldn’t know. “What is it? The thing that was stolen?”
“A set of dog tags,” Shlomo said. “Soldier dog tags. From World War II. Belonged to my father.”
“You were close to him?”
“At times,” Shlomo said. “He wasn’t always an easy man. I’ll tell you, though, since it’s Christmas, I’ll tell you. We haven’t had a lot of miracles in our family, okay? But those tags were part of a miracle, so I kept them. And you know, I’ll bet the people who owned the water jars on the day when Jesus turned all that water into wine, I’ll bet they hung onto those jars. Didn’t sell them on eBay or anything.”
“No,” I said. The door was open again, so I pointed down at the carnitas and waved my hand at my mouth as though to cool it. The door closed again.
Shlomo said, “Gonna ask her out?”
“No. I’m taken. I just wanted her to feel like somebody was showing off for her at the end of her day.” I took a big bite. The sissy sauce was pretty hot, too. “A miracle, huh?”
“You bet,” he said. “The shadow of death and everything.” He tugged on the sleeve of his Santa suit and said, “Christmas, too. It was a Christmas miracle. For a Jew.” He got up, leaving his food mostly uneaten. “Last hour of the workday,” he said. “Tell you the story if we get some time.”
9
The 1812 Overture, Rescored for Automobile Horns
“I need to know who the members of the Edgerton Partnership are.” My cell phone was in my lap and on speaker, thereby turning it into a hands-free device. LA cops, who are feeling left out as the violent crime rate drops, absolutely salivate at the sight of someone holding a phone while at the wheel.
“People who built the mall?” Louie said.
“Yes, and if there’s any talk about silent partners, those are probably the names I need most.” I accelerated to change lanes.
“Why?”
“I just want to know who besides Poindexter is going to want to kill me by Christmas.”
“Not going so great, huh?”
“No, no, why would you think that? Hang on.” I was heading toward downtown on the 101 with the Cahuenga Pass and Hollywood behind me. Low, heavy clouds reflected the city’s extra holiday wattage in a dull red glow that made them look as though they were being heated from above. Little Armenia and Thai Town were opening up to my right, disorientingly bright in the blaze of several million Christmas lights. Without thinking about it, I’d been waiting for the darkness of these usually dimmer environs, and I was unprepared to see the Melrose/Normandie exit coming up so fast. It took a little advanced weaving across a couple of lanes to get to it. I heard honking, but it sounded a few cars back.
“Hey,” Louie said, “just out of curiosity, how much is Poindexter paying you?”
“He’s allowing me to continue to inhale and exhale, and he was nice enough to extend that courtesy to my family if I’m a good little spaniel.”
“No carrot?”
“He’s not a carrots kind of guy.” I did a little maneuver to put me onto Ardmore.
“That’s what I heard.”
“And I want his real name.”
“That I can get easy. I even know his first name, but I’m not gonna try to pronounce it. It’s Y-E-V-G-E-N-I-Y.”
“Yevgeniy,” I said. “Essentially, Eugene. How do you know that?”
“I guess I don’t really, not with a, a thingamabob, a certificate of authenticity. Boy, that’d be a thing to forge, huh? Certificates of authenticity? But Yev . . . Yev—that’s what people called him until about seven, eight years ago. Yev.”
“Right,” I said. “It could actually be anything.”
“Why do you care?”
“This guy didn’t change his name because he wanted to join a golf club. He changed it because someone, a lot of someones, wanted to kill him. Having met him, I can say that it’s literally impossible that there aren’t people all over the place who want to kill him. At some point I might want to get their phone numbers.” I passed a furniture store with a green-and-red Christmas sign in Korean.
“Okay,” Louie said, “the Edgerton investors, Poindexter’s real name.”
“That’s it.” I made a left on a residential street that would take me to Western Boulevard.
“You and Ronnie want to come eat Christmas dinner with Alice and me?”
I was startled. As long as I’d known Louie, I’d never been invited to dinner. “Let me check with Ronnie,” I said. “For all I know, she’s expected for Christmas at the White House.”
