Cross

these days. Ever since Alex left the department and moved over to the FBI, Sampson’s reputation had been rising, not that it hadn’t been on a high level before, not that Sampson didn’t get a lot of respect for all sorts of reasons. The curious thing, though, was that Sampson couldn’t have given a rat’s ass. Peer approval had never meant much of anything to the Big Man. Unless maybe it was Alex’s, and even that was a hit-and-miss thing.
    His latest case was definitely a challenge. Maybe because he hated the bad actor he was trying to bring down. The scum in question, Gino “Greaseball” Giametti, operated strip joints and massage parlors as far south as Fort Lauderdale and Miami. His “sideline” was catering to pervs who needed adolescent girls, sometimes prepubescent ones. Giametti himself was obsessed with the so-called Lolita complex.
    “
Capo,
” Sampson muttered under his breath as he drove up Giametti’s street in the ritzy Kalorama section of DC. The self-important term referred to
capitano,
a captain in the Mafia. Gino Giametti had been a significant earner for years. He’d been one of the first mobsters to figure out that big money could be made bringing in pretty young girls from the former Soviet bloc, especially Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. That was his specialty, and it was the reason Sampson was riding his ass now. His one regret was that Alex couldn’t be with him on this bust. This was going to be a sweet takedown.
    At a little past midnight, he pulled up in front of Giametti’s house. The mobster didn’t live too extravagantly, but all his needs were met. That was how the Mafia took care of its own.
    Sampson peered into his rearview and saw two more cars ease up against the curb directly behind him. He spoke into a mike sticking out from his shirt collar. “Good evening, gents. I think this is going to be a fine night. I can feel it in my bones. Let’s go wake up the Greaseball.”

Chapter 37
    SAMPSON’S PARTNER THESE DAYS was a twenty-eight-year-old detective named Marion Handler, who was almost as big as Sampson was. Handler was certainly no Alex Cross, though. He was currently living with a large-breasted but small-minded cheerleader for the Washington Redskins, and he was looking to make a name for himself in Homicide. “I’m fast-tracking, dude,” he liked to say to Sampson, without a hint of humor or self-effacement.
    Just being around the cocky detective was exhausting, and also depressing. The man was plain stupid; worse, he was arrogant about it, flaunting his frequent logic lapses.
    “I’ll take the point on this one,” Handler announced as they reached the front porch of Giametti’s house. Four other detectives, one holding a battering ram, were already waiting at the door. They looked to Sampson for direction.
    “Take the lead? No problem, Marion. Be my guest,” he said to Handler. Then he added, “First in, first to the morgue.” He spoke to the detective holding the battering ram: “Take it down! Detective Handler goes in first.”
    The front door collapsed in two powerful strikes with the ram. The house alarm system began to wail, and the detectives hurried inside.
    Sampson’s eyes took in the darkened kitchen. Nobody there. New appliances everywhere. An iPod and CDs scattered on the floor. Kids in the house.
    “He’s downstairs,” Sampson told the others. “Giametti doesn’t sleep with his wife anymore.”
    The detectives hurried down steep wooden stairs on the far side of the kitchen. They hadn’t been inside more than twenty seconds. In the basement, they burst in the first door they came to. “Metro Police! Hands up. Now, Giametti,” Marion Handler’s voice boomed.
    The Greaseball was up quickly. He stood in a protective crouch on the far side of the king-size bed. He was a short, potbellied, hirsute man in his midforties. He looked groggy and still out of it, maybe drugged up. But John Sampson wasn’t fooled by his physical appearance—this man was a stone-cold killer. And much worse.
    A pretty, naked young girl with long blond hair and fair white skin was still on the bed. She tried to cover her small breasts and shaved genital area. Sampson knew her name, Paulina Sroka, and that she was from Poland originally. Sampson had known she would be here and that Giametti was rumored to be madly in love with the blond beauty he’d imported from Europe six months ago. According to sources, the Greaseball had killed the girl’s