“That’s probably where most hip-hop music is bought,” she said. “It’s all my son listens to. Ugh. How many talks have I had with him about the misogyny and hate for the police in the lyrics. He thinks I’m so out of it. He talks about how it’s poetry of struggle and oppression. Do you have kids?”
“No.”
When I said the word, something closed in her face and she thought differently about me. In Chandler, what married man wouldn’t have children? She didn’t know anything about Lindsey or me. Now I was simply strange, beyond comprehension.
I pushed the thought away and said, “Hip hop has gang connections. Tupac was somehow tied in to the Bloods. Or maybe it was the Crips. Could they have initiated the robbery?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I did some research. A couple of years ago a music producer was robbed of a fifty thousand-dollar diamond necklace, plus a Rolex worth another fifty K. But I didn’t find anything this large or audacious. Anyway, the people invited to this show are all respectable, rich, white. For all I know, real rappers aren’t so much into bling any more, so it’s become a collectable for the housewives who watch reality television.”
“And all this was worth a million dollars?”
“That’s what the expert from New York said.”
“Only a million…”
“Yes. I don’t know about you, but in my life that’s a lot of money.”
I took it in and we settled into silence.
“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said, extending my hand.
She took it. Her skin was smooth and cool. “Have you heard from Peralta?”
“No.” I said it without hesitation. But this is what I had been waiting for. Megan Long wasn’t here for a courtesy call. Rapport had been established. She was now down to business. So I ran through my Friday, how I knew Peralta had agreed to do a diamond run, but told me nothing more. The dictaphone message, that part I left out.
She nodded as I talked, not writing anything down. This didn’t deviate from the statement I had given the FBI on Friday.
“They tell me your wife is in critical condition,” she said. “Do you think this shooting is related to the robbery? Sergeant Vare thinks it is.”
And she would be right. But once again I said nothing about Strawberry Death and the demand for “her stones.” After a moment, “I don’t know what to think. I’m focused on Lindsey getting better.”
“Here’s to that.” She toasted me with the cup, stood, and gave me her card.
I said, “May I ask a stupid question?”
She cocked her head.
“Didn’t the rolling bag have a GPS tracker?”
Her eyes narrowed, trying to conceal her emotions.
She held up her index finger. “Would you give me a minute?” Then she stood and walked twenty paces into the high-ceiling lobby, pulled out her cell phone, and engaged in an animated conversation. She closed the phone and paced, not looking in my direction. In five minutes, the phone rang and she hastily answered.
Sitting down with me again, she looked flushed and was shaking both her legs.
“It’s not a stupid question. The case did have a tracker and it was working. I don’t know why the FBI didn’t turn it on. Or, for that matter, why Peralta didn’t cut it out and get rid of it. He had guarded diamonds before. He knew it was there.”
“So maybe he didn’t intend to come back for it.”
“Which means what?” Her response was heated. “And why the hell didn’t Horace Mann activate the tracker?”
“Maybe he did,” I said.
She stared at me a long time before running a pale hand through her hair.
I ran the scenarios through my mind. Maybe Mann saw the tracker indicating the parking lot and assumed Peralta had ditched the device there while keeping the diamonds. Maybe he put the Toyota under surveillance hoping this Pamela Grayson would show up to claim the bag.
She mumbled, “This is fucked up” and looked at the people around us. I understood. Who the hell knew what had gone down? Who was involved and who could be trusted?
“There’s something else.” She bit her lip, wondering whether to tell me more. “The rolling bag had a hidden compartment. Mann found it. Nothing in it. But when I talked to the guy from Markowitz, he said their bags didn’t have hidden compartments. It’s strange.”
“What about the other guard?” I asked.
She turned and faced me. “He’s out of the hospital, wearing a sling. The bullet went through his shoulder but didn’t hit any bones.”
I nodded. Peralta was that good a shot.
I said, “Which shoulder?”
“His left.”
“Which is his gun hand?”
The freckles on her forehead scrunched together. “His right.”
“And he couldn’t get off a shot?”
“No,” she said. “He said Peralta’s shot knocked him down, stunned him. He’s an older gentleman. But my partner checked him out and he came back mostly clean.”
“What do you mean mostly?”
“He lives out in the desert by Wickenburg and there’s some intel on him being suspected of selling guns to felons, but nothing proved. He has a valid PI license. He’s a Native American gentleman.”
My freckle-less face must have shown something.
She asked, “Are you all right?”
I nodded, trying to remember what I had seen in the video of the robbery. The second man was wearing a red ballcap, his back to the camera. My attention had been on the image of Peralta, grabbing the bag, turning, and firing. The feds wouldn’t allow me to replay the scene.
In a low voice I asked for the man’s name, even though somewhere inside I knew the answer.
She assessed me. “I shouldn’t, but what the hell. You’re a deputy again. His name is Edward Cartwright.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Ed Cartwright.
FBI Special Agent Ed Cartwright, deep undercover.
Valid PI license. Native American gentleman. Fade into the background.
It had been a setup from the start. But for what?
There were too many FBI agents, I knew that much.
I took the elevator up to the ICU swimming in anger.
But when I stepped out, I saw Sharon. The expression on her face turned me to ice. I started to speak, but no words came out.
“Where have you been?” she said.
“Looking for your husband. What’s going on? How is Lindsey?”
She simply hugged me and I felt my body go numb. I felt her warm breath on my ear as she whispered, “David, I am so sorry.”
Lindsey was dead.
The obscene ease with which the thought came surprised me, as if I had earlier decided to take the stairway in the office tower as high as it would go, break open the locked door, walk across the roof, and step into the air. Lindsey and I had been twinned for so many years, the only surprise was that I hadn’t felt something, an extrasensory squeeze of the heart, something, as I was prattling on with the red-haired detective downstairs.
I didn’t hug Sharon back. My body was slack. Widower, my God. Yes, I would find the strawberry blond assassin and kill her. For that matter, I would find and kill Mike Peralta, too, for thoughtlessly precipitating this catastrophe like the diplomats and generals and plumed emperors had done with the Great War a century before.
Sharon led me into a consultation room where an older woman in blue scrubs was waiting. She had a face that was both kind and had seen it all. Her identification tag read “RN.” I heard the door close.
Then I was sitting there with no memory of my body having moved from the elevator to this chair.
The woman said, “Your wife has a serious fever.”
I let out a heavy breath of relief. Lindsey was alive. How bad could a fever be?
I said, “I want to see her.”
“Talk to me for a minute, Mister Mapstone.”
I regained my fear and stammered, “She’s felt cold to me.”
“I know,” the nurse said. “That’s normal because of the shock and the blood loss.”