Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [121]
Meadows had the quarter ready, and he dialed the number from heart.
“Journal city desk.”
“Clara Jackson, please.”
“Hold on for a transfer.” There were three clicks, and then the voice of Clara Jackson.
“Clara? This is a friend down at Metro. Nelson in Narcotics just raided a restaurant called La Cumparsita on Southwest Seventh. They’re still down there if you’ve got a photographer handy.”
Then Meadows hung up. Maybe it was a dirty trick. Maybe Nelson would play it straight. But Meadows was one uptown architect who never designed anything that was not insured.
“Damn,” Arthur exclaimed, “I haven’t had this much fun since we upset Notre Dame.”
“You fell on a fumble,” Meadows said. It was done; he felt spent.
“Indeed, with six seconds left,” Arthur said. “In the end zone. Two green shirts hanging onto me like pilotfish.”
Terry asked, “How long before they open the briefcase, Chris?”
“Not long, I’m sure. They’ll take it downtown. Bermúdez will deny it’s his, of course, but we left Nelson a lot of rope to play with.”
They had packed the attaché case with care and cunning. In the lining, in a place where expert searchers were sure to look, were secreted two sheets of plain white paper typed by an anonymous IBM.
One carried names like Manny, Moe, Alonzo, McRae—all the names Meadows could remember, except Patti Atchison. The second sheet held a half dozen names with a plain black line drawn through each. The names had one thing in common. They belonged to victims of recent cocaine violence.
In the zippered compartment was a smoldering handwritten letter in Spanish to Queridissimo Josecito from a sexy lady named Carmen who could only be his mistress. When he finished reading it the first time, Meadows had been randy as hell.
“That’s some fantasy,” he had muttered.
“Fantasy?” Terry’s smile had been wicked. “Not fantasy, querido, history.”
Meadows had contributed a book to the briefcase, a handsome volume called Banking for the Eighties. A square section of each page, 410 in all, had been carved out with a straight razor. In this space, Meadows had reverently laid the bag of stolen coke.
One additional item completed the inventory: a receipt for a dozen yellow roses. Arthur had insisted.
NELSON TOOK THE briefcase downtown, but he did not pry it open for nearly two hours. First, he had to arrange the release of the three Colombians; if their documents were in order and immigration had no interest in them, neither did he. The two Cuban gunmen Nelson would keep for a while.
A shaken José Bermúdez drove home from La Cumparsita in his monogrammed Seville. The catastrophe at the restaurant surpassed understanding. He had gone in triumph. He had left stunned, in ashes.
There would be no repairing the damage with the skittish and suspicious Colombians now. They would believe he had set them up. And they had been set up—and he along with them. But by whom?
Not by the police. He had Octavio Nelson’s warmest apologies for the confusion and his most earnest promise to look for the young Anglo in the yellow T-shirt.
Still, Bermúdez thought, it would have been better had Nelson not draped a hairy arm around his shoulders there in the parking lot while the handcuffed Colombians were being herded into a paddy wagon. Most unfortunate.
Perhaps he should have gone to police headquarters with the old Colombian, stood by him, made him see that José Bermúdez had had no hand in the tragedy that destroyed their dinner and their relationship. No, his image in Miami would never have survived that; it would be hard enough to fend off the reporters as it was.
As he wheeled the Cadillac into his driveway, José Bermúdez made a mental note to order a better alarm system and to hire some respectable bodyguards.
OCTAVIO NELSON HAD never been good with locks, and it was nearly eleven before he jimmied the attaché case open with a screwdriver he found in the police locker. He sat on one of the gray varnished benches and examined the contents one by one, smiling wryly. “Nice try, amigo,” Nelson whispered, “but my way is better.” He heard