Powder Burn (26 page)

“Hey, Manny!” Meadows called. “Look what Moe found!”

The gun went off. Meadows wheeled and backed away simultaneously. He saw the big orange spark when Moe fired again and smelled the rich wave of powder. Manny’s urgent footsteps were not far behind.

“What are you doing?” he screeched breathlessly at his partner.

Moe shrugged. “I think I killed it by accident.” He lowered the pistol with his right hand and raised the flashlight with his left. The opossum lay in a heap, tongue out, mouth foamy in death.

“You asshole,” Manny hissed.

“Jeez, Manny, nobody can hear a thing way out here.”

“If I see that gun again, one of us is leaving here alone tonight.”

Moe was about to reply when he cocked his head and motioned with his gun hand. Manny heard the plane at the same moment. They sprinted toward the van. Meadows followed, still shaky, a few yards behind.

Manny vaulted into the driver’s seat and flicked on the headlights. The sound of the aircraft drew nearer, but Meadows could see nothing overhead. The plane seemed to be circling.

“Two thousand feet,” Moe whispered. He still gripped the pistol in one hand.

“There!” Manny said, pointing north. Meadows spotted the airplane’s silhouette. All its lights were off.

“He sees us,” Moe said assuringly.

“Where is he going to land?” Meadows asked.

“He’s not.”

Manny killed the headlights. The airplane wheeled lower and lower, dipping like a gull. Meadows guessed it to be a small Beechcraft or a twin-engine Cessna.

“Don’t take your eyes off it,” Manny commanded. Meadows followed the aircraft more by sound than by sight. He and Moe stood still by the van. Soon the plane was so low that the frogs and insects became silent. Meadows could see that the aircraft bore dark blue or green stripes and could barely discern the letter
N
on the tail.

“Banzai!” exclaimed Manny, pointing triumphantly as a bundle tumbled from a small door on the plane. Then came another and, very quickly, one more. Suddenly the pitch of the engine rose, and the airplane climbed rapidly, heading south.

“Moe, did you see where they landed?”

“Think so.”

Manny took Meadows by the arm. “Chris, you come with me. Moe knows what to do now. I’ll whistle if we need any help. And put that fucking piece away.”

“Okay,” Moe said. He slipped the gun back in his pants.

Manny crashed headlong through the sawgrass. Meadows followed tentatively, one eye on the ground and one eye on the bobbing white speck of Manny’s flashlight. “Hurry! Move it,” Manny yelled back at him.

They reached a small clearing. Meadows stood in cola-colored water over his ankles. His hands bled from stinging, invisible gashes; the sawgrass was murder. Manny handed him another flashlight.

“Point this at the ground and nowhere else. If you hear
anything
besides me, cut it off,” he said. “We’re looking for three bales. As soon as you find one, haul it back to the truck as fast as you can. If you hear Moe hit the horn, drop whatever you’ve got and run like hell.”

Meadows was grateful for the darkness; Manny could not see the fear twisting his face. The sweat clinging to his chest and back suddenly felt cold.

They sloshed through the marsh for fifteen minutes. Meadows took each soggy step as if on fragile ice; he was sure that he would step on a water moccasin or kick a sleeping alligator. He stayed as close to Manny as he could, without actually following. Once he felt something brush lightly against his left leg and yelped. Whatever it was swam unseen in the water; the flashlight revealed nothing. Meadows thrashed furiously to scare it away.

“Over here,” he heard Manny say.

Two bales lay within ten yards of each other. Manny hoisted one by its twine binding and handed it to Meadows. It weighed more than fifty pounds.

“How much is this worth?” he asked Manny.

“Not much,” Manny grunted. “Maybe five, maybe ten grand. Just depends on where and on who.”

Meadows was puzzled. “Then how can your boss afford to pay me five thousand dollars?”

“Because he’s not interested in the grass.” Manny stepped gingerly over a fallen cypress fence post. “We’re carrying about a half million dollars’ worth of cocaine. You can’t see it because it’s stashed in cans in the middle of these bales, where the cops would never think to look.”

Meadows quickened his pace.

“If we get busted,” Manny continued, “we get what? Maybe eighteen months for possession. Possession of what? Grass. The bales go right into the county incinerator, and no one gets burned for any heavy time. My boss is a smart man.”

“Hold up a minute,” Meadows said. “Let me catch my breath.” In front of him, Manny stopped and set the bale down. The only sound was Meadows’s breathing.

“I thought you said there was no cocaine around,” he said finally.

“No, I said it was scarce. And I said you probably couldn’t buy as much as you wanted.”

“I want to buy some of this,” Meadows blurted.

Manny didn’t answer immediately. Meadows thought he could see him smiling. “This is not for sale.”

“Why not?” Meadows demanded. His heart raced. He was so damn close.

“Because someone is waiting for it. It’s been bought and paid for, you asshole. Don’t tell me it works any different in Atlanta. This isn’t a fucking flea market, Carson.”

“I know, but—”

“You know what happens if a shipment turns up short,” Manny said, lifting the bale again.

As they trudged toward the road, Meadows carefully appraised his options. It didn’t take long. Running off with any of the cocaine would be fatally stupid; he would be shot as surely and casually as the opossum. Even if he got away, he had no car and no boat and, most important, no place to put the dope.

A second option was disarming his two partners and stealing both the shipment and the van. That would be brilliant, he thought grimly. What’s a couple of more killers chasing you when you’ve already got some lunatic Cubans on your trail?

The third option was to shut up, comply with Manny’s orders and hope for a there’s-more-where-that-came-from handshake when it was over. That, Meadows concluded, was the wisest course.

“We’ll put these in the van; then I’ll go back and find the other one,” Manny said.

Then he stopped in his tracks. Twenty yards away the van’s horn sounded twice. Then they heard Moe crash into the swamp.

“Shit,” Manny croaked. He dropped the bale, spun and raced back into the marsh, lifting his legs high to clear the water and grass. Meadows imitated in near panic. They stumbled for fifty yards before Manny stopped and dropped to one knee, wheezing like an old man. Meadows crouched beside him, and he saw the nine-millimeter automatic in Manny’s right hand.

“¡Cristo!”
Manny muttered. His voice was tense, his eyes moist and fierce. Meadows was close enough now to see the fear.

The Everglades were silent.

The architect’s heart jackhammered against his ribs. He cursed himself for leaving Terry’s pistol in his room.

Manny raised himself to a semicrouch and peered through the night toward the gravel road. He fanned the mosquitoes out of his eyes.

Meadows heard the sound of an automobile, the rocks crunching under rubber as it slowly approached. Manny ducked. The car stopped, and its engine cut off. A door slammed, then another.

Meadows heard several voices at once. He looked over at Manny apprehensively. The stocky young smuggler raised the handgun, tapped it against his cheek and smiled a rictus grin.

FOR HOURS THEY
huddled together silently until Manny fell asleep in a fetal curl on a bed of matted sawgrass. Meadows crouched, knees in the warm muck, afraid to move. He strained to listen, but there were no sounds from the dirt road where the strange cars had stopped.

Hunters, Meadows prayed. But what could they be after out here? Rabbits, opossums, raccoons. Not much else. And hunters would be making noise; they would be shooting at
something
—rats, beer cans, maybe even Moe.

No, it has to be cops, Meadows decided, waiting for us to come out. He felt like pummeling Manny in his sleep.

Another airplane flew over, this one with its full complement of lights winking green and red as it descended toward Miami International. Meadows thought of Terry; she was due back in a week, and he couldn’t wait to tell her everything.

If only he could get out of the Glades.

At dawn the sound of a car’s ignition roused Meadows from a cramped and miserable nap. His pants were soaked with urine-warm marsh water. His arms itched feverishly; his flesh was a topographical disaster, welts everywhere.

Manny was awake, too. He lay still, his head on one arm, listening as the car drove off. “OK, Chris, let’s move.” His voice was raw. The steel-blue handgun was out again.

They crept toward the dirt road, pausing every five or six steps to listen. Suddenly Manny rose to his full height and leveled the gun toward a tall thicket.

“Don’t move!” he ordered in a low voice that cut the morning stillness.

“Shit, Manny, put it away.” It was Moe. He was a wreck; the insects had made a banquet out of his pale skin. His face was splotched with scarlet, a razor cut arced over one eye and his shirt was shredded at one sleeve.

Manny helped Moe to his feet, and they trudged toward the van with deliberate haste, Meadows trailing warily. There were no other cars or trucks on the dirt road, and soon the van was heading east on Tamiami Trail, back to the city. The sunrise spilled luminous pink over the Everglades, and flocks of cattle egrets rose out of the heavy grass.

“What in the hell happened?” Manny said finally.

“You guys saw the car, didn’t you? I thought it was cops.”

“Who were they?” Meadows asked.

“All I know is what I heard,” Moe said. “As soon as I saw the headlights, I dove into the grass and just laid there. I didn’t move a fucking muscle.”

“We heard voices,” Manny said.

“Yeah, yeah. Two guys and a chick. I think they were balling her all night.”

Manny pounded his fists on the steering wheel. “And for that we spent six hours in the goddamn water? Jesus!” he mumbled furiously in Spanish.

Moe scratched a welt on his upper lip. “Look, man, I didn’t know if they had guns or what. What was I supposed to do, ask ’em to wait a few minutes while we loaded some dope in the truck? Shit, they could’ve ripped us off, or killed us, or took the license tag and turned us in…”

Moe got a warm beer from the cooler and popped it open. “We could go back and look for the stuff,” he suggested, “before it gets too light.”

“No way,” Manny said. “All it takes is one pilot flying a little too low, and we’re had.”

“Will Alonzo be pissed!” Moe was getting depressed.

Manny slipped on a pair of black wraparound sunglasses that reminded Meadows of the Tonton Macoutes in Port-au-Prince. “I’ll be talking to Alonzo tonight,” he said, “at Rennie’s party. Chris, you like parties?”

Meadows shrugged. A few moments ago he had suppressed near jubilation at surviving the night and retreating safely. Now he was daunted by a terrible new fear. He could imagine this Alonzo, whoever he was, fingering him as a conspirator. What if he didn’t believe Manny’s story? What if he suspected that the three of them had stashed the dope?
His
dope. Meadows realized he needed Manny’s cunning now more than ever.

“You want to come tonight?”

“Sure,” Meadows replied. “It beats another evening out there in the black lagoon.”

“I think that’s a damn good idea,” Moe said, burping. “I think all of us ought to be there together.”

They drove due east, and ahead of them the rising sun hung like a bright red egg. Manny flipped the visor down. “Don’t sweat it, Moe,” he said. “Alonzo understands this kind of thing. I’ve never fucked him over before.” The words rang with a forced confidence. Meadows traced a quick glance with Moe.

“You’ll like Rennie’s party,” Moe said.

Chapter 22

“
NASTY CUT.
”

Meadows’s hand went to his face. He fingered the thin gash that traced a capital
C
on his left cheek—a souvenir of his night in the swamp.

“Shaving?” asked Rennie McRae.

“Yeah.”

The porky young lawyer guffawed, and his nose reddened. “Manny! Buy your friend a brand-new razor. An electric one, too.” He shoved a fifty-dollar bill into Manny’s right hand. “Your friend obviously has very bad hands,” McRae said.

Meadows studied Manny for a cue. The Cuban took the money and shoved it in a pocket. “I’ll buy him a good one,” he said jovially, “and shave him myself next time.”

McRae laughed appreciatively and waddled off to liven up his own party. Meadows polished off his Jack Daniel’s in four hot gulps. He sat down alone on a sofa; he guessed at least a hundred people were in the apartment.

“Rennie’s a very popular guy,” Manny said. “He’s a great lawyer, Carson. The man knows the law. Hell, he’s kept me and Moe out on the streets.”

“Then he must be a wizard.”

Manny sagged down next to him. “Look at you,
idiota.
I take you to a fancy party, introduce you to important people, and you sit there like some kind of constipated—”

“I’m tired, OK?” Meadows scanned the crowd skittishly, afraid he would spot a familiar face.

Manny wrapped a taut arm around his shoulders. “You still bummed out from last night?”

“Oh, no, Manny, it was a ball. I’ve always wanted to spend the night in the Everglades with a billion mosquitoes sucking my blood, lying there in the water, waiting for some alligator to swim up and bite my nuts off. And what I really love is not getting paid for it.”

Manny lifted his hands. “Hey, no dope, no money.” He lighted a cigarette and leaned back. “We know where we dropped the stuff, and I bet we can find it again.”

“Be my guest.” Meadows sighed. “There’s probably only about twenty-five DEA agents staking it out right now, waiting to see if we’re stupid enough to come back.”

“No,” Manny said. “I don’t think so. I’m telling Alonzo that we’re going back. Maybe tonight, after the party?”