did the same thing.
'It's a pay phone,' she said.
Not good news, but not unexpected either. 'Do you know where?'
'The Grand Mercado Mall in Bala-Cynwyd.'
'A mall?'
'Yes.'
'You're sure?'
'That's what it says.'
'Where in the mall?'
'I have no idea. You think they list it 'between Sears and Victoria's Secret'?'
This made no sense. A mall? The kidnapper had dragged Chad Coldren to a mall and made him scream into a phone?
'Thanks, Lisa.'
He hung up and turned back toward the porch. Win was standing directly behind him. His arms were folded, his body, as always, completely relaxed.
'The kidnapper called,' Myron said.
'So I overheard.' `
'I could use your help tracking this down.'
'No,' Win said.
'This isn't about your mother, Win.'
Win's face did not change, but something happened to his eyes. 'Careful,' was all he said.
Myron shook his head. 'I have to go. Please make my excuses.' .
'You came here to recruit clients,' Wm said. 'You claimed earlier that you agreed to help the Coldrens in the hopes of representing them.'
'So'?'
'So you are excruciatingly close to landing the world's top golf protTgT. Reason dictates that you stay.'
'l can't.'
Win unfolded his arms, shook his head.
'Will you do one thing for me? To let me know if l'm wasting time or not?'
Win remained still.
'You know how I told you about Chad using his ATM
card?'
'Yes.'
'Get me the security videotape of the transaction,'
he said. 'It may tell me if this whole thing is just a hoax on Chad's part.'
Win turned back to the porch. 'I'll see you at the house tonight.'
Chapter 8
Myron parked at the mall and checked his watch.
Seven forty-five. It had been a very long day and it was still relatively early. He entered through a Macy's and immediately located one of those big table blueprints of the mall. Public telephones were marked with blue locators.
Eleven altogether. Two at the south entrance downstairs.
Two at the north entrance upstairs. Seven at the food court.
Malls were the great American geographical equalizer.
Between shiny anchor stores and beneath excessively flood lit ceilings, Kansas equaled California, New Jersey equaled Nevada, No place was truly more Americana.
Some of the stores inside might be different, but not by much. Athlete's Foot or Foot Locker, Rite Aid or CVS, Williams-Sonoma or Pottery Barn, the Gap or Banana Republic or Old Navy (all, coincidentally, owned by the same people), Waldenbooks or B. Dalton, several anonymous shoe stores, a Radio Shack, a Victoria's Secret, an art gallery with Gorman, McKnight, and Behrens, a museum store of some kind, two record stores all wrapped up in some Orwellian, sleek-chrome neo Roman Forum with chintzy fountains and overstated marble and dentistoffice sculptures and unmanned information booths and fake ferns.
In front of a store selling electric organs and pianos sat an employee dressed in an ill-fitting navy suit and a sailor's cap. He played 'Muskrat Love' on an organ.
Myron was tempted to ask him where Tenille was, but he refrained. Too obvious. Organ stores in malls. Who goes to the mall to buy an organ?
He hurried past the Limited or the Unlimited or the Severely Challenged or something like that. Then Jeans Plus or Jeans Minus or Shirts Only or Pants Only or Tank Top City or something like that. They all looked pretty much the same. They all employed lots of skinny, bored teenagers who stocked shelves with the enthusiasm of a eunuch at an orgy.
There were lots of high school kids draped aboutjust hanging, man and looking very, er, rad. At the risk of sounding like a reverse racist, all the white boys looked the same to him. Baggie shorts. White T-shirts. Unlaced black hundred-dollar high-top sneakers. Baseball cap pulled low with the brim worked into a nifty curve, covering a summer buzzcut. Thin. Lanky. Long-limbed. Pale as a Goya portrait, even in the summer. Poor posture. Eyes that never looked directly at another human being. Uncomfortable eyes. Slightly scared eyes.
He passed a hair salon called Snip Away, which sounded more like a vasectomy clinic than a beauty parlor.
The Snip Away beauticians were either reformed mall girls or guys named Mario whose fathers were named Sal.
Two patrons sat in a window one getting a perm, the other a bleach job. Who wanted that? Who wanted to sit in a window and have the whole world watch you get your hair done?
He took an escalator up past a plastic garden complete with plastic vines to the crowned jewel of the mall: the food court. lt was fairly empty now, the dinner crowd long since gone. Food courts were the final outpost of the . great American melting pot. Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, Middle Eastem (or Greek), a deli, a chicken place, one fast food chain like McDonald's (which had the biggest crowd), a frozen yogurt place, and then a few strange offshoots the ones started by people who dream of franchising themselves into becoming the next Ray Kroc. Ethiopian Ecstasy. Sven's Swedish Meatballs.
Curry Up and Eat.
Myron checked for numbers on the seven phones. All had been whited out. Not surprising, the way people abused them nowadays. No problemo either. He took out his cellular phone and punched in the number from the Caller ID. A phone starting ringing immediately.
Bingo.
The one on the far right. Myron picked it up to make sure. 'Hello?' he said. He heard the hello in his cellular phone. Then he said to himself through the cellular, 'Hello, Myron, nice to hear from you.' He decided to stop talking to himself Too early in the evening to be this goofy.
He hung up the phone and looked around. A group of mall girls inhabited a table not far away. They sat in a closed circle with the protectiveness of coyotes during mating season.
Of the food stands, Sven's Swedish Meatballs had the best view of the phone. Myron approached. Two men worked the booth. They both had dark hair and dark skin and Saddam Hussein mustaches. One's name tag read T Mustafa. The other Achmed.
'Which one of you is Sven?' he asked.
No smiles.
Myron asked about the phone. Mustafa and Achmed were less than helpful. Mustafa snapped that he worked for a living, and didn't watch phones. Achmed gestured and cursed him in a foreign tongue.
'I'm not much of a linguist,' Myron said, 'but that didn't sound like Swedish.'
Death glares.
'Bye now. I'll be sure to tell all my friends.'
Myron turned toward the table of mall girls. They all quickly looked down, like rats scurrying in the glare of a flashlight. He stepped toward them. Their eyes darted to and fro with what they must have thought were
