out on credit as it is, and I only order what I know for certain'll move.' He held up a nut. 'Screws and nuts, bolts and nails. Mollies. Pipe and lumber.'
Bill looked around, noticing for the first time that the shelves of many of the aisles were bare, the end displays empty.
'You don't have any kind of plastic sheets that I could use to cover my roof? No rolls of anything?'
'Nope.' Richardson shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. 'I wish I could help you, Bill. I honestly do. But times are tough.' He gestured around the quiet store. 'As you can see, the joint ain't exactly jumping.'
'The Store doesn't sell hardware, though, does it?'
'They don't carry lumber, but they carry everything else. And they're lowballing me at every turn.' He waved his hand dismissively. 'I'm sure you've heard it all before.'
Bill nodded. 'That's the sad part. I have.'
'I knew they might cut into my business, you know? I just didn't think it'd happen this fast. I mean, shit, I've been here since 1960. I've weathered a lot of trends.' He shook his head, looked up. 'And I thought people would be more loyal. I don't expect pity or charity, but I always considered my customers my friends, and I thought that would count for something. I didn't think they'd abandon me over a few pennies' price difference. It hurts, you know?'
They were silent for a moment, the only sound amplified rain on the tin roof. 'You don't have anything to help me with the leak?'
'I could order some tarps. Be here in half a week, maybe five days.'
'I'd like to wait,' Bill said. 'But it's kind of an emergency. I need it now.' Richardson sighed. 'Go ahead. Hit The Store. Everyone else does.'
Bill thought for a moment. 'You know what? I'll hold off on the tar and the tar paper. Why don't you order some for me. I don't need to fix the roof instantly, anyway. And I should wait until it dries out. I'll just get a cheapo tarp at The Store, keep the water out until the rain stops. It'll work temporarily.'
'You're a stand-up guy,' Richardson said gratefully.
Bill smiled. 'No, but I can fake it.'
The Store had quite a selection of tarps and plastic sheeting. There was even a Home Raincoat, a monstrous piece of waterproofed canvas that was specifically designed to fit over the roof of a house. But Bill bought four packages of the cheapest tarps he could find, did not take advantage of the two for-one sale on rolls of tar paper, and quickly sped home, where he climbed up on the roof and spent the next two hours trying to weight down the tarps with rocks he salvaged from the forest behind the house.
His efforts paid off, however, and when he walked into the bathroom, the leak had stopped.
'Fixed!' he announced.
'For now,' Ginny said.
'I've ordered some roofing supplies from Richardson. Once the rain stops, I'll patch it.'
'I've heard that one before.'
He slapped her rear end, making her jump, then, before she could hit him back, ran past her into the bedroom to change into some dry clothes.
Ginny and the girls spent the afternoon watching soap operas and talk shows in the living room, while he retired to his office and dialed up Freelink.
There'd been a shooting at one of The Stores in Nevada last week, and he'd been keeping up with all of the current events surrounding the various Store shootings over the past six months, but even though he was writing documentation for a Store system, he'd never really bothered to check into the history of the company.
Until now.
He accessed Freelink's Business Information database, and downloaded everything about The Store that he could find.
He read it all.
According to articles from the _Wall Street Journal_, _Business Week_, _Forbes_, the _Houston Chronicle_, and _American Entrepreneur_, The Store began as a small mercantile in West Texas in the late 1950s. Newman King owned a single shop on a virtually untraveled dirt road, miles from the nearest town.
Through word of mouth and, eventually, a series of billboards that he erected on major highways, The Store became something of a tourist spot, a must-see stop for easterners heading west on vacation. People were initially amused by the mercantile's humorously bland name and by the incongruity of its desolate location and up-to-the- minute stock, but they bought in droves. King kept his prices low and his selection large, and his combination of business acumen and self-promotion caused profits to shoot through the roof. Eventually he opened another store -- also on a small back road.
By the mid-1960s, he owned a regional chain of discount retail outlets and had joined Texas's rank of self- made millionaires. There were scattered complaints from competitors of hardball tactics -- bribes and intimidation, illegal business practices -- but there was nothing provable and nothing stuck.
Taking his cue from Sam Walton and Wal-Mart, King began opening big, modern stores in towns that previously had only small, local markets. He would not go into a town that had a Wal-Mart or a Kmart, or even a Woolworth's or Newberry's, but in towns with only local competition, he would dazzle the locals with state-of-the- art products and contemporary fashions and items that had previously been available to them only through catalogs.
And they would buy.
Sometime within the next two decades, King dropped from sight. He had gradually become more reclusive over the years, the press conferences that had once been de rigueur before each and every Store opening dwindling to four, then two, then one a year.
There were accusations from former employees that The Store was more like a cult than a place of employment, that bizarre tests were required to get a job at The Store, that participation in strange rituals was mandatory for all management trainees, that any attempt to either quit or go public with nonflattering information was met with well-organized retaliation. King remained in hiding, would not publicly respond to any accusations, but no charges were ever filed, many of the accusers were discredited or disappeared, and after that brief flurry no complaints were ever brought up again by any subsequent employees.
In the mid-eighties, The Store's corporate headquarters moved from a nondescript series of offices in El Paso to a huge black twenty-story skyscraper in Dallas that was dubbed The Black Tower by friend and foe alike. Still, there was no attempt made to expand The Store's base, to move into larger cities or metropolitan areas.
King's reported eccentricity and mysterious private life -- he was rumored to live alone in a concrete bunker under the desert, afraid of being exposed to ultraviolet rays because of the depleted ozone layer, afraid of breathing anything but specially filtered air -- not only created an air of mystique but tapped into the public's never-flagging interest in the Howard Hughesian rich and strange. There was speculation on Wall Street that King was staging all of this in order to gain name recognition and from there move on into other ventures, but he continued his slow progress throughout the country, opening Stores only in small rural towns.
And now The Store had come to Juniper.
Bill stopped reading, rubbing his tired eyes. The articles were mostly from financial publications, focusing on the nuts-and-bolts of the business, so the emphasis was not on muckraking or human interest and there was nothing overtly negative about Newman King or The Store. But there was still enough between the lines to put him on guard.
Bribes, threats, and intimidation? A cult? If those aspects were even mentioned in articles focusing on the financial world, it meant that they were more than merely idle speculation or isolated charges. And combined with his own thoughts, feelings, and observations, they painted a rather frightening picture.
The phone rang and Bill picked it up. 'Hello?'
It was Ben.
'Richardson's burned down,' the editor said.
'What?'
'I just came back from taking pictures. The fire guys're still there. The rain's helping, but the lumber was covered and it went up like a tinderbox.'
'Is --'
'Richardson's dead. He was trapped in the blaze.'
