Wheeler twisted the heading select switch to 324, and the aircraft rolled gently right as it steadied up on course. Nothing out here, he thought, unlike the Yucatan Channel some forty minutes earlier. He had not been able to avoid flying right over a half-dozen lights below him. Not knowing what they were had bothered him, but they were most likely fishing boats, Cuban and Mexican. He knew it was too early for the motor and sailing yachts, most of which spent the winters in and around the Virgin Islands, and the Belize yacht traffic was another month away at least.
The moon illuminated the low scattered clouds, so typical above Caribbean waters. They cast splotchy shadows on the surface below. Wheeler knew the next hour would be boring, so to pass the time, he thought of his favorite subject… himself.
A youthful forty-seven years old, Wheeler owned, with three partners, the Women’s Cosmetic Center, the top plastic surgery clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. They offered everything from rhinoplasty to Botox… the whole gamut of services, many on an outpatient basis. The overwhelming majority of the procedures were boob jobs, with augmentation surgeries leading the way. For nearly two decades the Women’s Cosmetic Center had offered hope and delivered results, with the ladies (and their men) gladly paying top dollar for their services. It was a gold mine.
Just last month two of Wheeler’s clients had brought in their teenage daughters for consults. Cullen, his own teenage daughter, wanted him to perform an augmentation for her 16>th birthday — to a tasteful C-cup that would “allow her clothes to fit better,” an argument that was part of the tried and true cover story. He certainly wasn’t about to let his lecherous partners touch her. Cullen would go to Atlanta with her mother, Tammy, for the procedure, allowing time to recuperate before her birthday party next month.
Tammy. A former homecoming queen at Alabama, Tammy had never allowed anyone to augment her—not even her husband, despite how much he had wanted to add some strategic curves to her tall and leggy figure. She was all for her husband performing plastic surgery for other women, and Wheeler had done work on several of her girlfriends. He had even had an affair with one of them that Tammy probably knew about but didn’t press him on. No, all was perfect with Tammy: hair, makeup, body, clothes, house, kid, husband… in that order. Between the Garden Club, the Tri-Delt national vice-presidency and innumerable shopping trips to Atlanta and Nashville, Tammy had little time for her husband. That was all the excuse he needed.
Ten years ago he had taken up flying and now was the instrument-rated owner of a King Air twin. He used the plane for trips to South America to perform pro bono reconstructive surgery on cleft palates for Doctors without Borders, giving deformed kids a chance for a normal life. Yes, the guys at the Club admired him for it, giving back to underprivileged third-world kids and all that.
He accepted their kind words with aw-shucks modesty, never letting on for a minute about his other motive: holding heavenly bodies in Bogotá and Cartagena and watching what the owners of those bodies could do with them. The coke, the money, the nightlife, and the girls — always the girls. I’m an American surgeon, here to help children. He would say it with a shy smile, looking down at his drink. And the girls crumbled before his eyes; leaning in, grateful, fawning, buying it, cooing in English or Spanish. It didn’t matter. Within the hour, they would lead him out of the hotel lounge and to their rooms or apartments — rich European girls on holiday, local gold-diggers, sophisticated American businesswomen, Asian flight attendants on layover, ages ranging from 22 to 50. A citizen of the world like Doctor Leighton Wheeler believed in diversity.
The first year he flew to South America twice, and now he was on his fourth trip in the past 12 months. Surely Tammy suspected something, but his altruistic alibi provided cover for both of them. She took advantage of his absences with shopping outings with her girlfriends to Atlanta or New York. Both felt entitled.
