Popped at the West Side Tower Records

I was waiting on line at the west side Tower Records, at 66th St. and Broadway, when I saw him. He was one of those men of indeterminate age?he could have been anywhere from 25 to 40. His face bore the winter pallor of an urban dweller, and his clothes had a lot of pockets: he wore a parka and parachute pants. He was about 5-10, with a stout body that had to go at least 250 pounds. He was like a lump of dough?a man you would never notice except that now he was sweating profusely and his eyes scanned the store like he was making a jailbreak.

I paid for my records and walked out in front of the man. And as I neared the exit, it went down: two undercover guards materialized out of nowhere, and stepped in front of the guy, directing him toward the side.

"What?" he cried. "What? This is illegal. I didn't do nothing. You can't stop me. I'm a citizen. You have to allow me to walk."

"Okay, citizen, just step over here," one of the guards, a muscular Irish guy, said. He was dressed in a jean jacket and had the look about him of an undercover cop.

The customer didn't like the way this was playing out and decided to use his considerable girth to push his way out the door. I knew this was going to get good, so I stepped to the side to watch. But the customer wasn't going anywhere. The Irish guy was stronger and kept his hand on the man's chest, which stopped him cold.

The other undercover was a Latino man, dressed in black. He smiled.

"He got CDs," he said.

"Look, I didn't take anything."

The guy started pulling his pockets inside out.

"Put your hands at your side and let me look," the Irish guy ordered. He did a thorough pat-down and, as he got closer to the stash, the chubby man pulled out a $50 bill. He held it out like an offering.

The guards laughed.

"We don't take bribes," the Irishman said as he reached into the man's coat and pulled out two compact discs, hidden deep in an inner pocket. He held them up and looked at them. Then he smirked and showed them to the shoplifter.

"What is this?"

"No, you don't understand," the thief blubbered. "I was going to pay for those. I just wanted to see the advertisement on the front of the store."

The guards just stared at him. Then they leaned in and whispered to each other, and finally put their hands to their mouths to keep themselves from laughing.

"Listen, take the CDs to the register right here and pay for them, and we'll let you go," the Latino guard said. "Don't come back."

The shoplifter backed away and handed the clerk the $50 bill across the counter. His release must have emboldened him, so he turned to the Irish guard and snapped, "That was an illegal search, you know."

The guard whipped out his PD badge. "My regular job is as a cop and the search wasn't illegal. And you're welcome, by the way."

I stood off to the side and looked through a record display and thought, that was a nice piece of work. Guards stepping out of the mist to pop a guy, and not only doing it coolly and calmly, but also with some mercy. I scanned the store?I wanted to talk to the guards?but they'd disappeared back into the anonymous mass of shoppers they'd come from. Shuffling around for 20 minutes, looking into aisles and corners and strangers' faces didn't do me any good. I'd already paid $20 for my Pogues import, but thought about shoplifting something myself, just to get myself caught by this pair, so I could learn their story. The memory of how Rex Reed had gotten busted at this same Tower dissuaded me.

So I was reduced to standing by the door, hoping someone else would get busted for shoplifting, but apparently the customers were relatively honest. There remained no sign of he guards. Those two were like the Ghost and the Darkness, and appeared only when prey was available.

Meanwhile, the chubby shoplifter pushed through the revolving doors and hotfooted it up Broadway.