Powder Burn

by Carl Hiaasen

  “I’d make six or seven stops like that, walking down the line.

  “Then, amigo, I would toss a couple of loaded submachine guns out there on the fifty-yard line in the Orange Bowl, and I would walk out and lock all the gates.

  “And an hour later I would go back inside and finish off the wounded. Then I would go fishing.

  “You like fishing, Meadows? Do me a favor. Go fishing.”

  Chapter 9

  ONCE MIAMI INTERNATIONAL Airport dwelt in lonely splendor in the moist flatlands between the city and the Everglades. Now it is surrounded entirely by the tropical metropolis it serves, one of the busiest terminals in the world, a north-south funnel where every minute is rush hour. Flights to Santiago and flights to Seattle. Refrigerators for Grand Bahama and millionaires for Aspen. Christopher Meadows had never known the airport in its youth, in the days before cheap air-conditioning made Miami a magnet for northerners who learned that final escape from bitter winter was worth the long summers.

  It amused him, nevertheless, to know that Miami International remained an official refuge for the burrowing owl and that rabbits, raccoons, squirrels and tropical birds of a hundred varieties lived in the grassy fringes alongside the giant runways. Meadows prized the airport. It was fifteen minutes from everywhere; eleven minutes by back road, to be exact, from his Coconut Grove haven.

  He drove slowly that night, deep in thought. He had plenty of time for the last New York flight, and for once there had been room. He was tired, washed-out. Too much too quick, and too much Jack Daniel’s to boot. It would take a good night’s sleep and a long walk in the morning to restore mental order from the jumble of fear, curiosity and Tennessee whiskey.

  Afraid? Jesus! There by the pool, with the lizard, he had come within an ace of wetting his pants. Meadows had never known fear like that. In the street, with Jessica and Sandy, there had been no time for it. Was Meadows a freak, to have lived nearly four decades without ever knowing that sudden bowel-wrenching emotion? Or was he simply the product of a society so well ordered that fear had become as anachronistic as smallpox?

  That was it, of course. And that was the argument he should have used on the cop. Without law, without justice, no man is safe from fear, and fear has no place among civilized men. Put that in your smelly cigar and smoke it, amigo Nelson.

  Meadows’s world held no one like Nelson. Tough, cynical, ruthless and probably very effective. Meadows pitied the criminal flotsam that fell into Nelson’s hands. Like going to bed with a bobcat. A psychiatrist would have a field day with Nelson, would peel him layer by solid layer, like an artichoke. And in the process would no doubt destroy him as a good cop. To allow people like me to live without fear, Meadows concluded, society produces people like Nelson.…

  But Meadows had coped, hadn’t he? He hadn’t wet his pants. He hadn’t fainted or run in circles. He had called for help, and he had dealt rationally with the strange man who had come to help him. With Nelson’s macabre prodding he had taken the only logical decision open to him. It was not a hero’s decision, but it was a sensible one, an architect’s decision made after measured analysis of form and stress. Meadows was running away, and he could live with his flight.

  Terry was something else again. Could he live with Terry? Was that what she wanted? She had left a lot unsaid at the airport, and that in itself was saying a lot. Meadows savored Terry as a rarity among women: She never engaged the tongue without first putting the mind in gear. So he was meant to think about Chris & Terry, twin hearts on a tree. Well, he would think about it. And while he thought, he would go see Dana. He already felt terrible about that. Damn Terry. Like Nelson, she, too, had set him up.

  Dana had offered to meet him at La Guardia, but he had refused. Airports made him nervous. All he ever wanted from them was to be allowed to get in and out as quickly and painlessly as possible. He hated airport greetings only slightly less than he hated airport farewells. He would take a cab to Dana’s brownstone in Brooklyn Heights.

  Calling Dana had been almost a reflex action for Meadows. New York without long-legged Dana was like New York without Chinatown. Once he and Terry had gone to New York for a weekend, and Meadows had worried absurdly the whole time that they would bump into her. She would not have fared well. Terry was a fighter.

  Meadows drove up Twenty-seventh Avenue, his attention only partly on what he was doing. Paint stores, drugstores, a muffler shop flashed by in the night, all shrouded and locked tight. The only life in the streets came, as it always did, in the barrio. Traffic picked up there, and many cars brandished red, white and blue Cuban flag decals on a bumper or back window. Swarthy men in guayabera shirts clustered in gesticulating knots before shops that dispensed cigars, cafecitos and memories. A black and gold Trans Am cut Meadows off near the Flagler Street intersection. He took no affront. El barrio had its own unwritten traffic rules, and no prudent man drove there without anticipating some spontaneous display of brio. A red light that stopped traffic dead in staid Coral Gables was only a gringo challenge to machismo here. Meadows shifted down mechanically and swung around the Trans Am. The Ghia coughed in protest. The car was twelve years old, and it had been a long time since all four cylinders had fired properly.

  Meadows disliked automobiles. They were dangerous, expensive and unreliable, and he drove one only because there was no alternative in a city where public transportation was as lackluster as its architecture. Besides, for table-flat Miami four cylinders was too much power. On the other hand, the damned thing would probably stop running altogether before long. As he approached the airport, Meadows made a mental appointment to have the car fixed. It was a promise he made religiously about once a month.

  Growth had driven the airport to reckless extremes. Once a spacious ground-level parking lot had beckoned before the terminal building. Now there were five monster garages that were an affront to architecture: windowless, soulless, concrete mazes the only virtue of which was efficiency. Meadows hated them, but he had mastered them.

  That had come after the time he had returned from a two-hour flight from Washington only to spend ninety-three minutes by his watch searching for the wretched car. Never again, he had vowed, and concocted a formula for parking survival that he shared with no one. It was simple: He always left his car in the last slot on the top level of the garage closest to the airline on which he was leaving. Sometimes, if he came back on a different carrier, it meant an extra walk—but at least he always knew where the car was without having to think about it. Like the owls and the rabbits, Meadows had learned to adjust to changing times.

  The flight to New York was on Eastern. That meant parking garage number three, a hard left as soon as the Ghia conquered the ramp to concourse level. Traffic was light that night, even inside the airport. The Ghia followed a Dade County policeman on a Cushman three-wheeler up the approach ramp. The cop went straight. Meadows turned left into the garage and began the laborious climb to the top. He never saw the sleek Trans Am that slid in behind him.

  The top level was empty, a few cars parked in gap-toothed clusters, but not a sign of life. Meadows had his choice of parking spaces. He left the Ghia against the far wall, pulled an overnight bag from the back seat, decided against locking the car and began walking toward the elevator.

  He was thinking of Terry and Dana when the Trans Am crested the ramp to the top level. The daydreaming almost cost him his life.

  It came hurtling at him like a torpedo, a rushing, roaring black hulk. What saved Meadows was the squeal of its radials as the big engine accelerated.

  He had one flashing glimpse of the machine rushing toward him. Instinctively he hurled himself aside. His leather bag landed under the rear end of a dusty Chevrolet. Meadows landed with his nose to the retaining wall, his chest in a slick of oil. His wounded leg screamed in agony. He saw stars.

  It was over in a second. With protesting brakes, the Trans Am howled to a stop a few spaces away from Meadows’s Ghia.

  Meadows pulled himself p
ainfully to his feet from the hot concrete floor. He felt like an old man. Nothing seemed broken, but his leg hurt like hell, and there was a six-inch scrape on his left arm. The oil had ruined his shirt. His pants were ripped. His head ached. Most of all, he was angry.

  “Dumb son of a bitch!” he yelled. This was the last straw. He had been shot. He had nearly been electrocuted. He was being run out of town, and now some stupid bastard had nearly run him over. Limping, Meadows stormed toward the Trans Am. One punch, he thought, and then throw the car keys off the roof. If anybody deserved it, it was this schmuck.

  The driver’s door of the Trans Am opened slowly as Meadows approached. Domingo Sosa, the man called Mono, got out.

  Casually, with studied indifference, with the movements of a man who has all the time in the world, Mono stretched. He worked his shoulders. And then he turned to face Meadows.

  “Buenas noches, caballero,” Mono said.

  Mono wore white shoes, white pants and a white belt. He wore a white silk shirt open nearly to the waist. From his neck hung a thick golden chain. His bushy black mustache was artfully trimmed. His shiny black hair was combed straight back. On his left wrist he wore a large gold watch. In his right hand he held a long knife. The knife shone dully in the fluorescent lights.

  Meadows saw all this without seeing. Never had he experienced such twin currents of anger and shock. His knees trembled. His right eyelid began to tic. He almost vomited. Yet he was so angry he almost threw himself at Mono. He might have—but he didn’t. Christopher Meadows whirled and ran.

  His leg ached from the first step, a searing, tearing pain that embodied his fear. He must stop. No, he must run. It was more of a limp than a run as Meadows approached the garage elevator. He could not stop. To stop was to die.

  Gasping, Meadows reached the elevator. His hand clawed along the pastel wall for the down button. It lit at a touch. The indicator light atop the door showed the elevator on level three. Meadows could hear it begin to move. He looked back. Mono was about thirty yards away, running softly with effortless strides.

  Meadows forced his hands against the elevator doors, as though to pry them open. Then he heard the elevator stop. The indicator read four.

  Meadows shivered. His whole body felt chill, as chill as a corpse in the morgue. His breath came in great sobs as he pushed himself away from the betraying elevator and staggered toward a gray metal door marked Stairs.

  The door was stiff. It would not move. Meadows pushed with all his strength. Finally it gave, opening into a barely lit, cavernous concrete stairwell that smelled of damp and urine.

  Mono reached the door a moment later, before it could close. As Meadows started down the stairs, his leg felt as though it were on fire. Every step grated in the fillings of his teeth.

  The garage stairs zigzagged down to the concourse level; two landings per level. Each set of stairs had ten steps. Meadows clutched the dirty handrail to help himself down the stairs. After six steps Mono was only a few inches out of range.

  On the eighth step Meadows tripped. His weak leg collapsed, and he fell onto the landing. Rolling once, he crashed with his back against the unfinished cinder-block wall. He lay there, gasping like a landed fish, defenseless.

  Mono was in no hurry. He looked down at his victim like some Aztec priest measuring his next sacrifice, gauging where to thrust the killer knife. Mono seemed to be enjoying himself. He had killed in more public places. In this little-used stairwell no one would even hear the screams. Supremely confident, he took a white linen handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his brow and then carefully laid the handkerchief on the third step as a buffer for his immaculate white pants. Mono sat down.

  “Ahora te cago, gringo,” he whispered. “You are feenesh.”

  Meadows, as still and as tense as a trapped animal, shouted at him, “You can’t do this to me! What have I done?”

  “For me you are unlucky. That is enough. Will you die like a man or crying like a woman?”

  Mono tossed aside the cigarette and sprang lightly to his feet. He even remembered to pick up his handkerchief. Perhaps that is what triggered Meadows, the ultimate indignity of watching his executioner carefully replace his handkerchief in white pants.

  Meadows didn’t move quickly, but in his arrogance Mono anticipated no movement at all. Meadows levered himself up along the wall until he was in a half crouch. When Mono came at him with the blade, Meadows did not rise but pushed off against the wall with strength he never knew he possessed.

  Meadows aimed his right shoulder at Mono’s groin. He felt the knife rip his shirt as the shoulder went home. As Meadows drove forward, Mono jackknifed above him. They slammed against the concrete steps, Meadows on top. He heard Mono grunt as his spine absorbed the jolt. He heard the clatter of the knife as it fell.

  The impact nearly knocked Meadows out. It stunned Mono. Meadows lay for a moment atop the killer in an obscene embrace. Then he rolled away, and something pricked his good leg. Meadows reached down and picked up the knife.

  Mono lay unmoving. Meadows’s only thought was to escape.

  He could not go up the stairs—Mono blocked the way—so he started down at a shambling pace, leg flaming, arm bleeding, head aching. His right hand grasped the banister; his left held the knife.

  Meadows had nearly reached the third level when Mono was on him.

  Savagely the killer tore at Meadows’s neck. Meadows turned, elbows bent, and Mono’s momentum carried him into the knife. Meadows felt the knife slash through something soft. Mono lurched back, away from the pain that suddenly enveloped him.

  The knife came free, still in Meadows’s nerveless hand. A gush of warm blood sprouted from Mono’s chest and drenched his white silk shirt.

  Meadows ran again. He jerked open the stairway door and burst into the garage. It was deserted, a graveyard of cars. Still clutching the knife, Meadows started down the ramp. He was drained, exhausted. He felt unclean, and he needed help.

  He had gone only a few paces when a wave of nausea engulfed him. Meadows tottered between two parked cars and fell to the pavement.

  It seemed as though he lay there for a long time. Finally he pulled himself to a sitting position, leaned against the ramp wall and breathed deeply. He tried to cry for help. All that emerged was a hoarse croak.

  Gradually Meadows’s brain began functioning again. Mono was badly hurt or dead. There was no longer any urgency. He could pull himself together and seek help at his leisure. The nightmare was over. All he needed was to find a policeman and explain his story. Mono would haunt him no more. If he was not dead, he would go to jail.

  Meadows had only to sit somewhere visible and to wait until a motorist or the cop on the Cushman drove past. It was over. Meadows laughed a bit hysterically at the prospect and prized himself forward to sprawl against the back of a car.

  Five minutes passed. Another five. Then Meadows heard the sweet sound of the sewing machine engine that could only mean the cop who patrolled the garages. The machine was just entering the garage. It would come up slowly, a level at a time. Meadows willed the cop to hurry.

  He would have to call Dana to say he wasn’t coming. Too bad, but it wouldn’t hurt her to sleep alone for once. There was no reason he couldn’t go right home to the Grove. A hot shower, a couple of drinks, and in the morning he would decide whether to see a doctor. He was hurt, but he was functional.

  And that—by Jesus—was more than anybody could say for that motherfucker Cuban in the stairwell. The cocaine mob would have to find another killer.

  Meadows heard the Cushman clearly now. It was on the second level and climbing. The cop made Meadows think of Nelson. Wouldn’t Nelson be pleased to know that Mono had gone out in the same violence by which he had lived. One less scumbag for the Orange Bowl, eh, amigo? Meadows felt lightheaded.

  But there was something. Nelson…Meadows shook his head to clear it. Mental alarms sounded. A thought formed, dissolved, formed again. Pickpocket Luis…enough firepower to retake
Havana…hanging beams…

  Then Meadows had it, and he groaned aloud with despair.

  Nothing had changed.

  Meadows, wide-eyed, naïve, an innocent bystander, had come to the airport because he was literally running for his life. And now he had even more reason to run. He had killed the killer. In the cocaine jungle Nelson had sketched so powerfully there could be no greater insult, no greater crime, no more surpassing summons to vengeance.

  If Meadows reported the body in the stairwell to the police, there was no way on earth he could avoid being publicly identified as the killer of Mono. That would be his death warrant. Always Get Even. Never Talk to the Cops.

  He would have to remain silent. He would have to disappear. Then no one would ever know it was the shy architect who had, in terror, dispatched the fearful Mono. Only he would have that satisfaction.

  As the police three-wheeler neared, he sank behind the car that had supported him, crouching in the shadow of its hood. The Cushman passed him going up. A couple of minutes later it whirled back down. The policeman driving it had seen nothing, suspected nothing. Who would check out a deserted stairway at this hour on a quiet night?

  Meadows felt a great weight lift from his chest. Now he was truly free. So there was justice after all. Adios, Señor Mono. May your death have come hard. May the shades of hell rejoice in your company. There is nothing to link me to you.

  There was the knife, of course, but that was easy, wasn’t it? There had to be a dozen places in the garage where he could safely discard the knife. No one would look for it very hard. Where could he hide it? Not under a car; cars move away. Not in the stairwell. He could throw it out the side, but it might fall somewhere easy to see. It might even hit somebody. He could hide it in the ashtray by the elevator, but even if it fitted, ashtrays must be cleaned occasionally.