Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [114]
THE MAN WITH the cauliflower ear drank deeply from the bottle of dark rum.
“I will not wear it,” he announced. “I have not worn one since my mother’s funeral.”
“It’s a fancy place, hermano; you have to,” the Peasant insisted.
“I don’t care how fancy it is.”
“We have to look good for the Colombians. We have to baby-sit them while Ignacio talks with their boss. He wants us there.”
“Al diablo con los colombianos.”
“They are our friends now, and Ignacio said we had to look good. He said it twice,” the Peasant cajoled, smoothing his own shiny brown suit. “Vamos.”
“Mierda. Show me how to tie the fucking thing.”
“CHRIS, THAT’S TOO much make-up. I already look like a strumpet.”
“That’s right. A little more around the eyes. And take off the panty hose.”
“What’s wrong with my panty hose?”
“You can see where the stocking ends at the top through the slit in the skirt. It destroys the effect.”
“Whoremonger!”
“WHERE THE FUCK is Pincus?”
“He ain’t here, Captain; called in sick,” the intercom squeaked.
Sick my ass, Octavio Nelson thought foully. The devious little twerp was up to something, and it was auditioning for the DEA.
“How many men does that leave us?”
“Nine, if you’re comin’.”
“I’m coming.”
Oh, I wouldn’t miss the T. Christopher Meadows Surprise Party for anything in the world, Nelson thought savagely. Especially since I think he’s right.
It had been three days since the meeting with Meadows, and Nelson had worked almost nonstop. He had shown two of the architect’s sketches to cops and snitches and a few brave witnesses. Nelson sensed that another day or two of legwork would enable him to attach names to the faces. After that it was only a question of finding the dirtbags and rousting them.
The sketch of José Bermúdez was Nelson’s personal treasure. He had shown it to no one. At first he had disbelieved that Bermúdez could be the street boss “Ignacio,” the doper’s ingenious el Jefe. Nelson had known Bermúdez casually for nearly all of the time they had both been in the United States. He had even admired him—one exile who had adapted spectacularly.
Meadows was mistaken, Nelson had concluded in the dark emptiness of the police car that night at Southland. He had fingered the wrong man. Yet in three days Nelson had discovered enough about Bermúdez to change his mind.
He had learned from a domino player that Bermúdez kept a small private office at the back of a cigar factory near his bank. It was supposed to be a front for the banker’s anti-Castro activities, but it would serve nicely, Nelson mused, as a nerve center for other, less patriotic enterprises.
Then Nelson had learned casually through other friends in the barrio that Bermúdez had business interests in Colombia. And he had realized, almost as an afterthought, that Bermúdez’s bank office was only a staircase away from the offices of a dead cocaine lawyer named Redbirt.
But it was Nelson’s wife, Angela, who had scoured the week-old newspapers stacked in the laundry room to resurrect a lengthy article in the Miami Journal about the Senate Banking Committee and an investigation of the flow of illicit drug cash into South Florida’s banks. Half the bankers in Miami had been on hand in the nation’s capital to defend their assets and cover their asses.
José Bermúdez had been there, too, explaining as best he could how ninety-five million dollars in cash had enriched his bank in a single twelve-month period.
Meadows’s sketch tied it all together. The more Nelson thought about it, the better it fitted. What better disguise than prominence? If Meadows made good his promise tonight, even if he simply put Bermúdez in the same place with the two goons, Nelson would know for sure.
Nelson wished to God he knew what the crazy architect was planning. With his quixotic taste for law and order,