All Sales Fatal (32 page)

“Where’re your helpers today?” I asked.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but I had to cut back their hours.”

“Yeah, I think you mentioned that you’ve been doing afternoons and evenings by yourself,” I said.

“So?”

“So you would have waited on Celio Arriaga when he was in here two weeks ago, the Tuesday he was killed. And yet you told me you hadn’t seen him.”

“I can’t remember everyone who comes in here,” he said irritably, setting a two-liter bottle of Sprite and one of Coke on the table.

“Of course not,” I agreed. His shoulders relaxed a fraction before I added, “But I’d think you’d remember a gang member in here on his own buying a stuffie. Or was he really here to buy something else?”

Mike turned to face me, hand gripping a plastic fork so tightly it cracked and he dropped it. “What are you saying, EJ?”

“I think you were working with Captain Woskowicz and William Silver,” I said, suddenly convinced I was right. “I think Celio Arriaga came in here to purchase a gun—one of the ones Silver siphoned off the gun amnesty programs. Somehow, Woskowicz knew you’d be interested in making a little untaxable cash, and he set you up as the front man.”

“We share—shared—a bookie,” Mike said with a
humorless smile, implicitly acknowledging my accusation. “Dennis knew I was into him for over forty large and asked if I’d be interested in the gun deal. I said, ‘Hell, yeah.’ The business was by word of mouth—not high volume, but enough to bring in a couple thou a month. Dennis funneled buyers my way; he had a lot of shady contacts. I’d sell to a woman needing a remedy for an abusive boyfriend here, an ex-con there. It let me keep up with the vig I owed Boris, at least. It worked like a charm until that gangbanger tried to hold me up.”

“Hold you up?”

“He came in for a gun late in the afternoon, and I sold him a .38, slipped it into the seal he bought.”

Eloísa had to have known there was something heavy in the stuffed seal she was lugging around the mall. Why hadn’t she mentioned it?

“But he wasn’t satisfied with that,” Mike said, speaking more freely now that he was into his story. “He asked what else I had on hand, but I told him my rule was one to a customer. It’s not that I had any moral problems with selling more guns to a gang—”

“No moral problems at all,” I said drily.

“—but it was logistically difficult. How would it look if he walked out of here with ten stuffed animals?

“He seemed okay with it, nodded a few times, but I could see him looking around, casing the place. He asked if I kept my extra stock in the storeroom in the back. I told him I didn’t have anything else on hand.”

“He didn’t buy it.”

Mike shook his head. “No. He was back that evening, a few minutes before closing. He held me up with the gun he’d bought from me.” Mike sounded offended by Celio’s crassness. “What he didn’t know is that I’ve had a gun on me ever since Boris sent his thugs to break my leg. I told the banger
we had to go in the back to get the guns, and when he followed me there, I shot him.”

It seemed to me that he paled a bit at the memory. “Why didn’t anyone report hearing the shot?” I asked.

With a smug little smile, he gestured toward the recycling bin brimming with two-liter soda bottles. “I grabbed one of those on my way by and used it as a silencer. The shot still made a hell of a noise, but it was muffled. Easy for people to think they’d heard something from the parking lot. With his body lying there and blood all over, I panicked. I called Dennis at home.

“He told me the biggest thing was to get the body out of the mall. With the cameras still out—Dennis had arranged that so there’d be less chance of any of you spotting one of my customers and so he could get new stock in here every week—I just had to wait until everyone was gone. Then I loaded him up in that wagon from Jen’s and dumped him on the sidewalk. I was petrified the whole time, practically peed my pants, thinking the night guard would come strolling down the corridor, even though Dennis said he’d distract him. I couldn’t think of a way to move the body any farther without getting caught on one of the security cameras, so I left him there. I cleaned up in here as best I could, went home, and downed half a bottle of Tanqueray. God, did I have a hangover the next day.”

He looked like he had one now, hands trembling slightly, a sheen of sweat on his pale, bruised forehead. “So how did Woskowicz end up with the murder weapon?” I asked. Since the mother-and-son duo had left, no one else had entered the store. I felt too isolated and smacked myself mentally for not coming down in uniform—so I’d have my radio, at least—and for letting Mike get between me and the door.

“He came in here the next day, after I’d spent hours going over the place with bleach. A website I found said that was
the only way to really clean up evidence of a crime. Dennis told me he’d get rid of the gun for me. He said he was meeting with his contact—you say his name is Silver?—and that he’d have the guy destroy the gun the way it was supposed to have been melted down or whatever in the first place. I gave it to him in a bag”—The bag Woskowicz had been carrying when he left here Wednesday afternoon.—“but then I began to have second thoughts.”

“You followed him to his meeting with Silver, didn’t you?”

A crooked grin straggled up Mike’s tense face, and he made a gun of his thumb and forefinger, pointing it at me. “Give the little lady a prize. I was desperate for more money—Boris said that next time he was going to hurt Glenda or one of the boys—and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn’t need a middleman, Woskowicz, taking a cut of my profits. I was the one with his neck on the line; the gangbanger taught me that.” Indignation colored Mike’s voice, the bitterness of a man who thinks he always gets the short end of the stick. “So why shouldn’t I get a bigger cut? Only problem was, I didn’t know who was supplying Woskowicz with the guns. So I waited outside his house and followed him to the battlefield park. He never had a clue I was there.

“I got out and confronted him before his connection showed up, told him I wanted more money. He actually laughed at me. Well, he shut up fast enough, I’ll tell you, when I pulled out my gun.” Narrowing his eyes, Mike continued. “I told him I needed a bigger cut, explained that I was desperate, but he made a grab for the gun and it went off.” His eyes slid away from mine. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

Uh-uh. Of course not. That’s why he followed Woskowicz to a deserted meeting point and pulled a gun. “You didn’t really have a choice,” I commented.

Continuing as if I hadn’t spoken, he said, “I searched him and the car, looking for my gun. He didn’t have it on him. I knew then that he hadn’t ever planned to have it destroyed; he was probably going to blackmail me with it somewhere down the line. I almost panicked then, wondering where it was, but then the guy with the guns showed up. He was very pragmatic once he saw my nine mil, and we came to a mutually beneficial agreement. He didn’t know my name or where I worked—Dennis had deliberately kept our names to himself, so he was essential to both of us—and that suited me fine. We set up a schedule for deliveries and agreed on email as a nice anonymous way of getting in contact when necessary, and I drove over to Dennis’s house, hoping to find my gun there. I searched for hours. No joy. I took his computer in case he had anything on it that incriminated me. Experts can pull up all sorts of shit you think you’ve deleted.”

He was lucky one of Woskowicz’s exes hadn’t caught him.

“I read, of course, that the cops found the gun. Where was it?”

“In a file cabinet in the security office,” I said, seeing no reason not to tell him. “Your prints are on it.”

“Liar. I made sure to wipe it down before I gave it to Dennis.” He seemed almost amused by my attempt to fluster him, but I could see his tension in the stiff line of his shoulders and the pulse throbbing in his neck.

I edged to the left, thinking that if I could get a clear path to the door, I’d make a run for it. Mike forestalled me by pulling a gun from his pocket, keeping it low and close to his body so a shopper glancing in the window wouldn’t see it.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Back there.” He jerked his chin toward the stockroom and office behind the partition.

Gathering myself, I flexed my knees slightly, ready to propel myself toward the door. With his leg in a cast, he
couldn’t tackle me, and I doubted he had the nerve to fire the gun with so many people still in the mall.

The barrel of the gun came up an inch. “I have nothing to lose,” he said in a flat, emotionless voice that told me he was dead serious.

“What time is Sierra’s birthday party?” I asked, hoping to distract him.

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Move.”

I started toward the back of the store, moving as slowly as possible. “The cameras are working again, you know,” I said. “You can’t just trundle me out of here in a wagon like you did with Celio.”

“Shut up. I’m working on it.”

I already knew how I’d get a body out of here if I were he, but I wasn’t going to give him any hints. Assuming he had a decent-sized box in the back, he could stuff me in one, push it out the back door of his store because the mall didn’t have cameras in the utility hallways, and wait for the mall to close. He could leave as usual. Then, he could come back disguised, say with a hat and dark glasses, disable the camera nearest the door with a squirt of spray paint, drive his car up, hoist the box with yours truly in it into the trunk, and disappear.

“The cameras will show that I came into Make-a-Manatee but never left,” I said, hoping to make him see the futility of doing away with me. I rounded the partition and quickly sized up the escape opportunities of the small office and stockroom.

He eyed me for a moment. “Glenda’s about your size. Take off your shirt.”

I gaped at him. Then it dawned on me that he was going to have Glenda don my clothes, and maybe a wig, and walk out of here as me. “She’s pissed at you; she won’t do it.”

He frowned. “Stop worrying abou—”

“Hello?” A woman’s voice came from the front of the store.

“Hel—” I started to yell, but Wachtel crashed the gun against my temple and I slumped to the floor, everything graying out.

When I came
to, head aching and cheek stinging viciously, I was momentarily disoriented. The sound of children’s laughter drifted to me, and I was chilled, lying on my back on a cold, hard surface. I tried to sit up, then fought down panic at the realization that I couldn’t move my hands. The confrontation with Mike came flooding back. I was in his stockroom, in the dark, my hands bound with what felt like duct tape, with another piece of tape over my mouth. Not good.

I managed to lever myself to a sitting position. At least I still had my clothes on. I did my best to shrug my shoulder up and bend my head so I could wipe my cheek on my shoulder, hoping, at the very least, to get blood on my shirt and foil Mike’s plan of having his wife impersonate me, not that the camera resolution was good enough to show a stain at all, much less enable anyone to identify it. Still, it made me feel like I was doing something. I sat and thought, wishing I had water to slake my thirst and a few painkillers for my headache.

There had been a customer in the store when Mike clobbered me, and he’d been expecting the birthday partiers within minutes, so he hadn’t had much time to incapacitate me. My feet were unbound—good—so maybe I could stand, open the door, and walk out of here. Failing that, maybe I could make enough noise to grab someone’s attention. Remembering the customer’s complaint about parents not sticking around to help with the birthday parties, I devoutly
hoped that a parent or two was in the store now watching little Sierra blow out her candles.

Scooting backwards on my butt, I backed into something solid—a packing box, maybe—after only a couple of inches. I braced my back against it and pushed with my feet, trying to stand. My head swam alarmingly, and for a moment I thought I might throw up. With my mouth taped shut, I could asphyxiate in my own vomit, and the thought terrified me. I stopped, holding perfectly still, and concentrated on taking calming breaths through my nose. In… out. When I felt the nausea subside a tad, I tried to stand again. I pushed to my feet and stood there swaying, desperately trying to stay upright and not throw up.

Wheels of light spun behind my eyeballs, and my head felt like someone with a skip loader was trundling around in my skull. I was concussed. I might even have a skull fracture. I opened my eyes to see if I could make the spinning wheels go away, but it was just as dark with my eyes open and the wheels spun anyway, so I shut them again. Door. I had to find the door.

Keeping my fingertips in contact with the box behind me, I inched sideways gingerly, knowing that if I banged into something and fell and hit my head, I might not be able to get back up. Within in a very short distance, a couple of feet at most, my left shoulder bumped a wall or another box. I let me fingertips explore the surface. Rough textured and cool. The wall.

Sidestepping to my left, fingers reading the wall as if it were a Braille script, I moved another three or four feet before meeting another wall. This was definitely the stockroom, not the office, which was too bad because the office might conceivably have scissors or a letter opener I could use to free my hands or defend myself. All the stockroom held, I suspected, was boxes of fluff and unstuffed plush
animals—I didn’t think beaning Mike with a fuchsia starfish was going to slow him down much.

I went left again and felt elated when my questing fingertips felt the smoothness of laminate or wood instead of the rough concrete of the walls. The door! Another step brought my fingers into contact with the knob, and I held my breath, hoping. The knob hit me just about where my wrists were taped together at the small of my back. Leaning slightly, I got my fingers around the knob and gave it a twist. Nothing. I tried again, jerking the weight of my body left to apply leverage, but the door was locked.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them away furiously. I was not going to let a weaselly, gambling, murdering…
turd
like Mike Wachtel kill me. I flung myself backwards against the door in frustration. It bowed ever so slightly—cheap hollow-core construction—but the movement jarred my head and I dropped to my knees, fighting back nausea. I stayed on my knees for long moments, concentrating on my breathing, trying to think.