The Color of Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

butter and cheese crackers from his sports coat pocket. Not much as brunches went, and it was all he was going to get. Sizemore might buy coffee for the strike force, but his idea of food was pretzels and beer.
    A lean man still in his twenties walked in. “Hey, Sam, what’s happening?”
    “Sweet fuck all. How about you?”
    “The same.” Mario yawned and stretched. Like Sam, he was wearing casual civilian clothes. Unlike Sam, Mario was a detective for the Phoenix PD. “The cell traffic we’re picking up is all about meeting for lunch at the local Taco Hell. I came close to falling asleep, and your SAC was in the HQ with me.”
    Sam shook his head. “Bad form. Doug’s a bear about staying awake on the job. Takes snoring as a personal insult.” He lifted his mug. “Have some coffee.”
    “How lousy is it?”
    Sam took a swallow. “How lousy is your imagination?”
    “That bad, huh? Must be why ‘Our Hero’ Sizemore drinks beer.”
    A shrug was Sam’s only answer. Anyone who had beer with every meal wasn’t Sam’s idea of a hero. “Who’s on the earphones now?”
    “Bailey. You should hear him bitch. An NYPD detective is too good for that shit. Just ask him.”
    “No thanks.”
    “What a prick.” Mario grabbed a handful of pretzels and ignored the bucket of iced beer. He pulled a can of Pepsi from his jacket pocket, popped the top, and spewed brown foam in all directions. Then he came closer to Sam and said softly, “We’re picking up more Spanish 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