Deadly Pursuit by Michael Prescott Read Free Book Online Page A

a stop near a trash bin. Two men in dark business suits emerged. They were Dallas P.D. homicide detectives, and they had been members of the Trail Ridge task force ever since a twenty-two-year-old legal secretary named Dorothy Beerbaum had turned up dead on the Trinity River greenbelt with a puncture wound in her neck.
    Both cops were carrying Smith .38 Chief’s Specials, drawn, cocked, and locked. They approached the back door of CSGI and waited, hugging the wall to minimize the risk of being seen from a rear window.
    Zykmund wasn’t buying it, not right off.
    “Excuse me?” he said with evident impatience. “I’m afraid I do not recall you or your company, Mr. ...?”
    “Michaels. Dave Michaels, of Consolidated Silver and Gold. Come on, Pavel, has it been that long? Let me check my records … Holy smoke, you won’t believe this. It’s been six months since I called. No wonder you don’t remember me.”
    “Mr. Michaels, I am busy man.”
    Precisely what Jack was counting on. A busy man could never keep track of all his phone calls and business contacts.
    “Call me Dave,” Jack said. “Look, I know it was a while ago, but you remember what we talked about last time? I was trying to get you into silver at five dollars an ounce. You weren’t able to do business with me at that time, which is a shame, because today silver’s at six dollars and twenty-seven cents. If you’d gone with me when I asked you to, Pavel, you could have made yourself a twenty-five percent profit.”
    “Twenty-five percent,” Pavel murmured, and Jack smiled.
    * * *
    Late last night, the street directly outside the strip mall had been lined with orange cones and signs warning Tow Away Zone. No vehicles had parked at the curb, leaving plenty of open space for the blue Honda Civic that pulled up now.
    At the wheel was a detective from the San Antonio Police Department, who had worked the case involving Jack Dance’s first known victim, a biochemistry graduate student at UTSA killed in her apartment fourteen months earlier.
    Seated next to him was the sheriff of San Bernalillo County, New Mexico. Dance’s second victim had been found in an arroyo near the Rio Puerco.
    Overhead, an FBI surveillance chopper swung into view, executing loops over the arrest site.
    * * *
    “I’ve got something for you now, Pavel, that’s even better than the deal you passed up. Not silver this time. Gold.”
    “I know very little about such things …”
    “Let me ask you a question. You’re a businessman, as I recall.”
    “I run auto-body shop.”
    “Right.” That explained the power tools still screaming on the other end of the line. “So you must follow financial developments pretty closely. Did you read the business section of the L.A. Times today? Interest rates are about to climb. That means inflation, my friend. And when inflation takes off, so does gold.”
    “I do not think I can afford—”
    “Sure you can. That’s the beauty of our system here at CSGI. We understand the needs of smaller investors like yourself. Which is why we permit you to purchase quantities of gold as modest as three troy ounces. At three-eighteen per ounce, that works out to only nine-fifty-four total.”
    “Nine hundred fifty-four dollars? Is too much.”
    “But all you have to pay is four-seventy-seven. You put down just half the price up front, with a fifty percent balloon payment required only when and if you choose to take physical possession of the metal. In other words, you can lock in the total price right now, no matter how high the market eventually goes. See what I’m saying, Pavel? You just can’t lose.”
    * * *
    A Saturn coupe parked behind the blue Honda. San Diego P.D. and the sheriff’s department of Clark County, Nevada, were represented inside.
    * * *
    “For half price ... I get all the gold?”
    “What you get is a half interest in your share, plus the guarantee of making an outright purchase at any time in the future. When you’re