Air Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan Page B

picking up a bargain deal on a knockoff Prada?” He taps on the poster again. “Think they realize they may have paid for this?”
    “Brass brought me up here to clean up this mess.” Lattimer leans toward us, palms down, over his expanse of government-issue, beige metal desk. “Organizedcrime. In on it, too. Guys with names like Billy the Animal. Kurt the Russian. That’s who’s selling this stuff. And that’s what Susie Suburban doesn’t know. She thinks having one purse party for the gals in her neighborhood won’t hurt anyone.”
    Franklin and I exchange uneasy glances. I’m sure we’ve just thought of the same two things. And we should have thought of them earlier. One of them I’ll bring up now.
    “Is, uh, buying the purses illegal?” I ask.
    “Time to call your congressman,” Lattimer replies. Scornful. “Why? Because it’s perfectly legal to buy the things. And to own them, just for personal use. Until they change the law, that’s what we we’re dealing with. What we’d like to do? Swoop down on one of those unsuspecting housewives and cart her and her purse-happy friends off to the slammer.” A brief look of conquest crosses his face. “That’d send a message.”
    “But you can’t now? I mean, you’d think you could arrest at least the hostess,” Franklin puts in. “Selling the stuff is illegal, right?”
    I grimace, picturing that. And the complications that would ensue. “I guess the headlines might be pretty unpleasant, though: ‘Fashion Police Feds Collar Neighborhood Moms.’”
    “I get my orders from the top,” Lattimer says. “Brass says, we’re going after the big guns. The source. Cut off supply, you kill the demand.”
    Now he’s talking. This is the kind of nitty gritty information we came here to get.
    “So you see our situation,” he continues. “We can’t go to China, close down the big fish there. No jurisdiction. Our U. S. Customs teams intercept what they can at the border. But once these bags get into the States, that’s what we’re targeting. The distribution chain.”
    “So, just for background for our story, may I ask how you’re tracing the products?” I turn to a new page in my notebook, hoping for some inside scoop. “You see these bags all over Canal Street in New York, Downtown Crossing here in Boston, people selling them right out in the open. Where do they get them? Are there warehouses someplace, full of purses? Have you raided them? How do they get to the little fish? When? Where? Who?”
    “Are there records of the raids?” Franklin adds. “If we could analyze, say, your database of searches and seizures…”
    “Classified.” Lattimer says, making a no way gesture with both hands. “No can do.”
    He lifts the World Trade Center photo from the wall, revealing what looks like a wall safe underneath, a number pad imbedded on the wall beside it. He plants himself in front of the pad, ostentatiously blocking our view as if there’s some possibility we’re going to come back into his office later and open the safe. I can tell he’s entering in a code. He moves aside as the metal door clicks open, then reaches in and pulls out a purse. Then another and another and another. He piles them on his desk, a mound of designer logos, camel-and-red plaid fabric, elaborate initials adorned with painted pastel flowers. Susannah would drool over the sleek black quilted-leather pouches and their silver-embroidered interlinked C’ s.
    “All these?” says Lattimer, waving a hand over the contraband. “All fakes. And all purchased at suburban purse parties. All in Massachusetts. Our undercover teams are—Well, stand by.” He pushes a buzzer on his desk phone.
    “Yes, sir,” a voice instantly answers.
    “Send in Agent Stone, please,” Lattimer says.
     
     
    “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.” Agent Keresey Stone sweeps into the SAC’s office, managing to look about as masculine as a centerfold in her FBI regulation