Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

calls.”
    “Sizemore will be happy to hear it.”
    “Some of the maids have cell phones.” Mario winked and made a pumping motion with his arm. “Real scrubwomen.”
    Sam snickered. He knew enough Spanglish—the creole of border Spanish and English—to catch the reference to maids who made a little extra working in the sheets before they changed them.
    More men and two women filed in. The first woman was a bright, barely-thirty-year-old NYPD detective whose marriage had just crashed and burned because of her career demands. Too bad, how sad, and about three out of four law-enforcement officers had stories to match. The second woman was the Legend’s daughter, Sharon Sizemore, a former FBI special agent who had been sacked for sleeping with her SAC. It was old news, but the kind of thingthat made the rounds of the FBI grapevine whenever her name came up. Since her exit from the FBI, she had worked for her father’s security consultation service.
    The men walking in behind her were between twenty-five and forty-five years old, short hair, clean shaven, like a herd of fraternity brothers in uniformly casual clothes. One of them wore Nikes. Another wore sandals, no socks. A third wore cowboy boots. The men started talking among themselves and shaking hands with everyone in the room.
    Sam sighed. Party time. Too bad he wasn’t a party animal. But he’d learned to howdy and shake with the best of them, so he made the rounds of FBI special agents, LAPD, NYPD, Las Vegas PD, plus other various local law-enforcement officers. When he got to Raul Mendoza, Sam’s smile became real. Mendoza was the BCIS—Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services—agent, the Department of Homeland Security’s representative on the crime strike force. Based in Florida, he specialized in South American gangs. In Los Angeles, Mendoza had chased illegals who ran drugs to pay off their smuggler, but he’d adjusted real fast to gems. He was politic, media-wise, and headed for the top.
    All the qualities Sam didn’t have.
    Mendoza was also a damn good investigator, which was what Sam cared about. He saluted him with a mug of coffee. Grinning, the BCIS agent returned the favor.
    The noise level subsided somewhat when the SAC Doug Smith walked in, looked over the crowd, and headed straight for the coffee, where Sam had gone back for seconds.
    “ ’Afternoon, boss,” Sam said, pouring him a mug of lethal brew. “Heard you snored over the phone logs.”
    “Bullshit. That was Mario.” Doug yawned hugely and took the mug of dark black liquid. He glared at it, scrubbed one blunt hand through sandy hair that got grayer and thinner every year, and sighed. He swallowed a gulp of coffee, grimaced, and swallowed more. “Thanks. I think.”
    “Those triple shifts will kill you,” Sam said, smiling slightly.
    “I took four hours off to sleep. Anything new?”
    Before Sam could mention his no-ID gem thief, the inner door of the suite opened and two men walked out.
    Ted Sizemore was the first. He moved with a confidence that was just short of a swagger. At sixty-three, with two successful careers under his belt, he’d earned the right. Unlike everyone else in the room, he was wearing a suit. The navy blue cloth had pinstripes so narrow they almost vanished. His shirt was white and crisp, his tie dark maroon with just the suggestion of diagonal navy stripes. His shoes were wing tips with a finish that could double as a shaving mirror. He might not carry FBI credentials anymore, but he hadn’t forgotten the old uniform.
    The second man was SSA Patrick Kennedy. More than a decade younger than Sizemore, Kennedy was one of the Legend’s biggest admirers. The fact that Kennedy had worked with Sizemore in the Bureau for about twenty years probably had something to do with it. The fact that Sizemore could conjure up the media with a snap of his fingers might have had a lot more. Positive media hits were as necessary for promotion as investigative and bureaucratic skills. Kennedy’s next career hike was riding on the outcome of the crime strike force he oversaw. Sizemore was a great unofficial asset, just as the FBI was a great unofficial asset for the Legend’s security business.
    Sam drank more coffee and wondered if one hand ever got tired of washing the other. He chewed his last peanut butter and cheese cracker, washed it down with more coffee, and waited for someone to pull his finger out and start the whole time-wasting dance.
    Meetings