Duke City Hit by Max Austin Page B

peers were tooling their way through college, Harry was building a small empire. He owned several companies, including one that supplied fire extinguishers to businesses all over Phoenix. At the time of his death, he sat on the boards of a bank, a solar energy company and a software corporation.
    —He also was involved with several charities, and helped organize a golf tourney to benefit disabled children. Maybe it was part of his cover.
    —He’d never been arrested, at least not as “Harry Marino.”
    —He had an excellent credit rating, and accounts with some of the finer stores and galleries in Phoenix and Scottsdale. His house was paid off, and he appeared to be set for retirement.
    —Harry had never married and left no heirs. Only some friends, who apparently resented his death.
    Nothing Vic uncovered would indicate Harry Marino was anything but what he seemed, a successful bachelor with ties to local business and some good causes. No wonder Penny hadn’t turned up his connection to the cartels. It must be buried deep.
    Vic couldn’t find any solid cartel connection to Joaquin Zamora, either. Zamora had a few arrests on his record from when he was growing up in El Paso, but they were kid stuff: auto burglary, assault, public drunkenness.
    By the time he moved to Albuquerque, ten years ago, Zamora was in his thirties and he’d already made a fortune. Vic assumed the money came from distributing drugs after they’d crossed the border into the United States.
    Vic found few photos of Zamora. The best one came from a charity event, where he’d been photographed with his wife, Rosa, by a local slick magazine. The wife, beauty-queen gorgeous with a glistening mop of black hair, wore a glittery gown and red lipstick that framed a big white smile. Zamora had his arm around her bare shoulders. He wore a tuxedo clearly tailored especially for him. A goatee clutched his strong chin. His black hair was slicked straight back, and his eyes were narrow slits.
    He was looking right into the camera. He wasn’t smiling.
    Pissed off about getting his picture taken, Vic thought.
That
sounds like a drug dealer. He wondered if something bad happened to the photographer after the picture appeared in the magazine.
    Vic noticed one other thing about the photo. Behind the handsome couple, looking uncomfortable in his tux, was a sweaty guy with a thick neck. He wasn’t identified in the caption, but Vic assumed he was a bodyguard. How many of those guys did Zamora have on the payroll?
    The photo was three years old. Zamora must’ve gotten more careful about cameras since then.
    The searches on Zamora didn’t come up with much from business or corporate records. He owned a couple of car washes, but they’d account for only a fraction of his wealth. His credit history was almost nil. Another sign of drug dealers: They pay for most everything with cash. Most have more cash than they know what to do with.
    According to county tax records, Zamora paid two million dollars for his hacienda in the North Valley nearly a decade earlier. That apparently had been some sort of cash transaction, too. No record of a mortgage.
    Vic now had a better picture of the two men, but hadn’t really learned much that was helpful. Both were wealthy, and both certainly could’ve come into their money by illegal means. But were they drug traffickers? Did they work for the cartels? Nobody had ever said so publicly, as near as Vic could tell. If the cops were onto either of them, they’d kept mum about it, even after Marino’s death.
    He wondered where Penny was getting her information. She seemed to know a lot more about these guys—after the fact—than Vic could find from computer records. Too bad she hadn’t snapped to the cartel connection
before
she accepted the contract on Marino.
    Too late now. Harry’s dead. His friends are angry. Vic got the feeling this thing was just getting started.
    He cleared the search history and started over, searching