All Sales Fatal
One
In my more profound moments, I think of malls as cathedrals to capitalism, airy sanctuaries filled with sunshine and optimism, embracing all comers with warmth and light, and offering cookies and Orange Julius in place of the wafer and the wine.
This was not one of those moments.
Hands balled on my uniformed hips, I regarded the middle-aged man in front of me gripping the handle of a kid’s red wagon, upon which rested a large leather ottoman. With the complexion and girth of someone who thinks a Quarter Pounder is a light appetizer, he gave me an affronted look when I asked if he had a receipt for his purchases.
“Are you implying I stole this, miss?” he asked, patting the ottoman with a beefy hand. “I have the receipt right here.” He fumbled in his suit pocket and thrust a crumpled slip of paper toward me.
“Not the ottoman, sir, the wagon. The manager at Jen’s Toy Store notified mall security that you had forgotten to pay for it.” In the year plus that I’d been working as a security officer at Fernglen Galleria, “forgot to pay” had become my favorite euphemism for “shoplifted.”
He snorted. “How else was I supposed to get this to my car?” He thumped the ottoman again. “It’s damn heavy.”
“I’m sure the furniture store could arrange for delivery, or—”
“Yeah, for fifty bucks. I’m not paying—”
“The point is, sir, that if you want to use the wagon as a cargo dolly, you have to pay for it first.”
He goggled at me as though I’d suggested he do the hokey pokey. Nude. In the parking lot. “Fine, just fine!” He bent and wrapped his arms around the ottoman, lifting it off the wagon. His red face grew redder with the effort. “If I get a hernia, I’m going to sue the mall and you personally for every penny you’ve got.” He nodded his head firmly, thunking his chin against the ottoman so hard his teeth snapped together. “Ow!”
“I’ll get the door for you,” I said politely, zipping to the exit on my two-wheeled electric Segway and dismounting to push the heavy glass door wide. A slight breeze riffled my bangs. Without so much as a thank-you, the man stomped past me, breathing hard. Giving him a cheery wave and a “Thanks for shopping at Fernglen!” in my best chipper, flight-attendant-like voice, I let the door close.
The radio clipped at my left shoulder crackled as I returned to the Segway. “EJ, Captain Woskowicz needs to see you on the double.” The southern-accented voice belonged to Joel Rooney, the youngest officer on the mall’s security team. As low man on the totem pole, he frequently got stuck with dispatch duty.
“I’ll be there in five,” I said, retrieving the wagon and heading toward Jen’s Toy Store with it trundling behind me. My brother Clint and I had had a wagon just like it when we were kids. I still had a half-moon-shaped scar under my chin from when he’d lost control of the wagon with me in it and I’d careened down our steep driveway before crashing into a neighbor’s Lamborghini parked at the curb. I’d gone flying and scraped my chin on the asphalt. The cut had needed six stitches. What had I been—three, four? I ran my index finger over the scar as the Segway purred smoothly over Fernglen’s tiled halls. The tiny ridge of tissue was nothing compared to the massive scarring around my knee, the result of an IED that had killed two of my unit in Afghanistan and gotten me medically retired from the military.
After leaving the wagon with the grateful toy store manager and suggesting that, if she didn’t want it to disappear again, she not park it outside the store as an advertising gimmick, I sped up and cut through the food court on my way to the security office, tucked into a side hall near Sears. An ill-lit hallway lined floor to ceiling with white brick tile, its narrowness and dinginess dissuaded most shoppers from venturing down it. A soda vending machine hummed quietly near an emergency exit at the far end. Glass doors fronted the security office, and I pushed through them, leaving the Segway outside. Small, dank, and smelling vaguely of pizza, the office boasted a couple of desks that belonged to whoever was on shift, filing cabinets, and a coffeepot. A short hall led to my boss’s office and a storeroom in the back. The office’s most prominent feature was a bank of monitors displaying views from the hundred-plus cameras in and around the mall. Actually, only about half the cameras were hooked up, a cost-saving measure I’d fought strenuously. The director of security, Captain Woskowicz, had said, “The cameras are mainly deterrents to shoplifting, Ferris, so as long as the general public doesn’t know they’re not working, they’ll still work.” That’s what passed for logic in Wosko World.