The Color of Death

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Kate followed because she didn’t have a choice. She looked narrowly at him as she lengthened her stride to keep pace.

  “Well, sweetheart, what next?” she asked.

  His smile was a lot less easygoing than the one he’d given to the dealer. “We go somewhere quiet and talk.”

  “No.”

  He raised his left eyebrow. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to and you don’t want to force me.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because you’re undercover and don’t want to be burned over something that’s going nowhere in terms of a bust.” She smiled a razor kind of smile. “Right?”

  He thought about it. “Close enough. For now.”

  “Now is all there is.”

  She jerked her wrist.

  He held on just long enough to let her know that she wasn’t escaping, he was letting her go. Then he watched her retreat with the lazy interest of a predator that wasn’t particularly hungry at the moment. Whatever her game was, it wasn’t part of the reason he was in Scottsdale. Until that changed, she was off his menu.

  He had bigger fish to catch, gut, and fry.

  Chapter 8

  Scottsdale

  Tuesday

  10:03 A.M.

  The FBI’s crime strike force had a formal headquarters in a million-dollar motor coach that was parked off to one side of the Scottsdale Royale’s employee lot. The strike force’s informal headquarters was Ted Sizemore’s suite at the Royale, or whatever suite Sizemore took in whatever city was hosting a gem show big enough to draw dealers and the thieves and hijackers who preyed on them.

  When Sam walked into the suite, he saw that the door to the other side of the suite was closed. He took the hint and left his SSA and Sizemore alone to talk about whatever part of the Good Old Days turned their crank. Patrick Kennedy and Sizemore went back a long way. Thirty-three years, to be precise.

  Sam grabbed a cup of bad coffee from the urn that room service had set up. Then he pulled a pack of peanut butter and cheese crackers from his sports coat pocket. Not much as brunches went, and it was all he was going to get. Sizemore might buy coffee for the strike force, but his idea of food was pretzels and beer.

  A lean man still in his twenties walked in. “Hey, Sam, what’s happening?”

  “Sweet fuck all. How about you?”

  “The same.” Mario yawned and stretched. Like Sam, he was wearing casual civilian clothes. Unlike Sam, Mario was a detective for the Phoenix PD. “The cell traffic we’re picking up is all about meeting for lunch at the local Taco Hell. I came close to falling asleep, and your SAC was in the HQ with me.”

  Sam shook his head. “Bad form. Doug’s a bear about staying awake on the job. Takes snoring as a personal insult.” He lifted his mug. “Have some coffee.”

  “How lousy is it?”

  Sam took a swallow. “How lousy is your imagination?”

  “That bad, huh? Must be why ‘Our Hero’ Sizemore drinks beer.”

  A shrug was Sam’s only answer. Anyone who had beer with every meal wasn’t Sam’s idea of a hero. “Who’s on the earphones now?”

  “Bailey. You should hear him bitch. An NYPD detective is too good for that shit. Just ask him.”

  “No thanks.”

  “What a prick.” Mario grabbed a handful of pretzels and ignored the bucket of iced beer. He pulled a can of Pepsi from his jacket pocket, popped the top, and spewed brown foam in all directions. Then he came closer to Sam and said softly, “We’re picking up more Spanish calls.”

  “Sizemore will be happy to hear it.”

  “Some of the maids have cell phones.” Mario winked and made a pumping motion with his arm. “Real scrubwomen.”

  Sam snickered. He knew enough Spanglish—the creole of border Spanish and English—to catch the reference to maids who made a little extra working in the sheets before they changed them.

  More men and two women filed in. The first woman was a bright, barely-thirty-year-old NYPD detective whose marriage had just crashed and burned because of her career demands. Too bad, how sad, and about three out of four law-enforcement officers had stories to match. The second woman was the Legend’s daughter, Sharon Sizemore, a former FBI special agent who had been sacked for sleeping with her SAC. It was old news, but the kind of thing that made the rounds of the FBI grapevine whenever her name came up. Since her exit from the FBI, she had worked for her father’s security consultation service.

  The men walking in behind her were between twenty-five and forty-five years old, short hair, clean shaven, like a herd of fraternity brothers in uniformly casual clothes. One of them wore Nikes. Another wore sandals, no socks. A third wore cowboy boots. The men started talking among themselves and shaking hands with everyone in the room.

  Sam sighed. Party time. Too bad he wasn’t a party animal. But he’d learned to howdy and shake with the best of them, so he made the rounds of FBI special agents, LAPD, NYPD, Las Vegas PD, plus other various local law-enforcement officers. When he got to Raul Mendoza, Sam’s smile became real. Mendoza was the BCIS—Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services—agent, the Department of Homeland Security’s representative on the crime strike force. Based in Florida, he specialized in South American gangs. In Los Angeles, Mendoza had chased illegals who ran drugs to pay off their smuggler, but he’d adjusted real fast to gems. He was politic, media-wise, and headed for the top.

  All the qualities Sam didn’t have.

  Mendoza was also a damn good investigator, which was what Sam cared about. He saluted him with a mug of coffee. Grinning, the BCIS agent returned the favor.

  The noise level subsided somewhat when the SAC Doug Smith walked in, looked over the crowd, and headed straight for the coffee, where Sam had gone back for seconds.

  “ ’Afternoon, boss,” Sam said, pouring him a mug of lethal brew. “Heard you snored over the phone logs.”

  “Bullshit. That was Mario.” Doug yawned hugely and took the mug of dark black liquid. He glared at it, scrubbed one blunt hand through sandy hair that got grayer and thinner every year, and sighed. He swallowed a gulp of coffee, grimaced, and swallowed more. “Thanks. I think.”

  “Those triple shifts will kill you,” Sam said, smiling slightly.

  “I took four hours off to sleep. Anything new?”

  Before Sam could mention his no-ID gem thief, the inner door of the suite opened and two men walked out.

  Ted Sizemore was the first. He moved with a confidence that was just short of a swagger. At sixty-three, with two successful careers under his belt, he’d earned the right. Unlike everyone else in the room, he was wearing a suit. The navy blue cloth had pinstripes so narrow they almost vanished. His shirt was white and crisp, his tie dark maroon with just the suggestion of diagonal navy stripes. His shoes were wing tips with a finish that could double as a shaving mirror. He might not carry FBI credentials anymore, but he hadn’t forgotten the old uniform.

  The second man was SSA Patrick Kennedy. More than a decade younger than Sizemore, Kennedy was one of the Legend’s biggest admirers. The fact that Kennedy had worked with Sizemore in the Bureau for about twenty years probably had something to do with it. The fact that Sizemore could conjure up the media with a snap of his fingers might have had a lot more. Positive media hits were as necessary for promotion as investigative and bureaucratic skills. Kennedy’s next career hike was riding on the outcome of the crime strike force he oversaw. Sizemore was a great unofficial asset, just as the FBI was a great unofficial asset for the Legend’s security business.

  Sam drank more coffee and wondered if one hand ever got tired of washing the other. He chewed his last peanut butter and cheese cracker, washed it down with more coffee, and waited for someone to pull his finger out and start the whole time-wasting dance.

  Meetings sucked.

  Sizemore opened a bottle of beer, scooped up a big handful of pretzels from the nearby bowl, and settled into the best chair in the suite, which just happened to b
e within reach of the goodies. His love of food in general and beer in particular showed in his belly and his jawline. He wasn’t at the triple-chin stage yet, but he was headed there.

  “Hey, Ted, good to see you,” Doug said. “Heard you had a rough flight out from L.A.”

  “They don’t build the damn planes the way they used to,” Sizemore said, shifting his weight more comfortably in the overstuffed chair. “Don’t fly ’em as good either.” He took a drink and shrugged. “We arrived rubber side down. These days that’s all you can ask for.”

  Doug and Sizemore traded bad flight stories while the politically adept among the strike force laughed and offered their own horror stories. Sam didn’t think having to stay in cheap quarters at a hotel—even though his own apartment was only half an hour away from the action—qualified as a horror story. Kennedy wanted everyone to travel and sleep and work together. What Kennedy wanted, he got.

  Good thing I don’t even have a pet rock, Sam thought. Sure enough, it would be against FBI regs.

  Sam wondered if his stomach could take more coffee. The burning in his gut told him the answer. Maybe Sizemore had a point with the beer. If nothing else, it was cheaper than the bottled water the hotel so thoughtfully left out with a six dollar price tag around its neck.

  The tap water tasted lousy, but it was free. Sam headed for the bathroom. By the time he’d drunk one mug of lukewarm tap water and gone back for a refill, Kennedy had pulled out a notebook and was getting down to business. Standing a few feet behind Sizemore, Sharon took notes by murmuring into a tiny microphone whose head was hidden in her thick, chin-length brown hair. The tiny recording device was invisible behind her ear. She was dressed in a business suit and low heels, which served to minimize her female attributes. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown suit, ordinary build. Easy to overlook even if the room wasn’t crowded.

  But she has the latest spy-tech equipment, Sam thought. Damn, I’d like to have what she’s wearing instead of the crap Uncle Sam supplied to the strike force. I’d need Rasta hair to hide the stuff we use.

  “…and Mendoza,” Kennedy said, “tell your men to ride that border harder. The assholes we’re looking for don’t use passports and paved truck crossings.”

  “What about the airports?” Mendoza asked.

  “Sky Harbor will be covered, even though we don’t expect much. Pass out photos of the known gang members and be watching all the flights that originate or connect south of the border.”

  Mendoza nodded as though he’d been told something unusually insightful. “I’m on it.”

  Sam looked at his warm water and asked, “What about the secondary airport in Scottsdale?”

  “You volunteering?” Kennedy shot back.

  “If that’s where you want me.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  Sam drank the rest of his water and thought about going back for more.

  “Okay, I want everybody,” Kennedy glared at Sam, “to keep in mind that we’re dealing with a highly organized, very fluid group of South American ex-military, some of whom were trained by various U.S. special forces to fight drug dealers but decided it was more profitable to hit jewelry couriers in the U.S. and keep the change. The low-level gang players change from week to week and month to month, but the leaders don’t. We want the top of that food chain, not the bottom. It’s a real old-boy club, so going undercover won’t work. If you weren’t in the homeboy military with these crooks, you’ll never get to first base in their gang.”

  Sizemore nodded emphatically. “The Colombian gang I put away was all ex-military, wise to technology, and brutal to the bone. Hardest people I ever came across in my…”

  …thirty-odd years with the Bureau, Sam said silently, speaking Sizemore’s sentences before the older man could. Nothing has changed since I set up my own security business. I tell you, don’t underestimate these assholes. You’ll be…

  “…dead before you know what hit you,” Sizemore finished. He banged his empty beer bottle on the table for emphasis.

  Warm tap water was sounding really good to Sam, but he knew if he walked out on Sizemore, Kennedy would get even.

  It wouldn’t be the first time. If Sam stayed long enough in the Bureau, he’d end up in Fargo, North Dakota, the FBI’s graveyard for special agents who had pissed off their SSAs. But he was sixteen years into his twenty and figured if it came to that, he could do his last four in Fargo.

  Hell, men survived in prison longer, right?

  “Any of the metro PDs have anything to report?” Kennedy asked, looking around the room with pale blue eyes.

  “Nothing yet,” Mario said. “A pawnshop and a 7-Eleven were robbed by Hispanics, but none of the gem shipments that are coming in for the show have been touched. At least I assume they’re coming in?” He looked at Sizemore for confirmation.

  “Several times a day,” Sizemore said. “Right, Sharon?”

  “Next one is due in Sky Harbor Airport this afternoon, via Mandel, Inc., a courier service,” Sharon said crisply. “The courier’s identity and flight haven’t been released for security reasons, but if required, we will advise Mandel, Inc. to cooperate with the FBI.”

  “Damn straight,” Sizemore said. He leaned sideways, snagged another beer, and twisted the top off the bottle. “These South Americans have spies and informers everywhere. Toughest, smartest bunch of…”

  Sam tuned out and hoped what he was thinking didn’t show, but he doubted it. He’d had three months to listen to Sizemore hark back to the good old days when he’d become the Legend by overseeing the crime strike force that dismantled three South American gangs that had been operating out of Miami, Manhattan, and Chicago. Murder, mayhem, robbery, rape—the gangs were good for all of them.

  And Sizemore would be happy to talk about all of it for hours. An agent’s glory days were hard to leave behind.

  “You have something you want to say?” Sizemore challenged Sam.

  “Bringing those gangs down was a fine piece of investigative work, no doubt about it,” Sam said. He knew he should stop there. He didn’t. “But that was what—fifteen years ago? The world has changed.”

  “Crooks don’t change,” Sizemore said, pinning Sam with cold brown eyes. “Crooks were assholes then and they’re assholes now.”

  “Right,” Sam said easily. “All that changes are the names and countries of the players. We’ve got a smorgasbord of nationalities to choose from. If we concentrate only on the South Americans, then we run the risk of overlooking—”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Kennedy cut in, “you’re not off on your wild-assed Teflon gang theory again, are you?”

  “I call them the Teflon gang because nothing sticks to them, not even blood,” Sam said neutrally. “They’re cold enough to kill and smart enough to stay off our radar.”

  “Bullshit,” Sizemore said roughly. “No one’s heard anything solid about a new gang that concentrates on couriers, and we’ve all heard a hell of a lot about the South Americans.”

  “The number of robberies has gone way up in the past few years, but the hits that street talk pins on the South Americans has stayed about the same,” Sam said. “Plus, the couriers carrying unique goods are being hit. That’s what made me think a new gang was at work. When I started comparing—”

  “Like you can believe mutts on the street to tell the truth,” Kennedy cut in sarcastically. “Stop wasting the taxpayer’s time. I need more evidence than gossip and an agent with a wild hair.”

  “If we’re not looking, we’ll never find more evidence,” Sam said. “Sir.”

  “We’re not looking,” Sizemore said, “because there’s sweet fuck all to find except South Americans.”

  Doug caught Sam’s eye.

  Sam thought about the career opportunities in Fargo, ND.

  Kennedy went back to his agenda. “Doug will give you your assignments. For the next week, most of you will be checking hotels for gang members known to the strike force, with special attention to the Royale. Mario and
Mendoza will interview the hotel’s workers from the floor managers on down.”

  “Don’t mention immigration status,” the LAPD cop said. “If the illegals run, there won’t be a maid or gardener left in Scottsdale.”

  “And all of you,” Kennedy said over the laughter, “take a good look at the information Ted brought with him. The more you know the big gem dealers and their staff, the faster you’ll be able to catch somebody who doesn’t belong, somebody who’s wrong.”

  “Like the woman Sam collared just before the meeting?” Bill Colton asked.

  Sam looked at the SA from his own Phoenix office and wished he liked the man. Hell, he’d settle for not despising the bastard. Colton used ass-kissing rather than good fieldwork to get ahead.

  Problem was, it worked.

  “False alarm,” Sam said.

  “What’s this?” Kennedy asked.

  Colton grinned and grabbed the opportunity to undermine Sam. “Our fearless special agent must have been bored holding up the wall in the gem room. He found himself a classy piece of ass and dragged her out into the lobby for some face-to-face. Nice clothes, nice body, black hair, and dark eyes that could bore holes in even his thick hide. Whatever he was selling, she wasn’t buying.”

  “South American?” Kennedy asked.

  “Why wasn’t I told?” Sizemore demanded.

  Sam looked at a point between the two men and said, “About half an hour ago I noticed a Caucasian female, probably early thirties, well dressed, walk into the conference room that some of the second-tier dealers have rented just off the lobby. Despite her clothes and confidence, something was wrong about her. I took up a position close to the Purcell booth, where she had engaged Mr. Purcell in a business conversation that could also have been a flirtation.”

  “Nobody would flirt with that slimeball unless money was on the table,” Sizemore said.

  “My impression was the same, which was why I watched her,” Sam said neutrally. “She flashed some skin, Purcell lost focus, and she switched gems on him.”

  “Big deal,” Sizemore said. “Gem shows draw con artists the way fresh shit draws flies. You get her name?”