another woman, a few minutes later, grabbed the same purse and asked, "Is this Chanel?" to which he also responded, "Yes." Whatever it takes to make a sale; tell them what they want to hear. Where the hell was the raid team? It had been almost fifteen minutes. No one spends that much time in a store the size of a minivan unless considering a major purchase, in which case I probably would have approached the salesman by now. But I didn't want to engage him for fear he'd later suspect my involvement, and then, suddenly, oh my God I was the only other person in the store, but, phew, he went outside, and . . . Shu- ku- ku- ku- CLANG! The pleather purses are manufactured for pennies, either in China or in sweatshops, and, obviously, not taxed. Markups can reach eight thousand percent. Salesmen, leases, aliases, and passports are all a dime a dozen; the crooks only cared about the bags -- not for their actual worth, but rather their potential, imagined worth. In this never- ending battle, the contraband was our Jerusalem: All sides revolved around it, gained definition from it, and, therefore, assigned it a value far greater than its face. That's why I was locked inside. Vendors protected their holy crap. They were familiar with raids, so if they saw the team approach -- it's hard to miss six beefy mustachioed Irish dudes rolling out of a white van like a clown car of sports