Chapter Two
Dancy was starting to relax a little as she pulled ahead in the second set, after barely taking the first. She could sense the win now, knowing Roberto would start playing worse under the tension of getting behind to a woman here on his own court in front of everybody. Guess I’ve got his ass, she thought. She almost felt sorry for him. Aside from the wager, beating him didn’t really mean that much to her, but the loss would be devastating to him. But the bet was on, and the stakes weren’t such that she’d want to lose.
She bounced the ball a few times, looking at her opponent’s tense crouch at the baseline. Reputation and machismo aside, just the stakes he stood to lose should be chilling his blood. She sneaked a glance at her husband’s table. Ignoring her, as usual, though Armando was staring at her, also as per. She bounced the ball one more time. He probably figured he knew what she was up to by now and would be digging in for a rally. Time to really break his heart. What I took those lesson in France for. She tossed the ball up, admiring the streak of yellow against the deepdish blue of the desert sky, and unwound herself in a blurred, slashing serve with a complex wrist action that skittered the ball up off the clay at a ridiculous angle just under Roberto’s forehand. She could read in the way he slumped back to the line that seeing scary new stuff at this point had really rained on his parade. Dancy suppressed her grin. She thought, it just gets worse and worse, baby. And the payoff’s a mother.
Armando was staring at Stan Russell like he’d never seen such a person. His attitude towards the American had been based on a mixture of rascally admiration and manly contempt ever since the two had been steered together by a rogue DEA agent more loyal to money than the agency. That the man was actually preparing to give away his wife–to sell her, in a way–increased the intensity of both of those impressions.
Women were a way of life to Armando, and he saw himself not as a gourmand or glutton, but a connoisseur. One look at Dancy Russell and he had instantly lost his appetite for the two women he’d brought along with him. In fact, he’d sent them home. Adriana, brought as his spare mount and show piece for public display, had been disappointed and bitter, crying as Morales drove her to the airport. Monica, who would never be presentable to anyone’s business partners or their wives since she looked like exactly the brainlessly passionate little slut she was and didn’t own a single item of clothing without sexy little cutouts to show off pieces of her creamy hide, had taken her obsolescence in stride, announcing herself quite content with the trip and the payoff. He’d been surprised that she would pass on a chance for a violent, theatrical tantrum until he realized she was still around, flaunting herself on the beach in front of Las Palmas in a bikini so minimal as to be superfluous and sleeping in Ramos’ room.
Ramos had a penchant for shagging his discards on the fly and years ago he’d become obsessed with comparing himself sexually with the slim, snide killer. He had questioned the women they’d shared, but such information is suspect at best. He’d even had a habit for awhile of getting drunk with Ramos, then plundering the same woman at the same time. The results had confirmed what women have said all along, that one man is about as good as another. And established that, if nothing else, he and Ramos were a formidable rogering team capable of deploying fiendish campaigns and exacting gratifying casualties.
Unlike the stereotype Mexican male, Armando had a relaxed sexual ego; based largely on the fact that he could count on women not to betray him, but also the result of his enhanced opportunities for experimentation and the resulting lack of concern over the duration of his affairs. His assurance of fidelity was not only based on his own wealth, courtly charm, and old-world good looks, but also sheer fear. In fact, he had cooled one actress’s wandering gaze by threatening to toss her to Ramos, whose cold eye and limpid movements somehow terrified her. Interestingly, when he had finally invited Ramos to help him pleasure the girl, she’d responded to the older man with almost disgusting ardor after having been transported past her initial panic and revulsion.
Now he sat and listened, thinking that you just never know who is going to blow your mind in this world. Russell was leaning forward, his weightroom muscles bunching as he pitched an idea that got better the more he talked it out. “Look, I’d actually pay you to do it, but there’d be no sense it that, since you’re a lot richer than I am. Besides, it’s not really customary to pay dowry for a kidnapping.”
“Dowry?” That idea shocked Armando even more. “For such a beauty, such a…I should pay you.”
“Well,” Russell demurred modestly, “That wouldn’t make much sense either. I’m not in your league–yet–but close enough. Besides we’re doing a pretty major deal here.”
“I’m getting the impression you’ve got this all figured out in advance. Did I miss a very strange ad in the New York Times?”
Russell chuckled at that, “But for you, absolutely free. No, I’ve given a lot of thought to her possible, God forbid, demise. I’d end up owning a lot of those companies instead of just honchoing them, let’s put it that way. Not that I’d ever, you know…a tricky thing to pull off with that kind of motive on the line. But this is perfect. You snatch her while I’m in plain sight, she disappears for eight months, her body turns up over in Nowheresville, I’m rich and single, you’ve just had a very exhausting eight month tour of fantasyland, and nobody’s wise. If they do figure out you took her, it’s no skin off mine, just makes it less likely I had anything to do with it. The real estate investor I was meeting with just turned out to be a major drug dealer. Wow, weird, so what.”
“Why the…you’ll pardon the expression?…deadline. A lucky number?”
“Sort of. It’s too complex to get into–fiscal year, my tax and inheritance situation until she’s declared dead, all that. But it’s a really important time frame. And it’s absolutely necessary for her to die. I’ll need the body or I’ll have to wait until she’s declared legally dead. Seven years or something.”
“Now that you explain, maybe I should charge you, after all. I’ll put a few accountants on working up a bid.”
“Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll set her up for you on a platter. And I won’t blow the whistle until you’re out of town with her.”
“I really liked that bit you said earlier about mutual trust, Stan. But what’s to keep me from taking her away to the Casbah, then just keeping her.?”
“Well, since you bring up idea of bad faith, the results of that would leave me with no choice but to finger you to the Federales.”
“They work for me, Stan.”
“Not the big ones up in Mexico City, sport. In fact, a few of the major ones are starting to work for us. Not to mention that my government could get a little testy, especially with her old man practically in charge of the whole DEA, Drug War shebang. The press would have a field day over a drug dealer kidnapping an American debutante. But hey, there’s no point in measuring peckers over this. Thing is, after eight months of having Dancy around, you’ll be glad to kill her. Believe me.”
“Well, that’s a little hard to believe.”
“Look, you want her; take her. But if she doesn’t turn up dead in eight months it’ll screw up the probate and knock the leveraging out from under everything I’m going to be propping up. Then everything blows sky-high, including some of my father-in-law’s ancillary companies, and I’ll end up in the slam. And since we’re mostly talking defense contractors, there’ll be some pretty sharp-eyed investigation, which will lead to you being tied in to U.S. companies violating US drug laws. You know, like Noriega?”
“I get your point, Stan. I don’t need that kind of trouble. Or intimidation.”
“Oh, of course not,” Russell said hurriedly, “This whole thing is entirely carrot-intensive.”
“Well, you lost me there.” Armando loved learning new colloquial English; he had even hired a UCLA fraternity boy as his personal idiom coach for several months, mastering cultural intricacies like “you’re history”, “gimme a break” and “get a life.” But he hated missing nuances and often suspected Russell of making them up to throw him.
“All carrot, no stick, to motivate the donkey,” Russell explained.
“Ah, I get it,” Armando nodded, personally picturing places where a gringo could stick a carrot. “And you’re right, eight months is a long time with one woman. But her…a woman like that can bring more out of a man that he ever knew he had.”
“Definitely. Bring it out to be sliced, diced, chopped off, and crucified. You’ll see.”
“I guess I will. Damn! I guess I will. Man, I can’t wait.”
“No need to. We can do it tonight. Can one of your entourage there get some downers to me by dinner?”
“Hey, Drugs R Us.”
“Then it’s a done deal.”