Obviously beginning to accept the idea, he responded, “And laundering it.”
“We wouldn’t have to,” she said, smiling at his sudden interest.
He inched forward, focusing on her cleavage, so visible above the pillows she was clutching to herself. “Does Hector satisfy you?”
Her eyes grew cold. “That’s none of your business. May I get dressed?”
“I thought maybe we’d go into the bedroom and talk this deal over.”
“You are a pig,” she said in genuine disgust.
“But a pig you need. Sex makes me trust people, Judith.”
“It’s not the sex, it’s the power it gives you.” She held his eyes, her face set in a thoughtful expression. “Oh, why not?” she said, pushing the pillows away and stretching out over the sofa. “We’ll do it here.”
He got up and slipped off his robe. He sat down next to her and began kneading her nipple with his left hand while the right still held the nine-millimeter automatic. “You’re a very beautiful woman.”
She moaned. Demanded, “Harder.”
He kneaded the long nipple between his fingers. She slid her arm around him, pushing his head down to her mouth, and she kissed him, drilling her tongue deep. He began kissing her body, making his way slowly down her body.
Breathlessly she asked, “Can you please put that damn gun away? It’s hard for me to concentrate on the moment with that thing staring at my head.”
He smiled, put the automatic on top of the coffee table, and resumed caressing her body. She groaned, nudging him lower with her right hand as the left sneaked up under her wig and pulled out a flat piece of metal about two and a half inches long with one dull edge and one razor-sharp edge. Moaning and thrashing while his face was pressed against her body, she delicately held the lethal blade between her thumb and middle finger, with her forefinger braced on the back of the dull edge. She moaned, “Roberto, I want you to look up at me.”
His face lifted up, and he saw the blade coming down at him. His eyes grew wide in terror, but before he could react, she had slashed the razor edge across his face, slicing open both his eyes.
“Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh!” he screamed, slapping his hands across his bleeding eyes. He leaped off the sofa and stumbled over the table, toppling himself and the gun onto the floor, where he writhed in incredible pain.
Judith sprang up, grabbed the automatic from the floor, and tried to aim it at his head but couldn’t because he was twisting and thrashing about violently, screaming as the blood poured out between his fingers. She tracked his jerking head movements with the gun until he stopped for the merest second. Then she shot him in the head.
She cleaned the blade by wiping it on the sofa and returned it to its hiding place under her wig. She went out into the foyer and began gathering up her clothes.
The stubborn haze that had clung to the city during the night and early-morning hours had been burned off by the sun and replaced by a cloudless blue sky as Judith drove a rented Ford off the Queens Boulevard exit of the Long Island Expressway, with Tina Turner’s sassy voice booming out of the tape deck.
Eleven blocks south of the exit, on the west side of Sixty-eighth Street, there was an oasis of garden apartments overlooked by the condos of Forest Hills. The long gravel driveway that cut in from the boulevard emptied into a residential community of manicured lawns and hedges. The sign at the driveway’s entrance read The Jacob I. Fine Community.
It had taken her almost seventy minutes to drive there in the afternoon traffic from Barrios’s West Side apartment because she had taken a detour through Cocaine Alley, as Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside was known. When she stopped for the light on Sixty-ninth Street, she had reached under her seat and pulled out the brown paper bag containing the carefully cleaned and wiped guns she had used to kill Carlsen and Barrios. Just before the light changed, she cracked the door on the driver’s side and dumped the bag into the street; she knew that some crackhead would find them and suck them up into the netherworld of narcotics. Eventually some junkie would get arrested with one or both of them in his possession, and the police would try to tie him in to both murders. She liked playing mind games with the cops. So far she had won every time.
After easing up the graveled driveway, she parked and locked the car. Standing in the small visitors’ parking lot, she watched an old man wearing green-tinted sunglasses with chartreuse frames, a designer sweatsuit, and a Walkman plugged into his ear bobbing along with his walker. “That’s the spirit,” she said to herself, walking down the curving pathway to an apartment whose brass nameplate read “Sol Stern.”
She saw her father sitting in his wheelchair on the small patch of lawn in front of his apartment, staring blankly off into space. His nurse, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a blue cotton blouse, was sitting on a folding chair next to him, reading a paperback.
“How is my father?”
The nurse slapped the book closed and got to her feet. “The same,” she said, obviously surprised by the unexpected visit.
“Leave us for a while,” Judith said, adding, “I pay you way above the going rate, and for that I expect you to dress more appropriately. My father likes well-dressed people around him.”
The licensed practical nurse started to say something, but she was cut off by Judith, who said, “If you have a problem with that, tell me, and I’ll replace you.”
“No problem, Miss Stern,” she said, and walked off along the pathway. In a tough economy even nurses were looking for work.
Gazing tenderly into her father’s rheumy eyes, Judith found it hard to believe that this was the tall, handsome, robust man she had so loved as a child. How could he turn into this shrunken shell with ugly brown spots all over his face and gnarled hands? Was this really her father, the man who had built G. Stern Bathing Garments, from a storefront operation on Hester Street into one of the largest dress manufacturers in the country?
She took her handkerchief out of her pocketbook and wiped food particles from the corners of his mouth. Then she took out small scissors and began to cut his nose hairs and then the tufts of hair in his ears.
This done, she sat next to him, took his unresponsive hand in hers, and kissed it. “I love you, Daddy. I always remember how you used to sit me on your lap when I was little, and tell me how beautiful and special I was. I remember the secret game we used to play.” Her tone became curiously remote. “You broke my heart when you brought Sam and Jay into the business and wouldn’t let me come in. I’ve always been smarter than both my brothers. When Mama died I really expected you to come to me and tell me that there was a place for me in the business.” Her voice trailed off. She watched a black squirrel darting up the trunk of a golden maple tree. Her mind snapped back to the present. “I’m making a fortune in my business, Daddy. I wish you didn’t have this damn Alzheimer’s. You’d be so proud of me, I just know you would.…”
As his daughter’s soft tones washed over him, Sol Stern’s lips began to tremble as though he were struggling to get words out. Faint recognition dawned in his otherwise cloudy eyes.
“Uhhhhhhhh. Uhhhhhhhh. Uhhhhhhhh.”
She moved closer. “What is it, Daddy? Tell me.”
“Uhhhhhhhh. Uhhhhhhhh. Martha, make sure you clean the damn chicken this time.”
“I’m not the goddamn maid!” she shouted. But she was too late. He had vanished, slipped back into the echoing emptiness of his mind.
22
The slender five-mile-long landmass of Thomas Cay was shaped like a harpoon. It was one of the seven hundred islands that made up the Bahamas, and it lay one hundred and fifty-six miles northeast of Miami, Florida. A five-thousand-foot concrete airstrip cut through the scrub vegetation and sea grapes that covered the cay. The western edge of the island was fringed with three miles of golden sand that curved along an expanse of turquoise water known as Pirate’s Cove, where sleek inboard-engined speedboats, Cigarette boats and steel-hulled motor-boats powered by five three hundred-horsepower eng
ines lolled at anchor.
Che-Che Morales had effectively bought control of Thomas Cay five years ago through one of his dummy offshore corporations. It was rapidly transformed into a marshaling area for the transshipping of drugs into the United States. At night, pit bull terriers and Doberman pinschers patrolled the shoreline along with their handlers, while Jeeps fitted with pedestal-mounted twin M-60 machine guns patrolled the cay around the clock. A communications tower that also held the antennas for the latest navigational aids rose up from the island’s center; a sophisticated, formerly Soviet radar searched out the sky and sea. Six prefabricated barracks, each with its own Laundromat, were clustered on the eastern side of the cay and camouflaged revetments of reinforced concrete abutted the runway’s western edge and housed the network’s small fleet of jet aircraft and high-performance twin-engine turbo-props.
Alejandro, dressed in khaki shorts, Top-Siders, and a short-sleeved unbuttoned cotton shirt, knelt inside a hangar on the southern edge of the runway, strapping a duffel bag filled with packets of heroin to the “store” of a Parapoint delivery system. Che-Che, Pizzaro, and Judith stood over him, watching. There was a row of nine other parachutes on the floor and a tightly packed pallet of four-kilogram packets of Cleopatra Gold alongside a pile of empty duffel bags.
It was eleven o’clock Monday morning on the sun-drenched cay. Alejandro had finished his last set at Environment on Sunday around four in the morning. He’d been up in the balcony, complaining to Che-Che about the treatment he had received from Pizzaro and Barrios in Mexico, when he’d seen Pizzaro, accompanied by a dark-haired, statuesque woman carrying a small overnight bag, making his way over to them. The duo had stopped in front of them and stood there, saying nothing. Pizzaro had worn a tight smile. Che-Che had finished his champagne and put down the glass, looked at Alejandro, and said, “We’re all going on a short trip.”
Alejandro had had her eyes for a moment, then deliberately and slowly had looked her over, particularly noticing her very full red lips and her deeply tanned skin.
“I’m Judith,” she had said in her husky voice. “Hector and I will drive you home so that you can pack.”
Getting up off his knees, Alejandro noticed Judith watching him. He met her eyes as he bent to pick up another duffel bag. He spread open the top and began taking packets of heroin off the pallet and stuffing them inside. As he did this his eyes studied the canvas, trying to see if he could spot the false panels that contained the credit-card-size flexible circuit boards and the thin flexible batteries that powered them. He felt relief each time he tried and failed. Stretching his arm inside to stack the dope, he felt around the sides, seeing if he could detect any of the adhesive diodes. He couldn’t. After filling the bag, he folded the flaps over the top, pushing the eyelets over the curved locking pin. This done, he held out his hand to Pizzaro, who took a padlock out of the cloth bag he was holding and handed it to him. Alejandro snapped it through the locking pin, securing the folds in place.
Forty-six minutes later Alejandro looked over at Che-Che and announced, “That’s the last of ’em.”
Judith, who was dressed in white shorts, beige espadrilles, a brown cotton blouse with three buttons on the top, and a wraparound tie waist that displayed her flat stomach, looked Alejandro in the eye and asked, “Did you check the guidance system in each of the black boxes?”
Alejandro noticed that Che-Che was standing by passively, allowing her to run the show. Where does this dame fit into all this? he thought. One minute she’s a worker ant, the next she comes on like the queen bee.
He looked at her and said, “I tested each nicad battery, all the receivers, the circuitry, and each homing transmitter. I also made sure that all the transmitters were set on the same frequency.”
She asked, “What about the parachutes, you check them out, too?”
“I packed each one myself,” Alejandro said. He looked around and asked, “Where is Barrios?”
“He retired,” Pizzaro said. His tone of voice did not welcome any further questions.
Judith moved along the row of parachutes, studying each one. Offhandedly she asked Alejandro, “How are you opening the chutes?”
“Static lines,” he answered, hiding his sudden concern behind a bland smile.
She knelt down and began kneading a duffel bag. “Why not use barometric pressure releases?” she asked, moving to another one.
“They’re only used on vertical drops when you want to deploy at low levels,” Alejandro replied.
Running her finger over the duffel bag’s seams, she glanced over her shoulder at Alejandro and said, “You appear to know a lot about parachutes, for a singer.”
Alejandro said a silent thank-you to Sergeant Mayhew for his intensive hours of lessons on the aerodynamics of parachutes. Next time he got to the Hacienda he was going to take Mayhew a bottle of scotch.
Pizzaro looked across the hangar at the van parked up against the ribbed steel wall and said, “I’m glad this island is only a short hop to Florida.”
A disingenuous smile pinched Alejandro’s mouth. “No way you’re dropping this load in Florida.”
Che-Che’s eyes flashed to Alejandro. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it would be moronic to drop this stuff into the government’s nerve center for drug interdiction. You’d have to deal with AWACs, and tethered aerostat radar balloons.”
“You told us that Parapoint was undetectable,” Pizzaro said.
“It is,” Alejandro said, “but the drop plane ain’t invisible. The DEA just added radar balloons in Florida that are tethered ten thousand feet up and provide look-down coverage that detects planes trying to sneak in below the beams of their land-based radar.”
“We know all that,” Judith said, not looking at him but continuing to examine the systems.
Pizzaro looked at Alejandro and said slowly, “We’re filing flight plans with the FAA. We’re going to be legit flights.”
“Bullshit,” Alejandro snapped. “Look, you guys do whatever you gotta do, but don’t look to con me.”
Judith looked surprised. “And what makes you think we’re trying to con you?”
“You’re a New York operation; you’re too smart to waste Parapoint on a drop way outside your territory.”
Judith’s eyes grew larger. She walked up to Alejandro and with her polished nails slowly made white tracks along his arm. “Why don’t you tell us how you would make the drop?”
Alejandro stared at her for a long beat and said, “I’d load the dope aboard one of those Lears you have parked outside. I’d take off at night, and wave-hop without navigation lights to New York. Thirty minutes out from the drop zone I’d turn off the plane’s transponder to cut the odds as low as possible. Then I’d climb to twenty thousand feet, throttle back, have the guy in the cabin drop the load, dive back down to the floor, and head for home. I’d be in and out without being spotted.”
“Very good,” Judith said, slowly clapping her hands in mock applause.
Che-Che brushed down the sides of his long hair and asked Alejandro, “Why wouldn’t you deploy the chutes sixty miles out from an altitude of thirty thousand feet?”
“I’d look to get the stuff on the ground as fast as I could,” Alejandro answered. “Darting up from the floor forty miles out would give you enough distance so that the Ram Air chutes would have sufficient glide ratio to make it to a landing zone close to the coast.”
The dopers exchanged blank looks. Judith asked Alejandro, “Where along the coastline would you make your drop?”
Alejandro shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Pizzaro peeled away from the others and walked across the hangar to the van. He climbed inside. The engine coughed and the vehicle moved in reverse, jerking to a stop alongside the rows of parachutes. Making his way back into the body of the van, he navigated the rows of metal rollers that had been welded to the floor, shoved open the double side doors, and stood on the van’s chrome running tube.
&nb
sp; Judith got up into the forklift that had been used to deliver the pallets of heroin. After starting up the engine, she drove over to the line of parachutes. Alejandro reached into a cardboard box that was on the floor next to the remaining stack of duffel bags and took out a handful of webbed harnesses that had loops at each end. He handed some to Pizzaro; they each strapped harnesses around the parachute containers.
Che-Che watched, saying nothing, seeing all.
Alejandro slipped the loops that were strapped around the first container over the forklift’s twin forks. Judith hefted up the delivery system and tooled over to the van’s open side doors. Alejandro and Pizzaro climbed into the van. Leaning out the door, with one foot firmly planted on the running tube, Alejandro stretched out his arm and, motioning to Judith, guided the load inside the van. Parapoint and its load crumped down onto the rollers. Alejandro and Pizzaro pushed it to the back.
They repeated this until all the systems were stored inside the van. Pizzaro climbed back behind the steering wheel; Che-Che got onto the passenger seat.
Judith called out to Alejandro, “Come ride with me.”
Alejandro climbed into the forklift and shared the worn leather seat with her.
The hangar door slid open and the van drove out into the bright afternoon sunshine, followed by the forklift. Two bare-chested Oriental men wearing sandals and white shorts were walking toward the hangar. Alejandro recognized them from Environment. They were the same guys he’d seen huddling there with Che-Che. The van stopped; Che-Che climbed down and ran over to them.
“Who are those guys?” he asked Judith.
“I don’t know.”
“I bet they’re his suppliers from the Golden Triangle.”
The skin around Judith’s eyes got tight. “I wouldn’t know. I take orders just like you do.”
For someone who only takes orders, you shove a lot of your weight around, lady, he thought. Che-Che shook hands with the two men and ran back to the waiting van.
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