“What about Paradise Valley?” I said. “There were two dead bad guys. You made me leave and you stayed.”
“Two bad guys you killed,” he corrected. “I untied Peralta and gave him the gun you handed me when I told you to get the hell out of there. I told the cops I was homeless, camping out on the property, and that was that.”
I shook my head.
“Play to people’s prejudices and it gives you an advantage, David. I’m the crazy old drunk Indian living out in the desert, selling guns, and working as a private eye who can get things done.”
“And you don’t care if your clients are aboveboard?”
“That’s how you catch the bad guys.”
The breeze made the palo verde leaves quiver. He stopped and looked at the hulking buildings and abundance of asphalt. Half a block ahead, a young Hispanic woman in scrubs jaywalked where Third Avenue made a wide curve around Park Central.
“Look how ugly this town has become. This was a better place when the Apache ruled.”
“No doubt,” I said. “Tell me about the Russians.”
“We met at a café in Wickenburg, me and two Russians. They knew I acted as a courier for Markovitz and Sons when they brought in diamonds for shows. They’d give me a hundred fifty thousand dollars if I’d handle the shipment for Chandler Fashion Mall on Friday. All I had to do was retrieve the rough, which would be concealed in the suitcase.”
“How did it get there?”
He shook his head. “They wouldn’t tell me. Markovitz is one of the top outfits in the country. Vertically integrated manufacturing, design, and distribution. But every organization has its bad apples. However it happened, the Russkies knew that rough was going to be there. They wouldn’t tell me how they knew, or who it was intended for. Once a shipment is delivered to the jewelry store the salespeople lock it in a safe until it’s time to set up the displays. The empty suitcase sits in the back. It’s supposed to be empty, right? Grab the rough and nobody would be the wiser.”
“And give it to the Russians.”
“Right,” he said. “So I took the job. Easy money for the U.S. Treasury and the Russians would never know what hit them when they were eventually arrested.”
I asked him how Peralta got involved. Cartright steered us north, across another street and into the big parking lot that had once served Park Central when it was a shopping mall.
“After I met the Russians, I ran the deal up the chain of command and got a call from the director. Not every day I get a call from the director. He tells me fifteen million in rough had gone missing three months ago from the evidence control unit.”
“Inside job?”
“Had to be,” Cartwright said. “I don’t even need to tell you the kind of bad press this would cause for the Bureau. Remember the forensics lab scandal? The Washington Post, New York Times…”
I said, “There were also wrongful convictions based on tainted evidence.”
“I’m trying to explain how they think at the top. They’re thinking about the press, being called before congressional committees, seeing their careers implode. So, back to the evidence theft. A very quiet investigation was launched and produced a list of ten agents and technicians that had the clearance, opportunity, and skills to have done it. They were about to go after each one hard-core when my little Russian deal popped up. ”
“So they wanted to set up a sting.” I said.
He nodded. “The trouble was, the thief might have been high enough in the Bureau to know that I was deep undercover. Unlikely, but we couldn’t take the chance. So we needed a distraction that took the spotlight off me.”
“Peralta.”
“Yes,” he said. “The concealed rough would only come if I was at Sky Harbor to receive it. Otherwise, the Russians would get suspicious. But if I stayed in the loop too long, the suspect within the Bureau might see red flags. So the plan was for Peralta to steal the entire shipment and get the rough. Make a big deal of it in the media. See how each suspect was reacting to the news by monitoring their phone calls, emails, and movements. Watch the Russians. Peralta would contact them, demand a cut, and set up a meet. We’d roll up the Russians, recover the evidence, and have enough to arrest the insider who stole it.”
He ran through the robbery scenario. Once they were inside the service hallway at Chandler Fashion Mall-and on camera-Peralta was supposed to shoot Cartwright to make the theft look real and establish his bona fides as going rogue. Peralta had hand-loaded the bullet he would fire into Cartwright’s shoulder so it would pass through cleanly without fragmenting. Without making a dirty wound.
“Still hurt like a son of a bitch,” he said. “I think he actually enjoyed doing it.”
Cartwright bought Peralta time to escape by acting more injured than he was. It was more than two hours before the courier-turned-robber was identified. To further camouflage the sting, the FBI instantly removed Eric Pham because he was Peralta’s friend. They brought in a senior agent from the outside to take charge.
“Horace Mann,” I said.
“He’s a supervisory special agent. Flew in from Minneapolis on a Bureau jet and took charge.”
“Does he know who you are?”
“He might find out I was quietly forced to retire ten years ago or face charges for bribery.”
That was the cover story that allowed Cartwright to go undercover. I said, “No chance he could know you’re still on the job.”
“There’s always a chance.” He momentarily looked back at the hospital. “But it’s a reasonable risk. Remember, the idea was to get be out of this early so I’d be nothing but a bit player, a victim at that.”
“Is Mann a suspect?”
“That’s an interesting thought, but no,” Cartwright said. “The prime suspect is named Pamela Grayson. She’s a senior agent in evidence control. Two years ago, she was investigated when eight pounds of very high quality heroin went missing, but she was cleared. So she was already on the radar for the diamonds.”
“Already?”
Cartwright nodded. “It gets better. She served as a field agent in the Central African Republic. That’s one of the centers of diamonds used to fund wars, drugs, you name it. Here’s a sweet part: she was already in town when the robbery happened, staying at the Phoenician. Vacation, she said.”
“What color is her hair?”
He looked at me curiously. “Brown. I’ve only seen the pictures.”
People can color their hair.
I thought more about all he was telling me. “But this meant she had to know what the Russians knew. So either she had lost the diamonds to the Russians and was trying to get them back. Or she was working with the Russians, and why did they need you? Plus, all this drama would make me stay as far away as possible.”
“Maybe you’d make a bad thief, David. When this much money is the itch somebody needs to scratch, he-or she-will take chances. Get reckless.”
It sounded too complicated. Too many unanswered questions. Too much that could go wrong.
I said, “But what if the real thief was Mann?”
Cartwright squinted at me. “Why do you have a hard-on for him?”
“We had a nice little chat,” I said. “I don’t like him. He also strikes me as a control freak. Did he volunteer for this, or was he assigned?”
“Cartwright said, “He volunteered to a priority request but…”
“So if he stole the diamonds from evidence and was working with the Russians, he’d be in the perfect position to steer the investigation wrong. As it is, Grayson has been tipped off by the robbery and if anything happens to her, she can claim entrapment.”
“Don’t play high-school lawyer, David. This was moving fast. I wasn’t totally comfortable with the plan.”
Then I told him about the voice on Pennington’s phone. “Mann’s window is closing.”
“Are you sure you heard right?” he said. “Horace Mann has a clean record. He’s been decorated for valor. Maybe your caller said ‘the man.’ Something like that.”