Powder Burn

by Carl Hiaasen

  When the elevator stopped on the fifteenth floor to load more passengers, the girl edged closer to the young lawyer.

  “I’ll bet it’s a scorcher out there, Mr. Redbirt,” she said.

  “Near ninety, I think, Virginia,” he replied. She was his secretary, and she typed well enough.

  On the ground floor the modish crowd from Redbirt’s office clustered for a moment to exchange Friday afternoon banalities.

  “Have a nice weekend.”

  “See you Monday, if I make it.”

  “Bring me some fish.”

  “I’ll have the Mitchell brief ready first thing Monday morning, Virginia.”

  “Fine, Mr. Redbirt, I’ll be waiting for it. Have a nice weekend.”

  “You, too.”

  The secretaries and the paralegals scattered for the parking lot, and the law partners strolled with more measured pace to their own cars, which waited in covered executive parking.

  Lane Redbirt lingered behind the rest. He stopped at the lobby newsstand to buy cigarettes and breath freshener. By the time he reached his Porsche it was 5:09 and the parking lot was nearly deserted.

  The brown Toyota pulled up sharply alongside him. “Hurry, Lane, I’m so horny I can’t wait,” she called from the driver’s window.

  “Ginny. I…”

  “Do you know what I’d like to do tonight for a change?” She told him what.

  Redbirt’s groin tingled. “Give me one hour. I have to make a stop.”

  “An hour is too long, the way I feel right now.”

  “Fifty minutes,” he lied.

  “I’ll start without you,” she challenged.

  “Wait for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Redbirt went back into the lobby, easily evading the gaze of the wizened security guard. He summoned the elevator and pushed 18. Virginia was as unimportant to him now as his wife.

  “Morgan Jones” had called just after lunch. And as usual, he had caught Redbirt off guard.

  “I have thought about what you said the last time,” said the voice named Jones, “and you are right. There is too much disorder.”

  “It’s not disorder; it’s madness now,” Redbirt wailed. “Nobody understands what’s happening anymore; the whole thing’s crazy. You said it would get better. It’s worse. Deal me out. Whoever you are, deal me out.”

  “Just now? When your patience is about to be rewarded?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I will explain that when we meet.”

  “When we meet?”

  “Yes, my friend, I have concluded you were right about that, too. We will meet this afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “In your office, after everyone has left. I will come precisely at five-forty, and I will leave at three minutes to six. Wait in your office, and leave the front door unlocked. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  Lane Redbirt was impatient. He swiveled in his black leather chair to stare at the wall clock. It was 5:20. So he was being granted a seventeen-minute audience with the disembodied voice whose sporadic calls over the past two years had changed his whole life. Morgan Jones coming to announce peace in our time, was he? Well, Lane Redbirt would be ready for him. No more messenger boy-distributor. No more dealing by dead of night with spics who smelled of garlic. No more pussying around. No, sir, Your Honor. Whether Morgan Jones realized it or not, he was about to surrender his trump card: his identity. If he wanted Lane Redbirt selling his shit, from now on it would be on Redbirt’s terms.

  At 5:22 Redbirt could contain himself no longer. He had popped an upper about three o’clock. It was wearing off. From the bowels of a filing cabinet he withdrew a small plastic bag. One line, Redbirt thought. Just one line now to fire all the cylinders for the good Mr. Jones. Later, with hungry Virginia, he would really quench the thirst.

  “Anybody home? Hello. Anybody home?”

  The voice came from the reception area, shattering Redbirt’s musings. He looked again at the clock: 5:23. It could not be Jones. If a man announces he is coming for seventeen minutes, he comes on time. Redbirt hurried from his office.

  “Thank God somebody’s here. I’ve been wandering all over the building, looking for a lawyer who doesn’t run home at five o’clock.”

  The man wore an impeccable seersucker suit and carried a smart attaché case of brown leather. Redbirt knew him instantly.

  “Oh, Mr. Bermúdez. Hello, I’m Lane Redbirt.”

  “I’m delighted to meet you, Mr. Redbirt, and I apologize for bursting in on you, but I need a legal opinion, and I need it urgently.”

  “I was just leaving, Mr. Bermúdez, I’m sorry. If it can’t wait until Monday…”

  “No, it can’t wait. That’s the point. I have people coming to my office upstairs in a few minutes to sign a contract, and there is one phrase I cannot understand. Our attorney has taken it into his head to go golfing. It is a game he will remember for a long time, I promise you.”

  “I’m sorry, I have to—”

  “Please, it will only take a minute. Look, three hundred dollars for three minutes’ work. I’ll pay cash.”

  Redbirt looked at his watch. It was 5:24.

  “It will have to be literally three minutes, I’m afraid. Come in, please.” It was a gamble, but a good gamble, Redbirt decided. The executive offices of José Bermúdez’s banking empire occupied the whole twentieth floor. Some people thought the man would be Miami’s next mayor. Lane Redbirt suddenly decided that he himself would make a fine city attorney.

  Bermúdez sat in the chair before Redbirt’s desk and laid the attaché case on his lap.

  “I can’t tell you how I appreciate this, Mr. Redbirt,” said Bermúdez, extracting a sheaf of papers. “Do you do much corporate work?”

  “A fair amount,” Redbirt lied.

  “Then this should be child’s play for you. Here, Clause Thirty-three. Does it mean we are protected in all cases?”

  The clock said 5:26.

  Plenty of time. Redbirt focused on the fine print of what seemed to be a fairly standard loan agreement. Bermúdez sat expectantly before him, hands crossed demurely athwart the attaché case.

  “Mr. Bermúdez,” Redbirt said, “this couldn’t be simpler. Your protection is as ironclad as the law can make it.”

  “I know.”

  “If you know, then what is the question?”

  “I have no question.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “I said I would come at five-forty. I came early.”

  “You?”

  José Bermúdez smiled. “It is quite simple, really. I see a bright young lawyer in the elevator every now and then. I make some discreet inquiries, and I discover that he is an ambitious man who is already strapped for cash. So ‘Morgan Jones’ calls and offers a private little cocaine deal that is too good to refuse. That is the beginning. Simple. I could have worked it with any one of a hundred young and ambitious professionals in this city.”

  Redbirt’s astonishment gave way to admiration. Bermúdez, of all people. What a scream! This would be easier than he thought.

  “You’re the last person I would have guessed…”

  “That is how I want it,” the banker said, nodding in satisfaction. “Now listen. I have solved all the problems. In another few weeks the merchandise will begin flowing at a standard quality and a fixed price. Only those who are authorized will deal.”

  “Jesus, you’ve cornered the market!”

  “Enough of it to make life comfortable.”

  “My God, how?” The stakes would be tremendous. Lane Redbirt struggled to find a diplomatic way of asking how much was in it for him. No, he thought, I won’t ask. I’ll demand. He wondered in silent congratulation whether Bermúdez understood how fatally he had exposed himself now. He was at Redbirt’s mercy.

  “I like your style, Lane,” Bermúdez said unexpectedly. “I want you as a full partner.”

  Redbirt was speechle
ss.

  “The market will be orderly, and we will not be greedy. I believe it should be worth about three million a year. Each.”

  Redbirt could only nod.

  “From now on we work together. Let me see what records you have kept, and I will assimilate them into the overall plan. We will study it together.”

  “They are hidden.”

  “Of course, they are hidden. Get them.”

  Numbly Redbirt stumbled to a filing cabinet and extracted a file marked DeFalco v. DeFalco.

  “There’s nothing deader than an old divorce case,” Redbirt joked weakly. “Everything’s in there under ‘List of Witnesses.’ Names, dates, amounts, the whole thing.”

  Redbirt slumped back into his chair as Bermúdez rifled the file. God, he needed another snort.

  “Excellent. I am glad to see my instincts about you were well founded. I will study these over the weekend. Let us meet again Monday. Would the same time be convenient for you?”

  “Uh, sure, Mr. Bermúdez.”

  “José.”

  Bermúdez slipped the DeFalco file and the loan agreement into his briefcase. “Now I must go. There’s only one more thing: Now that you know who I am, you must never, under any circumstances, contact me directly. Just wait for ‘Morgan Jones’ to call. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly. I will never call you, Mr. Bermu—José.”

  “I know you won’t, Lane.”

  It was over in a second. Bermúdez slipped a silenced Beretta from the attaché case and fired once. The bullet took Redbirt between the eyes.

  Bermúdez replaced the gun, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his lapel and rose to leave. He was halfway to the door before he realized his mistake.

  Wiping his hand in a clean white handkerchief, he rummaged swiftly through Redbirt’s desk. The tape recorder was still spinning. Bermúdez flushed. He took both spools and glowered with scorn at Redbirt. Then he shot the corpse twice more, once for each ball.

  “Gringo de mierda,” said José Bermúdez, mayor-to-be.

  The wall clock said 5:40.

  LATER THAT NIGHT Bermúdez let himself into the darkened cigar factory in el barrio. Once more he had two calls to make.

  The man Chris Meadows knew as the Peasant answered on the first ring.

  “We are ready now. You may begin,” said Bermúdez.

  “Muy bien.”

  “I will be sending you some more names.”

  “It is no problem.”

  “You have two weeks. Work quickly and well, hermano.”

  “In Mono’s memory,” promised the Peasant.

  The old man in Bogotá was slower to the phone, but no less obliging.

  “Things are moving nicely here,” said Bermúdez.

  “I am very pleased, Ignacio. Here as well.”

  “Will you be coming for dinner?”

  “Whenever you say.”

  “Two weeks from tonight.”

  “It will be my pleasure. But not spicy food, please. My stomach rebels.”

  Chapter 17

  WHEN HARRY APPEL called Monday morning to say he had an interesting new homicide victim, Captain Octavio Nelson wanted to retch. It was no way to start a week.

  “This one’s special, for a drug murder. White, young, affluent,” Appel reported. “Shot late Friday, by the looks of it. You’d better come see for yourself.”

  “Shit.” Nelson sighed. The architect, had to be. And it was Nelson’s fault, deserting the poor bastard like that. What seat-of-the-pants insanity, sending him into Hidalgo’s to eyeball those pukes! Jesus, what if Pincus ever found out about that little brainstorm?

  Nelson was morose by the time he got to the medical examiner’s office. Appel led him directly to the morgue, where a bare pale corpse gleamed on an autopsy table.

  “I’ll be damned,” Nelson said.

  “You were expecting somebody else?” Appel said.

  “Yeah. Who is this asshole?”

  Appel lifted a clipboard and read aloud: “Dale Lane Redbirt, attorney at law. Age: thirty-four. He lives at—”

  Nelson waved an arm. “Who? Who? I said.”

  Appel shrugged. “You’re the detective.”

  “Harry! Tell me what you know.”

  “It’s a small firm, even smaller now, Smith, Turner, Redbirt and Feldman. They do mostly criminal defense work. Redbirt here specialized in hookers and two-bit possession cases. In either event he often accepted fees in services rendered, if you know what I mean. His law partners say he was doing OK, no F. Lee Bailey, but pulling in maybe thirty thou a year. Has a wife, two kids and a secretary who screws anything that walks, him mostly.”

  “Sounds like the all-American dream.”

  “Right,” Appel said. “Except for the new Porsche and a refinished thirty-eight-foot Bertram. And how about a condo in Vail? And, oh, yeah, there’s this.” Carefully Appel opened a small brown envelope and turned it upside down in his hand. A heavy gold bracelet slid into his palm like a small glittering viper.

  “Solid gold, of course. Cost about five grand,” Nelson mused. “You think he was freelancing, right?”

  “Nelson, that is only an opinion.” Appel grinned. “I’m just a coroner.”

  Nelson studied the body. He counted three wounds, one in the face, two in the scrotum.

  “Not nice,” Nelson said. “No more screwing around for you.”

  “He got shot in his office over near the river. The weapon was a Beretta, not the usual Cuban doper’s choice. A Colombian preference.”

  Nelson asked, “And his wife?”

  “Truly bereaved.”

  “His partners?”

  “In shock.”

  “His friends?”

  “Catatonic. Total disbelief.”

  “Any drugs in the blood?”

  “Some coke, a touch of speed,” Appel said. “Nothing lethal.”

  Nelson and Appel walked out of the dank morgue. “Can I have some coffee?” the detective asked. “It’s been a lousy morning.”

  “Captain?” It was a thin red-haired secretary in one of the office cubicles. “You partner phoned. He wants you to call him…some report you forgot to sign.”

  Nelson groaned. “See what I mean?”

  He and Appel drank in silence for several minutes. Appel scribbled some notes on an autopsy report, stopping only to hit the intercom button and fire directions to scattered employees.

  “It was not robbery,” he said finally.

  “The gold chain?”

  Appel nodded. “They would have snatched the bracelet.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They didn’t touch the office, and they didn’t take the cash.”

  “How much cash?”

  “Two grand, and change.”

  “Dopers for sure,” Nelson concluded.

  “Yup,” said Harry Appel.

  TWO HOURS LATER Nelson slouched in a phone booth in Coral Gables, sweating like a pig. He was almost out of quarters.

  “¿Oye, gusano, qúe tu sabes?”

  “Hey, Capitán, cómo estás, chico?”

  The punk’s Spanish was atrocious. Nelson switched to English.

  “Know a lawyer named Redbirt?”

  “Used to. I heard he bought it over the weekend.”

  “Word gets around, don’t it? ¿Qué pasa?”

  “I’m broke, Captain, that’s what’s happening. Help me, and maybe I can help you.”

  “Fifty is all I got,” Nelson said.

  “Tu madre!” the worm sneered.

  “A hundred. No tengo más.”

  “Bueno.” The worm blew his nose. Nelson held the receiver away from his ear. He flicked the soggy stump of his cigar into the traffic of LeJeune Road.

  “Your lawyer friend is the first of many,” said the gusano. “The snow is going to melt for a while.”

  “Says who?”

  “Los Cubanos.”

  “Oh yeah? And our friends from Bogotá and Cartagena? They all retired all
of a sudden?”

  “Believe it or not, it’s all been settled. No more fighting in the family. Hay paz.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Nelson grunted.

  “It’s what I hear, is all,” the worm whined. “Things are going to be very tight for a while, is what I hear. Where do I get my money?”

  “What about Redbirt?”

  “He had good connections, dealt a lot of coke. He was working his way up. A lot of the downtown crowd bought from him because he was, you know…”

  “Gringo.”

  “Sí, gringo.”

  “Your money will be in the usual place,” Nelson said coldly.

  “¿Cuando?”

  “Tonight; six o’clock. You got anything else for me?”

  “Nada.”

  “Still pulling those b-and-e’s around the river?”

  “Not me, chico.”

  Nelson hung up and fished in his pockets for more change. All he came up with was three pennies; Wilbur Pincus would damn well have to wait.

  WILBUR PINCUS thought about what he had: He had caught his partner in two lies.

  Captain Nelson had lied about the Mercedes-Benz to cover up for his brother, a brother who obviously was into cocaine. At precisely what level of enterprise, Pincus was not sure, but it was lucrative, if judged by the price of Bobby Nelson’s house.

  Pincus was deeply troubled. Octavio Nelson surely knew about his brother. But how much? For how long?

  The second lie was equally disturbing, maybe more so because it could never be explained away as family loyalty.

  The missing architect was nobody’s wayward brother.

  Pincus knew Meadows had been hiding out in the Buckingham Hotel when Nelson arrived. Witnesses had seen both men leave together, yet Nelson had told him that the architect had spooked off before he got there.

  It was a total lie, and it angered the young detective.

  Now Meadows was missing, and Pincus couldn’t shake the gut feeling that he was gone for good, that hunks and snippets of his lean flesh would be feeding the pinfish in Biscayne Bay for a long time.