"Yes?" he hissed.
“I…ummm…am Sandy, Linda's friend," she answered. He looked like plenty of other twenty-somethings she saw around Seattle. This one scared her, though.
“Linda?”
“Linda Farragut.”
He eyed her up and down through the crack in the door. She checked the house number again without backing off the little porch to make sure this was the right place.
"Yeah, I know Linda. But I don’t know you."
There was someone else behind him, someone with an easy, friendly voice, soft but still audible over the sound of a party that drifted out from somewhere toward the back of the house.
"Wait a minute, Jason. Where are your manners? Let the little lady in. She says she's Linda's friend. That's good enough for me."
Jason obeyed immediately, unchaining the door and opening it wide, beckoning her in with a regal sweep of his hand and a demented grin that showed chapped lips and bad teeth.
The disembodied voice behind him turned out to be a young, dark man with big, sad, brown eyes. He had a welcoming demeanor, a handsome smoothness that instantly had her weak-kneed. He took Sandy’s hand, nodded slightly, and welcomed her to his party.
“I’m glad you could make it, ‘Sandy-Linda’s-friend.’ Please, make yourself at home. I’m Carlos…Carlos Ramirez…and I’m delighted to meet you. Come on back and let me show you off to the other guests.”
There was something almost hypnotic about the man. He made her feel as if he was, indeed, profoundly happy that she had come. He held her hand in his, his arm around her shoulders as he gently guided her through the expensively but tastefully decorated home.
They reached the source of all the noise. There were at least a hundred other people milling about the big room at the rear of the house, but Carlos seemed to be playing host only to her now. For that moment, the pretty blonde computer programmer from Iowa City was the most important guest at Carlos Ramirez’ party.
He led her down the steps into the big open room. The other guests fell silent and looked his way.
“Everyone, welcome Sandy!”
They all raised their cocktails to her in a friendly enough gesture. After a polite pause, they resumed their chatter. Sandy couldn’t believe the crowd. It was as if someone had called Central Casting and asked them to send over a hundred “beautiful people” to populate the most glamorous party Sandy Holmes had ever seen.
A drink appeared in her hand from nowhere. She put it to her lips and took a sip. It tasted sweet, strangely cool on her tongue, but warm and spicy as it went down. Carlos ushered her into the midst of the guests and soon she was talking to someone tall and dark-haired and wearing a suit that cost as much as her VW Bug.
Thank you, Linda, she thought. Thank you for delivering me right into heaven!
She soon lost track of Carlos Ramirez. He was standing on the party’s fringes, occasionally acknowledging one of his guests, but mostly watching this new arrival with a small smile playing at his lips.
His dark eyes were no longer sad. They had gone stone cold evil.
Beautiful white trash, he thought. Look how shyly she flirts. How innocent she tries to look. Soon she’ll be snorting with the rest of them. And taking back word of the delights available here to the others, just as her friend has done for her.
I may have her before she is too wasted to appreciate it. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll allow Jason to enjoy her first. These blondes are especially good, his favorites, and he deserves the perks of the job.
Carlos watched her as she laughed. He watched as her self-consciousness left her as she sipped the last few drops of her second drink. She was deeply involved in conversation, cozying up to one of those prancing, WASP, captain-of-industry types that he so despised. Despised even after they inevitably became his best customers. He observed the way the slight, pink flush was spreading its way up her throat now, coloring in her cheeks, adding starlight to her eyes as the alcohol did its work on her.
That was nothing. He would soon have another refreshment to serve her and the rest of his guests. And it truly was magical.
The plan is going precisely as Juan de Santiago promised it would, he thought.
“Give them a taste of the new powder,” de Santiago had urged. “Once they have tasted, they are yours from now on. Yours and ours, Carlos.”
And if the new powder worked as predicted, it would be gold.
A snort or two and hooked for life! How was such a thing possible?
Carlos didn’t care about the specifics. The scope of what de Santiago and the others were doing was much too big for him to comprehend. He only knew how it affected him. Basic supply and demand. This new product would take care of the demand and de Santiago swore he and the others would soon have the supply problem solved.
It’s finally my time, Carlos thought.
After the struggles of the last few years, the small-time marijuana business, the miniscule-margin cocaine distribution, he was ready to reap the bounty this new, powerful powder of de Santiago’s promised.
The noise level in the room confirmed that his party guests were ready, too. Carlos stepped through the double doors and signaled to Jason.
It was time to bring
