Sleight of Hand (16 page)

Morales grunted.

“What about Nokes?”

“Ian Nokes. Contract driver for Ranchos Rigs, out of Albuquerque. That was his own truck at the depot, and he was doing his own work. In the wind.”

“Who owns the house?” I asked.

“The stiff, through a shell company we found this afternoon. Your original dead end.”

“Back to Crate & Freight,” I said, tapping my fingers. There was something bothering me about the whole setup. “Eight drivers at least, a company that transports over the whole US, the size of that shipment, compartments designed for it. This must have been a major distribution center.”

Morales nodded, his face deeply unhappy. “Drug trading in Denver is going down. Much as I would like to say it’s thanks to the PD, there’s some indication that it’s gang-on-gang.”

“Keeping the base clean for their business HQ?” I asked and Morales nodded again. “This can’t be ZK, they’re just the hired muscle, aren’t they? They’re a frigging biker gang.”

“They were originally,” he agreed. “They’re not now, they’re big-league organized crime, and I hear there’s a new boss, some guy called Hoben, who’s taken them up a step.”

“So if they go the normal route for organized crime, they’d need a legitimate front, a reputable business.” The chair creaked as I shifted. “Is that Crate & Freight?” Carter going into crime instead of politics?

But Morales shook his head. “Not big enough, and strictly transport. Useful, but not enough.”

“But you’d assume that they’d want to own it as well if they were planning on using it as their distribution system. But for the main front company, how about the Kingslund Group?” I asked casually.

Morales looked up sharply. “You want to run that thought by me again?”

“You said Crate & Freight wasn’t big enough. Maybe Kingslund is. What if ZK were aiming to take over Kingslund? How would they go about it?”

“They’d have to shift Je…Ms. Kingslund first. She’s not the selling type. But it’s the type of company they’d be looking for: big, but not too big, privately owned, lots of outlets, national profile, mixture of businesses. What are you thinking, Farrell?”

I frowned. “I’m thinking I’m glad we organized a full-time security detail for her this afternoon. Victor Gayle’s crew.”

Morales grunted in approval. “I know him. He runs good security. What happened to prompt that?”

We had a staring contest across the table. I broke it first. “Something has happened, and at least one of the people involved had the ZK tattoos.” Morales looked as if he wanted to jump over the table and arrest me right there, so I hurried on. “If I have a provable felony that’ll slam dunk in court, I’ll tell you.”

“Find me enough ZK members in one place and I’ll pull them in anyway,” Morales said.

“Sir?” One of the team opened the door and put his head around. Morales looked up. “We’ve just got a call, sir, the news people are on their way here. Something must have leaked.”

“Okay, thanks. That was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m surprised we kept it quiet for this long.” He blew out a breath and got out his cell. “I gotta go. I don’t want attention focused on this.”

“You want a lift?” I said. “They won’t know my car.”

The cogs were visibly turning in his head, but he agreed. Five minutes later, we passed the news vans. I turned up towards Colfax to take us back into the city.

As I dropped him off at HQ, I mentioned that there was a ZK rave the next night and I would be going. I said I would call him if there was anything interesting, or even a lot of ZK around, and he decided he was going to be satisfied with that for the moment.

∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

It was after 1 a.m. when I made it back to Manassah and checked that the security team had changed shifts and was alert. I spoke to each of them and went through their procedures one more time.

The living room was in darkness but I could make out that the brandy bottle next to Jen’s chair was pretty much empty. That was one way to overcome the stress of the day, I guessed. I was surprised how sorry I was that I couldn’t have been there for her.

I took off my boots and crept along the corridor to bed.

FRIDAY

Chapter 19

I was in the office, working on Jen’s finance figures, when Tullah came in with the coffee. The new office had a small area where we could make our own, but it was still appreciated.

I pointed her to a chair in front of my desk. I’d taken the bracelet off and it was lying in front of her.

“Talk me through what this is again, please, Tullah.”

She looked nervous, which for her meant she went very still. “It’s a warning charm that Ma made for you.”

“It works,” I said. “I got a tingle from it yesterday when Jen and I were in danger.”

“Awesome!” Now she looked pleased and nervous at the same time. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. When people give you a good luck charm, you wear it and later they try to explain any good luck that happened to you was due to the charm. This isn’t like that, is it?”

“No. It’s real, but…” she cleared her throat. “But you’ve got to talk to Ma about it. I’m not supposed to say anything. I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Please tell Mary I do need to talk to her. I still need to thank her for it. And the food on Wednesday, which was damn good.” I picked the bracelet up and put it back on. Whatever else it was, it was pretty too. “You do this stuff too?”

“A little. I’m not—”

I stopped her. “I understand. I’ll wait to talk to Mary. Now, I’ve got to get back to these spreadsheets.” I waved her off. “There’s a package on your desk that I need to go by courier this morning. It’s all addressed.” It was the samples from Silver Hills for the colonel. I would need to call him about it as well.

“You look tired, Amber,” she said as she went off.

I grunted. “I’ll get to sleep in tomorrow,” I said. As if.

I made good progress on the financial files. It wasn’t so much that there was fraud, as far as I could see, as the company was overextending itself. Not unusual, but not the profile I expected from Jen’s description of her strategy. There was something that didn’t feel right in the numbers, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

The cell bleeped, and I answered. “Hi, Mom!”

“Amber, you didn’t tell me you’d moved. I stopped in at the old office and they told me you’re down near the college now.”

“Yes, we moved yesterday. The landlord needed the old storeroom, I guess, and Tullah found a better place for us here.” I didn’t want to tell her the whole story and have her upset.

“Oh. Okay. It doesn’t matter. I was just calling to get you here for lunch on Sunday.”

“That would be great, Mom. Twelve-thirty?”

“Yes, that’s good. Is there someone you’d like to bring with you?”

I screwed my eyes tight shut. Maybe I could get David to act the part of a boyfriend. No, that would only make it worse. “No, Mom, no one special at the moment.”

She made her usual disappointed noises. I said I was busy, so she let me go.

Tullah was standing at my desk with a special delivery envelope. I opened it with a feeling that this couldn’t be good. Tullah sensed it too and stayed to watch.

It was from a William Davies, partner at Weissman Porter LLP, one of the top law firms in Denver. I skimmed it. It started:
We act on behalf of Mr. Campbell Carter, Chief Executive Officer of Centennial State Crate & Freight Incorporated (“our Client”), in relation to a contract between…

Crap. He’d convinced his lawyers to start a civil suit against me. There was no way that a court would agree with him and no point in him trying to chase me for damages, even if I didn’t argue the case. It was pure spite. He wanted to put me out of business, create the maximum amount of disruption for me and make good on his threat to prevent me from ever working in Denver again.

I tossed it in a drawer. “Don’t sweat it, Tullah, he’s bluffing. Anyway, it’s me he’s after, not you.”

“It’s
us
, Amber, like you said yesterday.”

I gave her a smile. “That I did. Okay, it’s us. Still, don’t sweat it. I’ll handle this.”

Tullah went to college before lunch, quieter than I had seen her for some time.

I put Jen’s spreadsheets aside. I knew where I needed to go next on that side of things, and there were other tasks I had for today.

I called Colonel Laine. He answered immediately, as always. Sometime, I was going to call him in the middle of the night just to see how quickly he would pick up.

“Sergeant?”

“Colonel, I have a couple of things for you. Are you okay to talk?”

“Go ahead,” he replied.

“I’ve sent a package by courier for analysis in the labs. This isn’t anything on vampires.”

“What is it?”

“I’m hoping you’ll tell me. I don’t want to influence the analysis by discussing it.” I couldn’t resist teasing him. He’d see what it was soon enough and I went on before he could respond. “Second thing. I had a talk with a Lieutenant Krantz, of the army pay administration.”

“What on earth do they want?”

“He’s investigating fraud for the army and the VA. He tells me I was never in the army and therefore any disability compensation I’m paid is being claimed fraudulently.”

Colonel Laine didn’t swear, but the silence was angry.

“I apologize, Sergeant. I’ll deal with this immediately,” he said eventually, in a tight voice. “But you realize that there will never be a record of your time that he could access.”

“Of course, Colonel. I signed up for that. It’s just…” I hesitated. “It’s being told there is nothing. And the conclusions Krantz was drawing. Kinda hard to take.”

He apologized again and when he signed off, I felt a little better. I was going to need to store that up for the next call, which I was dreading. I had to look the number up. When I thought about what that really meant, I realized it was a bad sign. At least I had her direct number and didn’t need to fight my way through a switchboard.

I knew she’d let it ring for at least three rings. It was her way of saying that she was always busy. I got to four rings and I wondered whether she would just dump me to voicemail. She picked it up on the fifth.

“Hi, Kath.”

“Amber?” She sounded surprised to hear from me. Fair enough—I didn’t call my sister very often and we had drifted apart. We used to be close before I joined the army. Remembering that made me sad. We stumbled past the ‘how are yous’
like strangers, uncomfortable with each other.

“So, what can I do for you?” she said.

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Hmm?” Her voice became wary.

“You’ve read about Crate & Freight?”

“Yes.” I could tell she didn’t want to be having this conversation, but I had taken it this far, I felt I might as well finish.

“I was working for Carter at the time. He thought it was just drivers skimming. I found evidence of drug running and I called in the police. He’s suing me because of the disruption. I was wondering—”

“Look, Amber.” She stopped me. “If you reported a felony to the police, he’s got nothing, even if you didn’t have a contract with him. For that matter, even if you had a contract with him that said you wouldn’t talk to the police, it could be put aside by the court. There’s nothing he can do.” She paused a moment and I was about to leap back in when she said, “But I can’t help you on this case, it’s just too busy here.”

“Oh.”

“Amber, I really have to go. Call me and tell me how it goes. Bye.”

I managed to say goodbye in response and was left holding the dial tone.

Well, there was no one to blame but myself if she’d become so distant she didn’t want to help me. Now I’d have to think hard about how I was going to magic up a lawyer for free.

I took a drive around the block to pick up a snack for lunch. It gave me some time to recover and it was a good way to exercise my paranoia and see if anyone was watching the office. There was no one.

When I got back in I pulled out from the safe all the things we had taken after the attack at Silver Hills. The IDs were fake. The credit cards matched the IDs. I couriered them to Morales with a note saying I believed these had been used by ZK members. Let him work them through.

The cash in the wallets I put in an envelope and mailed it to the Volunteers of America organization on Larimer Street. ZK helps the community. Sort of.

For the cell phones, I needed some help and called Jen.

“Jen, have you got a geek who could give me a listing of every number these cell phones have called and a printout of all the texts? Without switching them on.”

“I’ve got just the person. I’ll send my driver over to pick them up now. Hold on.” She spoke to someone else and then came back. “Are you okay, Amber?”

I tried to pick myself up. It said something that Jen could spot my mood over the phone less than a week after first meeting me. “I’m fine, really. What about you? Did you have a sore head this morning?”

“No, honey, I practice enough. What about tonight? Should I get hold of a banker?”

I laughed. “No, but thanks anyway. I’d rather have a drink just with you, truthfully, but not tonight. I’ll be late. Maybe tomorrow.”
Oh God, that’s Saturday night
. “If you’re not busy, that is.”

“Me and my shadows out on the town? No. Amber, I know the security is a good idea, but they’re like a burr up my…well, they’re not great for partying. Anyway, it’s a date, tomorrow night. Carmen will cook for us.”

She signed off and I put the phone down, happier, if a little concerned. However well we got along, had I just agreed to a date with my client?

I pushed it all to the side and spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to find out more about ZK and their climb from biker gang to major criminal organization.

Chapter 20

The warmth had gone out of the day when I parked by the Leung martial arts academy, the Liu Leung Wu Shu Kwan. That’s a hell of a grand name for an old hall, but calling a hall a dojo or a kwan makes it special. I never failed to feel a thrill as I crossed the threshold.