Powder Burn

by Carl Hiaasen

  “Nelson is shrewd and mean, and he will use anything he’s got on anybody he knows to get what he wants,” Arthur had pronounced.

  “But he is latino,” Terry had objected. “If he gives his word, Arthur, then somehow he will keep it.”

  “Only if it’s convenient.”

  Meadows had cocked half an ear to the debate around him on the deserted beach. He thought Arthur was right, but he had taken no side. Mono would be academic to the plan Meadows was devising. Nelson would see that. Even if he had lied to Arthur, events would persuade Nelson that the Mono killing was not worth pursuing.

  With the right enticement, Meadows could snare Nelson and use him as calculatingly as Nelson had used Meadows at the funeral parlor. Locked away in Terry’s apartment, Meadows had what Nelson wanted most: the lifelike sketches of a peasant, a man with a cauliflower ear and a double-faced bastard with a dazzling smile and a rose at his lapel. Or perhaps triple-faced. That flamboyant José L. Bermúdez and the faceless Jefe were the same man, Meadows knew without question. Was Bermúdez also “Ignacio” to some of his doper minions? Meadows thought back to McRae’s avuncular lecture. McRae had said the name Ignacio with the same reverence some reserved for God or the president. El Jefe-Bermúdez-Ignacio. The name was as irrelevant as Mono. Whatever he was called, Meadows would destroy him.

  The sketches were vital for that. He would scatter them like chum and watch Nelson rise in pursuit like a hungry swordfish. Meadows could afford to give away the identities that Nelson craved because he had more than that. Meadows knew that Bermúdez and the Colombian chieftains would meet in Miami to formalize their alliance. He had learned that from McRae. And from what Meadows had heard from Alonzo, he suspected the cocaine summit would be soon.

  Meadows couldn’t know for sure how soon until he found the missing arch. He would dedicate tomorrow to it. A two-hour search by telephone that morning had been fruitless. Meadows was sure Alonzo had said “Cumparsi’s.” He had said it was a restaurant, but Meadows had been unable to find it in the phone book or through Information.

  “Cumparsi.” Meadows rolled the name over his tongue. He must have heard it wrong. But it was close, surely. Still, there had been no listing under Cu, Ca, or Co. He had even checked the G’s and the Q’s.

  Tomorrow he would look in earnest. A bell captain at one of the big hotels might know. Or one of Clara Jackson’s colleagues at the Journal. If necessary, Meadows would drive block by block through Little Havana until he found it. After that it would only be a question of hammering the roof in place.

  Meadows pushed himself to his feet on the sunny beach and walked toward where Terry swam, a pouting white speck in the warm blue sea.

  Chapter 25

  MEADOWS HAD CHOSEN the shopping center for its anonymity. It lay like a huge, gap-toothed cash register at the juncture of two featureless highways south of the city, a palace of plastic and plasterboard. Two squat department stores anchored the monster to its asphalt peneplain. A broad mall, glass-roofed, a quarter of a mile long and lined by lesser shops, throbbed like a phallus between them. The mall had become middle-class suburbia’s replacement for the neighborhood: Bored housewives rendezvoused breathlessly with sallow lovers on its benches; heart-attack victims sought rejuvenation on measured strolls along its floral carpet. Long-legged teenagers whose fathers had stolen hubcaps dueled silently with pimply store detectives for stereo tapes. Meadows hated the place, but he would use it, just as he would use Nelson, Terry and himself to destroy José Bermúdez. Chris Meadows had known the grip of compulsion before, but before, it had always been professional, a virus assuaged by an all-night stand at the designing board. The fever that enveloped him now was deeper-seated, more consuming. It left him cold with anger and cunning, and he wondered if he would ever purge it.

  “I’m afraid I have a bit of stage fright,” Terry admitted. They had been walking arm in arm through the crowded mall, a scouting foray. Now Meadows stopped and looked at Terry. She wore a denim skirt, a crisp white blouse and fisherman’s sandals. She was ravishing.

  “What is there to be nervous about? He looks just like the sketch I drew for you—a good-looking Latino. In this crowd he’ll stand out like a gorilla. Besides”—Meadows grinned—“looking the way you do, he’ll probably head right for you and figure if you’re not the mysterious Señora Lara, then the hell with her.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Suppose he doesn’t want to talk to you?”

  “He’ll want to, don’t worry.”

  “Maybe,” Terry replied uncertainly, “but I feel just like I did before the curtain went up on the big play when I was in school.”

  “And when it did, I bet you were fine. What role did you play?”

  “Pizarro.”

  “Pizarro the conquistador?”

  “It was an all-girls school, boludo.”

  Perhaps as a slave to his conscience for all the trash he sold up front, the owner of the Book Baron in the Southland Mall had built a quiet room at the back of his shop reserved for Floridiana. Meadows had browsed there before, always alone. And he was alone again when he heard Terry approaching.

  “…and so, of course, everybody knows God must be Brazilian. Who else repairs at night all the mistakes we make by day?”

  Octavio Nelson laughed. But when he stepped into the tiny room, his grin was only a formality.

  “Hola, amigo,” Nelson said to Meadows, hand outstretched, “how’s the floor covering holding out?”

  It was a bad moment for Meadows. Floor covering? What was he talking about? Meadows had summoned Nelson to talk about summary justice, not rugs. Then it came to him. A young Latina, lovely and importuning. A dead aunt and a rosary. Nelson was trying to throw him off-balance, the bastard.

  “So that’s your idea of surveillance, a lady in black,” Meadows said. “She wasn’t even around when I needed her.”

  “Neither was I, and I’m sorry,” Nelson said. “One of my men got shot, and I had to go. There was no time to get you.”

  “Sure. Who got shot, Pincus?”

  “No, unfortunately,” Nelson muttered. “Garcia. He works undercover. He was playing Wyatt Earp for some waitress at a doughnut shop, and he shot himself.” Nelson looked at Meadows. “I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

  Meadows stared back at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Shit,” he said finally. “I think I do. It sounds too stupid to be a lie.”

  He glared at Nelson. “You know I could have been killed in that place. How would that have looked in your file, getting a witness murdered?”

  Nelson gave him a look. “I said I was sorry.”

  “Sorry! You go chasing off to nursemaid some idiot while I’m waiting for a knife in my ribs?”

  Nelson shook his head. “These things happen.” He pretended to scan the titles on the shelves. “So how does it feel to swim with the sharks, Meadows?”

  Meadows calmed down. “So far so good. I swim fast.”

  “You damn well better. Now what it is you have to tell me?”

  “First,” Meadows said, “tell me the status of the Mono case.”

  Nelson laughed, his cigar tilting. “Coño. Mono’s ancient history. Nobody cares who killed that asshole. Didn’t your friend Prim pass along the message?”

  “What about Pincus? Pincus cares.”

  “Forget Pincus.”

  “You guys have been busy, I bet. Lots of killings, rip-offs. The cocaine is dried up,” Meadows said casually. “Hardly a snort left in town.”

  Nelson said, “So you’ve done your homework.”

  Terry pawed distractingly at a book about orchids. She must have been biting her tongue to avoid asking about the floor covering remark and the unexplained “she.” Meadows vowed to brain her if she interrupted now.

  “Are Mono’s two pals still hunting for me?”

  “No way. I mean, if they bumped into you on the street and recognized you, they’d kill you on general principles. But they aren’t looking for you.” Nel
son snorted. “They’re busy as hell, raking in the overtime. And do you know something else? They’re better than Mono ever was. Gun, knife, garrote, you name it. Slick as sandía.”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And the big man. What was it you called him? El Jefe?”

  Nelson shook his head.

  “Jesus, it’s not your year, is it?” Meadows scoffed.

  “Chris,” Terry blurted, “that’s not fair.”

  It was Nelson who responded. “No se preocupe, señorita. He’s right; there have been better times.” Nelson turned to Meadows. “You finished gloating yet?”

  “Tell me about Ignacio,” the architect said.

  Nelson whistled. “Now I am impressed. That’s the street name for el Jefe. Where it comes from, I don’t know.”

  “Does anybody know who he is?”

  “Nobody I’ve busted. Believe me, I’ve tried everything to get the name. I’ve had some very serious discussions about it with some of these little pukes.”

  “I almost believe it,” Meadows said grimly.

  He almost gave it away then. He wanted to shout the name. He wanted to throw it like a saucer of spoiled milk into the face of the bitter cop who had so frightened and humiliated him.

  Meadows fought back the urge. “I do have some things to tell you. That’s why I had Terry call. I think the less you have to do with me officially, the better.”

  Nelson’s eyebrows rose quizzically.

  “I know who the new torpedoes are, Nelson,” Meadows continued. “And I think I know who your mysterious Ignacio is.”

  Nelson jammed his hands in his pockets and said nothing. He would save the sarcasm for after the architect’s little presentation.

  “They were there at the funeral parlor, just like you said,” Meadows went on. “I saw them all.”

  Suddenly Nelson was taut. “Why didn’t you tell me? Por Dios!”

  Meadows smiled. “You don’t wait for me, I don’t wait for you.”

  Nelson’s dark face grew even darker, and fists balling, he stepped forward as Meadows faded back. Terry gasped. Simultaneously a voice spoke up: “Is this where I can find River of Grass by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas?”

  She was the color of damp tobacco, elf-sized, with frizzy gray hair and a believer’s mouth. Closer to seventy than anything else. Meadows didn’t look, but he would have bet she was wearing sneakers.

  “No,” Nelson snapped.

  “Do you work here, young man?” She turned to Meadows.

  “No.”

  “Oh, dear! Well, I must have that book for Tuesday’s ladies discussion group, and this is where Esther said she bought hers.”

  “Not here,” said Nelson.

  “Try outside,” said Meadows.

  “Well, this is the Floridiana section, isn’t it?”

  Terry was magnificent.

  “You are in the right section, madam, but I am afraid the book is out of stock. We should have it next week. I’ll be glad to save you a copy.”

  “Oh, that’s too late,” she said with a perplexed glance at Meadows and Nelson. She left as silently as she had come, and some of the sudden tension whooshed out behind her.

  “What is this all about, amigo?”

  “Part of it is about that long, boozy talk we had one night on my porch. It seems a long time ago.”

  “I remember.”

  “You said that you would kill el Jefe if you ever caught him, and I told you that would be wrong—but now I understand how you could feel that way. The law’s too good for people like him, or too weak but…it’s still all we’ve got, isn’t it? I mean, without it, we’d be no different from them, would we?”

  Nelson waited silently. Terry’s eyes went from one man to the other.

  “Well,” Meadows said, “I’m going to give you this Ignacio, so you can put a real name to his face. But I’m going to do it my way. ¿Comprende?”

  “You are going to give me Ignacio?” A growl.

  “That’s right. With evidence. There will be a Colombian, too, maybe several.”

  “Gee, thanks. You want to borrow my badge?”

  “I don’t foresee any violence, but I will need some firepower at the right moment. I’m assuming you can lay it on quickly.”

  Nelson’s cigar pitched onto the green linoleum floor.

  “You’re out of your goddamned mind,” he said. “I don’t believe this. Shit, you didn’t know cocaine from coconuts the first time I saw you in the hospital. And the last time, outside the funeral home, you were scared enough to wet your fancy pants. And now you’re telling me you’re going to deliver a scumbag I have been chasing for nearly two years. You’re acting like you got shot in the head, not the leg.”

  Again Terry intervened. “What he says is true, Captain. De veras.”

  Nelson shifted his gaze to the girl. Could she be involved somehow? Where was Meadows’s pipeline? He clawed at the left breast pocket of his guayabera for a fresh cigar.

  “Look,” he said more gently. “I know what you’ve been through, and I appreciate your wanting to help. But these people…they’ll chew you up like cornflakes, Meadows. If you know who they are, tell me and I’ll get them. You get out of town.”

  Meadows sighed impatiently. “No way,” he said.

  “Look, we’ll do it nice and legal. I’ll read them their rights in Spanish and English both, OK? Good old textbook justice.”

  “Did I say that’s what I wanted?”

  Nelson grumbled in exasperation. He ran his hand through rough black hair. He sucked glumly on the cigar.

  “Nothing happens for a week, that’s the deal,” Meadows said sternly. “Your word of honor.”

  “Impossible. The pressure we’re getting from the mayor’s office is incredible. Murders are very bad for tourism, Meadows. You give me the names and I’ve got to move.”

  “No names. Sketches. You can’t go out and arrest a soul with just a drawing for evidence, can you?”

  Nelson bit down hard on the end of the cigar. He wished there was a place to spit in the bookstore.

  “A week,” Meadows continued, “and you’ll have all that you need. The sketches will be delivered soon. I didn’t bring them here because I didn’t know how things would go.”

  “You’re crazy. Both of you.”

  “Wait. You’ll see. And when it’s over, we’ll all go out and celebrate. We’ll go to Cumparsi’s.”

  “You keep surprising me, Meadows. Not many Anglos know about that place. It’s a deal. Help me put this Ignacio away, and we’ll go to La Cumparsita. My treat.”

  “Fair enough,” Meadows smiled. Ssssnap. He felt the way Terry might after an all-night flight with the runway in view. The instruments were all in green. The gear was down and locked. All that remained was to bring it in.

  “Can you tell me any more about what you’re planning?” Nelson implored. “It would help me get set up.”

  “In a few days.”

  “Where do I find you in the meantime?”

  “You don’t. Stay away from me altogether. That is, if your career means anything to you at all. When the prosecutors ask afterward, you’ll want to be able to say you didn’t know anything about it until it happened. When I’m ready, Señora Lara will call.”

  “I sure hope you know what you’re doing,” Nelson said in a troubled voice.

  “Oh, I do.”

  “Well, be careful with the pistol,” Nelson said. He watched the words take the wind out of Christopher Meadows.

  “What pistol?” Meadows asked hoarsely.

  “The thirty-eight,” Nelson replied. “Be real careful. I can tell you don’t like guns.”

  Meadows swallowed hard. Terry was staring at him. “Here’s some bedtime reading,” he said abruptly, handing the cop a gaily wrapped package.

  NELSON FELT DAZED. His head throbbed. He had gone to the shopping center without expectation. Señora Lara, he had decided, would be a crank or an angr
y wife who had read someplace that cops made good lays. Well, she had been spectacular. And the elliptical architect had been simply bewildering: castles in the air. Had Meadows flipped out? It would be tempting to believe that, but he hadn’t seemed crazy—just single-minded and as idealistic as ever.

  With a sigh Nelson wrestled open the glove compartment of the police Plymouth and dragged out the aspirin. Then he turned on the dome light and opened the package Meadows had given him.

  The book was called Shark Fishing in Florida Waters. Nelson was about to toss it into the back seat when he felt the folded paper inside the cover.

  There were three sheets: a peasant, a boxer with a bad ear and a man whose well-known grace and power seemed to leap off the page. When he fanned out the three sketches on the steering wheel before him, Octavio Nelson realized his hands were shaking.

  LATER, AS THEY LAY in bed, Terry nibbled at Meadows’s right ear. “I think you are brilliant, querido. But now that he has the sketches, do you really believe Nelson will wait for the week he promised you?”

  “No, of course not. He might get Cauliflower Ear and the Peasant, and if he does, so much the better. But he won’t get Bermúdez in a week—the man’s wound his cocoon of legitimacy too tightly around him.”

  Terry was silent for a time.

  “Chris, that pistol Nelson talked about,” she said at last. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he know about it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I think Nelson must have come here one day while you were flying and I was in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “If he knows about this apartment, then he probably also knows we are here right now.”

  “Yeah, but he won’t bother us now. He has too much else on his plate. He’ll wait to see how things develop.”

  Terry shivered.

  “He scares me, Chris.”

  “He doesn’t miss a thing. But for now at least, he’s no threat.”

  “And your insistence on letting justice have its way with Bermúdez? Do you think Nelson believed it?”