(AD 1982; USA)

Thanks to the patronage of a wealthy beer baron’s widow, Sisters Mary Theresa and Mary Josepha were on their way to a week in Florida and 21 days aboard a Caribbean barefoot cruise. The trip would terminate at a lavish cocktail party at the Bahamian island home of the baron’s widow. It was more pleasure than any sister from the ‘Poor Handmaidens of Jesus Christ’ could ever have imagined.

From St. Louis, it was more convenient for the nuns to fly to Chicago’s O’Hara Airport and board a Pan Am 707 out of Canada and fly directly to Miami. It beat waiting three hours for a local flight, hours that could be spent on the beach, in a seafood restaurant, or just window-shopping. The nuns planned to save cash by flying economy and wearing their habits, insurance against being mugged, or overcharged, which meant a little extra pocket money for cruise clothes and souvenirs.

The Chicago police officer in charge of making Sergeant Tom Poole’s reservations also discovered that by flying Pan Am, he could be in Miami several hours earlier and $36 cheaper than by flying shuttle to New York. The 707 was bound for Jamaica with only two scheduled stops, one in Chicago and one in Miami. It left Ontario with 63 passengers and took on another 39 in Chicago, which left everyone with plenty of elbow room.

Across the aisle and a dozen rows back, Frankie Carillo wedged his massive body into a narrow seat and kicked off his shoes. Frankie liked to travel. He liked being his own man, even if he did work for someone else. It wasn’t like a regular job where he had to punch a clock every time he took a pee. Ever since ‘Doc’—Dr. James Penney—had ‘hired’ him out of a redneck bar in Pensacola where he worked as a bouncer, Frankie had been deeply grateful. Now he wore new suits, expensive shoes and earned $1,000 a week cash, with no deductions.

He also knew that what he was doing for Doc wasn’t legal. Sometimes it involved picking up large sums of money. Sometimes it involved pushing people around, even punishing them. But it was easier and far more profitable than beating up on drunken sailors.

Doc had taught him how to pick up desperate men on the streets and simply by putting weapons and money in their hands, turn them into assassins. It wasn’t as complicated as the paperback novels tried to make it sound. Under the cover of darkness and with a powerful weapon, the ‘rat’ became every bit as dangerous as the ‘cat’.

It was not love or loyalty to noble causes either that turned men into thieves or assassins; it was desperation, sleepless nights and hungry children. About all Frankie could remember of his childhood in Palermo, Sicily, was hunger and need, hunger so great that he and his family once ate their neighbor’s dog.

Lately, Frankie’s orders had taken a turn. Doc said that when the opportunity arose, he was to ‘fix’ a few Catholic priests. That meant introducing them to potentially lethal doses of narcotics ... and the use of force was sanctioned. The orders sat well with him. There was little love lost between Frankie and the fat, parasitic priests that hoarded and controlled the wealth of his country from their churches and seminaries.

He could not help wondering, after watching the two little nuns, if his new orders included them. He hoped so. The emphasis had been placed on the word ‘Catholic’. He had enough PCP with him to fly them both to Miami without a plane. But if force was sanctioned, why not use it? It had been a long time since he had tasted pussy that young and ... talk about tight.

The Panamanian 707 made a wide arcing turn in the sky, as if it had overflown the airport and was turning around for another pass. Poole lost interest in the magazine he was reading, some pseudo-scientific journal propagating fanciful tales about sperm from outer space and animals capable of teleporting themselves from one continent to another. The articles were a crock of shit, but the cartoons were a giggle.

The seatbelt sign came on and passengers stirred in their seats like newly emerging insects preparing to test their unskilled legs and wings. The two nuns in the seat across the aisle worked swiftly to fasten their seatbelts. They hadn’t talked much, only to each other.

Poole thought they traveled in pairs, not out of mutual interest or concern, but in self-defense, in the event they met disgruntled Catholic students dead-set on revenge. Raised in the bower of the Roman Catholic faith, he too had suffered needless pain and humiliation at the hands of a few sisters from the ‘Holy Order of Jesus Christ’. In subtle ways, they never let him forget he was the illegitimate son of a galley cook on a small fishing boat. A more vindictive spirit may have been tempted to seek revenge, but he was willing to forgive and forget.

Poole had served the Church faithfully as an altar boy and found refuge in its rules and disciplines. Such close proximity with the sacred had preserved a measure of innocence in his face and eyes. Now, even in manhood, his sharp, but distinctive imperfections would fit comfortably in a cassock.

He thought it strange that the nuns were traveling in the uniform of their order. Vatican Council II had supposedly loosened their bonds and given them the freedom to modify their wardrobe. But these two were undoubtedly members of an order that had been critical of the change, the same true believers, he suspected, who would have preferred to hear the Mass intoned in Latin.

The nun in the aisle seat caught him staring and smiled. "My first flight, first trip to Florida, too. I’m so excited I could scream."

With a smile once capable of melting the coldest cloistered hearts, he said, "I hope you brought a bathing suit," and directed her attention to the mummifying effects of the white habit.

She looked at the dense covering of material, grinned and covered her mouth shyly with one hand. "I wouldn’t dare. I’d turn redder than a boiled lobster."

Cute, he thought, not a hint of makeup on her face and skin so delicate and clear he could almost see through it. She couldn’t be more than 30; only a few years separated them, but what a world of difference.

Her companion in the window seat leaned forward to give him the once-over. He could see she approved. She was not as young or attractive as the other, but displayed a willingness to mix it up socially at the drop of a formality.

"You both from the same parish?" He asked. The pretty one smiled and nodded. "Yes, Belleville, Illinois. We’re members of the ‘Poor Handmaidens of Jesus Christ’. I’m Sister Mary Theresa and this is Sister Mary Josepha. We’re on our way to Miami, and we’re going to knock that old town on its heels! You know any good night spots?"

Poole grinned and words stuck in his throat. He felt embarrassed by the silent and sober spectacle he was making of himself. It looked as if VC2 had set them free to do a little more than alter their hemlines.

"Bull puckey," she whispered and nudged her companion. Together they shared a wicked little laugh. "We came down here to have a good time and by St. Andrew’s holy head, we’re going to do it. You know any nightclubs that cater to ladies from religious orders?"

The airport runway came into view. Chatter among the passengers increased. The plane was carrying far less than its full complement of passengers. Another sign of Reaganomics. Even the task force’s budget had been cut. If Poole wanted to fly higher than economy, the difference came out of his own pocket.

The plane sat down without knocking the bubble the least bit off center. The passengers were out of their seats and lining up in the aisle while the clipper taxied to the gate. Poole stood behind the nuns gazing at the back of their white cowls. The pretty one turned as if in response to his steady gaze. There was a lovely ice-blue serenity in her eyes and in her smile. He tried to reflect the same peaceful expression she shared with him when he returned the smile.

"I hope you enjoy your vacation," he said.

The collar seemed to fit her a little too snugly around the cheeks and neck. He wondered about her hair concealed beneath the bonnet. Was it brown or blonde? Her brows were almost red to gold, changing in the sunlight to the fairest shade in red’s spectrum.

"Thank you very much," she whispered and patted his hand as if she truly were his sister.

He watched them hurry through the gate, gather their luggage off the carousel, laugh and talk with a young woman and her two children, shake hands with an older man, decline assistance from a sailor and flag down a taxi.

He had fallen behind them out of habit, concealing his body behind posts and people, blending into the nondescript environs of the airport, stalking them thoughtlessly. But something was wrong. Their movements gave him pleasure, but there was a chill crawling up his back and across his shoulders. He couldn’t tell if it was meant for him or them. He forced an uneasy smile, but as the nuns vanished into the taxi and a stream of traffic, so did his smile. His uneasiness, however, would not go away.

By the time the plane landed, Frankie had devised a rather complicated plan considering his normally expeditious nature. He followed the nuns through the airport terminal staying behind a young man who was behaving like a cop, the same man who sat beside them on the plane. But they had not talked much, only when it came time to leave. So why was he following them?

Frankie followed their cab to a motel, got the room number from the clerk and took another cab to a car rental agency. After renting a car, he drove through Miami’s barrio and handpicked a half dozen Marielitos—men who had been released from Cuban prisons, put on boats and sent to the United States. Promises of whiskey and women brought them clamoring to his car. Before returning to the motel, Frankie stopped at a liquor store and bought them each a bottle of rum. In the motel’s restaurant, he requested that two large glasses of orange juice be sent to the nuns’ room. He intercepted the waitress, tipped her generously and said he would deliver it himself. He emptied a packet of ‘crystal ice’ into each glass of juice and waited while it dissolved. He wanted to make sure they drank it right away.

His heavy knuckles pounded on the door. "Who is it?"?

"Room service," he rasped. Scar tissue from a childhood disease and an inept surgeon had damaged his larynx.

She opened the door just a crack. Two glasses of juice, just like he said. But where had she seen that brute of a man before? She opened the door and invited him in, even though her instincts were screaming a warning.

"Here you are, ladies, I beg your pardon, sisters."

They were still in their habits, all except the young and pretty one. She had taken off her bonnet and shoes, but he still couldn’t see her feet. Until now, he didn’t know if nuns had feet. They could roll around on casters for all he knew. Her shoes and stockings were lying on the floor beneath the bed. They took the juice, toasted each other and drank wordlessly.

Frankie stopped smiling, and if that wasn’t frightening enough, he frowned. That’s what her senses were trying to warn her about. She turned the glass up, drained it dry and wiped her lips with her fingertips. She would do anything to get that horrible man out of the room.

"Oh, my ..." He took the glasses from their hands and set them on the desk. "Oh, no."

"There, ain’t that pretty good stuff? How’s it make you feel?"

"Oh, my goodness!" Sister Theresa held her head. "Wobbly, dizzy, but good, yes, very good! Oh, I feel simply wonderful!"

Then the room suddenly turned on her, tried to slip out from under her feet and escape through the keyhole, dragging her along.

"Oh, no! Oh, my, what was in that?"

Mary Josepha crashed on the bed like a pilot going down in flames. Frankie bent down to lift her feet off the floor and position them straight on the bed. Sister Theresa finally remembered where she had seen him before ... In the airport at Chicago and again in Miami. He must have been on the plane, too, which meant he didn’t belong here at the motel, or with the orange juice.

"You, you’re not who you say you are ... you’re someone else!"

Frankie squeezed her face between his hands. A nun sandwich. She thought he was going to eat her alive, but all he did was press his lips to hers and then lick her face, which, in her present state, didn’t really feel that bad. And then she did a back flip off the edge of the world into the universe ... and never touched bottom.

Frankie laid her on the other bed, stripped the habits off them both and fucked the young and pretty one first. He was proud of himself. He made her bleed. The other one bled, too, but not much.

The Marielitos were sitting on the ground around the car drinking rum. It was too hot to sit inside. Frankie signaled them from the motel room and they came running. He led them into the air-conditioned room with a smile and a wink.

The presence of the two naked women, spread-eagle on the beds and bleeding, frightened them at first. They thought the women were dead. They wanted to leave, to call the deal off. Some tried to give him back the half-empty bottles of rum, but Frankie blocked the door with his body and said "no." They had agreed to participate in exchange for whiskey and women, and these were the women. He taunted them with insults.

"I was told the Marielitos were real men!"

An old wino moved in a little closer and fondled Sister Theresa’s breasts. Warm to the touch, he began sucking them, first one and then the other. In seconds, the others were lining up behind him, pushing and shoving, dropping their pants and holding their cocks in their hands, feeling them grow, and drinking all they could hold.

Frankie backed up to the door, but before he left, he inspired them with his final words: "Fuck ‘em good, men, fuck ‘em to death."

Poole brought a taxi to a screeching halt with a nod. The driver was from some South or Central American country. "Acacia Boulevard, the old coast guard annex."

The driver shrugged. "The annex is a DEA office, and it don’t take no degree in criminology to figure out that you ain’t from Florida, not with that lily-white complexion."

Ten minutes later the cab swerved through a chain link gate onto a gravel road and stopped in front of a quonset hut surrounded by palm trees and tropical flowers. The driver clamored out and opened the door. Poole placed a $20 bill in his hand.

A dark-haired young woman sat within a glass cubicle just inside the door. A sparse mustache was visible on her upper lip. Hormones intrigued Poole. Hers were working overtime, producing male testosterone for whatever reason. Her babies would probably shave before they could walk.

"William Rogers in? My name is Tom Poole."

She lured him away from the contemplation of her upper lip with a smile. "We’ve been expecting you. I’ll tell him you’re here."

She punched a button on the phone and spoke in a whisper. He could not detect an accent. In fact, she spoke a more precise English than his. "Captain Rogers will see you now."

Poole followed her into a narrow corridor. "Did you have a pleasant trip?" She asked without turning to engage his eyes.

"Yes, I did," he replied, watching her carefully. He fell farther behind for a more compelling view.

She snagged a doorknob and spun around. "I hope you enjoy your visit. It isn’t often we get a chance to help other departments."

Poole’s eyes wandered. She was attractive. If the opportunity presented itself, he would address the hormone issue. ‘Have you ever heard a whore moan?’ He thought, frowned and shook his head. He’d been too long on the windy streets. He gazed wistfully after her and puzzled over her body language. It was trying to tell him something. She retreated down the hall, turned once, smiled and put more leg into her stride.

"Poole, that you?"

The voice came from inside the office. Poole opened the door and entered. A beefy man in a rumpled white shirt sat hunched over a wooden desk. A yellow tie with red polka dots was loosely knotted at his neck. A gold watch and band hung from his wrist.

Bill Rogers was older than Poole had anticipated, closing in on retirement. Poole was counting on experience, but not the kind that was essentially useless in the field.

Rogers offered a trembling ham-sized hand. Poole captured it in his. The captain put some muscle in his grip, but not enough to worry about. Things were not progressing well.

Rogers’ smile was wary. He retreated deeper into his chair. "Get right down to business, eh? Good. I like that in a man. Don’t get me wrong, I got good men, I just wish I had more."

Rogers offered a battered cigarette from a half-empty pack, the trademark of a chain-smoker. Poole declined. The captain thumped the pack against his palm and a cigarette dropped out. His fingers trembled while he held a flame to the ravaged tip. After sucking in enough smoke to charcoal a lung, he threw the match in a tray.

"Yeah, I know him. Been following his career for 15 years. You think he did your ... colleague?"

"The possibility exists."

Rogers’ head was shaking imperceptibly, an unconscious gesture that deepened the division growing between them. The captain pulled a thick file from a metal cabinet and turned to the first page.

"Dr. James Penney operated a medical clinic before he moved into drugs. Now he’s a principal supplier to drug dealers in the US; his labs crystallize more than a ton of base cocaine in a week. He’s also responsible for setting up the ‘safe harbor’ in Cuba, which provides smugglers with a gunboat escort halfway to the US and a place to lie over and make repairs. We’ve traced his money to banks and front companies in Panama, the Bahamas and the Philippines. He lives on a 100-foot yacht, flies his own chopper and is chairman of a Swiss holding company called ‘Citadel Corporation’.

"He may have passed sentence on your friend," Rogers said, "but he’s too far from the street to get involved in anything as messy as murder. He has lieutenants who take care of the dirty work, one in particular. His name is Frankie Carillo. They say he’s capable of ... what happened to your friend, and we know he was in Chicago a month ago."

Poole felt blood pounding up the back of his neck. He loosened his tie and opened the collar of his blue cotton shirt which he had come to realize was inappropriate for Florida’s sweltering climate.

"Can you help me find Doc ... and his lieutenant?"

"He’s cautious, Poole, like a good carpenter. He knows where every nail goes before he drives the first one in."

Poole disliked parables, especially when they glorified criminal behavior. They reminded him of his early catechism classes, nuns who tormented him and the monsignor who banished his mother from the Church. They also made his scalp itch, or was it the heat, or the fact that he’d never learned to ingratiate himself with authority.

Rogers leaned back in his chair and squinted through one eye. "Maybe once or twice in a lifetime you’re lucky enough to meet a real woman who knows who she is and what she wants. You can’t talk or buy your way between her legs. It’s either love, or it’s nothing. And if you should make a mistake and betray that love, then its ‘wham, bam, thank you, ma’m,’ and she’s gone out the door and off to a nunnery for the rest of her life, and you’ll never see her again."

Poole grinned. "I’ve never met a woman like that."

"You ain’t lived, Tom. You’ve been nowhere, done nothing. You don’t know nothing."

Poole thought a moment about his own mother. Had his father had trouble getting between her legs? He doubted it. The captain was right; he knew nothing.

"So the man who crucified one of Chicago’s finest is not only rich and clever, but also romantic," Poole said, sensing a twinge of envy. If it had not been for eight years in the navy, Poole would have perished academically. His Uncle Sam taught him the complexities of cryptography, introduced him to astronomy and navigation, and even gave him flying lessons, which eventually put him in the navy’s office of criminal investigations.

"He’s out there," Rogers said, "and he’s doing about $50 million a year, but no one has been able to bring him down yet."

"I’m going to try," Poole said.

Rogers smiled and shook his mane of thick gray hair. "The IRS has been trying to nail his butt for twenty-five years. He’s resourceful."

"I think you’re wrong," Poole replied. "You’re talking about a drug lord with a multimillion dollar operation. I think he’d eat dead babies to protect it."

Rogers smiled and wiped ash from his cigarette off the desk. "Wake up, man. He fancies himself a great humanitarian, a Don Quixote tilting with windmills, a knight in shining armor aligning himself against the evils of government bureaucracy and international corruption. He probably does more good for the peons of Colombia than the country’s past dozen presidents."

Poole shuffled through reams of paper in the file. "What else you got on him?"

Rogers ignored the invasion. "He doesn’t make mistakes, but his people do. That’s how we know he’s here, or soon will be. A freighter left Colombia a week ago with thirty tons of marijuana and more than one thousand pounds of cocaine base. When it’s converted to crystal, he’ll sell it to middlemen for about ten million. It will bring ten times that much on the street."

"You’ve got my attention," Poole said.

"A Russian gunboat provided an escort through the canal and into Cuba’s safe harbor. The transfer was made to smaller boats at Cuba’s ‘Cay Paredon Grande’ under the watchful eye of Cuban Intelligence, the DGI. Doc is cruising somewhere off shore.

"The street people say it’s a big shipment. It will come in through the Everglades, the Okeefenokee Swamp, or up the Mississippi. Once the stuff is on the beach, it goes to different labs for processing. After its cut, he sends it to wholesalers."

"How can he run that kind of play from a boat?"

"Trading with Doc is like doing business with AT&T," Rogers said. "His ducks are all in a row, and the king is in the counting house."

The thought that the opposition was better organized and gaining in technological superiority was disheartening. "Can we follow up when it comes in?"

"We’ll make a special effort just for you," Rogers said. "But we don’t know when that will happen. We’ll be flat on our feet when it does."

Rogers’ grin lengthened. "You sound pissed. I thought you enjoyed your work."

"I’m not in it for the money. How about you? You in it for the adrenaline, or for the shoe-box full of hundred dollar bills you got stashed in the closet?"

Rogers’ breath went out of him as if he’d been punched. His skin burned beneath the Florida tan.

"Christ, you are in it for the money, aren’t you? How much you got squirreled away, Captain, half a million?"

Rogers’ face turned red with anger and his lips compressed. "You know, for a cop, you talk too fuckin’ much to suit me."

Poole backed down. "Okay, take it easy, don’t get your bowels in an uproar. I came down here to nail Doc. I don’t care if you got ten shoe-boxes stuffed with hundred dollar bills."

Rogers leaped from the chair. His face was burning with anger. "I don’t have to put up with your crap! You smart-mouthed little ..... shit. If you expect help from me, you damn well better watch your mouth."

Poole was braced for a physical assault that fizzled out. ‘Wild’ Bill dissolved into the padded chair, sinking lower and lower.

"Sorry, Captain. Just a little joke, that’s all. I wish you did have a few million dollars. I wish we all had ..."

"All right, damn it! You had your little joke. Now let’s cut out this bullshit about money, okay?" He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar. "You got a room yet?"

"A motel called the Adventure Inn," Poole replied. The name summoned up visions in his mind of bare-chested men in cutoffs and jeans, tankards of ale in one hand and bikini-clad women in the other.

Rogers’ thoughts also turned inward, confronting demons. Poole observed a tremor on his lips and fingertips. The old man was upset. Poole figured he probably had several million dollars stuffed inside his mattress, and all that dirty money was tearing him apart.

"I know where it is," Rogers said. "You stay close to the phone; I’ll keep in touch."

Good-bye Florida sun, hello x-rated motel movies. Poole cleared his throat and sat up in the chair. "I’d like to hang around here, Captain, if you don’t mind, work with one of your boys. Maybe do some cruising on my own, get the lay of the land. I could be a big help."

Rogers nodded, affected a cough in his folded hands, and tried to meet Poole’s eyes without bursting a blood vein. "I know a man you can team up with. A young guy from Cuba. He’s doing a good job for me. He’ll show you parts of Miami that aren’t in the brochures."

Poole nodded dutifully. "Sounds too good to be true."

"I don’t want you leading this boy astray," Rogers said, regaining control. "Don’t start filling his mind with dreams of making some big drug bust."

Poole turned his palms up. "God forbid I should do something so crass. I’m just a visitor here. All I want to do is take the good doctor down and watch his network crumble."

Rogers’ eyes retreated to the desk and a gnawed yellow pencil. "I wish you luck, but when the bum-fuckers start asking questions, I’m going to give them your name."

Poole grinned and slumped back in the chair. He was beginning to like the heat and the hum of the air conditioner, but the humidity was a bitch. Maybe that’s what triggered Latin hormones, heat and humidity.