Read Online The Catch by Archer Mayor - Free Book Online Page B

particular ICE office was a political hotbed, and he hadn’t been here long enough, or kissed enough asses, that he was guaranteed a pass for all the bad press he knew would be churned up from within the office and the media combined.
    Which didn’t include the tensions surrounding the obligatory post-shoot investigation.
    It behooved him to make the Dot Ave killing of James Marano the start of an investigative cornucopia so rich as to reduce the whole incident to a minor detail.
    Surrounded by a small team hard at work dismantling the contents of Marano’s apartment, Chapman cast a glance at Joe Gunther and his female sidekick, wondering if they were going to prove a help or a hindrance with his ambitions. Right now, given that they had started the ball rolling toward this mess, he wasn’t optimistic, even while he was paradoxically grateful to them for flushing Grega out of the bushes.
    He had another problem—time was short. There was going to be a critique of the evening’s outcome, with everyone spending most of the night at the office, being scrutinized by people in suits who hadn’t even been at the scene. Chapman wanted at least a vague idea of what Marano and Grega had been up to before he was forced to stop dead in his tracks and cool his heels for this bureaucratic circus.
    “How did you get Grega’s name in the first place?”
    Chapman blinked at the still unfamiliar voice. Gunther was looking right at him.
    “What? I don’t … He was just mentioned in passing, at least initially.” Chapman scratched his head, realizing he’d been caught daydreaming. “Let’s see,” he began again, looking away from the Vermonter and gazing at his colleagues, who were tagging, labeling, and photographing almost everything in sight.
    “His name came up a couple of months ago. A snitch of mine was going on and on about how the Hell’s Angels were losing their grip in Canada, and how other players were starting to horn in on their territory. He mentioned how his pal, Luis Grega, was making serious money running product across the border as a result.”
    “He was a mule?”
    Chapman nodded, thinking back. “At first. Later, the same guy told me he was violent, upwardly mobile, and ambitious to make a dent in the U.S. That moved him up in my ranking, because he’d been caught here illegally once already and tossed out. If he was back and turning nasty, I wanted to grab him—and now had double grounds to do so.”
    Gunther asked, “Did your snitch say who he was working for?”
    “No. It was pretty vague—mostly generalities. I remember him saying, too, that another trend was the growth of drug use in the boonies, and how cities were losing their appeal as the only places to make money. He was very upbeat and used Grega as an example of all boats getting a lift from a good tide.”
    Chapman read the look in the older detective’s eyes and added, “Needless to say, I’ll get back in touch with him and squeeze him harder.”
    One of the search team approached them with a plastic evidence bag. “Found a cell,” he said.
    Chapman’s expression lightened. “Great. The lab should make some hay out of that. You finding anything else?”
    The man made an unhappy face. “Be nice if these people kept diaries. Mostly, it’s clothes and trash and drugs. A lot of cash lying around. There are some scraps of paper with scribbling on them—we’ll have to take a closer look at that. See if any of it takes us anywhere. Otherwise, not much. I’m guessing this wasn’t the only place they called home.”
    The technician held the cell phone up to the light so that Chapman could better see it, adding, “By the way, this is a throwaway, so don’t get your hopes too high. Some of these guys use ’em for a single call before ditching ’em.”
    “I know, Larry,” Chapman said, distracted and irritable. “Just let me know what you find.”
    “If anything,” Larry offered.
    “Right.” Chapman turned away, pretending