Shock Wave

people who would have jobs at the store, taxes that would come out of the store, profits made by the store.
    There were direct and negative movements as well: money lost by people who couldn’t compete with the stores. That money could be in the form of lost profits, or lost jobs.
    “Or lost lives,” Virgil said. “People who lose good jobs in towns like these don’t get them back. Not in town,” Virgil said. “They have to leave. Their whole life is changed.”
    “That, too,” Pye conceded. “But it’s just the way of the world.”
    “What’s the third way?” Virgil asked.
    “That’s the hardest to see, and maybe that’s where you should look, since you’re not finding it in the obvious places,” Pye said. “What it is, is lost opportunity. Somebody saw an opportunity out there, and was counting on it, and somehow the store upset that.”
    “Like what?” Virgil asked.
    “Okay. Say a guy had an idea for a little computer store. Nothing like that in town. So he saves his money, and maybe starts trying to arrange a loan. Then he finds out a PyeMart’s coming in, and he finds out that we have a pretty strong line of computers. All of a sudden, this guy’s bidness plan makes no sense. He can’t get the loan, either. This idea was going to make him rich, and in his head, he was already sailing a yacht on the ocean and hanging out with Tiger Woods. Then somebody took it away from him. Snatched it right away. No actual money moved—no currency, no dollar bills—but potential money moved.”
    “You can’t see potential money,” Virgil said.
    “But it’s real,” Pye said, shaking a fat finger at him. “It’s the thing that drives this whole country. People thinking about money, and how to get it. There are people out there who break their hearts over money. It happens every day. The shrinks talk about sex, and cops talk about drugs, and liberals talk about fundamentalist religion, and the right-wingers talk about creeping socialism, but what people think of, most of the time, is money. When I was the horniest I ever was, and I was a horny rascal, I didn’t think about sex for more’n an hour a day, and I’d spend sixteen hours thinking about money.”
    “But that means that the motive might not have any . . . exterior . . . at all,” Virgil said. “It’s just something in some guy’s head.”
    Pye shrugged: “That’s true. But that doesn’t make it unimportant.”
    “Not a hell of a lot of help, Willard,” Virgil said.
    “It might be, if you ever come up with a good suspect,” Pye said. “Once you get a name, start analyzing his history, talking to his friends and neighbors, there’s a good chance you’ll find his . . . dream.”
    “Which you stepped on,” Virgil said.
    Pye shrugged again, waved his hand at the raw dirt and the concrete pads: “This is my dream. Why shouldn’t I have my dream?”
     
     
    VIRGIL HAD A FEW ANSWERS to that, but didn’t feel like tangling with Pye right at the moment. So he said good-bye to Pye and Chapman, and headed back to his truck. Halfway into downtown, he took a call from Jenkins, the BCA investigator.
    “All done. We’re going over to a place called Bunson’s. You know where it is?”
    “I can find it,” Virgil said, which he could, having eaten almost all of his meals there. “You get both Martin and Gore?”
    “Yeah. Gore put up a fight, but we clubbed her to her knees, cuffed her. I don’t know how she got those bruises on her face; probably a domestic squabble.”
    “You’re joking,” Virgil said.
    “Of course I am,” Jenkins said. “I only said that because you’d be worried that I wasn’t.”
    “I’ll see you at Bunson’s,” Virgil said.
     
     
    JENKINS AND SHRAKE WERE PARTNERS of long standing, both big men who dressed in sharp suits that looked like they might have fallen off a truck in Little Italy, and were referred to as “the thugs” around the BCA. They were often used for hard takedowns; they were fairly easygoing, when not actually involved in a fight.
    Virgil found them talking over beers at Bunson’s, took a chair, ordered a beer of his own, and asked how it had gone.
    “Routine, but you know—you feel a little bad,” Shrake said. “They were both crying and pleading. It’s not like busting some asshole who knows the rules.”
    “I didn’t feel that bad,” Jenkins said.
    “That’s because you’re cruel, and you enjoy the spectacle of other human beings in pain,” Shrake said.