Shock Wave

ABOUT THAT, ordered dinner, steaks and potatoes, and talked some more about it, and then Virgil said, “You know, a lot of people think Willard bribed the mayor and city council to approve the zoning change for the store.”
    “I know.” She said nothing more.
    Virgil waited for a minute, then asked, “What do you think about that?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. She stopped talking as the food arrived, and when the waiter went away, she continued: “There was a situation in Indiana where a PyeMart construction expediter was charged with bribing members of a city council. This was four or five years ago. He was convicted and was sentenced to a year in jail. Willard said he didn’t know anything about it. I believe him, but . . .”
    “What’s an expediter?” Virgil asked.
    “PyeMart only goes into a town after a lot of market research—especially if there’s already a Walmart,” she explained. “Their target markets overlap somewhat. Margins are pretty low, and they want to make sure the store will make a profit. After the market research is done, if they decide that the market will handle the store, then an expediter is appointed. He fronts the company to the town—finds out what will be needed to get the store built. Local regulations, zoning, makes contacts with city officials and building-supply places. PyeMart tries to get the actual construction work done locally, and supplied locally, because that’s an economic point that the town will have to consider.”
    “This guy expedited the store by bribing the city council?”
    “Apparently. There was a slush fund in the construction department, and some of the slush got transferred to the councilmen,” Chapman said. “Willard said he never knew. I believe him on that exact point, but I also know that expediters are paid a lot of money—a lot more than somebody normally would be at that level. I expect some of that is risk money. Expediters are not expected to come back and say they can’t get the permits to build the store. They get the permits. Period.”
    “So Willard doesn’t know of any specific case of bribery, but at some level, has to know that it goes on,” Virgil said.
    “Willard can be a very sweet man and he’s tremendously loyal to his employees—but he is a ferocious businessman. He does what he thinks he needs to do.” She hesitated, and rolled the bottom of her margarita glass on the tabletop, making a tracery out of a couple drops of water. “We’re now getting into an area that I want to reserve for my book.”
    “So he knows.”
    “I can’t say that. I can tell you that the man, the expediter, who went to jail in Indiana, served eight months of the one-year sentence. When he got out, he landed on his feet: he got a great job with a major paper company, a maker of all kinds of paper products, everything from notebooks to paper plates.”
    “Yeah?”
    “A major supplier to PyeMart,” she said.
    “So the guy got taken care of.”
    “That would be for somebody else to say,” she said. Then, “Are you investigating Willard?”
    “I’m trying to find the bomber,” Virgil said. “But you know there’ve been accusations of bribery . . . you were at the press conference, almost a fistfight there.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you, Virgil, I’ve said about as much as I’m going to say,” Chapman said. “I won’t betray Willard, or go sneaking around to find information for you. If you’re going to investigate him, you’ll have to do it on your own.”
    “Be a good thing for your book,” Virgil said. “You know, if Pye got pitched into some kind of crisis.”
    She looked at him for a long moment, then laughed, a short, choppy sound, and said, “The snake crawls out from behind the surfer-boy smile.”
    “Hey . . . I’m just telling you what’s going on,” Virgil said.
    “We ought to talk about something else,” she said.
    So they did.
    They had a pleasant meal, talked about writing, and about police work, about where they grew up, and about Virgil’s cases—Chapman had access to an excellent news clipping service, and knew about Virgil’s major busts. She was, Virgil thought, an interesting woman, but something had fundamentally changed between them when the word “snake” came out of her mouth. He dropped her at the AmericInn at nine o’clock and, feeling a little melancholy, went on to the sheriff ’s department.
     
     
    OF THE FOURTEEN LETTERS sent out, they’d gotten back