Love at 11 (14 page)

“She auditioned for a movie I was working on,” he said. “Didn’t get the part, but did get me.”

“Ah, the booby prize,” I teased.

“Yeah, she’d probably tell you that,” he said with a laugh. “Though she was a lot different back then. She’d only recently arrived in Hollywood. Small-town girl from Missouri, desperate to become a movie star. Buck-toothed and brown-haired.”

“Are we talking about the same Jennifer? Your fiancée Jennifer?”

Jamie grinned ruefully. “One and the same. Pre Hollywood extreme makeover, of course.”

“Well she’s beautiful now. Stunning. I mean, she looks like Paris Hilton.”

“I guess.” Jamie pulled a twig from a bush as he walked past and snapped it in his hand. “Though to tell you the truth, I prefer a more natural look.”

I groaned. “Oh puh-leeze. Men always say that! And then they go off and ogle all the supermodels and porn stars.”

“You think I ogle porn stars?”

“All men do,” I insisted stubbornly. “Whether they admit it or not.”

“Fair enough. I may ogle, as you call it, but I’m not going to marry one.”

“Ah, here’s the Madonna and whore complex!” I said triumphantly. “You want to marry someone pure—like Mom, right?”

He shuddered. “Please. You haven’t met my mother.”

“You know what I mean, though. You men are all the same. Sow your wild oats while young, then marry the one girl who didn’t give it up.”

He laughed. “Maddy, your peek into the male psyche is astounding. Did you learn all that in Psychology one-oh-one, or did you take advanced courses?”

I playfully shoved him. “Whatever, dude. Face it. You know I’m right.”

“I don’t,” he insisted innocently. “If you were, then I wouldn’t be marrying a Hollywood starlet in a few months. Jen is the anti-mom. And she’d rather commit hara-kiri than set foot in a kitchen.”

“Okay, okay. I stand corrected.” I giggled. “You managed to buck the trend. Marry the whore instead of the Madon—” I stopped abruptly and turned to him. “Er, not that Jen’s a whore. Sorry, that came out wrong.”

He chuckled. “I knew what you meant.”

We fell silent after that. I felt kind of bad, teasing him about his fiancée. I didn’t want him to think that I was doing it as a desperate attempt to get him to break up with Jennifer and go out with me. That was so not my intention. Had I taken banter a step too far?

“What about you?” Jamie asked suddenly, breaking into my thoughts.

“Me?” I cocked my head in question.

“Yeah, you. Are you the Madonna or the whore?” My face flamed. “Uh … I’m … well …” How did one answer that question? If I said Madonna, I’d be the boring, cookie-baking mom type. Which I wasn’t. But I wasn’t some whore, either.

“Not as easy to categorize when it’s about yourself, huh?” Jamie asked. I looked up at him and could see the teasing light in his eyes.

Fine. He got me there.

“Yeah, yeah,” I acquiesced. “You’ve proven your point.”

“But you haven’t answered my question.” Jamie stopped and faced me. His eyes darkened and the teasing glimmer retreated from his face. “Which are you?” I suddenly felt hot in a way that had nothing to do with the desert sun beating down on us. I wanted to squirm away from his intense gaze. What was it about this guy that made me so crazy and weak in the knees? Did he have some kind of Maddy kryptonite in his pocket or something?

The phone rang again.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Jamie cried, dropping eye contact to grab the receiver. “Hello? Hello?” He banged on it with his hand and put the phone back to his ear. “Jen? Can you hear me?”

He pulled the phone away from his ear and pressed the “off “ button. The cell tinkled its good-bye music and shut down. He stuffed it back into his pocket.

“We’d better get hiking.”

We stayed silent for a while after that as we trudged through San Diego desert, careful not to catch our clothes on the prickly cacti that lined the trail. Truth be told, I was too busy willing my heart to slow down to bother pursuing a conversation. I couldn’t believe how turned on that man could get me with a simple look. And then his fiancée had to show up via wireless transmission and ruin it all.

That was it. I had to stop putting myself in these situations. There was just too much chemistry between us when we were alone together, and it always made me hope for something more. But really, in the end, none of this was going to lead anywhere. He had Jennifer. They’d be married in a few months. That was reality and I needed to accept it. I wasn’t a home-wrecker, after all.

I thought about my dad’s other woman. Cindi with an “i”. Did she have the same worries, guilt, and fear when she first met my dad? Did he seduce her, make her fall in love with him and then let her sit and wonder if he’d ever leave his wife? Did she try to break it off, only to find out she was pregnant? What went through her heart when the stick turned pink? Was she overjoyed at the new life she’d created with a married man? Or overwhelmingly afraid that she may suddenly find herself a single mom?

I grimaced. I didn’t like thinking about Cindi with an “i” as a real person with doubts, fears, and insecurities. Better to think of her as the whore who broke up my parents’ marriage.

But was she?

About twenty minutes of troubling thoughts later, Jamie stopped and looked at his map and compared the coordinates to his GPS computer. “I think it’s right over that hill,” he said, pointing ahead to a cliff-face drop-off.

This was it! My pulse kicked up a notch in anticipation.

“Okay,” Jamie said in a low voice. “Let me turn on the camera.” He casually reached into the backpack and hit the
record
button, then closed it again. We had about an hour of run time before he’d have to switch tapes.

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded and we started walking again. Our steps suddenly seemed uncomfortably loud, and I had the weird feeling we were being watched, though there was no one in sight.

My heart beat loudly in my chest. What if we got caught? What if they found the camera? Would they destroy the tape? Or would they do more? Torture us? Kill us? Oh, why had I thought this would be a good story idea? I would never be able to get a job on
Newsline
if I were dead!

We reached the brink of the cliff and looked down. There, about hundred yards away, sat a big warehouse. I could see excavators and other digging equipment. Oil wells dotted the landscape. But no tunnel.

“Is that it?” I asked, disappointed.

Jamie pointed the camera lens to get a few shots of the building. “Did you expect mounds of cocaine piled out in the open?”

“No.” I shrugged. “But maybe at least a giant tunnel. This could be anything. Looks like an oil field. Maybe Miguel was wrong.”

“They want you to think it’s an oil field. That way they can go about their business in secret, I’ll bet.” Jamie zoomed in the camera and panned the landscape below. “But would an oil field have armed guards flanking each side of the front door?”

I pulled out my binoculars and took a look. Sure enough, there were two camouflage-wearing, AK-47-carrying guards standing watch. “Wow, you’re right.” I set down the binoculars, hands trembling with fear. What if they looked up and saw us? Would they start shooting?

Calm down, Maddy. After all, Diane Dickson would not let fear get the best of her.

Good thing Jamie was doing the camerawork. My shaking hands would have made the video come out looking like the
Blair Witch Project
.

“Ooh! The doors!”

The guards stepped aside as the large warehouse doors swung silently open. A battered van with Mexican license plates drove out of the building. It stopped right outside and the driver killed the motor, but remained in the vehicle.

“I bet there are drugs inside,” Jamie said.

I grabbed his arm and pointed over to the far left of the building. “Someone’s driving up.”

Jamie turned the camera to zoom in on the new car approaching down a dirt road, its tires stirring up a cloud of desert dust. When the air cleared, I realized it was a brand-new black Mercedes SUV with tinted windows.

“This is so exciting,” I whispered as the door to the Mercedes opened. I’d never been on a stakeout before and the adrenaline pumping through my veins was better than any high.

“Yeah,” Jamie whispered back, sharing my enthusiasm.

A skinny man with curly black hair, wearing cutoff jeans and a wife-beater stepped out of the SUV. Not the kind of guy I’d have expected exiting the expensive automobile. He rubbed a handkerchief across his sweaty forehead and walked over to the van. One of the warehouse guards yanked open the sliding side door and the man leaned inside, as if to inspect the van’s contents.

I squinted my eyes. The guy didn’t look how I’d imagined a drug cartel member to look. I was thinking more John Gotti, I guess, not an out-of-work plumber. But, I reminded myself, it was doubtful Mr. Gotti actually made on-site appearances. This dude was probably just a courier.

I lifted the binoculars and zoomed in, hoping for a closer look, but I’d maxed the zoom out. “Piece of crap,” I muttered.

“I wonder who that guy is,” Jamie pondered aloud, still watching through the camera. “He’s got to be important. Look how they’re all watching him, waiting.”

I looked back through the binoculars. The man had pulled out a large bag of white powder from the truck and was examining it closely.

“Ooh, ooh!” I squealed, attempting to keep my ecstatic cries at a low decibel. Thank the Lord! We had the smoking gun! Or, in this case, the smoking cocaine. This was better than I’d dared dream.
Newsline
,
Newsline
here I come! “This is too good to be true. I feel like I’m watching a movie!”

“I can’t believe he’s doing this out in the open,” Jamie whispered back. “But then again, we’re pretty far from civilization. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never find this place.

He was right. We were miles and miles from any marked roads or towns. The drug dealers probably felt they were perfectly safe. Imagine if they knew there was a TV crew above them on the ledge. That’d get the bullets flying, for sure. The thought made me crouch a little lower to the ground.

The Mercedes guy reached down to his boot and pulled out a knife. He slit open the bag and stuck a pinkie finger in the powder, bringing it to his lips.

“He’s tasting it. I bet he’s making sure it’s real.”

“This guy is like a walking-talking drug-dealing cliché.” Jamie laughed.

After tasting, the guy nodded to the guard and walked back to his SUV. The guards began to empty the van and transfer bag after bag into the back of his vehicle. It appeared the dealer had some kind of secret compartment underneath the floor to stash the drugs. Some bags had the white powder. Others seemed to contain multi-colored pills. Probably Ecstasy or something.

“Look at all of that,” Jamie whispered. “This isn’t some fly by night operation. It’s got to be from a major cartel.”

After loading up the SUV, the guards slammed its back doors shut. The man started up the engine and drove away. Once he was gone, the van driver circled around and drove back through the warehouse. The guards shut the door behind him.

“Mark the position of this building on your GPS,” I instructed Jamie as I zipped close the backpack. “We can go to the nearest town and look up the property records. See who owns the land.”

“Good idea.” Jamie recorded our coordinates, then looked at his watch. “It’s getting late, but if we hurry we may be able to catch them before they close. Save us another trip out to no-man’s-land.”

I personally doubted we’d get back in time, especially the way my feet were already aching from the hike out. But I was willing to give it a shot if it meant I was getting the hell out of there.

The setting sun cast a warm orange glow on the desert landscape as we headed back to the motorcycle. Neither of us spoke much, and we walked with a sense of urgency.

We made it back in record time and hopped on Jamie’s bike. I thought maybe my fear would help with desensitizing the feeling of wrapping my arms around him, but evidently not. He hit the brake with his foot, revved the engine and we took off.

The desert town of Calla Verda was one of those if-you-blink-you’ll-miss-it type places. There was a mayor’s office, a small grocer, and four bars packed with motorcross riders come from the city to play out in the desert. It was obvious how the town made its income. We hit the mayor’s office, but to our dismay it was already closed. The town evidently turned up its sidewalks at five p.m., save for the bar scene.

“Dammit,” I grumbled. “Now we’ll have to come out tomorrow.”

“You could call.”

“No. I would need to make photocopies of the records so we can videotape them. We’ll have to come back.”

Disappointed, we hopped back on the motorcycle and hit the road. A few miles out we saw an orange glow on the horizon.

“What’s that?” I yelled at Jamie, to be heard over the roar of the bike. I pointed to the glow.

He slowed the bike to a stop. With the land suddenly quiet, we could hear the faint, but pounding beats of techno music.

“I think it’s a rave,” he said.

“Ooh, we should get video for our story since we already have the undercover camera set up. I mean, raves are great to show the effects of drug use.”

“Sure. No problem.” Jamie gave the bike gas, and we headed for the light.

The area for the rave was a roped-off section of desert, not seemingly any different from the rest of the wasteland except for the crazy generator-powered lights and pulsating sounds. Under a small tent, a DJ spun techno and house tunes for a group of about fifty college-aged kids. They were all dressed like Lulu—with extra baggy pants, colored sneakers, and gobs of plastic kids’ jewelry worn around wrists and necks. Most had several piercings—some in pretty interesting spots.

We paid our ten dollars and walked past the ropes. Someone had lit a huge bonfire and the ravers were dancing around it like shamans at an Indian tribal dance. I was delighted. This would make great video for our story.

We wandered around getting shots of the ravers. No one seemed to mind being videotaped—in fact, several kids begged us to turn the camera on them so they could watch themselves through the view screen after a rewind. We were happy to oblige. A few were curious as to what the video was for, but a vague mention of some kind of reality something or other worked to appease them. This was the YouTube generation. They were used to cameras invading every part of a person’s existence.