Powder Burn (36 page)

“It’s exactly five minutes to takeoff. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“I’m nervous as a cat, Arthur.”

“Honey, when Chris Meadows builds something, it stays built. Everything will be fine.”

“Those men are animals, swine.”

Arthur looked over at the four men. They looked back through angry obsidian eyes. Arthur smiled and waved a big left hand, a gesture of greeting or contempt.

“When I was playing my way through college, it took more meat than that just to slow me down. Here, drink from my glass—that’ll make them even madder.”

VICTOR WAS UP
to his arms in salad when a voice at his back surprised him. He whirled, and two handfuls of Bibb lettuce and fresh-cut cucumber flew like confetti.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” said the intruder, a tall man with sandy hair and cool green eyes. He wore a gray workman’s shirt with Dade County stitched over the pocket.

“What are you doing in my kitchen?” Victor blustered. “Who are you, anyway?”

“The name is Kelly, and I’m with the county building department. We had a call about a possible structural problem on your side of the building. Apparently one of the beams buckled. I knocked a couple times, but no one answered. The kitchen door was open.”

“I’ve got a roomful of customers out there,” Victor said irascibly. “Come back tomorrow afternoon.”

“You the owner?” the inspector asked.

“Of course.”

“This afternoon one of your people told the other inspector to come back tonight. Here I am. I won’t disturb your customers; it’ll be quick.”

Victor dried his hands on a towel. Structural problems, he fumed. Nobody had mentioned a word to him.

“Look, Inspector,” he said reasonably, “why don’t you have something to eat here with us in the kitchen and a nice cold glass of wine and then we can work out a more suitable time?”

“You offering me a bribe?”

Victor foamed. “No, of course not. But I do have an obligation to my customers. Inspection tonight is quite out of the question.”

“OK, wise ass, we’ll play it your way. I find this building to be structurally unsound. Shut it down. Now.”

“But, but…” Victor surrendered with what little grace he had left. “Please go ahead and do your inspection. I am sure you will find everything in perfect order.”

With a grim bureaucratic shake of his head Chris Meadows strode through the swinging doors of the kitchen at the rear of the dining room. He turned hard left and walked the seven paces to where the blueprints had told him the small men’s room would be. Luckily it was empty.

Meadows locked himself into the only stall. He spun the combination locks on each side of the expensive brown leather briefcase and took from it a small laundry bag. It took only a second to strip off the inspector’s shirt. It went into the bag.

From the briefcase he extracted a bright yellow T-shirt. The rococo lettering on the front read Viva Me. He put it on and added a pair of wraparound sunglasses with mirrored lenses. The chrome-plated pistol he tucked carefully into the waistband of his twill trousers.

Meadows made sure that the rest of the briefcase was as it should be and then wiped it carefully, inside and out, with toilet paper. The laundry bag he dropped into the tank behind the toilet. Meadows tousled his hair and checked his watch. Right on time.

Meadows had his hand on the stall door when he heard someone come into the bathroom. He cursed silently and decided to wait.

After thirty seconds Meadows chafed with impatience. After a minute he writhed. After a minute and a half he could wait no more. The unseen man’s capacity was astonishing. To wait longer would throw off the carefully arranged timing Meadows had worked out with Terry and Arthur.

Meadows opened the door to the stall and came face-to-face with Cauliflower Ear.

The gunman had just turned from the urinal; his hands were still groping at his fly. His zipper was down. Meadows could smell the beer on his breath from three feet away. Was there a dawning glimmer of recognition in the man’s bloodshot eyes? Meadows couldn’t be sure, but the risk was too great.

Meadows dropped the briefcase, snatched the pistol from his pants and jammed it, barrel first, into the gunman’s groin. Cauliflower Ear took an involuntary step back and doubled in pain.

“On the floor,
macho,”
Meadows hissed. “On the floor now, or you will never use it again.”

The gunman slumped to his knees, dazed. Savagely Meadows twisted the bloated ear. The man yelped in pain and flopped onto his belly.

Meadows reversed the pistol and hit the gunman once so hard across the temple that the jolt raced up Meadows’s arm and ignited a cord in his neck. Cauliflower Ear was silent.

Unconscious or dead. It didn’t matter. Meadows collected his ragged breathing and looked at his watch again.

“Not yet, Arthur, please. Just a few more seconds; that’s all.”

Meadows returned the gun to his pants, checked his appearance in the mirror and picked up the briefcase. After twisting the lock in the bathroom door so it would bolt behind him, Meadows strode purposefully into the dining room.

Arthur hadn’t failed him.

Every eye seemed riveted on the black giant who stood at the table by the window. Feet planted, plume waving, arms extended as though in benediction, Arthur was in fine fettle.

“Innkeeper!” he demanded in a rich baritone that filled the room and ricocheted off the walls. “More wine for the virgins and an aphrodisiac for my lover.”

At the rear of the restaurant Meadows turned left again and strode unobserved nine paces to the corner table. He skirted the protective screen of palms and sat down, briefcase at his feet.

“Ignacio, man, sorry I’m late. If there’s no food left, I’ll just help myself to a drink,” Meadows said.

José Bermúdez had a forkful of veal halfway to his mouth. It stopped there for a long heartbeat.

“I’m sorry, you must be mistaken,” Bermúdez said finally.

Meadows reached across to a silver salver on the table and tore off a chunk of French bread.

“Mistaken? Really?” he said, spewing crumbs. “Who’s the spic?”

“This man, who is he?” the old Colombian demanded in Spanish.

“I don’t know.”

Meadows laughed caustically. “You don’t know? Really, José. I mean, Ignacio forgive me, a slip of the tongue.” Meadows drained Bermúdez’s wine with a loud glug. Color ebbed from the banker’s face.

“Leave instantly or I will call the police,” Bermúdez demanded. His voice was shrill.

“The police. Now that’s funny. What is this, fellas, the amateur hour?” Meadows propped the sunglasses on the top of his head. “I’ve got your merchandise; I want my money. Simple, no?”

“I am leaving right now,” the Colombian said, wiping his mouth with an embroidered napkin.

Bermúdez was trapped between two fires. “Wait, my friend, please wait. This is a mistake,” he begged the Colombian.

“My mistake was coming here,” the old man said, and started to lever himself up from the table. “You are as foolish as the greedy cowboys who work for you.”

Bermúdez glared at Meadows. “You will die for this.” He clapped his hands twice.

“¡Violeta.!”
the old man shouted.

Both were well-rehearsed signals, but neither worked, for they drowned in a hellacious commotion from the front of the dining room.

The striking salt-and-pepper couple at the table by the window had exploded.

“Honky hussy!” the black man snarled.

“¡Ayuda! ¡Socorro!”
the
Latina
screamed.

“Two-timing bitch!”

“¡Polica!”

He was choking her. Everyone could see that. A waiter saw it and dropped a skillet of crêpes flambé. A fat woman diner saw it and screamed. A middle-aged Cuban businessman saw it and started over to help. The three killers saw it, and they erupted as one, toppling their table in their haste to help. They never heard their masters’ summonses.

In the darkness outside, Octavio Nelson intently watched the front of the restaurant from the shelter of a large cabbage palm. One of his detectives materialized suddenly.

“Captain, there’s an urgent radio call for you.”

Nelson’s gaze never left the restaurant.

“Not now, I’m busy.”

“It’s something about your brother, Captain. And Detective Pincus. They said it was very important.”

Nelson stifled a groan. Wilbur Pincus and Bobby Nelson were the last two people on earth he wanted to hear from just then.

“Mike,” Nelson muttered angrily, “you will go back to the car. You will tell the dispatcher you cannot find me. And then you will turn off the fucking radio. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Captain.”

In La Cumparsita, Terry wriggled in apparent helplessness as the giant’s weight bore down on her. Then Arthur abandoned the theatric chorus of grunts that had accompanied his assault.

“They will be here in a second,” he whispered. “Do it now, Terry; there’s no more time.”

He released his grasp, and Terry fell back against the front window. Carefully she pressed her open palm against the glass, clenched her fist and again showed the palm.

Octavio Nelson saw it, and his English deserted him.

“Vamos,”
he screamed.
“Vamos.”

With a gentle shove Arthur directed Terry toward the front door.

He caught the first of her would-be saviors with a stiff arm under the chin. The second went down under a pink-toed kick. Arthur was grinning like a maniac as he himself started backing toward the door. Child’s play. Not a linebacker among them.

Victor was apoplectic. Help. He had to get help. They were ruining him. Dazed, his eyes swollen with tears, Victor directed his great bulk toward the telephone by the door. He collided instead with the fish tank and carried it down to the soft beige carpet under him. For Meadows, the pratfall was a bonus.

He affected not to hear the madness that consumed La Cumparsita. He spoke with a tough edge.

“Look, Ignacio. I don’t know what’s going on here, but you wanted a delivery, and here it is. Now I expect you to transfer my fee into the appropriate account on Monday morning, first thing, as usual. Then we’ll talk about a next time, if there is one. I’m beginning not to like this restaurant.”

Meadows slung the briefcase on the table and rose to leave.

It was the best-quality leather case money could buy, identical to the one Bermúdez carried so smartly to work each morning—even the tasteful
JLB
monogrammed under the handle was the same. Arthur had found it at an imported leather shop in the Southland Mall.

The banker and the old Colombian stared dumbly at the briefcase. Meadows pushed it closer, knocking over a carafe of wine, closer still, until it stopped solidly against the chest of José Bermúd
z, who grabbed it furiously with both hands just as Octavio Nelson walked up to the table.

“Buenos noches, señores,”
Nelson said softly.

Chapter 30

TERRY DROVE
. Arthur sat next to her, chortling. In the back seat, Meadows exchanged the loud T-shirt for a blue cotton pullover.

“Don’t forget to stop at the phone booth,” Meadows said.

“Don’t you think you’ve caused enough damage already?” Terry asked with a grin. She would prize the image of the fat man going ass over teakettle with his fish tank for as long as she lived.

“It’s a good cake, but it needs a little icing.”

Meadows had the quarter ready, and he dialed the number from heart.

“Journal
city desk.”

“Clara Jackson, please.”

“Hold on for a transfer.” There were three clicks, and then the voice of Clara Jackson.

“Clara? This is a friend down at Metro. Nelson in Narcotics just raided a restaurant called La Cumparsita on Southwest Seventh. They’re still down there if you’ve got a photographer handy.”

Then Meadows hung up. Maybe it was a dirty trick. Maybe Nelson would play it straight. But Meadows was one uptown architect who never designed anything that was not insured.

“Damn,” Arthur exclaimed, “I haven’t had this much fun since we upset Notre Dame.”

“You fell on a fumble,” Meadows said. It was done; he felt spent.

“Indeed, with six seconds left,” Arthur said. “In the end zone. Two green shirts hanging onto me like pilotfish.”

Terry asked, “How long before they open the briefcase, Chris?”

“Not long, I’m sure. They’ll take it downtown. Bermúdez will deny it’s his, of course, but we left Nelson a lot of rope to play with.”

They had packed the attaché case with care and cunning. In the lining, in a place where expert searchers were sure to look, were secreted two sheets of plain white paper typed by an anonymous IBM.

One carried names like Manny, Moe, Alonzo, McRae—all the names Meadows could remember, except Patti Atchison. The second sheet held a half dozen names with a plain black line drawn through each. The names had one thing in common. They belonged to victims of recent cocaine violence.

In the zippered compartment was a smoldering handwritten letter in Spanish to
Queridissimo Josecito
from a sexy lady named Carmen who could only be his mistress. When he finished reading it the first time, Meadows had been randy as hell.