The Switch

72

For a moment everything felt unreal. Like the world had abruptly flipped upside down. Tanner felt light-headed. He just stared into the gaping maw of the locker.

Everything was gone. Not just his ratty old gym clothes and his deodorant. Everything.

This couldn’t be happening.

“Is this a joke?” Abbott snapped.

Tanner said nothing. He raced out of the locker room and thundered up the stairs, Abbott following right behind him.

They passed the Zumba-or-kickboxing class, and then Tanner stopped at the manager’s office. The manager was a tall, blond young woman with a strong Polish accent named Agnieszka.

“Can I help?”

“My locker — my locker is empty.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s stuff missing from my locker.” Tanner stared.

“You didn’t see notice?” the manager replied. “I post at entrance to men’s locker. Everyone must to remove contents of lockers by yesterday twelve noon for clean of locker area. Anyone who did not, we remove for you. We cut locks.”

“You removed — where? — where did you put stuff?”

“In lost and found.” She pointed out of her office and down the hall.

Lost and found was just an unmarked closet containing steel-wire shelves heaped with items: a shelf of locks that had been left behind, smelly sneakers, gym clothes. One shelf had some mini iPods and several sets of earphones. Tanner found a pile of his gym clothes and pair of running shoes.

No laptop. No computer.

“No?” Agnieszka said.

“It’s not here,” Tanner said, swallowing hard. “Could someone have put it somewhere else? Like, because it’s a computer, it’s valuable, all that?”

“Everything here,” Agnieszka said. “Valuable, not valuable, all here. No other place.”

“But it’s gone. It’s missing.”

“We don’t assume the liability for the lost or stolen items. Sign says this.”

“Right, I know, but where might someone have put it?”

Agnieszka shrugged. “This is only place. Maybe someone took? I lose two employees last week. I can’t keep cleaners, some reason. Always leaving.”

Will Abbott whirled around to look at Tanner. “You son of a bitch,” he said.

Agnieszka closed the door to the lost and found.

“Sorry,” she said. “Maybe someone steal?” She shrugged as if it didn’t make much difference to her. Might as well have been some pilfered, dirty gym socks. As she walked away, she muttered, “Is not good.”