Chapter 7
Lester loved a good drama and gleefully became one of the most prolific conduits of rumors and innuendo at the store. He stumbled into the Buy More one morning, bleary and smelling strongly of weed with news to share. He stayed late at Bennigan’s and had a drink with a stock girl from Underpants, etc. They shared an interest in true crime, or at least one particular crime, and with the rumors circulating around the Buy More Plaza she was intrigued to meet someone who worked with the missing Buy More employee. Their dollar margaritas turned into a doobie shared in her Camry.
Lester didn’t recognize her, but who was he to turn down a gift like that?
“Medium hot chicks cycle through that store faster than the Indy 500,” Jeff commented.
“It’s a training ground for Victoria’s Secret,” Lester offered sagely, and a few of the other men murmured their agreement.
A dopey, euphoric grin settled on Lester’s features and Jeff, of all people, elbowed him back to planet Earth. Lester shook his cloudy head and plowed on with the story.
The Underpants girl knew a FedEx guy whose roommate was also a FedEx guy who delivered sometimes to the Buy More loading dock, and he recently saw a guy matching Chuck’s description talking to another guy by the dumpsters where the security cameras didn’t cover.
Lester related it all in one unbroken breath, like his urgency alone made it true.
“A couple of weeks ago,” he added and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out back. Looked shifty.”
Shifty.
Sarah’s glare bored through Lester with the heat of a blowtorch. Like a random FedEx guy would have any idea what angles the security cameras covered.
Doubly unlikely was the chance a completely unknown woman, hot or otherwise would give Lester the time of day, much less flirt, share her stash and build theory with Lester over the rumored criminal misbehavior of a man she never saw, much less met.
And it was Chuck. The fact that so many of his coworkers couldn’t dismiss the rumors on that basis alone was as bad as the stories themselves.
Sarah seethed. People responsible for serious decisions about U.S. national security were coordinating this farce, people she definitely knew, and most of the Buy Morons were too stupid, too fond of drama in any form and so willfully ignorant of Chuck’s character that they ate the lies up with a spoon.
Casey wondered who Graham sent on that unenviable errand, what echo of Walker’s hot junior spy trainee past earned the privilege of flirting up and sharing an augmented doobie with Lester Patel for the purpose of planting that rumor. Definitely augmented, based on the size of Lester’s pupils, so many hours after the fact. Casey was also certain she was CIA. The NSA had many tools, but hotties on demand were not among them. Whoever the agent was, she was busy. Poisonous little morsels of untruth like that one had been trickling into the store for days.
Lester’s pupils were quite unusually large. Later in the day, mid-RAM upgrade, he passed out in the cage and wet his pants. That level of indiscretion was normally Jeff’s arena. They all stood around in a circle and pondered what to do. Except Sarah and Casey, who huddled in the corner by the roll up door evaluating how successful this tactic might be.
Probably successful enough.
The next day Lester came within an ace of needing a trip to the emergency room when Jeff announced in earshot of Sarah that Lester was writing posts on a Los Angeles crime blog.
The already flushed hue of Sarah’s face drifted dangerously closer to purple.
Casey quietly started boxing up a few items behind the Nerd Herd desk – a couple of staplers, all the pens, a letter opener, a tape gun with a serrated steel cutter, the more obvious implements Sarah might reach for when Lester eventually made the error of speaking directly to her. It was a futile gesture. Casey knew what Sarah wanted to do to Lester she could do with her bare hands, but when Casey wrote the report, he wanted it on the record that he tried.
Lester continued to hold court, oblivious to the danger, digging deeper and shoveling the pile of dirt higher around his head as Sarah boiled internally and Casey pondered ways to make the little man pee his pants. Again.
Morgan had quietly, loudly, methodically, emotionally, faithfully attempted to rebut every venomous insinuation he could for days on end, while the others looked on him with varying degrees of pity. Morgan was at his limit. He cut off Lester’s self-important ramble in a fit of frustration and blurted out the whopper he’d been crafting since the first rumor slithered into the building.
“I can’t listen to this anymore,” Morgan gritted out. “Chuck’s in witness protection.”
The wide-eyed attention of every on-duty employee of the Burbank Buy More pivoted from Lester and landed on Morgan.
Morgan couldn’t be specific, because Chuck didn’t tell him much or the family anything, probably for their own safety, but Morgan unofficially knew that he knew that he knew that Chuck was in witness protection.
The air around the Nerd Herd desk fell very quiet and very still.
Sarah briefly met Casey’s eyes before landing back on Morgan. Chuck’s best friend looked right at her, focused, intent, willing Sarah to play along. Sarah knew for a fact that Morgan had heard nothing of the kind, and Morgan was definitely going to have to explain this tactic but compared to anything planted in Lester’s fetid imagination, this was better.
Sarah swallowed hard and whispered, “You…you really think so?”
Morgan shot up a boy scout salute and just as quickly looked down at his hand. Morgan was never a scout and fumbled between two and three fingers. Ruben told him it was three, and Morgan nodded and held up his hand again.
“I’m telling you, Chuck was worried. He was out running an errand after an install. He didn’t give me details. And after he seemed sorry that he mentioned it, but he said he saw something weird, and then he thought someone followed him back to the store. And then he laughed it off and asked me not to repeat it because it was silly and Ellie would worry. But he was acting weird, right Sarah? He was weird.”
Sarah looked around. Everyone was waiting. Casey nodded very subtly.
“He was too quiet,” she said. Sarah’s voice wavered. “I-I asked him…but he said it was nothing.”
“Last month,” Morgan prompted.
“Yes…” Sarah wiped her eyes. “But I swear, he said it was nothing.”
“Exactly.” Morgan covered his mouth, almost like he was smoothing down his beard, but he lingered over it, considering what to say. “I was at the apartment, a few days later,” Morgan said quietly. “His window was open…it was always open. All I heard was just the tail end of a phone call, but…” Morgan was selling it unbelievably well. He wiped his nose and cleared his throat. A dozen people hung on his every word.
“‘I can’t leave. I can’t just leave.’ That’s what he said.” Morgan shook his head. “I figured someone offered Chuck a new job. People are always in here telling Chuck what a great job he does…telling Big Mike he did a good job. People always say it.”
Over by the counter Big Mike nodded thoughtfully. “All the dang time.”
“Right? And I should have asked him about the call, what it meant. But we were late logging in for a tournament and I didn’t ask. I should have asked.” Morgan wiped his eyes. “The weird thing he saw? It has to be that. And then he said didn’t want to leave? Do you think the people he saw messed with the inventory to make Chuck look bad?”
Sarah’s breath hitched. Everyone heard it, and they watched Morgan gather her up in a hug. He drew a breath like he would say more, but Sarah squeezed him very hard. Morgan got the message. He’d said enough. His coworkers were weighing it against the rumors and Lester’s claim and a quiet murmur of assent trickled through them. A couple of heads nodded. Bunny, ordinarily emotionless, wiped her eyes. It wasn’t a total turnaround, but Morgan had given them another option, and they were considering it.
Casey observed his coworkers with carefully guarded satisfaction. Morgan’s vague, frustrated pronouncement had landed with more weight than the rumors and more authority than anything, Lester said under the influence of weed, ecstasy, hormones or stupidity.
Big Mike’s attention drifted from Morgan and Sarah and landed on Casey for ten full seconds, before he turned and walked to his office and closed the door.
Skip hardly talked to customers, much less his coworkers. He would keel over from embarrassment before he touched Sarah, but he did manage to pat Morgan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, man…”
Sarah squeezed Morgan’s arm, hard. Not another word.
She needed a moment. Or Chuck’s girlfriend needed one. Both, really, and she skirted around the Nerd Herd desk and disappeared into the back hall.
Casey gave her a little while and went to find her. Morgan hovered near the Employee Only door, equally afraid to interrupt Sarah after that bomb and not be nearby if she wanted to talk it out.
The major wasn’t big on personal gestures, and certainly not among the Buy Morons, but Morgan had done his best friend a solid, even if Chuck would never know it. And if Morgan’s lie made tolerating the public fallout even one percent easier for Ellie, it was a good thing.
“Good job, Grimes” Casey murmured.
Morgan blinked, terrified of what he had done. “You think so?”
“I said it, didn’t I?” Casey clapped Morgan on the shoulder. “Let me take this one,” he said and headed down the hall to find Sarah.
Casey’s brief, breakroom visit with his partner included one point that Sarah already wholeheartedly agreed with – Ellie needed to know that happened.
Sarah’s first visits to Echo Park after Chuck was taken were tense and awkward as Ellie, Devon and Sarah grappled quietly and miserably with the truth and Morgan wrestled loudly with the lie. It got incrementally easier, which was awful in its own way.
Now Morgan had a lie of his own.
That night Morgan showed up for his nightly pilgrimage to Echo Park with Sarah in tow.
“I told a lie at the store,” Morgan blurted as Ellie opened the door. “They’re telling lies about Chuck, and I can’t freaking stand it, so I told a lie, too.”
Morgan told his fabrication again and Ellie cried and gave Morgan the longest hug in the history of their acquaintance, by over a minute.
“I forgive you for the hiding under the bed and the junior prom pillow thing, and I love you,” Ellie whispered as she squeezed Chuck’s best friend.
“You were very pretty,” Morgan said with an audible swallow. “Still are. It’s a terrible excuse. It’s the only excuse I have. I’ll do better.”
Ellie hugged him harder and wept.
Awesome said, “Dude,” several times with successively more disbelief and appreciation.
Sarah went to stand by the patio door by herself, because she was leaking from every emotion. Chuck’s best friend, who made $10.70 an hour selling blenders and dust busters, might have upended the government’s defamatory narrative, at least within the walls of the Buy More.
Sarah hoped Graham was watching when it happened and had an aneurysm from the stress.
Word of Morgan’s witness protection story got back to the police in record time, but they brushed off as exactly what it was, the desperate attempt of a man to preserve his friend’s reputation. There were dozens of other rumors swirling around, and Morgan’s story was just another one, but it gave his coworkers something to lean into.
Through subsequent trips to the precinct, Ellie and Devon roundly denied Chuck’s guilt and demanded over and over that the LAPD find their missing brother. Morgan cried foul to the cops as loud as the family. Never in a million lifetimes would he believe any of the garbage being cast at Chuck’s reputation. Morgan likely wouldn’t believe it if the LAPD papered his forehead with Chuck’s signed confession.
Sarah decried the notion that Chuck would play any part in the theft on par with Ellie and Devon, more loudly than her superiors liked. Casey was only questioned once, and his support was quieter and more sarcastic. Bartowski wouldn’t know how to steal a stick of gum, much less a store full of laptops. Chuck involved in the theft? That was total crap.
During one visit to the precinct, they all rode together, Devon, Ellie, Sarah and Morgan. The boys sat up front, and in the back seat Ellie squeezed Sarah’s hand until it hurt. The detective returned Devon’s grandmother’s diamond ring that afternoon because Devon only reported it missing, not stolen, and it wasn’t Buy More inventory.
Devon took it from the officer and in the next moment placed it on Ellie’s finger where it belonged.
Trips to the station mostly left Ellie, Devon and Sarah angry, and but for the immediate aftermath of the ring, that held. Morgan cried all the way home.
It was all too loud, and too messy. During the agents’ next update with the bosses, Beckman did most of the talking while Graham seethed in the background. An abrupt departure by Agents Casey and Walker would have resulted in even more unwanted speculation. The powers that be agreed. Meaning Beckman already believed that and Graham grudgingly acquiesced. Extremely reluctantly. By way of a nod, not an actual verbal affirmation. Wearing an immovable scowl.
In a moment of willful spite, Casey pointed out that disappearing a widely known and well-loved man with an explanation that in absolutely no way lined up with his character was maybe the stupidest bit of intelligence work ever. Character being the operative word. Chuck had it, in spades. As red herrings went, the theft was a convenient distraction, but patently ridiculous, and Chuck Bartowski was not a ridiculous man. Casey noted that Morgan’s witness protection angle was gaining more traction with the rank and file than the plan developed by the nation’s two most prestigious intelligence agencies.
That didn’t sit well in Washington.
Casey was tired of it all. For days, he stood on the fringes of the in-store drama, arms crossed, with smoke coming out of his ears. John seemed to Mike Tucker like a man who knew things, and what John knew was that he was angry. Big Mike’s eyes met John’s a few times across the store, and an odd sort of understanding passed between them. John Casey thought something stunk to high heaven and the unending theorizing among the Buy More staff had him looking like he was ready to throw a BeastMaster.
For however overwhelmed Mike was at the outset, and whatever regrettable things he might have said out of sheer panic on the first day or two, upon serious reflection, bolstered by Morgan’s convincing falsehood, he just saw no way that a fine young man like Chuck Barowski would do it; steal what did not belong to him and break so many hearts in the process – Grimes, blondie, and especially the sister. There was just no way.
One afternoon, Big Mike finally worked up the nerve to cross the DVD section and sidle up to the man whose undisguised disdain was preventing nearly every person on staff from speaking to him, much less looking his direction.
“Hey John, what’s on your mind, friend?”
Whereas most people hummed and you wondered what their thoughts might be, Casey hummed and you became marginally afraid for your life. Casey’s wordless rumble had Big Mike nodding in wary agreement.
“I know it, I’m at a loss, too, brother. Don’t make a dang bit of sense. Got no idea how the boy coulda done it. It’s too big a job…and Bartowski? I’d a laid odds on anyone else in the store before I got to him. That’s maybe what hurts the most. How do you trust you own judgement when you could be so wrong about a man’s character?” Mike covered his mouth with his fist and for a moment, Casey thought the store manager might puddle up. “Chuck Bartowski is the finest young man I know. If he did this, I don’t know how I can trust anybody anymore. And now Grimes and that story?”
Casey, with his arms perpetually crossed over his chest telegraphing I don’t want to chat, stared at the floor. There was a camera a dozen paces to his right, under the display model for last year’s Panasonic microwave oven. The microphone had a thirty-foot range. Casey looked at it and gritted his teeth. Shook his head. Didn’t care.
“Don’t give up on humanity yet. I wouldn’t pin this on Bartowski, no matter what the cops say.”
Big Mike nodded and held his fist out for a bump. “Right on, pardner.”
Casey’s natural inclination was to leave Mike hanging, but for once, he gave in to social convention and landed a solid bump.
“Right on.”
Casey spotted a couple heading into the large appliances, nodded and left Big Mike in the aisle. Maybe he’d sell one more Beastmaster for old times’ sake.