“Keresey who?” It’s Kevin. He’s so concerned about what Franklin and I might say. He’s the one who should keep his mouth shut.
“Yes, Keresey who?” Yens says. He crosses his arms in front of him, expression almost sardonic. Waiting.
I wonder if he really doesn’t know her. Or if he’s just trying to find out how much we know about the FBI’s counterfeit operation. How many Kereseys can there be?
“Keresey Stone of the FBI,” I say, then stop. I’m the reporter. Stay on the offense. “Do the state police have an undercover operation? Looking into counterfeit purses? Is Katie Harkins undercover for you? Did she go missing on assignment?”
Yens looks amused.
“Good try, Charlie,” he says, emphasizing that he’s using my first name again. “We’re done here. You’ll call me if you hear anything.”
“They will not,” Kevin says. “They’ll call me. Then we’ll decide where to go from there. Susannah, will you show the detective the way to the front door?”
When Kevin turns around to watch the two depart, I whirl to the TV monitor behind me. The tape is still rolling, but the video is over and the screen is, thankfully, black. Who knows how long it’s been that way. I punch the red stop button. Click the power switch to off. Franklin gives me a congratulatory nod. And by that time, I have a plan.
Chapter Eleven
“So what do you think, Kevin?” Now the parade is going the other direction. Franklin and I are accompanying Kevin back to his office. I think I can parlay Detective Yens’s visit into an open door for us to get permission to change our purse story into a real investigation of the distribution system, showing the teeming black market kept thriving by greedy suppliers and fashion-addicted women.
I just have to lure Kevin into thinking it was his idea. Talking in bullet points so he can understand, I’ve told him about our visit to the FBI and Keresey’s undercover work. I’ve told him about our potential access to the Delleton-Marachelle design studio in Atlanta. I’ve described the purse parties we could have access to. Of course, I left out the part about how I’d already been to one. Now I have to see if I can reel Kevin in.
“Do you think you could get into one of those parties? Maybe with a hidden camera?” Kevin asks. He opens the glass door to his office and gestures us in.
“Well, sure I do,” I say, nodding oh-so-thoughtfully. “Don’t you, Franklin?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” he replies. “We even have that new camera. In fact, I was fooling around with it and I…”
He pauses. I can almost hear his brain recalculating.
“I signed it out of the engineering department, just the other day,” he picks up his sentence. “To make sure we know how to operate it properly. So, I’d say we’re all systems go. If Charlie is comfortable.”
“Oh, sure,” I say again. “If it’s all right with Kevin.”
“You’d have to be in disguise,” Kevin says, swiveling in his black leather I’m-an-executive chair. His desk is stacked with resumé DVDs. In front of him is a legal pad with a list of something I wish I could read. “You’re so well known. How would you pull that off, Charlie?”
“Well, I think I could manage to look different enough. And, maybe, we could go out of the viewing area. Right, Franklin?”
Franklin nods. He’s shifting, trying to get comfortable on the wooden arm of Kevin’s ultramodern couch.
“And what are you efforting for this Atlanta shoot?” Kevin continues. “We’d have to pay for plane tickets, for an out-of-town photographer, hotel rooms. How will that be cost-effective? Can’t you just do it by phone?”
“Oh, no way,” I say. Hoping I’m right. “We’re getting unprecedented access to the manufacturing and design process. Hoping for interviews with big shot, execs, designers. They’ll explain how colossally detrimental the knockoffs are to legit businesses.”
“We can’t get to the bottom of it, of course,” Franklin says. “Even the FBI admits, it’s basically unstoppable. But the D-M people will show us evidence seized from the cargo ships that bring the stuff into the U.S. Huge containers crammed with fake bags. Customs nabs them, usually in L.A. But they know they barely make a dent. And we’re getting exclusive stuff.”
My turn at bat. “And also, of course, how the companies are taking law enforcement into their own hands. Forming their own in-house purse police. Tracking down the bad guys. Becoming kind of fashion vigilantes.”
“Fashion vigilantes,” Kevin repeats. “I like it.”
“Problem is,” I say. Going for the kill. “Susannah says she wants just the feature. I wonder if she might not be happy with the bigger story.”
“I’m the news director,” Kevin says. “She doesn’t need to know everything we do.”
I’m trying to keep a straight face. And I can’t possibly risk a peek at Franklin, who I’m sure is amused by Kevin’s insistence he’s in charge. But I’ve never been quite comfortable with hiding what we’re doing from management. If Kevin now gives us the go-ahead, he’ll never know we had already gone ahead without him.
“When a true journalist gets turned on to a big story, it’s our job to do it right,” Kevin says. From on high. “Not doing our job if we turn our backs on it. It may be tough, but you know the old saying. When the going gets tough-” He looks at me, as if to make sure I know how to finish the line.
And I know he expects me to say “the tough get going.”
But I don’t.
“The tough go shopping,” I say.
“Well done, Charlotte,” Franklin says. “At least now we’re not faking it.”
“Yup,” I say. “Telling the truth is always my first choice. It just doesn’t always work when you’re an investigative reporter.”
I throw my briefcase and purse into the backseat of Franklin’s immaculate silver Passat. Both car doors slam, and Franklin maneuvers us out through the overcrowded obstacle course of news trucks and microwave vans in Channel 3’s cramped basement parking lot.
“What does Keresey want anyway? Why do you think she’s asking to meet us out of her office?”
“Why are you asking me?” Franklin holds up the gizmo to open the garage door, pointing, then clicking. He eases the Passat up the ramp and into the sunlight. “The message was on your phone.”
“Just brainstorming,” I reply. “We can ask her about the raids, at least.”
“Yeah, good idea. I couldn’t find any mention of any enforcement actions that had resulted in agents being killed. Nothing. There were some Justice Department news releases about seizures of counterfeit goods. Lattimer’s successful bust in Atlanta. But nothing in warehouses.”
As we pull out into traffic and head toward our destination, I buzz down my window, hoping to let in the autumn day. Instead, I hear car horns blaring, irate drivers yelling at kamikaze bike messengers, crosswalk-ignoring pedestrians swearing as they claim the whole of Cambridge Street as their personal domain.
“I suppose they only put out press releases when something goes right. If an agent were killed in the line of duty, but the mission failed, maybe they’d just keep it quiet.”
“Maybe. And of course ‘Operation Knockoff’…” he looks at me, raising his eyebrows to scorn the pretentious name “…is still a work in progress. So maybe all of it’s still hush-hush.”
“There she is,” I say, pointing to a familiar shape. “See? Keresey’s on the sidewalk. Over there. Right under the entrance to the Charles Street T Station. You don’t think she’s expecting us to get on the train, do you? You have tokens?”
Franklin taps his car horn and Keresey looks up. Recognizing us, she points us to the Longfellow Bridge, the one everyone calls the “salt and pepper” bridge because of the huge shaker-shaped pedestals that line the edges.
I wave at her, signaling we understand. Genius Franklin even finds a legal-legal for thirty minutes at least-parking place in front of Mass General Hospital. We hurry to catch up with Keresey, who’s leaning back against the rusting wrought iron sidewalk railing and staring out over the street to the river beyond. She’s dressed in blue jeans tucked into high-heeled black boots and a dark chocolate leather jacket. Flat messenger bag over one shoulder. Sunglasses, baseball cap, blond ponytail. No necklace of ID tags.