High Country Nocturne

Chapter Seven

The sun was low by the time I woke up. It didn’t seem as if it should still be Saturday, but it was. Lindsey was sitting beside me in bed with her laptop open.

“Any news?”

“Hashtag Peralta is the most trending item on Twitter in Phoenix,” she said.

I asked if that was a good thing.

“Oh, Dave, not in this case. Most of it is ugly, racist stuff. So much hate in one hundred forty characters.”

“Someday we’ll have social media trials and summary public executions.”

She cupped my face with her hands and kissed me. That always took away the darkness and made our little oasis a bright and hopeful place.

Afterward, we had cocktails, Beefeater martinis, stirred, with olives. It was one of our healing rituals against the crazy place that began outside the property line, where the voters were such fools that they had kicked my friend out of office. Cocktail time was sacred.

As we watched the last light outside the picture window, I told her what some sleep had enabled me to realize. I had kept saying that this was an ordinary diamond run. But it actually wasn’t.

“There were two guards, not one. In the past, Peralta had gone alone.”

I didn’t know much about this part of our business, only that it was good money, plus the background that Peralta had given me.

Up until about 2000, the jewelers themselves had transported the diamonds. That stopped after a couple of robberies, including one where some Colombians had murdered a jeweler in the lobby of a Florida hotel and took his suitcase.

After that, many jewelers set up armed security teams in every state that picked up the diamonds, took them to the shows, and returned them to the jeweler at the airport.

But some firms hired two local guards to meet the jeweler at the airport outside the secure area-where they could still carry their weapons. They would take the diamonds, worth anywhere from three hundred thousand to a million dollars, to Kay, Zales, and other stores for special shows. Then they would return them to the jeweler, waiting safely at the airport.

“The companies didn’t mind losing a guard but they didn’t want to lose a jeweler.”

Then, around 2005, they cut back to one guard, I told Lindsey. A few months after we became private detectives, Peralta won a contract from Markovitz & Sons to transport diamonds in the Phoenix area. The most recent job before yesterday had been to take special-show diamonds to an invitation-only event at the Royal Palms Resort. Peralta told me Charlie Keating had been there.

“Don’t forget the ‘savings-and-loan kingpin’ part,” she said.

“Peralta said Charlie was still complaining that the feds wouldn’t pay for his knee replacement when he was incarcerated in Lompoc.”

That transport had gone according to standard procedure. Peralta took the suitcase back to Sky Harbor and handed it to the jeweler, who went back into the secure area and discreetly examined the contents. I only knew the details because Peralta wanted to tell his Charlie Keating story.

“But this time it was two guards,” she said.

“That’s what the FBI told me. I assumed Peralta was going alone.”

Lindsey asked who had provided the second guard. I didn’t know. Mann had told me that he was a private investigator.

“Who Peralta shot.”

“Winged,” I said.

“I can find out who he is.”

“Lindsey, your computer snooping worries me.”

“Nobody can catch me, Dave. Trust me.”

I knew she was the best. She had been the star of Peralta’s cybercrimes unit and then she had spent a year in Washington working for Homeland Security. It still concerned me. The FBI would be all over us and in ways we couldn’t tell.

She distracted me by suggesting fajitas for dinner. We sliced onions and peppers together in the kitchen. I made guacamole. Then I grilled the veggies, steak, and chicken inside the old chimneria in the backyard while she warmed the tortillas in the oven and assembled the salsa, shredded cheese, and sour cream.

I was way too full and loving it when Lindsey said, “I found Matt Pennington.”

Before I could learn more, the front door registered a knock. Three loud thumps. Whoever it was didn’t bother to use the wrought-iron knocker.

Maybe it was a neighbor. Maybe it was the tamale women selling door-to-door or a television crew wanting to know about the “gem heist.” Whoever it was, I moved quickly to the front bedroom and peeked outside.

The porch light showed a black Ford Crown Victoria was sitting in the driveway.

Crown Vics with their wonderful Interceptor engines were on their way out as the standard police vehicle in North America. They were becoming rare. Ford had stopped making them. This one had an eight-inch scratch on the right edge of the push-bar that was attached to the front bumper. It was one of the vehicles of the sheriff’s personal security detail.

The three thuds came again. That was the way cops knocked.

I opened the door to see one man. His partner had stepped into the flowerbed to peer in the picture window. One of Lindsey’s impatiens was under his boot.

“May I help you?”

Peralta’s old detail had been reassigned, of course. Still, I knew one of this pair, a sergeant named Gordon who had been in the patrol division under Peralta and was on the edge of being fired for what appeared to be a righteous brutality complaint. The other one, two decades younger than Gordon, came back to the step and showed his star.

As if I didn’t know.

They could have been brothers. Both were about five eleven, wearing cheap Dockers and polo shirts to show off their biceps. Both had thinning-hair crew cuts. They looked like personal trainers at a second-rate health club. Gordon’s partner was giving me the cop squint.

Gordon said, “The sheriff wants to see you.”