Powder Burn (31 page)

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 angry 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?”

“I hope so.” Meadows left the second half of his response unspoken: I almost believed it myself.

Terry’s fingers marched like soldiers with a mission along the inside of Meadows’s thigh.

“Sometimes,
querido,”
she whispered, “you scare me, too.”

Chapter 26

JOSÉ L. BERMÚDEZ
pressed the button for the twentieth floor. His hand explored a breast pocket of his pale suit. The speech was still there. One of the secretaries would have to retype it before noon. He hit the 20 button again, and the elevator doors whispered together, then stopped.

A huge black hand had inserted itself.

Bermúdez hit the Door Open button. “I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “I didn’t see you.”

“That’s all right,” a voice answered. A massive barn door of a black man strolled into the elevator. He wore a neat dark suit with a silvery tie on a French shirt. A lush, symmetrical Afro cut sprouted from his head. A finger the size of a small blackjack tapped the 19 button.

Bermúdez stared up at his early-morning companion.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I can’t help but asking, but do you play pro football?”

Arthur Prim smiled bashfully.

“I thought so! For the Dolphins, right?” Bermúdez was jubilant.

“The Steelers,” Arthur said.

His eyes fell on the brown leather briefcase the banker carried. He studied it for a few seconds, then looked up at the indicator light as the elevator hummed toward the top of the building.

“The Steelers have a fine team,” Bermúdez offered.

Arthur nodded confidently.

“I’m a Dolphins fan myself. I have season tickets on the forty,” Bermúdez said. “I haven’t missed a game in two years.”

“Yeah?”

The elevator doors opened on the nineteenth floor.

Bermúdez suddenly set down the briefcase and extended his right hand. “I’m José Bermúdez,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

Arthur Prim shook his hand. “I’m Terry Bradshaw,” he said, stepping off.

FROM NIGHT TO NIGHT
the dream changed little. Always the colors were brilliant, beginning with the crystal blue ocean.

Meadows was swimming offshore with a full, lazy breast stroke, his head out of the water. The beach was deserted except for two figures, a small girl with shoulder-length blond hair and a lovely tanned woman in a dark bathing suit. They were running hand in hand, and the sound of the girl’s giggling and her mother’s husky laughter drifted like music out to the architect. He paddled to shallower water until his feet met the grainy bottom. Standing upright, he shouted and waved happily with both arms.

The girl and the woman stopped running and waved back. The little one yelled something. Meadows put a hand to his right ear, to show that he was out of earshot. They strolled toward the water, and the little girl shouted again, this time cupping her tiny hands to her mouth.

Meadows was still too far to hear. He began to move out of the water, skating his legs against a mild undertow. “Just a minute,” he shouted, but the words died in a mounting rush of engine noise.

Meadows scanned the clouds but found no airplane. Looking down the beach, he located the source of the roar, a red Ford Mustang. It churned along the water’s edge, its fat tires spitting beach sand with the exhaust.

“Look out!” Meadows called to the woman and her daughter. But they would not take their eyes off him. They smiled and waved stupidly. Meadows pointed with both arms.

“Watch out for the car! Get in the water, hurry!”

Out of nowhere the little girl produced an ice cream cone and held it out, motioning for Meadows to come get his present. He thrashed toward the beach, and the splashing of his legs drowned in the earsplitting approach of the car, a blur now, one hundred yards and closing fast. Behind the windshield Meadows could see the forms, but not the faces, of two dark men.

The offshore current suddenly seemed to hug his midsection, driving him back a step. Using his arms, Meadows lifted each leg and pushed forward toward the beach. He knew he would never get there in time.

Couldn’t they see the car?

The woman and the little blond girl watched him curiously, smiling. They thought he was clowning around, trying to make them laugh.

Meadows was only a few yards from shore when his legs buckled and his feet went out from under him, cleaned out by some invisible cross-block. He went down in slow motion, a horrid freeze-frame image of the girl, her mother and the speeding car locked in his eyes.

A terrible cry sprung from Meadows’s lungs as he fell, but it died in his throat as his head went under.

Run,
it said.

When he came up, the woman and her blond daughter lay in a broken, bloody heap on the beach. The red Mustang was stopped fifty yards away. The two men were unfurling a canary-colored beach towel to lie down on.

Meadows dug his fingers into the wet-cement sand and dragged himself out of the water, crying. He stood up, weaving, and made his way to where the bodies lay.

The little girl’s eyes, as green as his own, seemed to stare past him into the boiling sun. Blood ran in thick trails from both nostrils.

Meadows fell to his knees, sick and dizzy. He keeled sideways, and his head hit the beach with no sound. He scrabbled pathetically at the packed sand, and he lifted two handfuls, letting the grains sprinkle down on his face and hair. He noticed that it was not sand at all, but something flaky and white.