Powder Burn

by Carl Hiaasen

  Señor Sosa could, on the spot, from a roll of bills so large it filled his hand like an egg. He’d never mentioned the money again. All he’d ever asked of Oscar was to keep El Hogar open late whenever Señor Sosa and his friends wished to talk business. He was asking more and more these days.

  “Oscar, you are having no more gambling problems, I hope?”

  “Oh, no. I have given up. I don’t even play la bolita anymore. Not even for one peso.”

  “That is good,” Mono said avuncularly. “If only you could talk some sense to these baboons. They dropped a fortune at the dog track today.”

  Southwest Eighth Street, Calle Ocho, glowed a hazy orange beneath the sodium crime lights. The streets were deserted, save for an occasional speeding taxi on its way back to the boulevard. Mono stood for a moment outside El Hogar. His heart raced slightly. He did not feel like driving home; he felt wide awake.

  His three companions slid into the gold Continental. Domingo Sosa did not follow. Instead, he walked briskly across Eighth Street and climbed into a gun-blue BMW parked in a space marked Handicapped Only.

  “Adios, Mono,” shouted one of the men in the Lincoln as it raced away. Drunken idiots, fumed Sosa, mashing the accelerator three times to warm the engine. Then he slipped the BMW into first and drove off in the opposite direction.

  Octavio Nelson and Wilbur Pincus scrunched low in the front seat of the old blue Dodge. They stayed that way until the Continental passed them. Cramped together almost flush under the dashboard, Nelson could smell some kind of mint on his partner’s breath.

  “Let’s go,” Pincus whispered eagerly.

  “Be still.”

  Nelson waited until the Lincoln’s engine was but a hum in the distance. When he sat up, he noticed bleakly that the BMW had vanished, too.

  “Shit,” said Nelson, gunning the engine. The Dodge protested with a stall. “Oh, shit.” He turned the key again and drove off as fast as he dared, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mono’s taillights and afraid to look over at his partner.

  Chapter 7

  THEY MIGHT have gone to Rio. Meadows later wished with all his heart that they had. It would have changed almost everything.

  From the dog track, Meadows and Terry had driven to a small condominium Terry owned on Key Biscayne, an island twenty minutes south of the city. Along the way Meadows had recounted, as rationally as he could, what had happened in Coconut Grove and what he had seen at the track.

  “I should have called the cops right then. They’d have caught the killer.”

  “Probably not, querido,” soothed Terry. “If he recognized you, then he and his friends probably left as quickly as we did. Besides, it is better not to take chances with people like that.”

  “I suppose so,” said Meadows, unconvinced.

  “Dios, how I wish I had been here. You have been through hell, mi amor. Look, suppose we go away someplace for a couple of weeks? I will make your wounded leg better and your middle leg sore. I promise.”

  “Can CAN do without you, Capitán?”

  “It will struggle along. I have hired a new pilot, and Pancho can break him in as well as I.”

  “Sold,” said Meadows. “How about Brazil? I’ve always wanted to go to Bahia.”

  “Vamos. I know it well, and I promise not to introduce you to any of my boyfriends there.…”

  They had gone no farther, though, than Key Biscayne, for the next night Terry had been summoned. One of CAN’s Convairs had broken down in Costa Rica with no hydraulic system and no way to move its cargo. Terry would have to go herself, with another plane: condoms to Peru, lumber to El Salvador and color televisions for traders in São Paulo.

  “I will be back in ten days,” she promised Meadows on the way to the airport.

  “Oh? How do you plan to do that? Rent a Concorde maybe?”

  Terry leaned across the front seat and gave him a kiss. “We need more time together,” she said. “No more long trips for a while, I promise.”

  His idea had been to go back home and amuse himself with the Ecuadorian project, but he found he’d lost his appetite for it. His house would be empty; there was too much cluttering his mind. No sense wasting drafting paper on thin ideas.

  He was distracted, first by Terry and now by the sketch of the killer, which felt like cold lead in his pocket. When Meadows left the airport, he guided the Karmann Ghia onto the expressway and headed east, toward the meager downtown skyline of Miami. It took only ten minutes to find the city police department.

  Meadows stood in the parking lot. Out of habit, he gave the new building a once-over. The earth tones made it warmer, all right, but the windows were so small, like Leavenworth. Maybe the architect was trying to shield the office workers from the merciless afternoon sun. It was still too institutional, Meadows decided. The police probably felt right at home.

  Inside, Meadows paced the slippery lobby floor, rehearsing what he would tell Octavio Nelson when he gave him the sketch. Would the detective laugh? Would he tell Meadows that he was hallucinating, that the Coconut Grove killers were long gone from this country?

  Meadows sat down and stole another look at his drawing.

  Two uniformed cops shoved a drunk through the lobby. “Lemme alone,” the man whined. “Lemme go home.” Meadows could see where the handcuffs had chafed the man’s wrists. He wondered if anything more would happen when the cops had the drunk all to themselves.

  IN THE FOURTH-FLOOR offices of the Vice and Narcotics Unit, Detective Wilbur Pincus hunched over his tiny desk and wrote in a small brown notebook. Carefully obscured under his right arm on the desk was a miserably faint photostat marked Vehicle Incident Report-Nonaccident.

  Pincus had gotten the report from a friend in the police garage. There was no supervisor’s signature on the last line, so the report would never be filed. There was, however, a significant bit of information about the Mercedes 450 SEL sedan.

  In his notebook Pincus printed in short, precise strokes: “PRW 378 fl.” He folded the photostat and ripped it into strips, tossing them into a waste can.

  Pincus picked up the phone.

  “Communications.”

  “Is Dennis on duty this afternoon?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Pincus in Narcotics.”

  A few minutes later, a new voice came on the line. “Hey, Detective, what can I do for you?”

  “Can you run a tag for me, Dennis?”

  “No problem. Fire away.”

  Pincus read the Mercedes’s tag numbers to the dispatcher.

  “Call you back in five minutes,” Dennis said.

  As Pincus hung up, he felt a hand on his shoulder. His mouth went dry, and he turned in his chair.

  “Excuse me I didn’t mean to startle you.…”

  “It’s OK,” Pincus said.

  “I’m looking for Octavio Nelson,” the man said. He was tall and sandy-haired, familiar. Although he had a good physique, Pincus marked him instantly as an academic, Ivy League.

  “Nelson isn’t here right now.”

  “I’m Chris Meadows. I think we met once before.”

  “Sure,” Pincus fumbled. “In the hospital, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re feeling better, obviously. I didn’t recognize you.”

  Meadows smiled wanly. “It was probably all the tubes running out of my face.”

  “Can I do something for you?”

  “When is Nelson coming back?”

  Pincus leaned back to look across the office at a wall clock. “Probably not at all this afternoon, Mr. Meadows. He’s working a homicide way down in Homestead, so he’ll probably go straight home afterward.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “Bright and early,” Pincus said. “I’ll tell him you’re coming by. Are you sure I can’t help you with something?”

  “Uh, no, no, that’s OK,” Meadows said. “I’ll talk to Nelson tomorrow.”

  Funny guy, the detective thought as he watched Meadows
leaving. Wonder if he remembered something about the shooting? Happens often enough after the trauma wears off. Probably should have pressed him some more…

  The phone made him jump.

  “Got your ten-thirty-nine,” said Dennis in Communications. “The name is Nelson, Roberto Justo. You want the DOB and all?”

  “Everything,” Wilbur Pincus said, forgetting Meadows. “Everything you got there.”

  THE TRIP BACK to his house from downtown Miami was only ten minutes, but Meadows drove slowly, distractedly, and nearly missed his turn off Main Highway.

  He wondered if he should have given the sketch to Pincus. The guy looked every bit as sharp as Nelson, more professional in fact. The square, smooth face, neat, if not too short, hair, blue suit—everybody’s favorite FBI agent right off the television.

  But Nelson was Cuban. Like the killers. It was precisely for that reason that he wanted him—and only him—to study the sketch. A man like Nelson was sure to know his way around the hot streets of Little Havana, whereas Pincus…well, that didn’t look to be his specialty. Tomorrow was time enough.

  He parked under the canopy of lush trees in front of his house. An outdoor spotlight, automatically timed to flash on at dusk, illuminated the walkway to the front door in a tunnel of white light. The moths and mosquitoes fluttered excitedly in and out from the shadows, and Meadows hurried into the house.

  On the drive home, suddenly, fixed clearly in his mind, had come an image of the Ecuadorian oil ministry, what it should and would look like. It gave Meadows a rush just to think about starting the drafting. He had not felt so much enthusiasm since the shooting.

  Meadows flipped a switch on the wall, and overhead fans began to purr. “To work,” Meadows said to himself, “but first, a swim.”

  He peeled off his shirt, kicked off his trousers and ambled to the porch. The wind had died, and the bay was smooth indigo glass in the night.

  Meadows noticed that the light in the swimming pool was on. He did not remember leaving it that way, but then again he had been forgetful these past weeks. Could it have been the pool service? What day do they come? Meadows wondered. It must have been them.

  The pool was clean and clear. The underwater spotlights threw an iridescent aqua glow on the dense foliage in Meadows’s backyard. The architect slipped out of his undershorts, savoring the privacy. Just me and the sleeping sparrows.

  Meadows walked to the deep end, squatting twice to check the right leg. No pain. He stood erect on the diving board, letting his eyes measure the four quick steps.

  A small branch, dropped from one of the old oaks, lay at the end of the diving board. Meadows retrieved it, his steps springing on the fiberglass platform. He tossed the branch into a hedge, and it landed with a rustle. The racket flushed a small chameleon, brown and mottled. Terrified, it ran full bore, its tail straight in the air, on a beeline for the swimming pool.

  “Watch out, little fella.” Meadows laughed.

  The tiny reptile skittered into the pool, and suddenly the lights flashed. In that fraction of a second, Meadows heard a sound like the ripping of a stiff piece of linen. Then a wave of heat rose off the pool, and it was pitch-black.

  Meadows inched back off the diving board, trembling, naked and unarmed. He waited fearfully for a noise, for footsteps hurrying through the yard, for a cold voice.

  But the night was silent.

  Slowly, in small steps, he moved toward the house until he was seized by his own fear and adrenaline. He broke into a run, but not before the architect saw it floating in the clear hot water: the twisted, blackened corpse of the chameleon, as crisp as a dead leaf on a quiet lake.

  Chapter 8

  OCTAVIO NELSON surveyed the pool, then peered out at the bay, where a rusty shrimper labored south, nets streeling. He drank deeply of the still night air, hot, humid, salty.

  “Beautiful place,” Nelson said. “Setup like this must have cost you a bundle.” He bent down to the spot where the electric cable snaked through the areca bushes into the shallow end of the pool.

  “Clever,” he muttered, as though to himself. “Those guys are usually not that clever. One little foot in the water and ciao.”

  Nelson decided not to call the boys from the lab. They would find no fingerprints, no discarded tools, no trace of whoever had so carefully and skillfully rigged a swimming pool for death. Nelson walked back to the wooden porch steps, where Chris Meadows sat with his elbows on his knees, knuckles white around a glass of amber liquid. On the phone Meadows had been tightly in control, but just barely. Little wonder. This was a no-nonsense hit, and by rights he should be dead.

  “Once again you’re a lucky man, amigo,” Nelson said softly.

  Meadows swirled the ice in his glass. The Jack Daniel’s was his third. He did not speak for a long moment, as though not trusting himself to speak. His face was the color of the limestone that ringed the pool. His button-down white shirt was wringing wet.

  “Not an accident? No chance it was an accident?” Meadows asked finally.

  “No accident. A professional job. Somebody wants you dead.”

  Meadows stood quickly, violently, whiskey and a lone ice cube sloshing from the glass. His words came with a rush.

  “And so I’m lucky. That’s what you call it when somebody is nearly murdered for the second time in a few weeks by a killer he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to know. That’s lucky.”

  Nelson walked into the house and poured himself four ounces of Mount Gay rum. He had been right to send Pincus home, to have come alone. Drinking on the job! Imagine! Wilbur would go right to the chief with that. Nelson lit a cigar and leaned against the redwood beam supporting the porch roof.

  “I’m afraid you’re a loose end. Those scumbags don’t like loose ends.”

  “But, Jesus Christ,” Meadows said, “I haven’t done anything to them.”

  “That’s not required. You must know something you shouldn’t. You are an impediment.” He drew the word out slowly, a syllable at a time. “A loose end. Simple as that. What is it you know?”

  Meadows shook his head, as though to clear it from a blow. The nonchalance of it all was appalling. Somebody had tried to kill him, and here on the porch was some Don Juan Caballero cop drinking his rum and matter-of-factly ascribing rational behavior to irrational action.

  “Look, who are these people?” Meadows demanded. “You must have some idea. And if you do, why don’t you go out and arrest them, for Christ’s sakes! How many chances do they get? All that stands between me and a pine box is one small lizard who was not, to use your term, lucky.”

  The outburst, curiously, made Meadows feel better. When he continued, his voice was more normal.

  “How did they find out who I am and where I live?”

  “I have been wondering about that myself,” Nelson said. “Your name wasn’t in the papers after the shooting. But it was on the police report, and it was certainly in the hospital records. I’d say the police report; anybody can look at them. Tell me again what happened last night. Slowly. You weren’t making much sense on the phone.”

  Haltingly, with false starts, pauses and an almost lack of inflection, Meadows recounted the incident at the dog track. But Meadows thought as he spoke, and by the time he finished the obvious was there before him.

  “So I recognized him, but he also recognized me. Right?”

  “That’s how it went down,” Nelson agreed. “And then they went and found out who you were.”

  Meadows was incredulous.

  “Recognizing the killer de facto made me such a threat to him that he decides he has to drop by and electrocute me in my swimming pool.”

  “De fucking facto.”

  “How could he know it would be me who went into the water? Sometimes friends swim here. Sometimes neighborhood kids come by after school. He couldn’t have been sure it would be me.”

  “That’s right, he couldn’t. It was a gamble, but a safe one. He’d be far away by the time it happened. L
ike I said, you were lucky.”

  “But there was a girl here with me only last night. I mean, it could have been her.” Meadows was agitated now. Delayed reaction.

  Nelson shrugged.

  “Amigo, I don’t make the rules. I’m just telling you how the game is played.”

  Meadows turned suddenly and hurled his glass into the woods behind the house. It slammed against a tree trunk and shattered. Meadows turned on Nelson.

  “Listen, this kind of shit does not happen in a society of law. We are civilized. This is not a jungle.”

  Nelson moaned inwardly. He should have sent Pincus after all. Pincus had illusions, too. Pincus and Meadows, a lovely couple. He could see them now, standing at attention to salute the flag; swapping patches around the campfire at a Scout jamboree, pledging truth, loyalty, obedience, promising never to jerk off or drive drunk or run dope on a hot summer’s night. Spare them, Lord, for they are innocent. Octavio Nelson downed his rum with a single swallow and turned to look for more.

  “Let me make you another drink,” Nelson said. “It will soothe the nerves. You’ve been through a terrible thing.”

  Nelson dawdled over the rum bottle, back turned to Meadows. He made a great production of adding ice cubes to his glass, one at a time, slowly, allowing Meadows to collect himself.

  “Who is he?” Meadows asked. The voice was cold and ugly now. Nelson did not turn around.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll show you who he is.” Meadows seemed full of nervous energy. He bounded up the porch steps and rushed to a table near the bar. Nelson heard a drawer protest as Meadows yanked it open. Then Meadows was beside him waving a single sheet of paper.

  “This is him—the man responsible for Sandy and the girl, the one who shot me. I drew it last night. Now you can arrest him, can’t you?”