Powder Burn

by Carl Hiaasen

  “I hope so.” Meadows left the second half of his response unspoken: I almost believed it myself.

  Terry’s fingers marched like soldiers with a mission along the inside of Meadows’s thigh.

  “Sometimes, querido,” she whispered, “you scare me, too.”

  Chapter 26

  JOSÉ L. BERMÚDEZ pressed the button for the twentieth floor. His hand explored a breast pocket of his pale suit. The speech was still there. One of the secretaries would have to retype it before noon. He hit the 20 button again, and the elevator doors whispered together, then stopped.

  A huge black hand had inserted itself.

  Bermúdez hit the Door Open button. “I’m sorry,” he said hastily. “I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s all right,” a voice answered. A massive barn door of a black man strolled into the elevator. He wore a neat dark suit with a silvery tie on a French shirt. A lush, symmetrical Afro cut sprouted from his head. A finger the size of a small blackjack tapped the 19 button.

  Bermúdez stared up at his early-morning companion.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I can’t help but asking, but do you play pro football?”

  Arthur Prim smiled bashfully.

  “I thought so! For the Dolphins, right?” Bermúdez was jubilant.

  “The Steelers,” Arthur said.

  His eyes fell on the brown leather briefcase the banker carried. He studied it for a few seconds, then looked up at the indicator light as the elevator hummed toward the top of the building.

  “The Steelers have a fine team,” Bermúdez offered.

  Arthur nodded confidently.

  “I’m a Dolphins fan myself. I have season tickets on the forty,” Bermúdez said. “I haven’t missed a game in two years.”

  “Yeah?”

  The elevator doors opened on the nineteenth floor.

  Bermúdez suddenly set down the briefcase and extended his right hand. “I’m José Bermúdez,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

  Arthur Prim shook his hand. “I’m Terry Bradshaw,” he said, stepping off.

  FROM NIGHT TO NIGHT the dream changed little. Always the colors were brilliant, beginning with the crystal blue ocean.

  Meadows was swimming offshore with a full, lazy breast stroke, his head out of the water. The beach was deserted except for two figures, a small girl with shoulder-length blond hair and a lovely tanned woman in a dark bathing suit. They were running hand in hand, and the sound of the girl’s giggling and her mother’s husky laughter drifted like music out to the architect. He paddled to shallower water until his feet met the grainy bottom. Standing upright, he shouted and waved happily with both arms.

  The girl and the woman stopped running and waved back. The little one yelled something. Meadows put a hand to his right ear, to show that he was out of earshot. They strolled toward the water, and the little girl shouted again, this time cupping her tiny hands to her mouth.

  Meadows was still too far to hear. He began to move out of the water, skating his legs against a mild undertow. “Just a minute,” he shouted, but the words died in a mounting rush of engine noise.

  Meadows scanned the clouds but found no airplane. Looking down the beach, he located the source of the roar, a red Ford Mustang. It churned along the water’s edge, its fat tires spitting beach sand with the exhaust.

  “Look out!” Meadows called to the woman and her daughter. But they would not take their eyes off him. They smiled and waved stupidly. Meadows pointed with both arms.

  “Watch out for the car! Get in the water, hurry!”

  Out of nowhere the little girl produced an ice cream cone and held it out, motioning for Meadows to come get his present. He thrashed toward the beach, and the splashing of his legs drowned in the earsplitting approach of the car, a blur now, one hundred yards and closing fast. Behind the windshield Meadows could see the forms, but not the faces, of two dark men.

  The offshore current suddenly seemed to hug his midsection, driving him back a step. Using his arms, Meadows lifted each leg and pushed forward toward the beach. He knew he would never get there in time.

  Couldn’t they see the car?

  The woman and the little blond girl watched him curiously, smiling. They thought he was clowning around, trying to make them laugh.

  Meadows was only a few yards from shore when his legs buckled and his feet went out from under him, cleaned out by some invisible cross-block. He went down in slow motion, a horrid freeze-frame image of the girl, her mother and the speeding car locked in his eyes.

  A terrible cry sprung from Meadows’s lungs as he fell, but it died in his throat as his head went under.

  Run, it said.

  When he came up, the woman and her blond daughter lay in a broken, bloody heap on the beach. The red Mustang was stopped fifty yards away. The two men were unfurling a canary-colored beach towel to lie down on.

  Meadows dug his fingers into the wet-cement sand and dragged himself out of the water, crying. He stood up, weaving, and made his way to where the bodies lay.

  The little girl’s eyes, as green as his own, seemed to stare past him into the boiling sun. Blood ran in thick trails from both nostrils.

  Meadows fell to his knees, sick and dizzy. He keeled sideways, and his head hit the beach with no sound. He scrabbled pathetically at the packed sand, and he lifted two handfuls, letting the grains sprinkle down on his face and hair. He noticed that it was not sand at all, but something flaky and white.

  “Cocaine,” Meadows said aloud, closing his eyes. Dunes of cocaine.

  The last thing he heard was the noise of a car being started.

  He awoke, as always, damp in an acrid sweat and clutching for Terry. But her half of the bed was empty. Still trembling, Meadows shambled toward the kitchen, where he heard her voice on the phone. He folded himself into a hard-back chair at the table and tried to shake the dark fog of the dream.

  “Yes, señorita, is this La Cumparsita? Bueno, I am calling for Señor Bermúdez…yes, yes, I am one of his secretaries.” Terry giggled. “Oh, yes, he has several.”

  A real pro, Meadows thought proudly. She’s perfect.

  “Señor Bermúdez would like to verify his reservation for tonight…oh? Don’t tell me he got it wrong again. Oh, my. Yes…certain. You’re sure. Sí. Thank you very much.”

  Terry hung up. “How about some orange juice?” she asked.

  Meadows nodded and started to talk.

  “It’s tomorrow night,” she said solemnly. “Eight o’clock. And you were right. The reservations were in his name.” Terry opened the refrigerator and began gathering the breakfast items. Meadows could not see her face but he heard her voice.

  “It was just like you said,” she murmured.

  Meadows stood up and stretched so hard his elbow joints cracked audibly. He was wide awake.

  THE YOUNG BLACK woman behind the counter beamed when she saw him. “It’s been awhile, Christopher.”

  “Yes, Sally.” Meadows smiled back. “You look terrific.”

  She shrugged. “I guess the jogging helps. Haven’t seen you on the course lately. You been in town?”

  “In and out,” Meadows said casually. He started to mention the leg injury but thought better of it.

  “What do you need?”

  “There’s a Cuban restaurant on Twenty-seventh Avenue near Seventh Street. It’s called La Cumparsita. They are expanding the operation, and they’d like me to redesign the whole thing. Trouble is, they can’t find the working papers.”

  “The owners?” Sally said. “Lord.”

  “Well, it’s changed hands once or twice,” Meadows said, groping. “I guess the blueprints got lost in the shuffle.”

  “Well, that’s what your friendly county building department is for,” she said. “Give me that address again.”

  Sally was back in five minutes with a sheath of yellowed papers that curled themselves at the edges when she tried to set them on the counter. Meadows peeled through them until he found t
he contract documents.

  “I can make a copy for you,” Sally offered. “Won’t even charge you the twelve-dollar fee.”

  “It’s up to twelve?” Meadows said with mock surprise. “I think I can handle that, Sally, but does it still take two weeks to get blueprints duplicated?”

  “At least. I can move you to the top of the waiting list.”

  “You’re wonderful,” Meadows said warmly. “But I’m afraid I need these today.”

  Sally looked puzzled. “Your clients are in a hurry, huh?”

  “No, I’m in a hurry, Sal. This is going to be a real drag, and I’d like to polish it off as soon as possible. Get on to more exciting things.”

  “I can’t remember the last time you did a restaurant,” she remarked.

  “Oh, I just don’t brag about them like the other guys.” He carried the drawings to a long table at the end of the room and spread the blueprints out. To keep the corners from springing up, Meadows laid his briefcase across the top edge and a chipped glass ashtray across the bottom. He set an onionskin sketch pad on his lap and, with a finely sharpened No. 2 lead pencil, began to duplicate the working plans for La Cumparsita’s restaurant. He’d never had much of a gift for guessing dimensions, so he used a slide rule to ensure that his freehand plans were true to scale.

  The blueprints were dated February 17, 1957. Meadows winced. There was no telling what random changes had transformed the interior since then.

  It was just a hole in the wall, Meadows mused. Sixty by thirty, table space. A small bar running twenty feet along the east wall. The kitchen was like a cell, ten by thirty with an exit.

  The drawings indicated rest rooms at the south end, with a fire exit in between. There was a small room, three by three, next to the women’s rest room. Meadows guessed it to be a pantry or janitor’s closet.

  He duplicated every detail, including the dimension of the lot, the parking area and the front easement, which faced busy Twenty-seventh Avenue. When he was done, he carried the papers back to Sally.

  “It was good seeing you again,” he said.

  “You, too,” she replied. “I like your hair like that.”

  Meadows felt himself redden.

  “You want me to send the copies to your office?”

  “What?”

  Sally laughed. “I mean, you aren’t going to work from that, are you?” She motioned to the sketch in his hand.

  “Oh…no,” Meadows fumbled. “This…this is just to fiddle around with until the blueprints come. I’ve been doing a lot of work at home lately.”

  Sally nodded.

  “Yeah, send the copies to the office,” Meadows said, heading toward the door, “as usual, Sally.”

  JOSÉ BERMÚDEZ TOOK one sip of the Chablis and winced; his wife’s hand tugged at his elbow.

  “Please,” she said in faultless English. “Act like it tastes fine.”

  “This is goat piss,” Bermúdez muttered. He set the glass down and smiled across the table at Mayor Rubén Carrollo. To the mayor’s right was a county commissioner; to his left, an executive from the University of Miami. Next to the executive was the publisher of the Miami Journal, J. B. Deene, accompanied by an editor whose name Bermúdez had already forgotten. It was quite a table of dignitaries.

  “Your speech all prepared?” Carrollo asked.

  Bermúdez nodded and tapped his chest. “Always I am a bit nervous when I have to talk to a big crowd.”

  “Better get used to it,” Carrollo said, winking.

  Donna Bermúdez beamed.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…” The voice came from a stumpy red-faced man at a podium, not far across the hotel ballroom. Behind him, fastened to a ghastly green curtain, was a banner that said United Charities of Dade—Hop on the Bandwagon!

  “I am proud to introduce our keynote speaker for today’s kickoff luncheon.”

  Bermúdez speared a baby tomato in his salad and ate it off the fork. He looked around the ballroom and counted a half dozen people yawning. Already, he mused.

  Carrollo leaned across the table and whispered, “I thought you handled yourself very well in Washington last week.”

  “Thank you,” Bermúdez said. “I only told the truth.”

  “Of course.”

  “I cannot stop people from depositing money in my bank,” he said. “What would happen if I asked every customer where he got his cash?”

  Carrollo shook his head and reached for the wine. “I thought the questioning was very unfair. After everything you’ve done for this community.”

  Bermúdez seemed to be heating up. “I told them that what they wanted was impossible. I am a businessman, a banker, not a damned narcotics agent!”

  “…and, of course, we can thank him for the Downtown Community Center,” boomed the man at the podium, “the Bayside Seniors’ Park, and—in large part—for the children’s leukemia wing at Flagler Memorial.”

  “Jesus,” said Donna Bermúdez. “You’ve got a piece of lettuce on your suit.” Her husband scowled and flicked it away.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this year’s chairperson for the United Charities of Dade, Mr. José Bermúdez!”

  Bermúdez rose, waved once to each side of the ballroom, then threaded his way through the tables toward the lectern. He waited for the applause to die, then slipped the speech from his inside suit pocket.

  “We have had a most difficult year in Miami,” he began. “Civil disturbances, a worrisome decline in beach tourism and unprecedented violence in the streets. Some of my dearest friends are considering leaving South Florida, but I have told them, and I will tell you: It is at times like this that we need each other the most. That, my friends, is what United Charities is all about. Friendship and need…”

  “A very good speech,” Mayor Carrollo said to Donna Bermúdez. “Did he write this himself?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “He stayed up last night working on it. This means a great deal to José.”

  “We are fortunate to have him,” the mayor said warmly.

  “…and by giving generously, by working hand in hand, we can remedy many of the social ills that have plagued our community, and we can bind the painful wounds of racism, of alienation, of lawlessness…”

  In the back of the ballroom two men stood together by a set of double doors through which uniformed waiters crashed every few seconds.

  “So that’s your man?” said the first one.

  “Yes,” said the second, swallowing hard.

  “He don’t look like a killer, but who does?”

  “I want you to remember his face,” the second man said.

  “No sweat.”

  At the table the mayor touched the hand of Donna Bermúdez. “Did José tell you I plan to run for the State House?”

  Mrs. Bermúdez stopped listening to her husband’s speech and focused on Carrollo. “Yes, he did. We will do everything we can. You can count on us.” She delivered the words momentously. The mayor took a deep breath and touched his heart graciously.

  “He’s almost done,” said the first man in the back of the room. “Let’s take off.” He wished they had not come.

  The second man did not move; each of Bermúdez’s platitudes seemed worth a thought. The irony was splendid.

  “And nobody knows better than those of us who came here to escape tyranny, to embrace freedom, to make our own way,” Bermúdez concluded, “what opportunity is all about, what compassion is all about…”

  “Let’s go,” the first man said impatiently. “Come on, Chris, before he recognizes me.”

  “Arthur,” said the second man morosely, “he wouldn’t know me any more than he knew Sandy. I could walk up to him now—”

  “Don’t even think of it.”

  “I could walk up to him right now and blow his head off, and even when I pulled the trigger, he wouldn’t know what on earth was happening,” Meadows said. “He wouldn’t have a clue. That’s the beauty of this whole thing.”

  Outside, Arthur Prim sh
uffled toward the car, distracted. Meadows pointed to a brown Seville parked in front of the hotel.

  “Look at that. That’s his car, Arthur, and look where it’s parked. Blocking a whole cab lane!”

  “Take it easy, man.”

  The heat rose in discernible waves off the sidewalks of Miami Beach. They crossed the street with a gaggle of old women, some toting open umbrellas to escape the sun. When they got to the rented Thunderbird, Meadows rolled down the electric windows to vent off the hot air. The two men stood by the car, waiting until it was bearable inside.

  “I finally appreciate your problem,” Arthur said to Meadows. “That guy in there—no cop would ever believe it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Even after what you just saw in the ballroom?”

  “Because of what I just saw,” Arthur said, clapping his huge hands together. “That’s the good thing about growing up in Liberty City. I knew junkies that could make you believe they were preachers. To this day I think some of them were.”

  “This man is a murderer.”

  Arthur stopped laughing and ducked into the passenger side. “I know, man,” he said.

  Meadows drove them west toward the city. There was an FM station that played classical music, but his one-handed effort to find it on the car radio was futile.

  Arthur idly opened the glove compartment and saw Terry’s gun. “Why you keeping this here?”

  “I thought it would look worse if it was under the seat,” he stammered, “if I got stopped by a cop or something.”

  Arthur slouched back against the headrest and raised his eyes upward. “Lord help us.”

  “Jesus, what good would it do me in the trunk?”

  “Are you still practicing?”

  “Yes.” After three afternoons of firing the pistol Meadows’s arm ached below the elbow. He was developing a callus on the fleshy part of the palm of his hand. Progress, however, was evident: His aim was now more than adequate—if perforated beer cans were any testament. The .38 caliber Smith & Wesson was not yet a friend, but it was no longer a stranger.

  “None of the goons were at the speech today.”