Her 24-Hour Protector(53)
“Did you get someone on Rothchild’s tail?” he asked Perez, removing his jacket.
Concern showed in Rita Perez’s eyes. She got up from her desk, came up to him, talking quietly. “What’s going down, partner?”
“They’re freaking idiots, that’s what. Where’s Quinn?” he said, noticing the door to his office was shut.
“He’s in Washington, gone for two days. You going to tell me what’s going down with Rothchild?”
Lex sighed and swore. His little chat with the boss was going to have to wait. He was going to have to remain on the case, status quo, for another forty-eight hours.
“What you want Quinn for?”
“Just needed to speak to him about something personal.”
Perez put her hands on her hips. “What you need is to speak to me, partner. You need to tell me what the hell is going on between you and that Rothchild woman.”
“Nothing is going on.”
“Oh? Apart from the fact she was followed last night, caused a major highway pileup and you didn’t bring her in?”
“Executive decision,” he said crisply, pulling out his chair.
Her brow tweaked up, and she regarded him suspiciously. “Let’s hope it’s the right one. For your sake.”
“Haven’t you got some work to do, Perez?”
“Yeah. I got work. I’m just wondering if we’re like, still a team here, you know?”
Lex grunted.
She remained, arms akimbo, looking at him.
“Look.” He glanced around the office, lowered his voice. “I’ll explain it all, I promise. Between you and me, I got myself messed up personally with this woman, and I need to get myself off this case. And I will as soon as Quinn gets back.”
She studied him for a few beats. “You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah, as long as you quit hassling me and get off my back for a few minutes.”
Perez sat at her desk, began busying herself irritably with her computer, and Lex felt bad. Rita Perez had worked for the FBI for twenty years now, and she’d always been there for her partners. She had that kind of rep, never fussed about stuff like tenure, and who’d been where longer. She was one of the most decent, fair, equality-minded people he knew. And apart from the recent bachelor auction fiasco, he trusted her with his life. “Everything okay with your niece?” he muttered.
She glanced up, that dark all-knowing brow of hers crooking higher. “What? You want to be my friend now?”
“Whatever. Don’t worry about it.”
“Marisa is fine,” she snapped. “Better than fine—she’s got a new man in her life.”
“Who?”
“Patrick Moore, an accountant and a really decent guy who came out of nowhere into her life. I’m happy for her. She’s had a rough haul since her miscarriage. She’s opening up her own nanny agency now.”
“That’s great, Perez. Tell her I’m happy for her.” And he was, genuinely so.
Perez hesitated. “I’m having them both over for dinner next weekend. Want to come?”
“Thanks. Maybe I will. I—” The phone on his desk rang, and he snagged the receiver. “Special Agent Duncan,” he barked.
It was his contact from the financial crimes unit in New York returning his earlier call. And what Lex heard next made him sit forward sharply.
The New York unit apparently now had an informer, a retired personal accountant of Frank Epstein’s from the old Frontline days who’d kept copious copies of records—payroll, budgets, tax files, receipts—all because he feared he might one day need “insurance” against Epstein. And among those records was a mention of a business deal with Harold Rothchild.
“Can you fax those pages through, the ones that pertain to Rothchild?”
“It’s just two pages—a copy of a letter from Epstein’s desk to Rothchild, outlining the parameters of a pending partnership in a property deal. I’m sending them as we speak.”
Lex walked over to the fax machine, phone still to his ear. “They’re coming through now—” He stilled when he saw Epstein’s letterhead inching out of the machine, his mind veering wildly off track and back into time. Because next to Frank Epstein’s name was a little logo—a cartoon lion with a crown on its head. The same logo Lex had seen on the bumper of the metallic-blue Cadillac that used to bring the brown envelope of cash to his mother’s house in Reno each month.
Heart thudding, Lex removed the fax, stared at the logo. “That little drawing—”
“It was Epstein’s logo for a while, back in the day,” said the New York agent. “It’s on all his personal correspondence from that period. Apparently those in Epstein’s inner circle used to call him the Vegas Lion, or the Lion King, a bit of egotistical motivation that led him to dub his next big casino project the Desert Lion.”