“How’s your buddy, Sheriff Peralta? I hear he became a private eye.”
The question surprised me considering Peralta’s newfound notoriety, but I made my face express boredom.
“He’s doing well. How’s the fence business?”
He studied me with sad gray eyes. I was one of the few people who knew he had been one of Peralta’s CIs or confidential informants.
He lightly rubbed his mashed face. When he took his hands away, his drawn appearance was evident. Since the last time I had seen him, he had probably lost twenty pounds he couldn’t afford.
“Business is shitty. That’s how it is.”
“Is that what made you pick up the muscle out front?”
He stared into his lap. “He picked me up. He’s MS 13, so you’d better watch your ass. Goddamned Salvadorans. I’m into ’em deep. Look, I’ve got to close pretty soon, so what’s on your mind?”
He pulled out a Marlboro and lit it with trembling hands, offering me the pack, but I waved it away and said nothing.
He smoked with his bad hand. The shooting accident had shorn off most of the index and middle fingers. So he smoked by holding the cigarette between his thumb and fourth finger. The effect was half Sinatra and half circus geek.
After a few moments, he shrugged. “This business used to be simple. Junkies and burglars bring in electronics, I pay ’em shit, send the stuff to Mexico where it’s repackaged and resold.”
He smoked and stood. His small body seemed incapable of idleness, but what had that gotten him? When I kept staring, he sat back down and continued.
“Here’s what made it work. Stuff goes to a pawnshop and it’s liable to attract the cops. A legit pawnbroker has to log it in the computer system. Here, I got a smoke shop in Maryvale. Who’s gonna think? Simple business model. I connect buyers and sellers. How am I different from an investment banker or a hedge-fund guy? We’re a coarse, shitty land run by criminals. I go with the flow.”
While he philosophized, I gently uncocked the little shotgun’s hammers, broke it open, tossed the shells on the floor, and set the empty firearm beside his desk.
“So what changed?” I asked.
“The fucking Internet, for one thing. E-sellers, they call them-craigslist, eBay. Scoop up a lot of the really good stuff, so I’m dependent on the dude who’s too stupid or too poor or too jonesing and impatient to go online.”
He had given this much thought.
“Plus, there’s too much crap today,” he said. “Thieves don’t know the PC era is over, see? Don’t even try to bring in a PC nowdays, much less with Windows XP. Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Androids-those I can use.”
He pouted.
“And?” I said.
“The fuckin’ Salvadorans.”
“You have to go through them now?”
“Shit, they don’t care about stolen iPads. Stolen guns, they like those if they’re the right kind. No, they use my humble, locally owned retail establishment the way they want.”
He wiggled his arm to see a silver watch.
I put my hands behind my head, exactly the way Peralta used to do when he was either relaxing or trying to irritate me. It had the latter effect on Jerry.
“What do you want from me, Mapstone? Use your fucking imagination. Money and drug drops. Stuff I don’t want to know about, okay? If there’s heroin coming through here to be broken up and distributed, it’s not my problem. The less I know, the less chance they’ll feed me to their pit bulls.” He paused. “Cigarette smuggling is the biggie. That I have to know about.”
“What about the tax inspectors?”
“Haven’t seen one in years,” he said. “State cutbacks. Anyway, some of the inventory is legit. Go look, you’ll see tax stamps. The rest goes into the black market. I don’t get diddly as a cut even though I’m the one taking the chances here.”
“How’d they take over?”
“I needed a loan fast, okay? Goddamned Indian casinos, all around the city now. It’s their revenge on the white man. Anyway, I was fifty thousand short and a guy told me about a guy. You know how it goes. Next thing I know, Ahu is my babysitter.” He used his good hand to wipe away sweat. “Are we done?”
I thought about that. Ahu’s tattoos didn’t look like MS 13, one of the most dangerous criminal organizations in the hemisphere. He didn’t fit the profile ethnically, either. Jerry, as a former cop, should know that. But somebody was leaning on him and Phoenix had no lack of gangs.
Even if Ahu didn’t belong to Mara Salvatrucha, this was cause for concern. CIs always went to the highest bidder. Peralta had taught me that. Now somebody was able to put in a higher price for Jerry than keeping him out of jail on condition that he provide information and not murder anyone, Peralta’s old deal.
I thought about the Tide. It was tough on stains, a cash cow for Procter & Gamble, and in recent years had become a street currency used to buy drugs. Addicts shoplift the 150-ounce bottles and at the most risk a shoplifting charge, way better than a felony count for burglarizing, say, a television. Organized groups called retail boosters have gotten into the racket, and not only with detergent. Fences buy the items at a discount and resell them, even to major retailers.
Jerry’s simple business model was keeping up with the times.
I said, “We’re not done. You have some place you need to be?”
“I need to close, Mapstone. Really.”
“Your sign says you’re open until eleven.”
His new partners probably had a shipment on the way. I affected nonchalance.
He blew a plume of blue smoke over my head, stood up, turned around, and studied one of the pinups. He sighed and faced me. “God, this town was way simpler when the Italians ran things, you know?”
I nodded sympathetically.
“Tell me about diamonds.”
He looked at me like I was insane. “Diamonds? What?”
“You heard me, Jerry. Tell me about diamonds and I’ll let you close or whatever you need to do.”
He plopped into the chair. “Diamonds. They’re hard. They’re forever. They’re a girl’s best friend. Color, cut, clarity, and carat. Who cares? Some lowlife brings in a stolen engagement ring and I’ll give him a hundred bucks. And that’s if it’s a good ring. The resale market stinks.”
My swollen eye and cheek throbbed in realization.
I smiled on the inside.
He doesn’t know about Peralta and the robbery.
This was a good thing, or so I calculated. If he knew, he might have somehow used it against me. For the first time, I was thankful for a society of ignoramuses that didn’t read newspapers or even watch television news.
He stubbed out the Marlboro. “I don’t deal in ’em.”
“How would a person fence valuable diamonds, in unique settings? Hypothetically speaking.”
“Way over my pay grade,” he said. “Diamonds make people crazy. The 2003 Antwerp heist? A hundred million. They got caught. Absolutely insane plan. But it didn’t keep them from trying. You get into that kind of shit, you better pick out your dirt furniture.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Dirt furniture,” he repeated. “Goes well six feet under.”
When I spread out comfortably in the chair, he talked again.
“Here’s what I’ve read, okay? Uncut diamonds are the easiest to resell. They’re tough to trace. The buyer could cut them, change their characteristics, and make it hard to track them. Nothing worth more is as small and easy to move. No mineral is worth more per gram. Now, cut diamonds are a different breed of cat. If they’re expensive enough, they might be laser-inscribed, with a number or name. De Beers does that. I’m no expert, but that’s what I’ve heard, see.”
For somebody who claimed little knowledge of diamonds, he knew quite a bit.
I said, “So they’re not fence-able?”