Powder Burn (35 page)

Nelson wished to God he knew what the crazy architect was planning. With his quixotic taste for law and order, whatever it was could not be violent. Or would Meadows surprise him once more? Nelson wondered fleetingly whether he could successfully cover for Meadows if the architect calmly walked up to José Bermúdez and shot him through the head.

Nelson reached across his office desk and punched the intercom. “It’s almost eight. Round up the posse and let’s move.”

“We’re ready, Captain, but Reilly had a question.”

“What is it?”

“Those people inside that you told us to watch out for? Who they with?”

Good question, Reilly, Nelson muttered inaudibly. “Let’s just say they’re with a friendly force.”

DR. HARRY APPEL
was fourteen blocks and eight glorious minutes out of the morgue when the beeper on his belt went off. For just once on a Saturday night, he had hoped to slip away early, but now his plans dissolved. He congratulated himself for not having made any serious arrangements for the evening. In his line of work it was hard enough getting dates.

Appel negotiated a daring U-turn at the toll plaza on the Airport Expressway, and he was back in the office ten minutes later. Dr. Frank Cline greeted him in the lounge as Appel unfolded a starched, clean lab coat.

“Harry, I’m sorry to call you back, but this one’s got me stumped.”

“Just one? Thank God. I thought we’d had another quadruple. I may get out of here at a decent hour yet.”

Appel picked through his locker for a bag of prized pipe tobacco. Cline was only two years out of his residency, but Appel valued his work. Good pathologists were hard to come by.

“They found this guy at the airport,” Cline told him as the men rode downstairs to the morgue. “At first they thought he was hit by a cab, but he wasn’t.”

“No traumatic injuries?”

“Nope.” Cline held the door for his boss, followed him through and pointed to the autopsy table. Sitting nearby in a straight-backed chair was Detective Wilbur Pincus. Appel gave a friendly wave.

“Christ, Wil, what brings you out? This a VIP?”

Pincus said nothing. His face was ashen.

In a low voice Cline said, “Pincus was there when the guy collapsed. He’s not real eager to talk about it. Seems he was tailing the deceased off an airplane.”

Appel gave the body a once-over. He picked up Cline’s chart and read from the notes. “Roberto Justo Nelson,” he said aloud. “This shows an address on Hibiscus Island.”

“Right,” Pincus murmured.

“Frank, the toxicology isn’t done yet?”

“I sent it down an hour ago. The lab is very busy.”

“Call them back, and tell them to push it. I don’t want to keep Pincus any longer than necessary.” Appel noticed that the young detective was keeping a liberal distance between himself and the corpse. Cline left the morgue to use the phone.

Appel turned to Pincus. “This guy an informant?”

“No,” Pincus said. “It’s Octavio Nelson’s brother.”

“Shit,” Appel said heavily, mouthing an unlighted pipe. “Why were you tailing him?”

“He was dealing coke.”

“Is Nelson involved?”

“I think so,” Pincus said gravely. “There were some peculiar circumstances…”

Appel lifted Roberto’s bluish arms and peered at the veins. “Where is Nelson?”

“On a stakeout.”

“Have you called him?”

“No,” Pincus said, growing pale. “Not yet.”

Appel sighed and struggled into a pair of latex surgical gloves. Cline came back and reported that the lab technicians were moving ahead on the blood testing with renewed haste.

Appel began probing Roberto’s organs. Pincus turned his chair away; the wooden legs squealed like chalk on the bare tile, breaking the silence.

“Wil, was this a convulsion?”

“Yes. A seizure. There was some salivation, thrashing around. Then his heart stopped, and I tried CPR until the ambulance got there. It was too late by then.”

“Was he arriving on an international flight?” asked Appel, holding up a yard-long length of intestines.

“Right. Colombia.”

Appel said, “Frank, look at this.” The two men huddled over the purplish soup inside Roberto Nelson’s splayed abdomen. Pincus stared at the chilly walls and rehearsed the speech to his partner. He had plenty of ammunition—the phonied towing report, the ride to the Avianca terminal. Octavio would have much to explain. Unfortunately there was nothing to connect him directly with Roberto’s unsavory commerce, nothing but the blood between them. To Pincus, that was plenty. To the headhunters at internal review, it might be zero. And it might be Pincus who would be forced to explain his extracurricular spying. So be it, he thought determinedly, if that was how Octavio Nelson wanted it to go. There was always one last weapon: Aristidio Cruz. It was never too late for a naïve young detective to atone for his past sins. Pincus’s honesty, however belated, might even be regarded as an act of courage.

“OK, I think we’ve got ’em all,” Harry Appel announced finally.

“I can’t believe it,” Frank Cline said.

“They were easy to miss, unless you were looking.”

Appel carried a stainless steel surgical tray from the autopsy table to Pincus’s somber seat across the morgue. “Here,” the pathologist said, “are your culprits.”

Pincus swallowed hard and forced himself to study the contents of the tray: a number of gaily colored sacs, moist with blood and rank with body fluids, swollen and elastic.

“Rubbers,” Harry Appel said triumphantly. “Seventeen rubbers.” He used a sharp surgical tool to poke one until it split open. He spun the tool in his hand and used the cupped end to scoop a pinch of damp ivory paste and hold it up to glisten under the morgue’s piercing lights. “Don’t suppose you wanna take any bets on what this is?” Appel said.

“Coke!” Pincus exclaimed.

“Yeah, the lab techs, bless their lethargic little hearts, will tell us for sure. My guess is that the contents of one or more of these little beauties was discharged right into Nelson’s bloodstream.”

“That’s fatal?”

“In large amounts, certainly. Different things can happen. Usually the brain goes haywire and stops telling the lungs to breathe. Massive respiratory failure. If that doesn’t get you, some sort of heart arrhythmia probably will,” Appel explained. “You see, the human body simply wasn’t made to absorb this much of a powerful stimulant. It’s like plugging a hundred-ten-volt toaster into a two-twenty-volt socket. You burn it up.”

“I figured it was a stroke or something,” Cline said sheepishly.

“Just a smuggler’s special,” Appel said. “Another couple hours, and he would have passed these fine. He would have been home free. This kind of constipation is deadly, Wil.”

“I figured he was carrying something,” Pincus said. “I had Customs do a body search at the airport.”

“Well, Customs doesn’t give enemas,” Appel said. “You better call your partner now.”

“No,” said Pincus, his face as gray as the new corpse, “not me, Doctor.”

Chapter 29

VICTOR GLOWERED
and tugged peevishly at his Vandyke. The boy was a tease. Either he delivered that night or he went back on the street. Victor could not abide teases.

The old grandfather clock read 8:25, and the small dining room was nearly full. The clink of crystal and the murmur of voices soothed Victor. At least dinner was proceeding as smoothly as ordained. Quiet, elegant.

Several main courses remained to be ordered. There were a few groupers left in the tank, and Victor knew he would have to push them hard, else they would probably die overnight. Wretched beasts.

“Hey!” To Victor the call was like a curse at an opera. He flinched, and several other diners’ heads raised. The Gómez table again. Victor didn’t know who they were, but he vowed they would never be back. Four nasty little men who should be shining shoes. Two pairs of them, really, and not friends either. In their ill-fitted suits and pointy toes they had circled like dogs at first, as though uncertain whether to fuck or to fight.

“Hey! Fat man!”

Victor hurried over.

“Yes, sir?”

“We want to eat
now.”
The man in the skewed necktie spoke in atrocious gutter Spanish.

“May I suggest grouper? Grilled with a light sauce of butter and garlic, it’s quite delicious.”

“Not fish,” said a dark man with a black mustache. He was from the second pair.

“The veal is very good tonight,” Victor ventured.

“No. Chicken.
Arroz con pollo.
With plenty of black beans.”

Victor brooded. Did they think they were in a cantina?

“You can make
arroz con pollo,
can’t you?”

“It’s not usual, but of course we can make it.”

“Good. Hurry, we are hungry.”

Victor turned to go.

“And more beer,” the Mustache Man added.

“Not me.” The man in the shiny brown suit spoke for the first time. “For me another scotch and Coca-Cola.”

“Yes, sir,” said Victor, mentally deciding how much he could pad their bill without causing a scene.

“And send one to the lady,” the man said, gesturing toward the window where a lovely
Latina
in a skintight dress slit almost to her waist sat alone.

“The lady,” Victor said icily, “is waiting for her husband.”

“Send her the drink, fat man.”

“That is my dessert,” announced the Peasant when Victor had shambled away.

“I saw her first,” complained the Mustache Man.

“She smiled at me,” said Cauliflower Ear.

“What about the husband?” The fourth man was thin and wore a large emerald ring.

“Fuck the husband.”

“No, fuck her.”

They all laughed loudly while Victor quivered impotently.

When the red-coated waiter brought the drink, the woman shone a dazzling smile of thanks at the four men. Her tongue drew a slow and lascivious circle around full red lips.

“We are all friends now,” the Peasant said tightly. “We will share her.”

THE OLD MAN
skillfully dipped a morsel of lobster into the cup of hot butter.

“Excellent, Ignacio, truly excellent. I congratulate you.”

“Yes, it is a good place. I’m sorry you did not bring your wife.”

“Next time perhaps. This is a working trip, too important for her.”

“But not for your two associates.” José Bermúdez gestured through the screen of palms toward the sound of merriment beyond.

“Ah, Pepín and Alberto. I seldom travel without them. Rough men, but their hearts are good.”

“Yes.” Make peace, but prepare for war. Canny old bastard.

“Your men seem to be showing them a good time.”

“Yes.”

“It is well. They should know and respect one another. I believe that specialists should always respect their peers, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“And you and I, Ignacio? When do we exchange information?”

“Tomorrow. If you will come to the bank at nine. I have everything ready.”

“Splendid. I have brought things for you to see, too.”

“We will not be disturbed for the whole day, I promise you.”

The old man smiled thinly. “And what business is it that brings me to the bank tomorrow, Ignacio?”

“Of course, I’m sorry. It is a textile agreement. You want to build a new factory in Cartagena, and we are interested in financing it. The papers are all ready, and we will sign them. In another ten days the deal will collapse in a dispute over mortgage interest.”

The old man speared another chunk of lobster.

“Excellent, Ignacio. Excellent.”

OCTAVIO NELSON HAD
not been this tense since the long-ago afternoon he had clung to a rock with a bloody arm and prayed that the Batista patrol would weary of the hot sun. His palms itched. His stomach clenched.

José L. Bermúdez’s big Seville rested peacefully in the parking lot. Nelson had seen that much in his first quiet prowl through the darkness. But what was happening inside La Cumparsita? Was Meadows there? Nelson had not seen him go in. Who else was there, and what were they doing? If Meadows had only given him a little more notice, he could have wired somebody and sent him inside.

Nelson skirted the pale circle of light from the restaurant windows and walked along the left side to the door leading to the bar.

“Reilly, have you got a watch with a second hand?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Are you sure you know what to do?”

“Captain, relax, I’m not stupid. Exactly one minute after we hear you guys go in the front and the back, me and Bloom seal this door. Our people slide out the door in the meantime, right?”

“How many people?”

“Three people, Captain. Two guys and a gal. Relax, willya? You’re makin’ me nervous.”

“OK, Reilly, OK. Sorry.”

Nelson returned to the front of the restaurant to await Meadows’s signal.

Jesus,
he thought silently, I would give my soul for a cigar.

“NOW THAT’S SOME
nigger,” the Peasant smirked. All four men turned beerily toward the door.

The black man who stood there seemed seven feet tall, an effect encouraged by a gigantic wide-brimmed hat topped by a gaily trailing ostrich plume. The hat matched the leisure suit and the shoes. They all were shocking pink. A heavy gold medallion peered comfortably from the rippling black chest. The black man froze the restaurant.

“Good evening all,” he proclaimed to no one in particular and strode to the table by the window. He bussed the solitary
Latina
firmly on the cheek, ran proprietary fingers lightly across her lap and squeezed into the chair opposite her.

Victor came quickly. The evening was becoming bizarre.

“My good man. A planter’s punch to match my suit, if you please, and a cup of black coffee to match my true love’s eyes.”

Victor felt giddy. At the Gómez table the tension was suddenly electric. The two distinguished men in the far corner took no heed. They were talking business.

“Arthur,” asked Terry from between her teeth, “where did you get those clothes?”

“Chris told me to be ostentatious.”

Terry suppressed a giggle.

“What time is it?”

Arthur ignited a quartz watch, and the numbers glowed fiercely against his wrist.