The Quickie - James Patterson [71]
My eyes strained to get the license plate number as I ran across the exhaust-stained pavement after it.
It was a DC plate starting with 99.
I gave up on the rest of the plate number and tried to get a quick look at the driver. I wanted to see who, or more specifically what gender, the person was who had just picked up my husband.
But the windows were tinted. I discovered that little fact about the same moment that I tripped over a golf bag and gave the hallowed ground of our nation’s capital an enthusiastic, chest-bumping high-five.
Chapter 101
NOT EXACTLY SURE where to start looking for Paul, I decided to pay Roger Zampella, the contact detective listed in the FBI report, a visit.
I’d never met Roger face-to-face, of course. He turned out to be a large, well-dressed African American with a smile brighter than the polished buckles of his polka-dot suspenders.
When I called him from the airport, he’d immediately invited me over to his squad room at the Metro DC Second District Station on Idaho Avenue. I arrived to catch him just beginning an early lunch at his desk.
“You don’t mind if I eat while we talk, do you, Detective?” he said, flipping his silk pink-and-green repp tie over his shoulder. He tucked a napkin into the white collar of his two-tone baby blue banker’s shirt before upending a brown lunch bag onto his desk with a flourish.
A small apple slid out, along with a Quaker oatmeal bar about the size of a used bar of soap.
He cleared his throat.
“My wife,” he explained as he tore open the bar’s wrapper with his teeth, “just saw the results of my latest cholesterol test. I got an F-minus. You said on the phone you wanted to talk to me about a robbery? I should have told you, I’m in Homicide now.”
“It’s actually from nearly five years ago,” I said. “I was wondering if you could recall anything about it. The case number was three-seven-three-four-five. An armed robbery at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the capital. The perpetrator —”
“Left some blood,” Detective Zampella said without any hesitation. “The ticket-broker thing. I remember it.”
“You have a good memory,” I said.
“You never forget the open ones, unfortunately,” he said.
“You said something about a ticket broker?”
Zampella sniffed at the oatmeal bar before he took a dainty squirrel nibble.
“The Sheraton, this is the one out near Reagan National Airport, was hosting the annual NCAA football coaches’ convention,” he said as he chewed. “All the big schools’ coaches and assistant coaches receive Final Four tickets every year for free. These ticket brokers — glorified ticket scalpers, if you want my opinion — just set up shop in the hotel and buy them up. Pay out cash right there and then. Illegal, of course, but we’re talking about college recruiters. They’ve been known to bend a few rules.”
“How much cash are we talking about here, Roger?”
“A lot,” Zampella said. “Some of the games go for a thousand bucks a ticket.”
“And there was a robbery?”
Zampella went to take another little bite, decided to hell with it, and dropped the whole thing into his mouth. He chewed twice, swallowed, then cleared his throat.
“One of these brokers apparently came down a couple of nights before the convention,” he said. “And somebody must have gotten wind of who he was, and they robbed him of his suitcase of cash.”
“Get a description?” I said. “Anything at all?”
Zampella shook his head.
“Guy wore a ski mask.”
A ski mask? Wow, Paul was really original. Not to mention completely insane.
“Where’d the blood come from? Anybody figure that out?”
“When the broker was handing over the case, he had second thoughts and hit the thief in the chin with it. Guy was a bleeder, I guess. Ruined the carpet.”
“What did the thief do then?”
“He took out a gun, threatened to blow the guy away. That’s when the broker gave it up.”
“How much did he get?”
“Half a million, maybe more. The broker said it was only seven thousand,