Thrill Kill (Matt Sinclair #2) - Brian Thiem Page 0,36
deep cover. One woman will come to your hotel room. Even if she saw you on the news at some point, the chances of her recognizing you and putting two and two together is negligible. There’s no one else that we can get up to speed in time and who can play the part we need to make this work.”
“Convincing a woman to have sex with you,” Braddock remarked. “This is right up your alley.”
Sinclair gave Braddock a wry smile and turned his attention back to Roberts. “My old ID is expired.”
“The law enforcement section at DMV has agreed to a rush for a new driver’s license. You have an appointment at the DMV on Claremont at two to pick it up. Our contact in security at Wells Fargo Bank is issuing you a new Visa card right now. I’ll pick it up this afternoon. The Feds are working on a clean cell and the backstop of your identity. Everything will be in place by close of business.”
The last time he carried the ID of Carlos Gutierrez had been when he was part of a deep-cover operation into a Mexican cartel that was establishing a foothold in Oakland. He was making his third controlled buy, handing over a briefcase with forty thousand dollars in exchange for a duffle bag with two kilos of powder. After the exchange, everyone was supposed to walk away, and surveillance teams from OPD and DEA were to follow the money. But it didn’t work out that way. The two cartel henchmen decided to kill Sinclair, take the money, and keep the drugs. They pulled guns and ordered him to his knees. Sinclair knew the surveillance teams couldn’t get there in time, so he drew a compact Kimber .45 from under his shirt. When the firefight was over, one cartel member was dead, the other was wounded, and Sinclair had suffered a bullet wound in his left shoulder that would require three surgeries and continued to nag him to this day.
Sinclair thought his undercover days were long over. But this wasn’t like infiltrating a drug gang or buying illegal guns from Chinese Triads. All it involved was pretending he was someone else, something he’d been doing most of his life. He was sure Dawn’s murder was connected to her work as an escort, and the key to solving the murder was getting into the organization. “When do we do this?”
“We’ll meet right here at five to brief and then head to the hotel. Wear your best suit—you’re going to be a high roller.”
Chapter 14
Sinclair’s cab pulled up to the Waterfront Hotel in Oakland’s Jack London Square at 6:30. Escort services were not strangers to the hotels in Oakland, so it was reasonable to expect Special Ladies Escorts might have a contact even at the Waterfront, the most expensive hotel in Oakland. He was glad the Feds had the money to run the operation the right way. He had worked too many undercover operations during his time in vice where shortcuts were taken to save time or money. They’d use cheaper hotels and sometimes work through hotel security to get the room free, but often it blew the UC’s cover because the hotel management told someone on the staff who tipped off their target.
Sinclair paid the driver, collected his carry-on, and rolled it into the lobby. As he passed the hotel bar, Sinclair recognized two of the FBI agents from the briefing among the well-dressed after-work business crowd.
“Checking in, sir?” a thirtyish woman dressed in a hotel uniform asked from behind the front desk.
“Yes, my name’s Gutierrez.”
She clicked a few keys on her computer. It printed out a single sheet, which she handed to him. “Welcome to the Waterfront, Mr. Gutierrez. I show you staying one night in a bay-view suite. Please review the information to confirm everything is correct. May I see a photo ID and the credit card you wish to use for incidentals?”
From his pocket, Sinclair pulled a new black calfskin wallet. As was standard procedure, he had emptied his pockets of anything that could be linked to Matt Sinclair and dropped them into a large envelope in Roberts’s office. Braddock took the envelope along with his gun and badge. In addition to the wallet filled with ID in the name of Gutierrez, the Feds gave him a new phone and a set of keys that supposedly fit his make-believe home in Bel Air, his make-believe office, and his make-believe BMW.