As usual, the last question is the one that does her in. “I’m sorry,” she says aloud, as though her words could somehow reach Boss Mak. And she is, truly sorry, from the bottom of her heart, but the answer to that question is yes. What was it he used to tell her? “Everyone has a price. The trick is figuring out what it is without overpaying.” Well, she’s unearthed America’s price for her freedom, and that price, not a penny more, nor less, is him.
Her laptop chimes, informing her of a new email. It’s from the hardworking marketing strategist who must have grown impatient waiting for her to return his call. Dazed and queasy, she reaches for the remote and turns off the TV, glad to have something else to do. She clicks on the link to the new website for her fictional family-owned jewelry business, Hopkinton Jewels. The business is based in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, USA (pop. 5,589), a place she landed on after poring over photographs of New England’s famous fall colors. Soon, once their social media pages are up and running, she will visit Beijing’s premier diamond labs, seeking out the perfect partner for their next venture.
She still hasn’t told Ava about these developments, not yet, not when they’re so close. There’ll be plenty of time to catch her up once all this is over.
17
How does it feel, Detective, to finally arrest the man you’ve been tracking all these months? You likely have a better understanding of the breadth of his criminal activities than I do, now that it’s clear that counterfeit handbags are only one small part of his empire.
You took him into custody before he had a chance to pressure Winnie and me to participate in his other ventures, but trust me when I say it would have happened eventually. Our competitors, for instance, had begun streamlining their operations, packing bags of fentanyl pills into their counterfeit purses to save on shipping costs. And if Boss Mak had wanted to implement this, Winnie and I would have had little recourse. As I’ve already said—and as I’d warned Winnie months earlier—they controlled the inventory; we had no choice but to submit to their orders.
So I can say unequivocally that the Maks and Winnie and I were not a team. He was the boss, and we were his employees, or, perhaps more accurately, he was the kingpin, and we were the pawns.
Case in point: when the department stores tightened their return policies last month, and our shoppers went into a panic, and counterfeits piled up on our shelves, do you think the Maks told us to take our time, assess the situation, and come up with a solution? No, they demanded to be paid on schedule, regardless of whether we could put those handbags to use. Does that seem like the attitude of a business partner to you?
At the same time, Detective, I don’t want you to think I gave up Boss Mak as an act of revenge. This is first and foremost about taking responsibility for my actions. Believe me when I say that I would have found my way to you, whether or not you’d found your way to us.
So why did I wait until November 1 to give myself up? That’s a very good question. Because I knew you could arrest me on the spot, and I had to be sure that my son would have someone to take care of him. He’s only three. Sorry, I’m sorry, I never cry. I’m embarrassed, this is so unlike me.
That’s kind of you to offer, but I don’t need a break. I want to keep going. You see, back in September, Maria had decamped for a British expat family in Laurel Heights once Henri started preschool, leaving us without a nanny. Two and a half weeks later, he proceeded to get himself kicked out. (Yes, almost exactly when the department stores caught on to us.)
How did he get expelled, you ask? Well, by crying nonstop for seventeen days straight. And lest you think I’m exaggerating, I can assure you I was there to witness it all. Adhering to school policy, on each and every one of those days, I’d accompany my son to the classroom, plant him in his seat, and tell him I’d return in fifteen minutes. Then I’d wait in the teachers’ lounge for the specified amount of time, come back to check on him, and tell him I’d return in thirty minutes, and then forty-five minutes, and so on and so forth. So I can say for certain that Henri never stopped crying. His stamina was frankly impressive. He’d sit in his chair in the back corner of the room, red-faced and wailing, while the other children sang and danced and played and listened to stories.
On day seventeen, when Principal Florence Lin invited me into her office, nestled her chin in the basket of her hands, and said, He’s young to begin with, keep him at home for another year, all I could do was slump in my chair, exhausted to the point of delirium.
What choice did I have? I took him home and tried to convince Maria to come back. But no matter how much money I offered, she gently but firmly refused. So here I was in the house, alone with my kid, trying to meet Winnie’s demand to figure out a way to get around the department stores’ new policies, while simultaneously soothing our spooked shoppers, all in the couple of hours in the afternoon that the new babysitter dropped in to plant Henri in front of the iPad and talk to her sister on the phone, as though I wouldn’t notice.
As a mother yourself, you must see where I’m coming from. I couldn’t risk getting myself arrested and stranding my son with this indifferent community college student for who knows how long while his father toiled away in Palo Alto. I needed a better plan. I wasn’t foolish enough to think I’d find another Maria, but maybe someone who wasn’t simply in my home to collect a paycheck, someone who actually cared about Henri.
Meanwhile, Winnie was formulating her counterattack against the department stores.
I got it, she said. We’ll hire a white shopper.
I was clearing the lunch dishes while listening to yet another potential nanny read to Henri in the other room. What are you talking about?
If Purse Addict and the others are right that they’re being racially profiled, then we have to adapt. We hire white people.
Focused on extricating myself from this job, I said, All right. Whatever you say.
And that, Detective Georgia Murphy, is what led Winnie to hire you.
Now, perhaps you might fill in a couple of blanks for me. Am I right to deduce that you’d been monitoring our eBay store for some time? That we’d attracted attention by putting out limited editions earlier and earlier, so much so that the brands had begun to take notice? That’s what I feared from the start.
From what I can gather, you purchased one of our bags on eBay—a Mansur Gavriel bucket bag in camel (excellent choice, by the way)—took it to a professional authenticator, and determined it to be the real thing. This raised questions about how we could be turning a profit, since all our bags were listed at, or even slightly below, retail price.
A search for reviews of our store led you to an online forum for handbag fanatics who raved about our merchandise. Digging into different topics on the forum, you came across a thread of disgruntled Neiman’s shoppers who claimed to have been sold knockoffs, which led you to a Reddit community of die-hard replica buyers, which led you to Winnie’s job posting. Have I got it right so far?
As you saw for yourself, Winnie took pains to make the posting look like a generic want ad for secret shoppers, the kind hired by legitimate companies to pose as buyers to help them evaluate their customer experience. It’s only after an applicant had been vetted and hired that Winnie provided further information about our business—and always via an anonymous Telegram account.
On a hunch you posed as an ordinary suburban mom who happened to love high-end replicas and was looking to make some extra cash. Like I said, Winnie was desperate. She hired you at once. She started you off with a basic assignment. You were to go to Bloomingdale’s, pick up a Longchamp Le Pliage in mustard, and ship it to our P.O. box. You swiftly completed the task, prompting her to send the corresponding superfake to your address.