Free Suspects by Thomas Berger Page A

shoplifter was being detained.
    Marevitch asked his partner, “Are you old enough to remember the real five-and-dimes?”
    â€œIt wasn’t that long ago, was it?”
    Marevitch was driving the unit. “The one down at Mulhavill and Sixth even had a pet department, at least for birds and goldfish. I loved that place when I was a kid.”
    McCall chuckled. “Now, the pets were before my time.”
    Marevitch swung the car into the parking lot for the strip mall, which was two miles northwest, same road, of where the liquor-store killing had occurred the day before.
    â€œThat’s it,” said McCall. “There in the middle: Just Nickels. That’s a chain, you know. Guy who founded it was really named Nichols. Bet you can’t buy much there any more for five cents.”
    Marevitch stopped in the zebra-striped no-parking zone directly in front of the store. The Just Nickels show windows were all vidéocassettes on one side, assorted novelties on the other.
    A fiftyish man with very dark hair on top but gray sideburns, the latter looking more synthetic than his scalp, awaited them impa-tiendy just inside the door. He wore a plastic name tag on which was printed MR . SAWYER, MANAGER .
    â€œBack here.” The store was empty of customers. He led the of ficers, past some gawking female salespeople, behind a partition in the rear and on to a large storage area, only about a third of which was stacked with cartons. Under a hanging light bulb, the only illumination in the windowless place, stood a husky black man in a security guard’s uniform. He was unarmed, so far as could be seen, but he was conspicuously powerful-looking, tall and wide, with biceps that made blue sausages of his shirtsleeves. A young man much smaller than he in every dimension stood next to him, presumably detained only by the implied threat of what the guard could do to him, for he was under no physical restraint. Stores had to be careful in such matters. They were vulnerable to lawsuits, and not only on the part of those unjustly accused. It was the fashion for professional criminals to sue those who legitimately nabbed them in the act, and not at all unusual for today’s juries to award them hefty damages as victims of brutality.
    Marevitch was prepared to stare narrowly at the security officer: it was not unprecedented to recognize such an individual as a felon you had collared within recent memory, and then you had to decide whether he had really turned his life around or was planning to rob the place from inside. But he knew who this man was.
    â€œHi, Winston.” He put his hand out. “Jack Marevitch. I saw every game you played in.”
    The big man shook hands with a very gentle grip. “Thanks a lot.” His voice was a high tenor, incongruous given his size.
    â€œMeet my partner, Jack McCall. This is Winston Merryweather. He was—”
    â€œYou don’t have to tell me about Winston Merryweather!” McCall cried with enthusiasm. “It’s an honor, Winston. You’re still the best linebacker ever played for the Bulldogs.”
    Merryweather had been a high-school football star a decade or so earlier. He went to State on an athletic scholarship but got badly hurt in his first practice scrimmage and never played again.
    â€œWhat you got here, Winston?” Marevitch asked, looking at the smaller man.
    Mr. Sawyer broke in. “I stopped him at the door. Here.” He showed the officers what the accused had been about to leave the premises with, sans payment: a little rubber duck, yellow of body, red-beaked and blue-eyed.
    â€œWhat have you got to say about this?” Marevitch asked the youth. “Did you steal this toy?”
    The young man had a long scratch on the right side of his face, but it was not fresh enough to have been received in the current encounter. His eyes were slightly bloodshot but very defiant. “I didn’t leave the premises.