by Jon Talton
“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.”
“I know what I heard. If Horace Mann is dirty, what next?”
“If that’s true, Pham has it covered.”
“Pham’s not in Alaska?”
“Hell, no. That’s disinformation, same as using the media to make sure the Russians and the bad fed knew Peralta was the robber. The director wanted redundancy and secrecy because this evidence theft involved a compromise of Bureau security. So he had Pham handpick a very small team that could go dark and be Peralta’s guardian angels. Mann doesn’t know.”
“What could possibly go wrong?”
“Smart ass. Peralta has a GPS homing device concealed in his shoe but it never activated. The trackers on his vehicle didn’t function, or he removed them. We haven’t heard anything. The messages he left for you at least show he was still alive as of Friday night. I have no idea why he went to the High Country.”
“And he willingly got into a sedan that headed back to the Interstate. That’s what the witness told me. He could be in Southern California by now.”
“Hell.”
I recounted my conversation with the Chandler detective, how the official shipment had been found but the hidden compartment was empty. He said he already knew.
Then I asked him who was shadowing Sharon. Phoenix field agents working for Mann. That gave me little comfort.
“But nobody was watching our house. Why not?”
“I’m not sure. Might be a manpower issue. Peralta was trying very hard to keep you out of this, keep you safe.”
A stream of bile started creeping up from my stomach. “That worked really well. If they had been there, Lindsey wouldn’t have been shot.”
“I’m sorry, David. There’s a lot of moving pieces.”
“Yeah. This was a pretty damned big moving piece. What about this woman,” I pulled out the Phoenix PD sketch. “Pamela Grayson?”
“No.”
I pointed at Strawberry Death. “How does she fit?”
He shook his head. “I saw that on TV. I have no idea.”
“That’s not good enough.” My tone was full-on angry now. “She’s connected to this. When she confronted me in the front yard, she said, ‘Where are my stones?’ When I
told her I didn’t have them, she talked about having to keep a promise to Peralta.”
“Did she sound Russian?”
“Southern accent.”
“There was nothing in the intel about her.”
“Well, your intel sucks. Somehow she’s connected with Peralta. She knew his name. She knew he had the diamonds. What is this promise?”
I told him about first meeting her when she impersonated a DPS officer. And about Kate Vare finding a kit on the lawn that the woman had left behind, with handcuffs and tranquilizers. About her preference to “suicide” her targets.
“She’s a professional,” I said. “She’s done this before.”
Cartwright took it in without speaking.
I said, “Who is Matt Pennington?”
Although his eyes didn’t change, I saw the tension knotting up the small muscles in his neck. “Where’d you get that name, David?”
I told him about the message Peralta had left for me in Flagstaff, my walk to the zombie skyscraper, and what I had found.
We paused in the shade and he put his hands on his hips.
“You’re full of surprises, David. For years, we had heard that the biggest diamond fence in the Southwest was operating here. Mostly selling gem-quality diamonds to retailers. There was a list of potential suspects Pham’s people was working on. Pennington was not one of them.”
“But you suspected him?”
“I heard his name from some of the circles I run in. I did a little checking and never found a thing. He worked at a call center. Led a boring life. His back story interested me.”
Cartwright told me how Pennington had served as a liaison officer with a Mexican Navy drug interdiction unit. The Sinaloa Cartel penetrated it, a major intelligence breach, and Mexican marines ended up getting killed on a raid where the cartel had advanced notice. Although nothing was ever proved, Pennington was sidelined and left the U.S. Navy. That’s when he moved to Phoenix.
I said, “Now the man who called me in his office thinks I’m Pennington and he’s expecting me to call him back.”
“And you will.”
“No.” I stopped and forced down the volcanic anger inside. My voice was dishonestly steady. “I won’t. Lindsey was nearly killed and I’m only now learning this is all because of an internal FBI fuckup? And you don’t even know who shot her? This is where I get off.”
I started to turn back when he grabbed me hard by the shoulder with his good hand. His grip was strong enough to push me down if he’d been inclined.
“Look, boy,” he shouted like a drill sergeant, “Mike Peralta loves you like a son!”
His words stunned me. That word again, love, coming from the most improbable source.
His grip tightened until my shoulder, arm, and hand were immobilized with pain. I would have hated to be on the receiving end of his strength if he hadn’t been shot three days before.
The onyx glare fixed on me. “We’re not going to leave him out there. You are not going to leave him out there.”
He let go and walked ahead. “He’d do the same for us.”
By this time, we were fifty yards into the parking lot and approaching an ancient RV. A bumper sticker said, “Ask Me About My Grandkids.”
I followed and caught up with him.
He put his hand on my back and in a gentler voice said, “Come sit with me for a few. Then you can get back to the hospital.”
Unlocking the side door, he beckoned me in with a tilt of his head.
I reluctantly stepped up and inside. A poster directly ahead showed a nineteenth-century photograph of four warriors with rifles. It was bordered by the words, “Homeland Security. Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.” It wasn’t easy to read because the shades were drawn, including flaps to keep anyone from seeing in through the windshield. The air was stale.
A sound—was it a sniff?—caused me to turn my head left and through the gloom see the figure sitting on a bench. A black hood was over his head.
Something in the primal brain reacts to a hooded man whether he is the reaper or the reaped.
I started to turn back and speak, or flee, but Cartwright gave me a decisive shove and slammed the door behind us.
Chapter Twenty-three
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, Cartwright’s prisoner jerked at his restraints knowing we were in the RV. It sounded like a show from a horror house but he wasn’t going anywhere. The shackles allowed his legs to move an inch at the most. His hands cuffed behind him were useless. A seat belt completed his imprisonment.
Ed motioned for me to sit on the opposite bench, then he approached the man and slipped off the hood, revealing a black blindfold tight around his head. Next, he ripped open the man’s shirt, sending a little hailstorm of buttons onto the yellowing linoleum floor.
He was muscled up and his sunburned skin was about seventy percent tattoos. Prominent among them was a scroll with Cyrillic letters, two skulls with crowns and, running down his abdomen, an enormous onion-domed cathedral.
This was not the kind of thing you found on the average ASU student.
Or perhaps it was—I was out of it on the contemporary culture front.
In any event, the abundance of tats had overpowered a wider assessment of the man. He was in his thirties with short blond hair, a rawboned face, and thin lips. An X of duct tape covered his mouth.
“Ain’t he pretty?”
I said nothing. He looked hideous. If he wasn’t Russian mafia, he had paid thousands to a local ink-slinger to get the same effect.
Cartwright reached toward the man’s right ear and pulled off the duct tape in a slow sawing sound. The results showed the downside of wearing designed stubble. Scores of little hair follicles violated by the tape started bleeding.
The man flinched but made no sound.
Cartwright leaned close. “We had a deal. I get your diamonds and you pay me a hundred fifty grand. Now the diamonds are gone and the Mexican tried to kill me. You fucked me, Bogdan, and you’re gonna make it right.”
The head tilted up. “How do you know my name?”
This brought an open-handed slap across the man’s jaw.
Cartwright demanded, “Where are my stones?”
I suppressed a shiver.
“You’re a dead man, red savage.” His voice was a baritone with only hints of a Slavic accent. “When my people…”
Another slap, harder. The Russian fell sideways and Cartwright sat him back up. My black eye began throbbing in sympathy pain.
“Your people are dead.” Cartwright said the words matter of factly. “You won the lottery, Bogdan. You’re alive because you get to give me answers.”
The Russian coughed up some phlegm and was about ready to spit when Cartwright snapped his fist against the bottom of the man’s jaw. The move was so quick it caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth.
This time silence was not possible. Bogdan screamed.
“Don’t you bleed on my stuff, you commie bastard.” Cartwright used both hands to tip the man’s head up. “Swallow it all, blood and spit. How’d that work out for you, genius?”
Three minutes.
Five minutes.
I watched the time pass on a wall clock that needed to be straightened. Housekeeping was not the strong point of Ed’s RV. The heat increased and the air was stagnant.
The man swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving like a rickety elevator.
Cartwright reached back into a cabinet and brought out a flimsy dirty brown something. He pushed it against the Russian’s face until he gagged.
“You know what that is, smart guy? That’s the scalp I took of a Russian adviser behind the lines in North Vietnam. Sliced it off with my Ka-Bar while he was still alive. Then I gave him an Indian lobotomy. Might have been your daddy or uncle.”
I caught a whiff
of rotting meat and suppressed a dry heave of my own.
Cartwright tossed the scalp aside and leaned in, “Why did you send the Mexican to rip me off?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” The Russian’s answer was slurred by the damage to his tongue.
“Yes, you do. We had a deal that I would pick up the shipment from the jeweler at Sky Harbor on Friday morning. When I got there, the Mexican had been hired as a second courier. Nobody told me. Why’d you do that?”
Bogdan shook his head.
“Here’s my theory,” Cartwright said. “You brought him in to take the rough for less money, cut me out of my commission. Too bad he was a crappy shot.”
“Fuck you.”
Crack. Ed’s open hand knocked the Russian nearly off the bench. He pushed him back into place and cinched up the seatbelt.
Another long silence, before Cartwright spoke again. “The only way out is for you to tell me the truth, Bogdan. You knew the diamonds were coming in. You knew they were hidden in the suitcase.”
The tattoos on Bogdan’s chest rippled and his face reddened but he said nothing.
“Enough of this.” Cartwright reached into a cabinet behind him and held up a black cylinder with holes in the sides and heavy multi-sided top and bottom. It was about the size of a travel container of shaving cream. But the shaving cream didn’t have two safety rings on the top.
My un-muscled-up abdomen tightened and I looked longingly at the door.
Cartwright ran the device across the Russian’s face.
“You know what this is, Mister Badass Russkie Criminal? An M-84 stun grenade. A flash bang. It’s a non-lethal weapon. Unless…”
He slipped on evidence gloves, deftly passing the grenade from one hand to another. My eyes were fixed on the pins, making sure they were still there.
“What are you doing, you goddamned faggot!?” It was Bogdan’s voice and he was not happy.
Cartwright had unbuckled the Russian’s pants and dug a hand down in his crotch.
“I wanted to see what you had down there, little guy. Here’s the deal, this is a non-lethal weapon unless I set it off between your legs.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Now open your mouth.”
