“Working their fingers to the bone in some sweatshop to make a bag, all so some woman from Milford or Westport or Darien can stroll about trying to fool people into thinking she’s worth more than she really is. Do you know where the money goes, Mr. Garber? When a woman here in Milford drops thirty or fifty or a hundred bucks on some bag, do you know where the money ends up? The woman running the purse party will get her cut, of course, but she has to pay her supplier to get those bags. That money goes to produce other knockoffs, but not just other handbags. Counterfeit DVDs, video games, children’s toys-covered with lead paint with parts that can snap off and choke a kid to death-substandard building parts with counterfeit approval stamps on them, even knockoff baby formula, if you can believe that. There are even imitation prescription drugs out there that look like the real thing, even have the same product identification stamps on them, but don’t have the same ingredients, there’s no regulation at all. I’m not talking about less expensive drugs from Canada. I’m talking pharmaceuticals from India, China. Some of these pills, Mr. Garber, they don’t do anything. So you have someone on a limited pension, low income, he can’t afford his heart medication or whatever, he finds what he thinks is the same drug on the Internet, or he buys it off a friend of a friend, starts taking it, next thing you know, he’s dead.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You know who’s making money from all that? Organized criminal organizations. Chinese gangs, Russian gangs, India, Pakistan. You name it. And plenty of good ol’ Americans, too. The FBI says some of this money even gets funneled to terrorist operations.”
“Really,” I said. “Some lady down the street buys a Gucci bag and suddenly we’ve got planes flying into buildings.”
Arthur smiled. “You make light, but I saw the expression on your face, a moment ago, when I mentioned building supplies. You’re a contractor, am I right?”
The words had registered with me, and I may have blinked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Imagine,” he said, “if someone working for you were to install into one of your houses, I don’t know, knockoff electrical components. Parts made in China that look, on the outside, exactly like name-brand ones manufactured and approved for use here, but on the inside they’re just junk. Made with wire of insufficient gauge. They overheat, they short out. Breakers don’t trip. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what might happen.”
I rubbed my hand over my mouth and chin. For a moment, I was back in that smoke-filled basement. “So why are you here? If this is such a big deal, why aren’t the police asking me about this instead of you?”
“We work with the police wherever we can, but they don’t have the resources to deal with this problem. Counterfeit goods are a five-hundred-billion dollar-a-year-business, and that’s probably a conservative estimate. The fashion industry has turned to private security and investigation firms to track down counterfeiters. That’s where I come in. Sometimes, it’s pretty simple. We find a woman who’s been holding purse parties, naively thinking there’s nothing wrong with what she does, and we let her know she’s committing a crime, a federal crime, and that may be enough. She stops, we don’t charge her. Sometimes. When we find shops that are selling these goods, we notify the merchants, and the landlords, that what they’re doing is illegal, and that we’re prepared to bring in the police to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. And we often do. But just the threat of it is often enough to get landlords to act. They get rid of those tenants and bring in ones that obey the law, that sell legitimate merchandise.”
“What about just buying a purse? Owning a knockoff? Is that a crime?”
“No. But would your conscience be clear, if you were a woman and were carrying around a knockoff, and knew that this kind of thing could be happening?” He was looking in the envelope for a couple more pictures. He handed them to me.
“What are-oh Jesus.”
They were crime scene photographs. If I was going to have to look at pictures like these, I would have preferred to see them in black-and-white. But these were in Technicolor. The bodies of two women, pools of blood beneath them. All around them, purses. On tables, hanging from the walls, from the ceiling.
“Dear God.”
I looked at the next picture. A man, apparently shot in the head, his upper body sprawled across a desk. I thrust the pictures back at Twain. “What the hell is this?”
“The women’s names are Pam Steigerwald and Edna Bauder. A couple of tourists from Butler, Pennsylvania. In New York for a girls’ weekend. They were looking for bargain-priced purses on Canal Street and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man is Andy Fong. A merchant, and an importer of knockoff purses manufactured in China.”
“I don’t know anything about these people.”
