After half an hour of looking for work and getting nowhere, I was beginning to think maybe it was me. Why was nobody around here hiring?
Iola had a job. Chet had a job. I wondered if Joe was having a hard time too. I’d already tried every clothing and shoe store, as well as the pet store, the video game store, the hat store, the sunglasses store—and got no results. Toy stores, zilch. Bookstores? Nada.
“Good thing you’re an ATAC agent and don’t need to look for a real-life job,” I told myself, sitting on the marble edge of the fountain. I needed a short “get-it-together” break before I went back to the hunt.
“Hey, you!” a heavily accented, gruff voice shouted. “No sitting there! Don’ you see sign?”
“Me?” I asked, pointing to myself.
The guy yelling at me was not a security guard. He was wearing dark green overalls with an EAST SIDE MALL patch sewed to the chest and the name OSKAR embroidered underneath.
He was kind of old to be a janitor—tall, hulking, and bald except for a fringe of wild, curly gray hair. It grew out of his ears too. Flakes of white dandruff decorated his shoulders, and a faint smell of unwashed clothes wafted in my direction.
“Yeah, you,” he said. “You want sit, find bench.”
He was leaning on something that looked like a push broom, except that the bottom was not a broom, but metal mesh. “What’s that you’ve got there?” I asked, curious.
“This? For fishing,” he said, indicating the fountain. “Get coins from pool, give to charity.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Okay? You don’t sit here no more.”
“No, I get it. Thanks, Oskar.”
He frowned. “I know you from somewhere?”
I pointed to the name on his chest. “My name’s Frank,” I said. “Frank Hardy.”
“Yeah? So what?”
“I’m … uh, I’m looking for work here at the mall. You know of anyone who’s hiring?”
“You want my job?” he asked, offering me the coin-fisher. Then he laughed, showing broken, blackened teeth. “Listen, this mall finished. Kaput. Rich millionaire gonna buy, tear down, make new one. Then maybe young kid like you find good job in nice store. Not like now.”
He looked over at the group of kids Iola’d pointed out before. They’d moved on from the wall by the food court and were now hanging out by the emergency stairs.
“You see kids over there?” he grumbled. “They keep nice people away. Somebody gots to get rid of them.”
“It must be tough for you,” I said, figuring maybe Oskar might know a thing or two about what went on here at the East Side Mall, and that it would be a good thing to get him talking about it. “Do those kids give you a hard time?”
“Not so much—but make dirty, make loud noises, scare customers,” he replied. “Listen, I night watchman here too. After close, I gotta chase those kids away. They no want go home.”
“Hmm. Maybe their homes aren’t such fun places to go back to.”
He shrugged. “So what? No come here, make frighten older people.”
I could see that I wasn’t going to convince him to cut those kids a break. So I stopped trying and changed the subject. “Oskar, how many coins do people throw in here, anyway?” I asked, nodding toward the fountain and the pool that surrounded it.
“A lot coins! Very many!” he said, suddenly angry. “And you see what happen? Look!” He gestured toward the pool, which had very few coins in it.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Didn’t you just collect them?”
“No! I come collect, but somebody steal coins before me! They take this first, from broom closet,” he said, shaking his mesh broom at me. “I find, you know where? Bottom of water!”
He was still staring at the kids by the stairs, and I could tell he suspected them of the evil deed. But I had to wonder—if they had done it, would they still be hanging around with all those coins in their pockets, waiting to get caught?
“I call security guy, but he think I steal!” Oskar ranted, spit and foam flying out of his mouth. “Nobody like immigrant, but I not steal! Not like most people.”
“I’m sure you didn’t, Oskar,” I said. “Um, when exactly did you notice the coins had been taken?”
“Just now. Hey, what your name again?”
“Frank, why you ask so much question, Frank? You some kinda cop or something?”
Oops. It was time for me to back off, before I blew my cover to smithereens.
“Nah, I was just curious, that’s all.”
“Lots people around this place up to no good,” said Oskar. “Not just young people—lots people. I see everything.” He tapped his forehead, nodding slowly.
“Oh, yeah? Like who?”
His eyes narrowed, and he looked me up and down suspiciously. “Never mind who,” he said. Then he put his fingers to his lips and pretended to lock them with a key.
So I was right about Oskar—he probably knew more about what was going on around here than anyone else.
But now was not the time to pump him for information. That would have to wait for when he wasn’t in such a bad mood.
“You’re right,” I said, patting him on the arm. “It’s none of my business. Well, nice meeting you, Oskar. See you around.”
He watched me go, muttering something to himself.
Yes, I thought, there was lots more to old Oskar than met the eye. I made a mental note to check up on him again, real soon.
Well, at least the evening hadn’t been a total waste. I decided to give Joe a call and see how he was making out, so I took out my cell and backed into the doorway of a store, to get out of the flow of human traffic on the promenade.
Joe didn’t pick up, and I didn’t feel like leaving a message. I had just hung up when somebody tapped me lightly on the shoulder. I turned to see a girl looking at me, smiling.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Um, why do you ask? Do I look lost?”
“No, but you’re standing here in the store, so …”
I suddenly realized that while dialing, I must have stepped back into the actual store—In the Groove, it was called. It offered lava lamps, incense burners, disco balls, black lights, weird T-shirts, posters, and lots of other novelty items.
“Oh, I get it,” I said. “You work here.”
“Yup. Were you looking for something special?”
“Oh—no! I was just … um, making a phone call.”
“Oh … I see. So, where’s your phone?”
“In my pocket.”
“Aren’t you going to need it? To make a call, I mean?”
“No—um, I tried to call my brother, but he didn’t pick up.”
“Ah. Well, let me know if I can help you with anything.”
“Wait!” I said.
“Yes?”
First of all, let me say straight up, I am so not good at talking to girls. Especially if they’re staring right at me with huge, gorgeous brown eyes, like this one was.
“You don’t go to Bayport High, do you?” I asked.
“No, I live out in East Bay.”
“My name’s Frank.”
“Adriana,” she said, shaking my hand with her fingertips. “Nice to meet you, Frank.”
“You, um, know if they’re looking for help here?”
“Why, you want a job?”
“Uh, yeah. Part-time. You know.”
“Yeah—most jobs here are part-time.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
For some reason, I always turn into a complete geek whenever I’m face-to-face with a girl I really like.
“You’d have to ask Steph. She’s my boss.”
“Steph?”
“Stephanie Flowers. She’s around here somewhere—probably back in the stockroom. Let me check.”
A minute later Adriana came back, trailed by what I can only describe as someone straight out of the sixties. “Steph,” as Adriana called her, was pretty much a retro-hippie—from her long, braided hair to her fringed suede vest. The vest, by the way, was covered with more than a dozen buttons, most of which were about saving the environment.
In fact, one of them said STEMM—with the two Ms linked. I remembered that was the environmental group Q had told us about—the one that supposedly sent the threatening e-mails to Applegate.
Steph stared me up and down. “Have you got references?”
“Uh …”
“No references, huh?” She frowned and folded her arms. “Well, I guess I could give you a shot. Adriana seems to like you, and she’s got good instincts. And to be honest with you, I could use the help.”
I looked inside the store. There were only two customers, standing at the cash register as Adriana rang up their purchases. “Really?” I said. “It doesn’t look that busy….”
“True, but weekday afternoons, a lot of kids come in here. Besides, I’ve got other things going on right now, and I can’t be stuck here all afternoon and evening. So if you want a job, like I said, I’ll give you a try.”
“Great!” I shook her hand, which had about ten rings on it. “Thanks. When can I start?”
Steph looked at her watch. “Well, it’s almost closing time, so how about you come back tomorrow?”
“Is four o’clock okay? I’ve got school….”
“Great. See you at four … Frank, is it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Frank Hardy.”
“Don’t call me ma’am—call me Steph. Everyone else does.”
We shook hands again. Steph stepped out onto the promenade and looked up at the roof of the mall. It tilted upward on one side, which was almost entirely made up of glass skylights held together by a thin metal frame. Usually the glass let a lot of light through. At the moment, though, the sky was pretty dark.
“It’s going to pour any minute,” said Steph. “I’m outta here. Adriana, will you lock up?”
“Sure thing.”
“Uh, Steph?” I said. “I couldn’t help noticing your buttons.”
“Oh, these? Yeah, I’m pretty ‘out there,’ I know.”
“What does that one mean?” I asked, pointing to the STEMM button.
“Ah—it means Save the East Side Marsh and Mall. I’m the president,” she told me. “We aim to keep this place just as it is—safe for animals and people.”
“You know,” I said, taking a chance, “I heard something about e-mails to the owner of this mall, warning him not to sell. Weren’t they supposed to have come from STEMM?”
Steph stared at me, her expression as dark as the sky overhead. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I don’t remember,” I lied. “But is it true?”
“Definitely not! That rumor is just a bunch of baloney, spread by the forces of evil.”
The forces of evil?
Right on cue, there was a tremendous clap of thunder, and rain started pouring down on the roof, pattering loudly on the glass skylights.
“Somebody else is signing our name to those messages!” Steph insisted.
“Why would they do that?” I asked.
“To make us look bad, of course! And so that the city council and the mayor will approve the sale of the mall.”
“But aren’t they already in favor of the sale?” I asked.
Uh-oh. Now I’d gone and made Steph mad. Her face got all red, and she wagged her finger in my face. “If this place gets sold to Shangri-La, you know what comes next?”
“Uh, no. What?”
“I’ll tell you what comes next—stores like this one will disappear from the new mall, and so will the kind of customers it draws. Teenagers and young adults will be just as endangered around here as the creatures who live in the marsh outside! Well, let me tell you something, Frank—that is never going to happen.”
Steph sure seemed committed to her cause. I had to wonder if, in spite of what she said, she really could be trusted to stay nonviolent if things came to a crisis. From the fiery look in her eyes, and the hot tone of her voice, I got the impression that she had a pretty explosive temper.
After Steph had gone, Adriana said, “She gets a little worked up sometimes, but she’s really pretty nice. You’ll see.”
Yeah, I thought. Pretty nice, if you’re on her good side.
Adriana showed me around the store for about fifteen minutes. By the time closing time rolled around, the rain had let up, and the sky was getting a little brighter.
She got out her keys, and we stepped out onto the promenade so she could lock up. I was kind of hoping she’d let me walk her to her car. That way, I could get to know her better—and question her some more about the case, of course.
As I waited, I heard a cracking noise coming from above my head—a noise that sounded like …
I looked up, just in time to see a huge pane of glass separate from the ceiling and come hurtling down, headed right for us!