Powder Burn

by Carl Hiaasen

Interviewed Susan Lesser, B/F, DOB 3-21-48. Stylist at Pep’s Poodle Emporium, ph. 555-4457. Ms. Lesser says blue Malibu has been parked outside for at least two days. Doesn’t know who it belongs to.

  Interviewed Joy Burns, W/F, DOB 8-8-52, ph. unk. Works as silkscreen operator at custom T-shirt booth. Says the blue Chevrolet in quest. has been parked at mall at least two days. Ms. Burns says she is sure because her boyfriend noticed it one day when he picked her up from wk.

  Pincus walked out of the mall to tell his partner what he had learned. He saw a figure lying on the pavement near the burgundy van and broke into a run.

  He later wrote:

  Found subject, Aristidio Cruz, W/M, DOB unk., address unk., lying in parking lot bleeding profusely from head. He was unconscious and showed rapid breathing.

  Capt. Nelson stated that when he asked subject for identification, subj. suddenly opened the door to the van, which struck Capt. Nelson in chest and arms. Capt. Nelson stated that he ordered subj. Cruz to get out of the van and put his hands up, but that subj. Cruz attacked him with fists.

  Capt. Nelson further stated he struck subj. Cruz several times with his fists, which failed to subdue him. Capt. Nelson stated he then got his Kel-Lite and was forced to strike subj. Cruz numerous times before he could put the handcuffs on.

  Capt. Nelson asked me to call Metro Fire Rescue. A search of subj. van, Fl tag JOG-737, produced: one Head tennis racket, three Wilson tennis balls, two towels, three (3) marijuana cigarettes and one Adidas athletic bag containing 8.7 pounds of white powder substance in plastic bags. (Substance later tested out as mixture of cocaine and lidocaine.)

  Subj. Cruz transported to Flagler Med. Center. Charged with resisting arrest w/violence and possession of controlled subst. w/intent to distribute.

  That’s what Pincus meticulously wrote in the blue notebook. That is not precisely what found its way into the official arrest report or what the internal review board heard.

  “Do me a favor,” Nelson said that afternoon after the ambulance had left. “The headhunters are going to want to know if this was excessive force. Tell ’em you saw the guy come at me.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Look, we just made the biggest coke bust this month. That Cruz guy is a scum. I got a file this big I can show you—”

  “He can’t be more than twenty years old,” Pincus protested.

  “Means nothing,” Nelson said. “I got lots of work to do and I don’t have the time to waste in all these goddamn ‘use of force’ hearings. I’m asking you to do me this one favor.”

  They had not been partners long enough to read each other’s minds, or long enough to enjoy that peculiar we’re-all-in-this-together bond. Pincus was wary, but he was also green.

  “It’s no big deal,” Nelson said, “and someday you’ll need me to do the same thing. That’s just the way it works.”

  “OK,” Pincus said after a few moments. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand. If this Cruz guy was so wild, where’d you get the time to run back to the car and grab the Kel-Lite?”

  “Well,” Nelson said, chewing on the end of his cigar, “that happened right after you went into the mall. Before he went nuts on me. I asked him if I could have a look in the van, and he said sure. That’s when I got the flashlight.”

  “Then he came at you?”

  “Right.”

  So Pincus hedged on the report, hedged even more when one of the internal review guys asked him what he saw and downright lied on his affidavit: “Subj. Cruz then attacked Capt. Nelson and began striking him as this officer approached scene.…”

  Cruz himself gave a remarkably different version, but no one in the department seemed to pay much attention. Cruz was unable to give his statement for three months, until he was out of the hospital and the speech therapy had sufficiently progressed, and by that time almost everybody had forgotten about the case.

  Wilbur Pincus was not one of them.

  Over the months he added a few details and thoughts to what already was in that blue notebook:

  Kel-Lite brand police flashlight. Wt. 6.5 pounds.

  Cruz medical charts, signed by Drs. Jacobsen and Krew, UM neurology, cites traumatic head injuries caused by rptd. blows.

  12-18-80. Resisting w/violence charges vs. Cruz dropped by Dade State Attorney Office per OK of Nelson.

  2-10-81. Cruz coke trial pstpd. due to hospitalization of def.

  4-7-81. Cruz enters negotiated plea of poss. of controlled substance in exchange for two-year max.

  9-8-81. Cruz out w/time served.

  Long after the Cruz case was closed, Pincus continued to puzzle over why Octavio Nelson needed his flashlight to search that van on a day when the afternoon sun was like a torch.

  One day, as he flipped again through his notes at home, Pincus decided it was time to unpack the little Smith-Corona portable his folks had given him when he had graduated from the academy. He typed straight from the notebook, adding more details when they came to his mind, correcting all mistakes with a patch of Eraso type.

  A file was no good unless it was neat.

  OCTAVIO NELSON GLARED at his brother. “It’s broken,” he said.

  “It’s ninety degrees, Octavio.”

  “The air-conditioning has been shot for three years in this car. I don’t mind it anymore,” Octavio Nelson said. “You want to get out and call a limousine?”

  Roberto Nelson shook his head. He scanned Biscayne Bay, admiring the peacock sails of a small regatta tacking north. He did not look directly at his brother; he knew there was going to be another argument.

  “Where is Suzanne?” Octavio Nelson demanded.

  “New York,” Roberto replied. “Maybe Montreal.”

  “Does she know you’re leaving?”

  “I left her a note. I’ll be back by the weekend.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “On business.” Inwardly Roberto Nelson groaned. In front of them the drawbridge rose on the MacArthur Causeway. A mammoth barge nuzzled by three smoky tugs waited in Miami Harbor to cross through. Roberto Nelson would be trapped for at least fifteen minutes with his own brother, and he knew what was coming.

  “Have you seen Mami lately?”

  “No.”

  “She’s looking better.”

  “Good.” Roberto reached for the dial to the dashboard AM radio, but his brother seized him by the wrist.

  “No,” Octavio Nelson said disapprovingly. “If we listen to anything, we listen to that.” He nodded at the General Electric police-band receiver. It was turned off. “You’re in trouble, hermano, no?”

  “Sí, un poquito.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m not running away if that’s what you think. Is that your theory? Cops got to have a theory, am I right?”

  Octavio Nelson laughed contemptuously. Such an indignant fellow, his brother. So proud. And such a private person, so secretive.

  “Mami asks about you all the time.” He let it go until it settled in Roberto’s eyes.

  “What do you tell her?”

  “I lie.”

  Roberto Nelson turned sharply and fixed on his brother for the first time.

  “What do you tell her?” he repeated.

  “That you’re quite the entrepreneur, quite the import-export wizard.”

  Roberto turned away, flushed.

  “She wondered, you know how Mami does sometimes, how her little boy could afford such a house. I told her you sell a billion dollars’ worth of rattan furniture every year. I told her you’re the best in Miami.”

  The bridge was down. Octavio Nelson punched the accelerator, and mercifully the car cooled with the breeze of its movement. They made the rest of the trip in silence.

  As Octavio Nelson banked the old Dodge through the big curve into Miami International, he saw the five ungainly parking towers and thought of Christopher Meadows. Damn it, where was he? If he was walking around with a gun…Yesterday, out of desperation, Nelson h
ad tried calling the girlfriend’s place on Key Biscayne and then, on a wild chance, the architect’s house in Coconut Grove. He’d gotten no answers. Meadows was underground, and Nelson was more than a little concerned about how and when he would come up for air.

  His mind turned to other business: that Señora Lara who had called twice the past two days, both messages urgent, but neither leaving a return phone number. Something he’d want to know, she’d said. Well, there was plenty he wanted to know, starting with…

  “This is fine.”

  “What?”

  “You can drop me here,” Roberto said.

  Nelson eased the car to the curb under the orange and white Avianca Airlines sign. Roberto got out and struggled with the sticky back door until it squeaked open. He carefully lifted his suit bag and smoothed out the wrinkles. He closed the door and leaned over through the passenger window so abruptly that his sunglasses nearly slipped off.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Roberto said.

  “Sure,” said Octavio Nelson.

  “I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “Call a cab instead,” growled the detective. “A cab with air-conditioning.”

  The two men parted, Roberto for the ticket counter and his brother for home.

  The time was exactly 11:28 A.M.

  This was meticulously recorded in a blue notebook by Detective Wilbur Pincus, sitting in his own car near the Eastern Airlines baggage stand, his mouth as dry as plywood as he watched the send-off.

  Chapter 24

  “I’LL TRY him again,” Terry said. She slipped on a pair of clogs and snowshoed through the hot sand to where the public phone stood in the lee of the old brick lighthouse. A tender breeze off the sea rustled the coconut palms. The tide was high; the water, sparkling and fresh. It was an idyllic scene. Terry was not feeling idyllic.

  “Con el Capitán Nelson, por favor.”

  “Es el que habla.”

  Terry switched to English.

  “You are a hard man to locate, Captain. This is Señora Lara.”

  “Ah, yes. I got your messages, señora, but I have been very busy, in and out, and you didn’t leave a number. How can I help you?”

  “I have some information for you.”

  “Oh.”

  “About someone you’re looking for.”

  “Yes.” Nelson’s response was flat, emotionless.

  “In the barrio, people call him el Jefe.”

  “Oh, a businessman, perhaps?”

  “Don’t play games, Captain. We both know what kind of business.”

  “Bueno. Tell me more.”

  “Not on the phone.”

  “How?”

  Terry allowed a hint of impatience to creep into her voice. “If I give you this information, it must be in complete confidence.”

  “Of course.”

  “We must meet.”

  “All right.”

  “At Southland. Tonight at eight o’clock, in the main mall. Come alone.”

  “Very well. How will I know you?”

  “You won’t know me. I will know you.”

  “Bueno.”

  “One more thing, Captain.”

  “Yes?”

  “El Jefe killed my brother. I want you to get him for me.”

  CHRIS MEADOWS LAY on his back, chin high, toasting in the afternoon sun. Terry slipped off the light shirt that covered the top of her white bikini and gazed at him with affection. The longer hair made a difference, and the resolved set of the face. Meadows had changed. The gentle, intellectual architect was there still, perhaps, but it was sunken into something leaner, tougher, something that tasted of recklessness and danger. With a delicious shiver Terry lay down beside him.

  “He took the bait,” she announced.

  “Good.” Meadows did not open his eyes. He might have been drowsing, but Terry knew better. Meadows was weighing angles, checking distances, building, demolishing and rebuilding a tower of deceit.

  “I rehearsed so hard that I might have been a trifle theatric at the end,” Terry ventured, “but I think it went well.”

  “Um.”

  “I am sure he’ll come, and alone.”

  “Fine.”

  “He sounded very exotic, your Captain Nelson, very exciting; like someone I could really fall for.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Terry sat up in exasperation. “Chris!” she rebuked. “I am not a rock or a grain of sand.”

  Meadows opened one baleful eye.

  “Terry,” he said in a way that made plain that was all he was going to say.

  “You have never been ignored until you have been ignored by a lion.” Terry snorted more in jealousy than petulance. “I am going for a swim.”

  THE PIECES WERE FALLING together nicely. It would not be the most beautiful structure he had ever designed, but it might be his most inspired, Meadows decided. Nothing of soaring beauty, but not a house of cards either. It did not have to be permanent, simply strong enough to endure one man-made storm.

  There was still one vital arch missing, of course, but he would find that in time. One last arch should not be beyond the reach of T. Christopher Meadows, AIA, tempest maker.

  It was only two days since he had fled the lawyer’s party for Terry’s apartment, stinking of sweat and excitement and gingerly carrying the satchel of stolen cocaine. Terry had been waiting, fresh and fetching in one of those long-sleeved dress shirts. And angry.

  “Chris! It’s three o’clock in the morning. Where have you been? Why weren’t you here when I arrived?” Arms akimbo, hair tousled, legs planted like a boxer, she had surveyed him suspiciously from the doorway of the darkened bedroom, as though trying to decide whether to embrace him or slug him.

  “What have you done to your hair? What happened to your face? What’s in the bag?”

  “Is there anything else, or can I say, ‘Welcome home’? I wish you’d told me you were coming, but I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I didn’t know myself until this afternoon. Tell me what is going on, carajo.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  The cocaine bag in hand, Meadows walked quickly to the tiny kitchen. Terry stalked after him. He poked through the refrigerator freezer compartment. Ice trays, a chicken, something in tin foil that looked like a fish, about a half dozen packages of frozen vegetables. He pulled one out from the bottom of the stack. Brussels sprouts. Perfect. He dumped the sprouts into the sink, fitted the cocaine into the box and restored it to its frozen home. Terry watched wide-eyed, momentarily stunned into silence.

  “Now,” said Meadows in satisfaction, “give me a big kiss and make a pot of coffee.”

  “I do not want any coffee, thank you, and I am through kissing you until you start making sense. What’s in the box?”

  “Cocaine.”

  That stopped her.

  “Cocaine?” She echoed weakly.

  “Like I said, it’s a long story. Please make a pot of coffee.” As Meadows went to shower away the taste of theft and stewardess, a clatter of pots and a monologue of rude Spanish bobbed in his wake.

  As dispassionately as possible Meadows recounted what he jokingly called the “survival surrealism” that had climaxed with his theft of the cocaine. He left out only Patti and the stewardess. If Terry suspected, she said nothing, interrupting only once to suggest they climb into bed to be more comfortable. She listened quietly for a long time. “Querido,” she said finally as dawn tinged the Atlantic, “this is not like you. None of it.”

  “It’s a bit like getting caught out in a bad storm, isn’t it? You run and run, looking for a place to stay dry, but there isn’t any. And after a while it suddenly occurs to you that being wet isn’t so bad, that you might even come to enjoy it.”

  “Brrr!” Terry shivered dramatically and pulled the mauve sheet close around her. “Now what will you do?”

  “Well,” Meadows replied pensively, “I have nearly all the materials I need, so I think I will build a house for
Señor Bermúdez and all his friends—a special kind of house.”

  “It would be easier if you were latino,” Terry said.

  “Why?”

  “Then you would kill them, one by one, until they were all dead and you felt very good.”

  Meadows laughed. “I’d rather do it the American way.”

  “Bueno, mi amor.” Terry snuggled closer. Her fingers traced lightly across his chest, then danced slow circles around his navel. “You do it your way, and I will help you,” she whispered. “But now you will help me, yes? Not too gently.”

  MEADOWS RAISED HIS arms above his head and rolled over onto his back on the crisp white towel. Adrenaline coursed through him. Things were moving now, moving well. But he would have to be careful. Meadows was juggling too many balls. No, not balls, grenades. If one of them slipped, they might all explode. Still, there was no other way. He had to take risks.

  Manny and Moe and emptied-headed Patti were all risks. Chris Carson had dropped from their lives without a good-bye. What would they make of that? Would they conclude that the thin and nervous novice from Atlanta had stolen Rennie McRae’s coke? Had McRae caught a glimpse of him, or would they simply puzzle it out once their systems had flushed away the fogging dope and alcohol? Once they knew, would they come looking? Meadows thought they probably would. He could not judge how well they would look, or how hard. It didn’t matter. Ignore them. They were minnows, and he was fishing for shark. All Meadows needed was a little more time. If they came while he lay low in designing frenzy on Key Biscayne, too bad for them.

  The cocaine itself also troubled Meadows. It was like a dead rat, lying there in Terry’s refrigerator. Sooner or later it would smell. He had not wanted to involve Terry. Now there seemed no other way, and that troubled Meadows. Ignore that, too. Deep down, Meadows knew, she was tougher and stronger than he could ever be.

  And so was Octavio Nelson. There was no way he could be ignored. Meadows would have to take him head-on. That would be a trial and a danger. Nelson was the foundation on which Meadows’s structure of revenge had to rest. But could Meadows trust him? Probably not. Certainly not beyond the Cuban cop’s own self-interest.

  Meadows watched the coconut fronds rustle in a light breeze off the sea. The night before, he had paced the beaches of Key Biscayne with Terry and Arthur. Terry thought Nelson could be trusted in his promise to forget about the Mono killing. Arthur believed otherwise.