Mall Crime Fiction, with Dick Wisely

Mall security is a lonely job, but I wear my badge proudly, and I'm pretty happy with the name tag too. It says "Dick", and sometimes I can be one.

It was another late night at the Mall, and I was as tired as a volunteer whore at the end of a charity fuckathon. I was walking my rounds lethargically, stumbling past the stores like a zombie who had skipped his morning breakfast of scrambled brains. The java wasn't working so I decided to try the coffee.

I stopped near the deli at the East fork in the Lower Mall, and I glanced slowly across the lobby, catching every detail like an outfielder with a butterfly net. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but that might've been the illusionist standing in front of the joke shop.

I never trusted magicians, because they always had something up their sleeves, even if that was part of their act. There's just something wrong about a man wearing a cape, unless you're a superhero with a good tailor.

I looked over at the magician casually, because I never liked the formal look. He was a shifty-looking fellow, the kinda guy who won't mix his vegetables. He looked like he had a chip on his shoulder--potato by the looks of it. And the bag of Lay's in his hand confirmed it. I knew this guy was no good, even without checking his "best before" date.

My highly-trained security guard senses started tingling, but I think that my bootlaces were pulled too tight. I grew suspicious, like a farmer grows lettuce, only suspicion wasn't something you could buy at the supermarket, unless it was specially ordered. I knew this guy was as rotten as a certain type of fruit you'd find at the bottom of some kind of barrel.

It might've been coincidence, or just two things that were happening by chance at the same time, but this magician's appearance coincided with the disappearance of the wishing fountain coins. For two weeks the fountain had been cleaned out every night like a poker player's bankroll on a run of bad luck.

Call it a hunch, but I think it was just my own bad posture. I think the magician was involved, or maybe he was seeing someone. Either way I think there was a connection between him and the missing money.

I checked with the clerk at the magazine shop across the hallway, and it turns out the magic man had been purchasing his potato chips with pennies, a hundred and sixty-nine of them at a time.

I walked over to the magician, advancing a step each time my other foot touched a floor tile. I noticed that his pants pockets were wet, like he'd filled them full of water, or wet coins freshly pulled from a fountain that had once held coins, wet ones, until it didn't, because they'd been plucked. That was all the proof I needed.

I wrung a confession out of him, at the same time he was wringing the water out of his socks. He tried to sell me an excuse, but I wasn't buying it, because I didn't carry cash and my Visa was at its limit. But just like the novelty drinking glasses sold at the joke shop, the magician's story couldn't hold water.

He started waving his stick at me, like some sort of wand, so I cuffed him, and then I put on the handcuffs. I made him disappear from the Mall faster than a rabbit in some sort of magic act. After that, the joke shop promised to make reparations, but I hoped they would make up for the wrong-doings. It looked like another Mall mystery solved.

If I haven't already told you, my name is Dick, and I can be a real pain in the ass.