“I’m afraid I don’t know the first thing about this,” Byrne said.
“Well, I’m no expert, either, but I’ll tell you what I know,” Mateo said. “The system, as a whole, is called EAS, or Electronic Article Surveillance. There are two main types: the hard tag and the soft tag. The hard tags are those bulky, plastic tags they put on leather jackets, Armani sweaters, Zegna dress shirts, et cetera. All the good stuff. That kind of tag has to be taken off with a device once you pay for the item. Soft tags, on the other hand, have to be desensitized by swiping them over a pad or with a handheld scanner that tells the tag, essentially, it’s okay to leave the store.”
“What about videotapes?” Byrne asked.
“Videotapes and DVDs, too.”
“Which is why they hand them to you on the other side of those—”
“Pedestals,” Mateo said. “Right. Exactly. Both types of tags work on an RF frequency. If the tag hasn’t been removed, or if it hasn’t been desensitized, and you walk past the pedestals, the beepers go off. Then they tackle you.”
“And there’s no way around that?” Jessica asked.
“There’s
always
a way around
everything.
”
“Like how?” Jessica asked.
Mateo lifted a solitary brow. “Plan on doing a little shoplifting, Detective?”
“I’ve got my eye on a sweet pair of black linen Blahniks.”
Mateo laughed. “Good luck. Stuff like that is protected better than Fort Knox.”
Jessica snapped her fingers.
“But with these dinosaur systems, if you wrap the whole item in aluminum foil, it could possibly fool the old security sensors. You could even put the item against a magnet.”
“Coming and going?”
“Yes.”
“So someone who wrapped a videotape in aluminum foil, or put it up against a magnet, could get it out of the store, keep it for a while, then rewrap it and sneak it back in?” Jessica asked.
“It’s possible.”
“All without being detected?”
“I believe so,” Mateo said.
“Great,” Jessica said. They had been concentrating on people who had rented the tape. Now the possibilities opened up to just about everyone in Philadelphia with access to Reynolds Wrap. “What about a tape from one store going into a different store. Say, a Blockbuster tape being sneaked into a West Coast Video?”
“The industry isn’t standardized yet. It’s pushing for what they call
tower-centric
systems as opposed to
tag-centric
setups so that detectors can read multiple tag technologies. On the other hand, if people knew that these detectors only catch about sixty percent of the thefts, they might get a little bolder.”
“What about taping over a prerecorded tape?” Jessica asked. “Is that difficult?”
“Not in the least,” Mateo said. He pointed to a small indentation on the back of the videocassette. “All you have to do is put something over this.”
“So if a person took the tape out of the store wrapped in foil, they could take it home and record over it— and if no one tried to rent it for a few days, no one would know it was gone,” Byrne said. “Then all they would have to do is rewrap it in foil and sneak it back in.”
“That’s probably true.”
Jessica and Byrne looked at each other. They weren’t just back to square one. They weren’t even on the board yet.
“Thanks for making our day,” Byrne said.
Mateo smiled. “Hey, do you think I would call you down here if I didn’t have something good to show you,
capitán, mi capitán
?”
“Let’s see it,” Byrne said.
“Check this out.”
Mateo spun in his chair and hit a few buttons on the dTective digital console behind him. The dTective system converted standard video to digital, and allowed technicians to manipulate the image directly from the hard drive. Instantly,
Psycho
began to roll on the monitor. On the monitor, the bathroom door opened and the old woman entered. Mateo rewound it until the room was empty again, then hit PAUSE, freezing the image. He pointed to the upper left-hand corner of the frame. There, on the top of the shower rod, was a gray splotch.
“Cool,” Byrne said. “A smudge. Let’s put out an APB.”
Mateo shook his head.
“Usted de poca fe.”
He began to enlarge the image, which was fuzzy to the point of near obscurity. “Let me sharpen this a little.”
He hit a sequence of keys, his fingers blazing over the keyboard. The picture became slightly sharper. The small smudge on the shower rod was now a little more recognizable. It appeared to be a rectangular white label with black ink on it. Mateo hit a few more keys. The image became larger by about 25 percent. It began to look like something.
“What is it, a boat?” Byrne asked, squinting at the image.
“A
river
boat,” Mateo said. He brought the picture to a slightly higher degree of clarity. It was still very blurred, but it became apparent that there was a word beneath the graphic. A logo of some sort.
Jessica took out her glasses, slipped them on. She leaned closer to the monitor. “It says . . . Natchez?”
“Yes,” Mateo said.
“What is Natchez?”
Mateo spun around to a computer, one hooked up to the Internet. He typed in a few words, hit ENTER. In an instant, the monitor showed a website displaying a much clearer version of the graphic on the other screen: a highly stylized riverboat.
“Natchez, Inc., manufactures plumbing and bathroom fixtures,” Mateo said. “I believe this is one of their shower rods.”
Jessica and Byrne exchanged a glance. After a morning of chasing shadows, this was a lead. Small, but a lead nonetheless.
“So do all the shower rods they make have that logo there?” Jessica asked.
Mateo shook his head. “No,” he said. “Look.”
He clicked over to the catalog page for shower rods. The rods themselves had no logos or markings on them of any kind. “My guess is that what we’re looking at is some kind of tag that identifies the item to the installer. Something they’re supposed to peel off when they’re done putting it up.”
“So what you’re saying is that this shower rod was recently installed,” Jessica said.
“That would be my deduction,” Mateo said in his strange, precise manner. “If it had been in there awhile, you’d think the steam from the shower might have made it slip off. Let me get you a printout.” Mateo hit a few more keys, starting the laser printer.
While they were waiting, Mateo poured a cup of soup from his thermos. He opened a Tupperware container in which he had two neatly stacked columns of saltines. Jessica wondered if he ever actually went home.
“I hear you’re working with the suits on this,” Mateo said.
Jessica and Byrne exchanged another glance, this one suffixed with a grimace. “Where did you hear that?” Jessica asked.
“From the suit himself,” Mateo said. “He was down here about an hour ago.”
“Special Agent Cahill?” Jessica asked.
“That would be the suit.”
“What did he want?”
“Only everything. He asked a lot of questions. He wanted deep background on this.”
“Did you give it to him?”
Mateo looked mortified. “I’m not that easy of a lay, Detective. I told him I was working on it.”
Jessica had to smile. PPD
über alles.
Sometimes she loved this place and everyone in it. Still, she made a mental note to rip Agent Opie a new asshole the first chance she got.
Mateo reached over, retrieved the photo printout of the shower rod. He handed it to Jessica. “I know it isn’t much, but it’s a start,
sí
?”
Jessica kissed Mateo on the top of the head. “You rock, Mateo.”
“Tell the world,
hermana.
”
THE LARGEST PLUMBING supply company in Philadelphia was Standard Plumbing and Heating on Germantown Avenue, a fifty-thousand-square-foot warehouse of toilets, sinks, bathtubs, shower stalls, and just about every other conceivable fixture. They carried high-end lines such as Porcher, Bertocci, and Cesana. They also carried less expensive fixtures like those manufactured by Natchez, Inc., a company based, not surprisingly, in Mississippi. Standard Plumbing and Heating was the only distributor in Philadelphia to carry the product.
The sales manager’s name was Hal Hudak.
“That’s the NF-5506-L. A one-inch OD aluminum L-style,” Hudak said. He was looking at a printout photograph taken from the videotape. It was now cropped to show only the top of the shower rod.
“And it’s made by Natchez?” Jessica asked.
“That’s correct. But it’s a fairly low-end fixture. Nothing too fancy.” Hudak was in his late fifties, balding, puckish, as if everything had the potential to amuse. He smelled like Cinnamon Altoids. They were in his paper-besieged office overlooking the chaotic warehouse floor. “We sell a lot of Natchez fixtures to the federal government for its FHA housing.”
“What about hotels, motels?” Byrne asked.
“Sure,” he said. “But you won’t find this in any of the expensive or midrange hotels. Not even in the Motel 6 variety, either.”
“Why is that?”
“Mainly because the fixtures in those popular economy motels get a lot of use. It doesn’t make good business sense to use budget fixtures. They’d be replacing them twice a year.”
Jessica made a few notes, asked: “Then why would any motel buy them?”
“Between you, me, and the switchboard operator, the only kind of motels that might install these fixtures are the ones where people don’t tend to stay overnight, if you know what I mean.”
They knew exactly what he meant. “Have you sold any of these recently?” Jessica asked.
“Depends on what you mean by recently.”
“In the last few months.”
“Let me see.” He hit a few keys on his computer keyboard. “Yeah. I’ve got a small order three weeks ago from . . . Arcel Management.”
“How small of an order?”
“They ordered twenty shower rods. The aluminum L-style. Just like your picture.”
“Is the company local?”
“Yes.”
“Was the order delivered?”
Hudak smiled. “Of course.”
“What does Arcel Management do exactly?”
A few more keystrokes. “They manage apartments. A few motels, I think.”
“Motels of the by-the-hour variety?” Jessica asked.
“I’m a married man, Detective. I’d have to ask around.”
Jessica smiled. “That’s okay,” she said. “I think we can handle that.”
“My wife thanks you.”
“We’ll need their address and phone number,” Byrne said.
“You got it.”
* * *
WHEN THEY GOT back to Center City they stopped at Ninth and Passyunk, flipped a coin. Heads meant Pat’s. Tails, Geno’s. It was heads. At Ninth and Passyunk, lunch was easy.
When Jessica returned to the car with the cheesesteaks, Byrne shut his phone, said: “Arcel Management manages four apartment complexes in North Philly, as well as a motel on Dauphin Street.”
“West Philly?”
Byrne nodded. “Strawberry Mansion.”
“And I suppose it’s a five-star property with European spa and championship golf course,” Jessica said, slipping into the car.
“Actually, it’s a no-tell called the Rivercrest Motel,” Byrne said.
“Did they order those shower rods?”
“According to the very accommodating, honey-voiced Miss Rochelle Davis, they did indeed.”
“And did the very accommodating, honey-voiced Miss Rochelle Davis happen to tell the probably-old-enough-to-be-her-father Detective Kevin Byrne how many rooms there are at the Rivercrest Motel?”
“She did.”
“How many?”
Byrne started the Taurus, pointed it west. “Twenty.”
12
