Brown, it’s Sal. Shake it off, dear. We’ve got issues.” Issues, Pam considered, as she wiped the remaining residue from her eyes. “Issues” meant DEA business. Besides, it was never personal if Sal Goldridge (Chief Investigator/DEA) called, and especially at this hour.

“Wow. And to think I was gonna put in for that vacation. Maybe try and tan my body a little?” The way Pam said it was as though that was such a foreign idea . . . to relax and feed her body some sun.

“A wha—? Brown, you’re dreaming. Wake up, this is serious.”

“Okay, okay. I’m up.”

“Seattle was good for the Agency, Brown. Real good. But we’re on a roll. We don’t want to lose momentum now.”

“I guess not. So what’s up, Chief?”

“About an hour ago FHP pulled over an eighteen-wheeler . . .”

Pam was indeed wide awake now, with her mental motors crankin’. “Florida Highway Patrol,” she finally responded.

“That’s right. Bell Glade. And Brown?”

“Yes, I’m listening, Chief.”

“They think they stopped over five hundred kilos.”

“Five . . . hundred . . . kilos?” Pam’s staccato response came just as she sat up, her one leg folded in front of her while the other draped over the edge of the bed.

“That’s what I said. Found it buried in the front end of a load of corn.”

“Dogs?” Pam assumed.

“Well, there were dogs, but it was highway patrol officers who made the stop and search.”

“Don’t tell me—another illegal search.”

“It’s possible. It’s a long story. But the thing now is, they’ve got the driver—calls himself Big Slim. Aaanyway, he’s being held in their lil’ pokey down there. Lord only knows what kinda lawyer’s gonna show up or when . . .”

“You don’t have to say another word, Chief. I got the picture. I’m already half-dressed . . .” Pam was moving through her bedroom, a brewing storm, with no bra and red satin panties. She threw on a fresh wife-beater that she had laid out for her usual, but now postponed, morning run on the treadmill.

“Is the Gulf on the tarmac?” Pam was speaking of the Gulf Stream jet; the tarmac was a runway at Ronald Reagan Airport.

“It’s probably quicker to take a chopper from VA.” VA meant Quantico, Virginia, where the community of federal law enforcement agencies called the Pentagon home.

Pam eventually got a chance to exhale before she asked, “What time will they be here?” She was already anticipating her boss and his every move.

“Sometimes I’m scared to think with you around, Agent Brown. It’s as if you can read my mind.”

“Mmm-hmm . . .” she replied, wondering if he was just buttering her up; that second-guessing sensibility again.

“Ten minutes?”

“Sure,” said Pam, already knowing the inevitable. She could even picture the motorcade with two armored SUVs speeding along Pennsylvania Avenue. Silent, spinning lights, that blip of a police siren every now and then at the intersections. “Orders?”

“The usual, Brown. Squeeze him. See if we can’t get a lead on the source. This could be big.”

“Yeah-yeah, every operation could be big, Chief, as long as Sam tells on Harry, and Harry tells on Frank, and Frank tells on Espinoza . . . and so on and so on.”

“Well, you’re the best I’ve got out there in the field, Brown.”

Pam lip-synched the Chief’s words to herself, since she’d heard those very words so many times before. Then she cut in. “Heard it all before, Chief. Don’t you worry, I’ll be on the chopper and in Bell Glade before Mister Slim has a chance to scribble graffiti on the jailhouse wall.”

“That’s m’girl.”

When would he ever stop treating her like his daughter? Pam wondered as she pushed and pulled the toothbrush across her teeth, creating her very own visual scenario on the mirror before her. She could see beyond her sharp political facial features; that button nose, dimpled chin, high cheekbones, and otherwise captivating green eyes that folks swore would get her some heavy-duty elected position . . . past her proud, blond crown that (some people claimed) seemed to command a room full of attention. This wasn’t the time to ask her mirror the usual questions . . . that whole “mirror, mirror on the wall” bit, wondering why someone as beautiful as she wasn’t married off and burdened with a family by the age of thirty-six. If Pam was on her own time, right this moment, she might raise a middle finger at the mirror, cursing that goddamned biological clock.

Copyright © 2000 by Relentless Aaron. All rights reserved.