Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [78]
Inside, the rooms were large and spread out, the center hall, living room, and dining room dominating the wood-paneled first floor. A thick oak staircase led to the three bedrooms on the second. There were skylights and gas fireplaces in every room except the kitchen. Wall-clipped surveillance cameras recorded each move, from every possible angle. Two purebred German shepherds walked the rooms with complete freedom. Outside, the morning air was fresh and brisk, with a cool breeze coming down from the cliffs. Less than a mile from the house, tourists, fresh off a fast-food breakfast, were already lined up in front of the Red Rock Jeep Tours waiting area, eager to bounce their way through well-charted terrain.
All the activity was in the kitchen, a large, airy space with bay windows, overhead fans, and a three-screen video display terminal bolted into the granite countertop to the left of the oversized microwave. Two middle-aged women in housecoats and slippers padded quietly across the thick tile floor, carrying cellophane-sealed two-kilo bags of cocaine. They were taking the bags from a large satchel on the kitchen table, then resting them in neat piles next to the sink. Three men in well-tailored suits stood at different ends of the kitchen, eyes hidden by dark shades, arms folded across their chests, silently counting off the piles.
The women were two bags away from emptying the satchel when Lucia Carney walked into the kitchen.
The three men dropped their arms to their sides when they saw her. She stared and smiled at each of them as she passed, the thick aroma of her Chanel perfume filling the air. Her dark hair was combed straight back, hanging down long over the shoulders of a black Karl Lagerfeld dress. She wore four-inch heels and her skirt was slit high on both sides, revealing ample portions of well-sculpted legs. The nails on her fingers and toes were painted dark red, her skin was tanned and unlined, and her brown eyes, while seductive and enticing, conveyed a distant and frightening chill.
Lucia was thirty-eight years old but looked much younger. She maintained her spectacular figure with punishing daily two-hour workouts. She took great pleasure in knowing that men both desired and feared her equally. It was what had helped keep her alive in what was a very dangerous occupation. But for Lucia Carney, surviving was always the priority.
She was born in a clinic in Houston, Texas, the third child of migrant workers with little in the way of money and even less in the way of hope. At seven she was sent to Galveston to live with an aunt and her bedridden husband. They lived in a wood frame house with off-and-on running water and a bathroom hooked up next to the shed. Her aunt, a once-beautiful woman eaten away by hard times, worked as a waitress in a local diner during the day. At night she turned tricks in her bedroom while her husband sat in the kitchen propped next to a hand-cranked turntable, listening to Hank Williams and Patsy Cline.
Lucia was a poor student and found herself skipping more classes than she attended. By the time she was ten, she was helping her aunt serve customers in the diner, handing over the tips but eating as much of the cherry pies as she wanted. Her aunt noticed the way in which the weary men who frequented the diner fawned over the girl and how Lucia was quick to flirt back.
A month past her twelfth birthday, Lucia was moved out of the diner and sent to work in the shed next to the house. There, in the shadow of a twenty-five-watt bulb, sitting on a wooden bench rich with splinters, her back against the creaky shed wall, she gave oral sex to any man who paid her aunt the five-dollar fee. She always wore the same blue-flowered print dress her mother had sent her from Houston for Christmas, white socks trimmed with lace, and black buckled shoes shined daily with spit and water. She always kept her eyes closed and her hands wrapped tightly around the sharp edges of the bench. Tight enough to