Esposito sighed. “Yeah, well, even so, the Colombians are gonna come after me for the product. So where the fuck is it?”

“I have most of it, and it wasn’t pretty getting it, lemme tell you. We went through three boxes of Ex-Lax,” Bud said.

“Most of it, you got? Where’s the rest?”

Bud glanced around, lowered his voice. “I went out for cigarettes before the girls passed all the balloons. When I came back, they were dead. What was I supposed to do?”

“Fuckin’ cut ’em open, for Chrissakes!”

“Jesus Christ.”

“That’s what I woulda done. Money’s money.”

He would have, the scumbag. Worrying about the mules’ health was not Jay Esposito’s style. When baggage screening tightened up post-9/11, Jay had immediately switched the girls over from suitcase carries to internal smuggling, and his biggest concern had been the fact that they demanded more money. Jay was a parasite. Bud would be doing the world a big favor by putting him out of his misery.

“Can I ask you something?” Jay said.

“What?”

“I thought Whitney was done swallowing. She wanted to be more like an escort, a coyote? Isn’t that why she brought the new girl into the picture?”

Bud had wondered if Jay would notice that inconsistency. He was so fucking thick, you never knew. But now that he’d noticed, Whitney’s death was difficult to explain. Luckily, Bud had prepared a response.

“Yeah, well, the new girl got cold feet. After like ten balloons, she freaked out and refused to swallow any more. So Whitney did the rest.”

“Whitney always was good at opening her mouth.”

“Yeah,” Bud said, chuckling, “don’t I know it.”

“Give her a coupla tabs of X and she’d hump a fucking parking meter, too. Shit, that reminds me, though. I better destroy the videos we got of her. And erase that stuff on her blog.”

Too late, you prick, Bud thought gleefully.

“Excellent idea, Jay,” he said aloud. “Oh, hold on a second. The phone just beeped for me to put in more money.”

Bud fed another quarter into the slot, checking all around to satisfy himself that he was still alone. No worries. With the lousy weather, the store was empty.

Esposito sighed again. “Jesus, I’m getting fucking teary-eyed, here. I should look on the bright side. Whitney was an unreliable cunt.”

“She was a wild girl. You couldn’t control her. Who knows what she was into that we weren’t even aware of? That’s why I think this OD explanation is gonna fly.”

“Yeah, that was quick thinking. But wait a minute, you said you didn’t get all the balloons. Won’t they find the ones that didn’t pass still inside ’em when they do the autopsies?”

Bud had thought of that himself, but only in the middle of the night last night, only after the whole thing was over and it was too late to do anything about it. Crime was always perfect in the movies. But in real life, in the heat of the moment, you improvised, and sometimes you missed things. Short of leaving town, Bud still hadn’t come up with a solution to this one. And, of course, leaving town before Friday was not an option. No, he’d decided his best bet was to get Jay to slow down the investigation. All he needed was a few days, and Jay definitely had the will and the resources to take care of business, even if that meant going after federal agents. All Bud had to do now was convince Jay it was necessary and point him in the right direction.

“Yeah, I thought of that. We probably have a day or two before the feds get the autopsy results. When’s that next shipment?” Bud asked, feigning ignorance.

“Friday, and it’s a big one. How the fuck we gonna get another girl by then? We may even need more than one, with the weight we’re movin’.”

“I’ll take care of that part, Jay. That’s the least of our problems anyway. We need to think more defensively than that.”

“Talk English, for Chrissakes.”

“Friday is a big score, right?”

“That’s what I just fuckin’ said.”

“We need to make sure it happens, so we have a nice cushion and we can lay low for a while, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So. We need to keep the feds off us until then.”

“I’m with you on that. In fact, I sent Pavel and Lamar over to the courthouse to check shit out, look into who’s investigating this,” Jay said.

“Those idiots’ll never come through. All they know is how to kill people. But lucky for you, I already got that information.”

“That was quick. How’d you manage it? Your day job?”

“I do what I have to do to look out for you, Jay.”

“You always did,” Esposito said. “And I always show my appreciation in return, right, Buddy boy?”

“Yeah, right. But you catch my drift? I’m giving you this information to help you take appropriate steps.”

“You don’t need to spell it out. I’m making sweet money right now. I got an investment to protect.”

“Good. I knew we’d see things the same way. What I have so far is the name of the lead investigator. She’s a woman named Melanie Vargas, about five-six or -seven, shoulder-length dark hair, maybe late twenties, early thirties, attractive…”

18

MELANIE STRODE PURPOSEFULLY down the center aisle of the cavernous ceremonial courtroom. With its twenty-foot ceilings and row upon row of spectator benches, the place was big enough to host a three-ring circus, and nearly every seat was filled at four in the afternoon. Judge Warner was on duty. Even though arraignments had been piling up since early that morning, he refused to assume the bench until every single case was ready to be called. And since he loved nothing better than sanctioning any lawyer unlucky enough to step out to the bathroom at the wrong moment, they all spent hours glued to their seats, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the fearsome jurist to make his appearance.

Melanie slid into an empty chair at the government’s table, setting down her armload of files and shrugging out of her heavy winter coat. She’d changed into the spare skirt and hose she kept in her office. It was well known that any female Assistant U.S. Attorney who dared to appear before Judge Warner in pants would lose her bail hearing as punishment. Some pretty serious offenders had made it out onto the street that way.

Brad Monahan, the clean-cut, square-jawed prosecutor in the next seat, leaned over to speak to Melanie.

“So, Vargas, is it true you caught this Holbrooke junkies case?” Brad asked wistfully.

“Holbrooke junkies? What a way to put it!”

“Not my words. Take a look.”

Glancing anxiously at the empty bench first, since Judge Warner had been known to sanction lawyers caught reading the paper in his courtroom, Brad pulled a Daily News from beneath his folded overcoat. A huge black headline proclaimed SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. A smaller headline beneath it read, “Beautiful Holbrooke Junkies Include Candidate Seward’s Daughter.” Superimposed on a grainy shot of body bags being loaded into the medical examiner’s van in front of Seward’s building were the same wholesome, smiling yearbook photos of Whitney, Brianna, and Carmen that Melanie had seen in Dr. Hogan’s office that morning. Under Whitney and Brianna’s photos, boldface type screamed DEAD, whereas under Carmen’s it said simply SUSPECT.

“Jesus, who leaked that?” Melanie whispered, feeling sick to her stomach. She sincerely hoped Luis Reyes and his daughter Lulu hadn’t seen the papers.

“Face it, Vargas. You’re a hotshot. First the Benson case, now this. How do you do it? You and Witchie-poo sorority sisters or something?” he asked, referring to Bernadette by the epithet favored among junior prosecutors.

“She was paging around last night, and I was stupid enough to answer my beeper.”

“I sleep with mine under my freakin’ pillow, and I don’t get assignments this good.”