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THE MALL

thousands of dollars' worth of Coach bags at once. Bloomingdale's security people didn't like to upset the store's customers, so when they had a suspicious one, they normally called Watts or his partner, who'd arrange for a discreet traffic stop on a "vehicle code violation" to check out the suspect away from the store. If the shopper was innocent, they'd never know that Bloomingdale's had called the cops on them. Chris's and Shitrit's behavior, though, was so blatant that the store had no worries that they might be innocent. The security team called the police dispatch desk directly to make sure the men didn't get out of the parking lot.

But Watts wasn't buying Chris Aragon's hard-luck story. He'd been a detective for only eight months but a cop for seven years; the first thing he'd done when Aragon came in was run him through NCIC. He'd seen that Chris's criminal record stretched back to the seventies, and technically, he was still on probation from his most recent bust in San Francisco—for credit card fraud.

He figured he had a ringleader in his holding cell. He got a search warrant in a hurry and converged with a team of detectives and uniformed cops at the only address he could find for Chris: Trendsetter USA. One look at the baffled faces of the employees as the cops stormed the door told Watts they were innocent. After some questioning, one of the workers mentioned that their boss, Clara, ran an eBay business in the back office.

Watts opened the storage cabinets in back and took inventory: thirty-one Coach bags, twelve new Canon PowerShot digital cameras, several TomTom GPS navigators, Chanel sunglasses, Palm organizers, and iPods, all new in the box.

Clara walked into the office in the middle of the search and was promptly arrested. In her purse, Watts found several utility bills for an address in Capistrano Beach, all in different names. Clara reluctantly admitted she lived there; her face fell when Watts told her it was his next stop.

With Clara's house keys and a new search warrant in hand, the detectives arrived at the Aragon home and began their search. In Chris's home