On Thin Ice Read Free Page A

dates, but if you need ’em they’re in here.” He thumped his forefinger against the folder Mick still held.
    Mick tore his eyes away from the woman’s face in the photograph and looked up at McMahon. “What’s any of this got to do with me?”
    â€œWell, a funny thing began to happen around the ole ice rink, Mick. Everywhere Miller and Morrison competed, high-grade heroin began showin’ up on the streets. Scag so pure it had junkies dropping like flies.” McMahon rubbed his palm over his balding scalp and frowned. “We got Morrison in a sting, nailed him dead to rights for distributing. I’m pretty damn sure he was recruited by Quintero but we couldn’t get the kid to flip, not even when faced with murder two. Actually, because he didn’t show up in NADDIS—hell, didn’t have any priors at all—in the end he got off fairly lightly: seven-to-ten in minimum security. The girl was never implicated and went her merry way without him. She’s still skating. She won the silver at the Winter Olympics, then went professional. That shoulda been the end of the story.”
    â€œBut?”
    â€œBut there were kilos of heroin never accounted for, Vinicor, and now the shit’s turnin’ up again. Gotta be the same stuff—it’s knockin’ off junkies like ducks in a shooting gallery. We’ve had reports from San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Fresno. You name it; if it’s a city of any size in California, we’ve heard from them.”
    â€œSo you want me to investigate Morrison.”
    â€œNah, Morrison’s due to be sprung soon, but at the moment he’s still in lockup.” McMahon thumped his finger against the woman in the snapshot. “I want you to nail Miller.”
    Mick felt a tiny pulse of excitement but sternly suppressed it. “If she checked out clean the first time around,” he said, deliberately playing devil’s advocate, “what makes you think she’s got anything to do with it now?”
    McMahon passed him a full-page advertisement from Variety for an upcoming engagement for Follies on Ice. He pointed out Sasha Miller’s photograph. Leaning closer, Mick looked it over, studying it carefully. He read her name in bold print beneath the full-body shot and beneath that, in finer print, US champion and Olympic silver medalist.
    â€œNow look at the itinerary,” McMahon said.
    Mick flipped to the next page and scanned the contents. “San Diego, LA, Bakersfield, Fresno, San Jose, San Francisco,” he murmured. He looked up at his supervisor. “We’ve got a trail of dead junkies matching the dates the ice show appeared in these cities, I take it.”
    McMahon pointed a finger at him and cocked his thumb. He pulled the trigger. “Got it in one.”
    â€œHow many kilos involved?” Mick inquired.
    For the first time McMahon looked uncomfortable. “Uh . . . seventeen.”
    â€œOh for . . .” Mick tossed the folder aside in disgust, watching as the advertisement floated to the desk in its wake. “Call the local Narcs,” he advised flatly. The DEA dealt in cases where seizure of heroin and cocaine was counted in tonnage. It didn’t say much for the American way of life that they’d come such a long way since the seventy kilos seized in the French Connection just twenty years ago.
    McMahon shook his head. “Can’t do that. The show stays in one town maybe three-four days before it moves on to the next one. In the bigger cities like LA and Frisco it maybe stays a week. It’s due into Sacramento tomorrow and when it leaves there it crosses state line into Oregon.”
    â€œLet the FBI have them then.”
    McMahon just looked at him and Mick rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. The FBI always attempted to dismantle an entire drug trafficking organization in a single law enforcement operation. When they had identified principal members