The Finishing School

17

BUD HAD KEPT his phone off all day, because he knew Jay would be going ballistic trying to call him, and he just didn’t feel like listening to his bullshit. But when he turned the damn thing on and there were seven voice mails, every one of ’em a hang-up, he decided he’d better call back. Jay Esposito had been the same since their schoolyard days. If he smelled a rat, he’d move right in for the kill. Shoot first, ask questions later.

Despite the inconvenience, Bud knew he should call from a pay phone. He’d been thinking a lot about phone records these days, what would show up and what wouldn’t if someone were checking into things. At the end of the day, he wanted to get away clean. That was his main concern. So he’d been taking precautions for a while now. Not only to deflect attention away from himself but also to focus it on Jay. Like, he’d purposely called Jay last night from the phone on Whitney’s desk while Brianna lay dying. Jay said he wanted a report. Well, he got a fucking report, and it was like a big red arrow pointing the cops right to him, the prick. Bud had scores to settle with Jay going back to when they were five years old. Some big, some small, but the most recent one was a whopper. And he planned to get his revenge.

He knew of a phone in the back of a Korean grocery about ten blocks from his apartment, so he walked uptown for a ways, his scarf pulled up over his face, actually enjoying the sleet that the wind drove into his eyes. Soon enough he’d be in a warm, sunny place, all of this behind him.

He bought three packs of Dunhills from the skinny old Korean man behind the counter.

“Got a telephone?” he asked, as if he’d never been in the place before.

“Yuh. Back. Near beer.”

He headed toward the back of the small store. Bins of pungent-smelling root vegetables lined the shelves on either side of the narrow aisle, their strange odors assaulting him as he trod the uneven floor-boards. He got to the phone, checked to make sure he was alone, then dropped the quarter into the slot.

“Yeah?” Esposito answered. He had a whiny voice, high-pitched for a guy his substantial size.

“It’s me.”

“What the fuck, Bud! You said everything was all right! Then I wake up to Whitney in a fuckin’ body bag on the front page of the Post.”

Bud had already decided how he would handle this. The lies flowed like honey from his mouth.

“Everything was all right when I called you, but things went south. Shit happens sometimes in this line of work. You know that.”

“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, pal! Those girls were prime merchandise. Seven trips I used Whitney, and every time she sailed through security like nobody’s business. You want somebody looks like a rich girl on vacation, hire a rich girl and send her on vacation. Where am I gonna get another one of those, huh? Answer me that!”

“Take it easy, Jay-”

“Don’t tell me to fuckin’ take it easy! You realize what you’ve fuckin’ done here, Bud? Young girl, fancy family. Not a lot of those willin’ to smuggle heroin in their bellies. And not only is she hard to replace, but with her dead now, the cops are gonna be fuckin’ all over us. Fuck.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Every other word out of his mouth, the lowlife. Learn another fuckin’ word, you fuckin’ prick. Bud could barely stand to be associated with him. He had to take a deep breath to calm himself before speaking.

“Look, you wanna blame someone, blame the Colombians, Jay,” Bud said, keeping his voice neutral with great effort. “They use cheap latex. You knew that since Mirta.”

Mirta Jimenez had dropped dead a while back in the bathroom at Marín Airport before she even got on the plane to New York. Jay was always careful to sit several rows behind the mules when he rode shotgun, so he wasn’t questioned in her death. He just got on the plane and flew to New York like nothing had happened, then took the opportunity to upgrade the quality of his employees by hiring Whitney Seward.

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…”