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“Still hurt like a son of a bitch,” he said. “I think he actually enjoyed doing it.”
Cartwright bought Peralta time to escape by acting more injured than he was. It was more than two hours before the courier-turned-robber was identified. To further camouflage the sting, the FBI instantly removed Eric Pham because he was Peralta’s friend. They brought in a senior agent from the outside to take charge.
“Horace Mann,” I said.
“He’s a supervisory special agent. Flew in from Minneapolis on a Bureau jet and took charge.”
“Does he know who you are?”
“He might find out I was quietly forced to retire ten years ago or face charges for bribery.”
That was the cover story that allowed Cartwright to go undercover. I said, “No chance he could know you’re still on the job.”
“There’s always a chance.” He momentarily looked back at the hospital. “But it’s a reasonable risk. Remember, the idea was to get be out of this early so I’d be nothing but a bit player, a victim at that.”
“Is Mann a suspect?”
“That’s an interesting thought, but no,” Cartwright said. “The prime suspect is named Pamela Grayson. She’s a senior agent in evidence control. Two years ago, she was investigated when eight pounds of very high quality heroin went missing, but she was cleared. So she was already on the radar for the diamonds.”
“Already?”
Cartwright nodded. “It gets better. She served as a field agent in the Central African Republic. That’s one of the centers of diamonds used to fund wars, drugs, you name it. Here’s a sweet part: she was already in town when the robbery happened, staying at the Phoenician. Vacation, she said.”
“What color is her hair?”
He looked at me curiously. “Brown. I’ve only seen the pictures.”
People can color their hair.
I thought more about all he was telling me. “But this meant she had to know what the Russians knew. So either she had lost the diamonds to the Russians and was trying to get them back. Or she was working with the Russians, and why did they need you? Plus, all this drama would make me stay as far away as possible.”
“Maybe you’d make a bad thief, David. When this much money is the itch somebody needs to scratch, he—or she—will take chances. Get reckless.”
It sounded too complicated. Too many unanswered questions. Too much that could go wrong.
I said, “But what if the real thief was Mann?”
Cartwright squinted at me. “Why do you have a hard-on for him?”
“We had a nice little chat,” I said. “I don’t like him. He also strikes me as a control freak. Did he volunteer for this, or was he assigned?”
“Cartwright said, “He volunteered to a priority request but…”
“So if he stole the diamonds from evidence and was working with the Russians, he’d be in the perfect position to steer the investigation wrong. As it is, Grayson has been tipped off by the robbery and if anything happens to her, she can claim entrapment.”
“Don’t play high-school lawyer, David. This was moving fast. I wasn’t totally comfortable with the plan.”
Then I told him about the voice on Pennington’s phone. “Mann’s window is closing.”
“Are you sure you heard right?” he said. “Horace Mann has a clean record. He’s been decorated for valor. Maybe your caller said ‘the man.’ Something like that.”
“I know what I heard. If Horace Mann is dirty, what next?”
“If that’s true, Pham has it covered.”
“Pham’s not in Alaska?”
“Hell, no. That’s disinformation, same as using the media to make sure the Russians and the bad fed knew Peralta was the robber. The director wanted redundancy and secrecy because this evidence theft involved a compromise of Bureau security. So he had Pham handpick a very small team that could go dark and be Peralta’s guardian angels. Mann doesn’t know.”
