Rarities Unlimited 04 - The Color of Death

office and wished he liked the man. Hell, he’d settle for not despising the bastard. Colton used ass-kissing rather than good fieldwork to get ahead.
    Problem was, it worked.
    “False alarm,” Sam said.
    “What’s this?” Kennedy asked.
    Colton grinned and grabbed the opportunity to undermine Sam. “Our fearless special agent must have been bored holding up the wall in the gem room. He found himself a classy piece of ass and dragged her out into the lobby for some face-to-face. Nice clothes, nice body, black hair, and dark eyes that could bore holes in even his thick hide. Whatever he was selling, she wasn’t buying.”
    “South American?” Kennedy asked.
    “Why wasn’t I told?” Sizemore demanded.
    Sam looked at a point between the two men and said, “About half an hour ago I noticed a Caucasian female, probably early thirties, well dressed, walk into the conference room that some of the second-tier dealers have rented just off the lobby. Despite her clothes and confidence, something was wrong about her. I took up a position close to the Purcell booth, where she had engaged Mr. Purcell in a business conversation that could also have been a flirtation.”
    “Nobody would flirt with that slimeball unless money was on the table,” Sizemore said.
    “My impression was the same, which was why I watched her,” Sam said neutrally. “She flashed some skin, Purcell lost focus, and she switched gems on him.”
    “Big deal,” Sizemore said. “Gem shows draw con artists the way fresh shit draws flies. You get her name?”
    “Natalie Harrison Cutter. No ID to back it up and I didn’t have the authority to push it. Last time I checked, a shell game isn’t a federal crime.”
    “You turn her over to the locals?” Kennedy asked.
    “The gem I caught her with was a lab job,” Sam said. “I haven’t had time to verify if the blue sapphire she left with Purcell is real or not.”
    “You nailed her too soon,” Colton said, shaking his head in false sympathy at Sam’s mistake. “She hadn’t pulled the switch yet. Patience, boy. How many times do I have to tell you?”
    Sam bit back his first answer, looked at Kennedy, and said, “She pulled the switch. I’d swear to it in court.”
    Kennedy shut up. However much SA Sam Groves chapped Kennedy’s Boston ass, he knew that Groves was one of the best sheer investigators in the Bureau. Great eyes. Great instincts.
    And too damn smart for his own good.
    Sizemore tapped one index finger on his chin and stared into the middle distance. Then he looked at Kennedy. “Anything that weird should be investigated. All my men are tied up in security for this convention.”
    “Jesus,” Kennedy muttered. “Another joker. I have more of them than real cards.” He pointed at Sam. “Run her and tell Sizemore what you find. If it still doesn’t fit, keep after her.”
    What Sam thought of the assignment didn’t show. It didn’t have to.
    Everyone in the room knew that he’d just been given more of a slap than an assignment.

Chapter 9
    Los Angeles
    Noon Tuesday
    Eduardo Pedro Selva de los Santos walked up and down the narrow aisles of Hall Import and Specialty Gem Cutting, which for all its fine name was in the basement of Hall Jewelry International along with the heating, cooling, and plumbing systems. Eduardo didn’t particularly notice the piercing clamor of cutting machines and the bent backs of the cutters from Ecuador who tended their geriatric equipment the way they had once tended crops.
    The air tasted of powdered stone and petroleum-based lubricants.
    He no more noticed the gritty air than the immigrants at bus stops noticed smog or bodies that ached before their time. Ni modo. It didn’t matter. What counted was the cash money to be earned, the kind of wealth that was impossible to find in the jungles and mountains of Ecuador.
    Even after forty years in America, Eduardo mailed half his money to his family back home, to his mother and wife and sisters and daughters. While their men worked in the golden north, the women raised children who were the result of the men’s seasonal Christmas visits. A lonely way to raise a family, but better than being poorer than dirt, generation after generation, world without end.With the miraculous American dollars that flowed from the north, the women bought chickens and wool yarn, calves and seed and even the most precious thing of all: land.
    “Hola, Manolito,” Eduardo said. “¿Cómo estas?”
    A teenager