He passed the receptionist's desk at a pace that made her look up. "Please let the retail oversight team know I'm going downstairs," he said. "Ask them to pull the live customer-service incident log for Bellweather, and don't alert the store until I've seen what's happening." He did not yet know the cause of the problem, but the caution came from long experience: when a senior manager was given advance warning of an incident, the scene sometimes changed before the facts could be preserved.
The elevator ride took less than a minute. Richard watched the floor numbers descend and thought of David standing beside him in this same building twenty years earlier, both of them carrying tape measures because they could not afford to pay an outside consultant to tell them whether the retail ceilings were high enough for a tenant's plans. Back then David had done his own negotiating and occasionally his own painting. Richard respected him not because he controlled valuable property, but because he had never been embarrassed by the work it took to make that property valuable.
When the elevator doors opened, Richard saw a small group of people near Bellweather's central counter. He recognized Victor immediately, his shoulders squared in an attitude that suggested he was managing a difficult customer. Then Richard saw David, standing beside a tray of necklaces with a worn photograph on the velvet, and his face changed. He crossed the polished lobby quickly, no longer pretending this was an ordinary management visit.
"Mr. David," Richard said, the old familiar form of address escaping before he could catch it. "I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting. What happened?" Victor turned with visible relief, assuming at first that Richard had arrived to deal with the troublesome customer and not to ask him for an explanation.
"Sir," Victor began eagerly, "I'm dealing with a customer using a fake card. He was attempting to make a substantial purchase with suspicious identification, and one of our junior employees has been interfering with the proper procedure." Richard's eyes moved from Victor's hands to the scissors on the counter, then to David's calm expression. "Did you verify the card with the bank?" he asked.
"I didn't need to," Victor replied. "I saw the way he was dressed, and the card didn't even have embossed numbers. It was obvious." The sentence came out confidently, as though Richard would admire his efficiency. Instead, Richard went still.
"You made a determination about a customer's bank card because of his jacket?" Richard asked. Victor shifted his weight. "The presentation was inconsistent with a luxury card," he answered, falling back on the phrasing he used in reports when he wanted prejudice to sound like expertise.
Richard looked down at the fragments. "And you cut it apart without attempting a transaction?" Victor glanced at Emma for support, but she met his gaze without lowering her eyes. "He had already accused the gentleman of using a fake card," she said. "I asked him to try the terminal or call the bank. He refused and cut it instead."