Roses Are Red (Alex Cross 6)

Betsey winked. “I’ve been here since six.”

“Show-off,” I said.

I sat down at the desk I was using and started to look through the mountain of paperwork that had already accumulated. Agent Cavalierre was at the desk across from mine. I was glad to be back on the line. One or more killers were out there murdering bank tellers, managers, families. I wanted to help stop it if I could.

An hour or so later, I looked up and saw Agent Cavalierre staring my way with a blank look on her face. She’d been lost in her thoughts, I suppose.

“There’s someone I need to see,” I said. “I should have thought of him before today. He left Washington for a while. Went to Philly, New York, Los Angeles. Now he’s back. He’s robbed a lot of banks, and he’s violent.”

Betsey nodded. “I’d love to meet him. Sounds like a swell guy.”

It probably had something to do with our scarcity of solid leads that she went with me that morning. We rode in her car to a fleabag hotel on New York Avenue. The Doral was a decrepit, paint-peeling flophouse. A trio of skinny, shopworn prostitutes in miniskirts were just leaving the hotel as we arrived. A retro-looking pimp in a gold lamé zoot suit leaned against a yellow Cadillac convertible, picking at his teeth.

“You take me to all the nicest places,” Agent Cavalierre said as she climbed out of the car. I noticed she was wearing an ankle holster. Dressed for success.

Chapter 39

TONY BROPHY was living the vida loca up on the fourth floor of the Doral. The hotel desk clerk said he’d been staying here for a week, and that he was “a very troubled dude, not a nice person, and a serious asshole.”

“I don’t think this place is connected with the Doral in Miami,” Betsey said as we took the back stairs. “What a dump.”

“Wait until you meet Brophy. He fits right in here.”

We arrived unannounced at his room and unholstered our guns. Brophy was a legitimate suspect in the robbery-murders. He fit the profile. I rapped my knuckles on a scarred, bare wood door.

“What?” a gruff voice called from inside. “I said what?”

“Washington PD. Open up,” I called out.

I heard movement, then someone snapped a few locks on the other side. The door slowly opened and Brophy filled the narrow doorway. He was six-four and close to two sixty, a lot of it bulging muscle. His dark hair was shaved with neat razor lines to the scalp.

“Asshole D.C. cop,” he said, a nonfilter cigarette hanging from his lips. “And who’s this lovely asshole with you?”

“Actually, I can talk for myself,” Betsey said to Brophy.

Tony Brophy grinned down at her. He apparently liked to get a response to his rudeness. “Okay. Speak. Woof.”

“I’m Senior Agent Betsey Cavalierre. FBI,” Betsey said.

“Senior agent! Let’s see, what’s the line from all the cop shows on TV? We can do this the hard way — or we can do it the easy way,” he said, and showed off surprisingly even white teeth. He was wearing black paramilitary pants, off-white shower thongs, no shirt. His arms and upper torso were covered with jailhouse tats and curled black hair.

“I vote for the hard way. But that’s just me,” Betsey said.

Brophy turned to a skinny blond who was sitting on a lime green retro couch propped in front of a TV. She wore a loose-fitting FUBU shirt over her underwear.

“You like her as much as I do, Nora?” Brophy asked the blond.

The woman shrugged, apparently uninterested in anything but Rosie O’Donnell on TV. She was probably high. Her hair was stringy, with the bangs gelled down to her forehead. She had barbed-wire tattoos on both ankles, wrists, and around her throat.

Brophy looked back at Betsey Cavalierre and me. “I take it we have business to discuss. So, the mystery lady is FBI. That’s very good. Means you can afford any information I might have.”

Betsey shook her head. “I’d rather beat it out of you.”

Tony Brophy’s dark eyes came alive again. “I really like her.”

We followed Brophy to a lopsided wooden table in a tiny kitchen. He sat straddled on a chair, the backrest wedged against his hairy stomach and chest. We had to arrive at a financial agreement before he would give up anything. He was right about one thing — Betsey Cavalierre’s budget was a lot bigger than mine.

“This has to be good information, though,” she warned.