Cut to the Bone(102)

He screeched to a halt, then back-whipped the Buick into an empty slot, scattering pedestrians like ten-pins.

Superstition hurried as fast as her towering stilettos allowed. She peered through the windows as she moved around the car, noticed his hands were already below his waist, moving furiously. Hey, buddy, wait for me, she thought, amused. There's a penalty for early withdrawal-

But he was shaking Tic-Tacs into his hand.

“Aw,” she murmured. “You're new at this.”

She leaned into his window as his round, hopeful face appeared over the descending glass line. The streetlights and humidity gave her cleavage a damp orange shadow.

“Wow, you look like a Creamsicle,” he murmured.

She ran a hand over her scanty clothes. Her figure-hugging micro-dress was the blinding neon of Orange Crush. Likewise the five-inch stilettos accenting her long, lean legs. Her skin was the white of pastry cream, and her smile, moonglow on piano keys. “A Creamsicle, huh?” she teased. “Does that mean you’ll lick me?”

He wiggled in his upholstered seat. “Uh, yeah, I’d like . . . um . . . where . . .”

“My place is around the corner,” Superstition said, scouting for clues the driver was what he appeared. Like fortune-tellers and con artists, she had to read clients accurately if she wanted to avoid fatal mistakes.

He was middle-aged and clean-shaven. Bald on top, styled on the graying fringes. He smelled like Drakkar Noir, lightly applied. He wore pleated tan chinos, a parrot shirt from Tommy Bahama, and beef-roll loafers without socks. His Buddy Holly glasses had silver insets at the temples, and there was a pale indent on his ring finger, where a wedding band used to gleam. He was freshly divorced, or stepping out. She guessed the former. Players didn’t waste breath mints on street hookers. They also spray-tanned their telltale divots . . .

“I’m, uh, John,” he said, his anxiety thickening his voice.

“Fantasi,” she lied back as she slid into the passenger seat. “With a heart-thingy over the i. It’s a pleasure to meet you, John.”

“Likewise.” He glanced at the rearview, then back at her. “Is your place, um . . .”

“I’m at the Wainwright Hotel,” she said. “There’s free HBO if you don’t like me.”

John looked her over again. “That’s not remotely possible,” he murmured. He caressed her knee with trembling fingertips, but didn’t move higher.

Horny, but polite. She decided he’d been dumped for Higher Earning Potential. He hadn’t seen it coming, got shellacked by wifey’s law-shark, was forced into an efficiency under an O’Hare flight path. He paid for her golf lessons and tooth bleaching, saw his kids Saturday afternoons at the Woodfield Mall food court, and lay awake nights wondering how his carefully charted life had gone so completely to hell. After months of Internet porn because all the women he knew were her friends, he showered, groomed, hopped into the only car he could afford after alimony and child support, and headed into the Viagra Triangle - the Near North Side club district prowled by Important Men, the tanned and bejeweled divorcées who adored them (or at least their investment portfolios), and the upmarket hookers who serviced the rest.

She kissed his downy cheek. “Gonna rock your world, Johnnycakes,” she murmured into his ear, making sure he felt the tip of her tongue. “As soon as we get to my room. Does that sound all right?”

John nodded like a puppy and put the Buick in gear.





Nogales, Arizona

The mosquito landed on the narco’s sun-crisped arm, preparing to sink its blood-fang.

It died in a crushing splatter.

“The courier is late,” Ortega said, scratching the bloody pieces. “Should I call?”

“Road construction in South Phoenix,” Garcia reminded, calculating the circuitous route the man had to take to this remote desert canyon, fifteen miles north of the Mexican border. “Give him another thirty.”

Ortega nodded, went back to sweeping the canyon with binoculars. “Makes me nervous, sitting this long exposed.”

“Eleven million in drugs will do that,” Garcia agreed.





“This, my friend, is your work cubicle,” said Brian Charvat, waving his bony hand at the cactus and boulders lining Peck Canyon Road, a potholed rattletrap that reminded his passenger of the Dan Ryan Expressway back home. “And this bad boy,” he continued with a knuckle-thump of the dashboard, “is your company car.”

“Impressive,” Derek Davis said over the engine whine of the Border Patrol Jeep. He surveyed the dusk-bitten landscape. They were only a few minutes west of Interstate 19, which connected Nogales - the nation’s busiest border crossing - with Tucson an hour north. Yet, they were deep inside smuggler country. He heard the whissssh of speeding cars - and the random pop-pop-pop of gunfire. Since it was too dark for hunting, the shots were most likely from smugglers, the hard cases who plied their deadly trade in the big lonesome of Arizona’s border with Mexico. He tingled with excitement. His job in Chicago was hazardous, no question. But this was bad to the bone.