John Lutz Bundle (87 page)

He sat on a stool in Has Beans coffee bar and watched her approach on the other side of the glass door.

She was attractive enough that almost every male reacted in some way when she came through the door. Very well built under that blue sweat suit, he thought. Medium-length blond hair cut in some kind of layered way so it would always look slightly mussed, just the right amount of makeup. Her jaw was strong—what used to be called mean—but her full lips took away its severity. There was a slight angularity to her blue eyes that made them interesting. She looked a little like that sexy movie star Charlotte Rampling, only younger. Just the right age.

He slid off his stool at the bar, moved toward her with a smile, and gestured with his arm toward one of the vacant tables near the back of the place, where it was less crowded. Not coming on too strong, but already taking charge. Friendly and firm. They liked that, or they wouldn’t have sent in the questionnaire in the first place.

She smiled back, nodded, and their paths converged at the table. He saw that she had a small galaxy of light brown freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose. Charming. He made a mental note to memorize their pattern.

Jill liked it that he sort of took charge of the meeting but waited until she’d sat down before he sat. And he had a wonderful smile that dissipated much of her nervousness. He certainly was handsome enough, and he was tastefully dressed in tan pants and a darker brown sport jacket. His cream-colored shirt beneath the jacket was open at the collar, revealing a few dark chest hairs. The hair on his head was parted and neatly combed and there was no beard stubble on his face, so he wasn’t going for the macho need-a-shave look.

Jill decided there was nothing here not to like. So far so good.

When he’d sat down opposite her, he said, “Tony Lake,” and extended his hand.

She laid her hand in his and felt a gentle pressure. Just right. “Jill Clark.”

“As advertised,” he said, with the smile again.

“You too,” she said, not knowing how else to respond. She raised her chin and a look of pleasure moved over her features. “It smells terrific in here,” she said. “I love the aroma of roasting coffee.”

“Me too. And there’s a touch of cinnamon in the air. Makes it smell all the better.”

“I agree.”
My, don’t we already have a lot in common?

He nodded toward the oversized gray mug he’d brought with him to the table. “I’m having a Honduras,” he said. “It’s a caramel latte. They’ve named their coffee drinks after Central and South American countries.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve been here a few times before.” Then she quickly added, “By myself, though.”

“Could be the countries are where the beans come from,” he said.

That had never occurred to her. “You think?”

“Truthfully, I have no idea.” He seemed amused by the detour their conversation had taken. First-date talk. “So which piece of geography do you want to order?”

“I like their El Salvador.”

He went to the bar and returned a few minutes later with a large mug topped with creamy froth.

“I’ll have to try one of these sometime,” he said, placing the mug before her on the table and sitting back down. He took a sip of his Honduras and studied her over the mug’s thick rim. “So tell me about yourself, Jill.”

“I guess you read my online profile.”

“Sure. Like you read mine. They go only so deep. People tend not to confide in computers. Being online isn’t like sitting across from someone and talking face-to-face.”

“You’re right. We should do some confiding.” She sampled her El Salvador, found it too hot, and set the mug back on its coaster. Foam might be sticking to her upper lip. She dabbed it gently with the back of her knuckle and felt no dampness. “I hope you won’t find me too dull.”

“Not hardly. You already cleared that hurdle by just walking in the place. A lot of Central America came to a boil.”

She laughed. “Well, let’s see. I haven’t been in town all that long. Like a lot of other people, I came to New York for a fresh start. There are more possibilities here.”

“Opportunities.”

“I haven’t run into too many of them yet.”

“Maybe this is one.”

She put on her best smile. “Maybe it is. I’ve been working for Files and More. That’s a temp place. And for the past week I’ve been a temp at Tucker, Simpson, and King, a law firm on the East Side that specializes in traffic violations and domestic disturbances.”

“AWD. Arguing while driving.”

She laughed. “Fixing traffic tickets, actually. As for the domestic cases, from what I’ve seen they go further than arguing.”

“Yeah, I suppose they do.” He appeared genuinely concerned. “It’s a problem.”

She tried the El Salvador again. Better. “All I’m doing there is filing, which gets old fast. And you know how temps get treated—especially at the smaller companies, like this one. When they know you’ll be leaving at the end of the week, no one bothers to get to know you.”

“Jill, I can’t imagine someone not wanting to know you better. Especially people of the male persuasion.”

“Uh-huh. They want to know me in the biblical sense, and skip the Old Testament.”

He threw back his head and laughed. She approved of his sense of humor, and he seemed to approve of hers. She’d been afraid he was going to be a dry stick. Who could tell from an online profile that might be 90 percent lies? She glanced around at the place she’d chosen to meet him. Strangers around them who were supposed to provide some sort of comfort and assurance.

Am I really doing this? What do I actually know about this man?

“So what do you do?” she asked.

“For a living? I sell advertising space in international publications. There’s some traveling involved, but I don’t mind. Kind of enjoy it, in fact.”

“Sounds interesting.”

“About like Files and More.”

“Oh, I think not.”

“You a religious person?” he asked.

Where’d
that
come from?

She answered carefully. “Not particularly. There should be plenty of time to get around to that.”

“So you want to have fun first.”

Ah,
there’s
where he was going.

“I didn’t exactly mean it that way,” she said. She didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. A toss between the sheets she could have in this town any time; she was, after all, a woman who could bring Central America to a boil. She wanted to be clear she was looking for something more here. And wanted him to be looking for more than casual sex.

“I hope you didn’t take what I said the wrong way,” he told her. “I mean, you know, about having fun…” He looked terribly concerned that he might have offended her.

She smiled and patted the back of his hand. “Not to worry, Tony. I’m neither a bimbo nor a nun, nor a combination of the two.”

“Let’s hope they’re mutually exclusive,” he said.

“Let’s hope. Hope is a good thing.”

And she did hope.

Jill and Tony talked for more than two hours except for a few minutes when Tony left the table to talk on his cell phone.

Jill decided that their coffee bar date had gone marvelously. He’d been about to kiss her on the forehead when they’d parted outside of Has Beans, but then he’d changed his mind, despite her unspoken wishes. Obviously, he didn’t want to push too soon and too hard.

Maybe later.

Still high on caffeine or Tony Lake, Jill now began to walk.

It was interesting how her nervousness had left her only moments after sitting down with Tony. And their conversation had flowed so smoothly. Most of it, she realized, had been about her. She told herself not to be so selfish next time they met. But he had a way of making her feel important and the natural subject of the conversation. He wanted to know all about
her
. He was genuinely interested in her. More than interested—fascinated.

Yes,
fascinated
was the word.

She smiled at her happiness that lay right there in front of her like a gold coin waiting to be picked up.

Face it, doomster, the meeting was a roaring success.

Now and then in this crappy, difficult world, something went wonderfully right.

As she strolled away from Has Beans toward her subway stop, Jill actually found herself whistling.

The traffic light at the intersection was a
DON’T WALK
, so Jill stopped and stood with a few other people waiting for it to change. Since she had on her sweats and Nikes, she began idly jogging in place on the sidewalk, her body revolving in a slow circle. She could feel a slight bouncing of her breasts, but she didn’t mind. Let people look. Let them guess how happy she was. Someone passing in a car honked the horn and shouted something.

At me?

For me?

Almost certainly.

As she turned to face back the way she’d come, her mood suddenly changed for the worse. She saw a woman, a street person in filthy clothes and with unkempt dirty blond hair, standing about fifty feet away and openly staring at her.

What bothered Jill was that the woman seemed oddly familiar.

Then she realized why. Jill was sure she’d seen her across the street from Has Beans when she and Tony had emerged from the coffee bar. Jill remembered the pang of pity she’d felt for the woman, who’d been standing alone and motionless as if lost, clutching a wrinkled brown paper sack beneath her right arm.

The woman was staring at her now in a way that evoked more fear than pity. As if there was some kind of connection between them.

Jill didn’t want a connection. With a little bad luck,
she
could be this woman. Maybe only her dwindling checking account was the difference between them now. Homelessness happened. This city was cruel and could crush.

The woman took a faltering step toward her.

Jill looked away, continuing to jog in place, turning her back to her.

The woman had to be close now. Getting closer.

Jill continued facing away from the sad specter of a horrifying future and stared hard at the traffic signal across the intersection.

Change, damn you. Change!

The light did change.

Jill lengthened out her foot motion and jogged across the intersection. After veering around an old woman pushing a shopping cart full of groceries, she accelerated into a brisk run. Her rhythmic arm motion and the strain on her thighs felt great, liberating.

The homeless woman didn’t figure to be a runner. Jill didn’t have to glance back to know she was leaving the ragged figure behind. Her bleak alternative future receding into her past.

Running faster made Jill somehow breathe easier.

On the way home from work the next evening, Jill saw the woman again. It was when Jill stopped to look at a shoe sale display in a small shop. There, superimposed in the show window over the red high-heeled pumps she was considering, was the woman’s reflection. She had to be close, not more than ten feet behind Jill.

There was something about the woman’s reflected image that horrified Jill to the point that Jill was faintly nauseated.

To be in this woman’s thoughts, her intentions…

It wasn’t simply that Jill knew for sure now that the woman had truly been following her, had for some reason fixated on her. It was more a creepy certainty that she’d seen the woman before, other than just that evening outside Has Beans.

How long has she been following me? Watching me?

Had they met? Did they somehow know each other?

Had she simply pegged Jill as a soft touch, wanted a handout and was too shy to ask? It was a possible explanation. Maybe the poor thing was driven more by hunger than malice.

Either way, Jill had to find out.

Better to face your fears.

Jill decided to turn around and simply ask the woman, get to the bottom of this nonsense. She’d look the woman in the eye. Force a smile. Force a question.

Do we know each other?

She knew from experience that when you confronted your terror, it could quickly dissipate.

And this woman, determined, homeless, terrified her.

This will all end in a moment.

She tensed her muscles and whirled to face what waited behind her.

The woman was gone.

Mexico City, two months earlier

Maria Sanchez lay next to her husband, Jorge, in a circular bed in the honeymoon suite of the plush Hotel Casa Grande on the busy Paseo de la Reforma. They were on the twelfth floor, far above the noise and bustle in the streets below.

The only sound in the room was Jorge’s even breathing, but Maria knew he wasn’t asleep. He’d seldom slept at all the last few weeks because of the pressure. Political winds had shifted, and Jorge Sanchez, once an almost invincible drug lord and master of cocaine, was now vulnerable. New drug money, in larger amounts, had found its way to Jorge’s friends in the government and made him dispensable. Over the past few months, routes into the United States had closed or become too dangerous. Just last week a sleek cruiser running drugs into southern Florida had been intercepted at sea, actually boarded after two of its crew had been gunned down from another, faster boat. After the cargo was transferred, the surviving members of the crew were allowed to live. They, along with the boat, might prove useful to Jorge’s successor.

The alarm by the bed began to buzz, and Jorge sat up immediately and turned it off. He was a lean, muscular man, dark and with a black, carefully trimmed beard and mustache. The fierce downward trim of the mustache was overmatched by the liquid softness of his brown eyes.

In the silence after the alarm, he lay back down and drew Maria to him. Both were nude, and sexually satiated after last night, but for a moment Maria thought he might want to make love again.

Unlike her husband, Maria had a light complexion, though her long, straight hair was auburn, like his. Her features were symmetrical and well sculpted, and her body was trim and athletic. Maria was the daughter of staid Midwesterners and had met Jorge three years ago when she was an art student at UCLA and he was studying business. Supposedly. What Jorge was really doing in the United States was establishing a drug distribution network.

With Jorge’s help, Maria’s basic grasp of Spanish soon improved, and their friendship quickly developed into a love that transcended any cultural differences. In fact, it gained the momentum of a freight train, and there was no leaving the rails without a fatal smashup.

When Maria learned from one of his friends that Jorge was a major drug dealer, she was thrilled rather than repelled. She confided this to him, and their love affair became even more heated. The friend who’d told her about Jorge disappeared. Maria never asked why or where to.

She regretted nothing of the life that had led to them being here in this room at the Hotel Casa Grande. Her family considered it sinful, and they didn’t know the half of it. With Jorge, boundaries fell one after another, and behavior changed, along with what was unacceptable. Life was something to be seized. If it was selfish to live it to the fullest, so be it. People might not approve. Screw them, Maria thought.

Jorge didn’t want to make love again. He leaned back away from her and rested his head on his pillow. The air conditioner kicked in with a soft rushing sound, almost like water flowing, sending a cooling breeze like a benediction down from the vent near the bed. It might not have been so pleasant lying here under different circumstances.

“A sad day for us,” Jorge said. “After this morning, we won’t be able to see each other for quite a while.”

Maria scooted nearer to him on the bed and kissed him on the lips. “I understand,” she said.

And he knew she did. And she accepted. He smiled. “You are unlike any other woman.”

“So is every other woman, but no other woman is yours.”

His smile widened. “That is because you would cut off my testicles.”

“You are so right. And I love you so much.”

“And I you.”

They kissed again and she moved away from him and climbed out of bed. She didn’t see any point in drawing out what for both of them was going to be a painful but necessary parting.

Raising her arms high, she stretched the length of her sleek body. “I’ll shower first.”

“Perhaps I’ll join you. Save the hotel some water.”

She paused and grinned at him. “Yes, you’ve always been interested in hotel water conservation.”

“If it involves you, I find it a fascinating subject.”

An hour later, Maria left the room first. She rode the elevator down to the lobby, walked to an archway beyond the reservation desk, and found a table in the coffee shop.

She ordered an espresso and sat calmly sipping it, waiting for Jorge to finish dressing and come downstairs.

As she sipped her espresso and gazed out the coffee shop’s wide window that provided a view of the street, she noticed two identical black Volkswagen Jettas parked at the curb near the hotel’s entrance. Though they were in the way of taxis, and a shuttle bus, if one were to arrive, the uniformed doorman was obviously ignoring them.

He also ignored the three men in dark suits who hurried past him, walking side by side. From her table, Maria could see beyond the entrance arch as the three men entered the lobby and strode across the terrazzo floor toward the elevators.

Only there were four of them now, all walking in step. One suddenly veered off and stood leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, staying well out of the way of guests and bellhops scurrying past. Through the window, Maria saw a third black Jetta. A van peeled away from the traffic and parked directly across the street. Several men emerged from it and began to cross.

Maria’s heart was hammering as she drew her cell phone from her purse and called upstairs.

After breaking the brief connection, she kept her eyes trained on the lobby, and a few minutes later there was Jorge. He must have passed the men in the elevators, descending in a different car as they were going up. He was hurriedly making his way through the lobby, his shirt untucked, his hair uncombed. He didn’t glance toward her as he passed the coffee shop entrance and walked faster toward the street exit.

Quickly he passed from her sight.

Almost immediately she heard gunshots and screaming. She watched through the window as the figure with the half-tucked shirt came into view and began to run. His pace faltered, and red splotches appeared on the broad back of his white shirt.

Then he stopped, raised both hands, and collapsed dying on the sidewalk.

People in the hotel and out in the street were rising from where they’d sought shelter and moving around now. Some of them were running. People were hurrying from across the street, weaving between the stopped cars. All were moving faster and faster toward the scene of the shooting.

Maria rose from her table, hurried to the lobby, and joined the throng of people rushing to see what had happened. Car horns were honking. There was much shouting. The wailing of sirens drifted over the city.

Like banshees, she thought.
They sound like banshees mourning for Jorge.

But she knew the sirens meant only more police closing in to help establish and maintain order.

Out on the sidewalk, she avoided elbows and shoulders, pushed her way against the flow of the crowd, and slipped away.