The Night Detectives (David Mapstone Mystery 7)

Sing Hi was two blocks south. Dominguez wasn’t worried about being seen with me because the venerable Chinese restaurant had lost a good part of its clientele of deputies and prosecutors to the new restaurants at CityScape, the boring mix-used development to the north. I still liked Sing Hi’s chow mein.

He played at being aggrieved over my hurry-up request, but he was clearly interested.

Bob Hunter and Larry Zisman came up pretty clean. Each had accumulated a few speeding tickets. The same was not true of Zisman’s son, Andrew. The son had two juvenile arrests for assault and weapons at ages sixteen and seventeen. His father had paid a top criminal lawyer to get him out of both. He joined the Army but was discharged for being part of a white supremacist cell at Fort Hood, Texas, that was blamed for the beating of a black non-com and the rape of a female soldier. Three of his buddies had gone to military prison. Andrew Zisman had been sent back into the civilian population. His last known address was his father’s condominium in San Diego but over the past year, he had racked up two moving violations in metro Phoenix.

ViCAP was no help on either anti-personnel mines or women being pushed from balconies.

But I had also emailed Artie the list of Grace Hunter’s clients.

“It’s like the Forbes 400,” he commented.

The list contained chief executives, investment bankers, a venture capitalist, doctors, lawyers, and one Indian chief.

The one exception was named Edward Kevin Dowd, age thirty-six.

Yes, Edward.

“This one has an outstanding federal warrant.” Dominguez showed me the intelligence report. “He’s suspected of involvement in the theft of anti-personnel mines from Fort Huachuca.”

A sheet of paper had never felt so heavy.

“Dowd left the Army six years ago after serving for a decade in Special Forces. He had seen multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Then Obama became president and Dowd started recruiting what he called the White Citizens Brigade among other disaffected soldiers. He was no redneck, but a trust-fund baby from back east, attended Andover and Yale. He was a captain. It was two years before the military got a hint of what he was doing on the side and brought him up on charges. But the investigators didn’t find any laws broken, yet. So the Army quietly pushed him out.”

Dominguez slid a photo across the table. Dowd had a lean face, a full head of reddish-brown hair, a narrow soul patch that looked like a Hitler mustache that had fallen to his chin, and small, mean eyes.

“This guy is a killing machine,” Dominguez said. “He’s also a licensed pilot.”

Killing machine. I thought about what Ed Cartwright had told me.

“I need those back.”

I reluctantly slid the material back across the table.

“Did Dowd know Andrew Zisman?”

Dominguez shook his head. “Unknown.”

What was known was that Dowd had been a client of Grace’s, meeting her a dozen times.

“So Artie, where was Dowd last operating?”

He smiled crookedly. “Phoenix and San Diego. What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

It was a lethally pertinent question, but when Peralta arrived at the airport terminal we had no time to talk. Two tough, big men in suits came inside and called our names. They led us outside where an imposing Gulfstream jet was waiting on the tarmac.

“I’m going to have to ask for your weapons,” one said.

“No,” I said. It was one of Peralta’s cardinal rules: you never give up your sidearm.

“It’s all right, Mapstone.” Peralta handed over his Glock. I reluctantly did the same. On a pat-down, they found my last-option knife and confiscated that, too. Peralta glared at me. I glared right back. We stepped up inside the jet, visions of being tossed out in the desert dancing through my head.

“Mike, how the hell are you?”

Mister Fortune Magazine, whose name was Jim Russo, looked older than his photograph, even though he appeared very fit with a golf-course tan. He led us to a sumptuous seating area where a young woman brought us bourbon.

“It’s been too long,” Russo said. “How’s Ed Cartwright doing?”

Now I was confused and paranoid.