Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [20]
“I’ll be OK.”
Meadows stepped into the parking lot, and the harsh afternoon sun blinded him. He breathed deeply. Full of rain and summer heat, the air felt marvelous in his lungs after an hour in the stale autopsy room.
Chapter 5
THE PHONE was ringing when Meadows returned from the morgue.
“Chris, thank God. It you don’t come here instantly and rescue me from these miserable curs, I shall never speak to you again.”
“Terry!”
“Perro de mierda. ¡Cállate, carajo!”
“Terry, where are you?” From the receiver came snarls, barks, a howl.
“I have just brought two dozen mangy dogs from Panama to a place called the Miami Shores Kennel Club. I should have dumped them out over the Caribbean instead. Filthy brutes.”
“I’ll be right there. Wait in the lobby.”
“I will not wait in the lobby. I will wait in the bar, and if you are not here in twenty minutes, I shall run off with the first man there who tells me he hates greyhounds.”
“Twenty minutes.”
Meadows hustled back to his Karmann Ghia and pointed for the expressway north. The steering wheel was nearly too hot to grasp. Meadows hardly noticed. Terry was back.
Terry the wildcat. Meadows had never known a woman like her. She was to Sandy as a hurricane was to spring rain.
They had met at a party in New York the year before, one of those East Eighties parties so full of earnestly meaningful phonies that Meadows had taken one look and nearly headed for the door. Instead, he had sought out a quiet corner, and there she’d been.…
“MY NAME IS María Cristina Betancourt Issuralde,” she said after a moment, apparently deciding he wasn’t one of the bores. “People call me Terry.”
“Chris Meadows.” He offered his hand awkwardly. “How do you get Terry from Maria and all the rest?”
“It’s a nickname—short for Terremoto.”
“I am moved.”
Terry rewarded him with a grin, then, after a few minutes, said suddenly, “Will you please take me away from this horrible party? Take me to eat. I’m starved.”
“Sure,” said Meadows, delighted and somewhat nonplussed. “Chinese food?”
“Anything.”
Over dinner they talked, or rather mostly she talked and Meadows listened. She had been born rich, Terry confided between mouthfuls of Peking duck, and she bored easily. She was the eldest child of a South American land baron who owned huge tracts, and passports to match, in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. Terry had skied at Portillo and swum at Monaco. She spoke English, Portuguese, Spanish and French interchangeably. She had been to boarding schools in England and a university in France. She had been wooed by playboys and tycoons. And she had rebelled.
“There I was one day, twenty-two years old. I had known about men since I was sixteen. I had known about the world since I was born. So I asked myself: ‘María Cristina, what are you going to do with your life?’ It was nasty question.
“‘Marry a millionaire and screw the gardener while he counts his money? Run off with a sports car driver until one day he makes goulash of himself against a concrete wall?’ No, señor, that was not for me.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t find a good revolution,” Meadows ventured.
“I thought about that, it is true—and believe me, I look terrific in khaki fatigues and a beret. But I will tell you something about my part of the world. The revolutions all promise freedom and justice. South America is a continent of great promises. But what they deliver is nothing. And I will tell you something else. Take away the rifles from those tough hombres and they are nothing. A woman might as well go to bed with her teddy bear for all the good they will do her.”
“I didn’t know,” Meadows replied weakly.
“Revolutionaries destroy. I am a builder. So I looked around for something I could build, something romantic and challenging. I thought about it for a long time, and then I decided. I went to my parents, and I told them. My mother called for her confessor. My father yelled and threatened to whip me, but deep down I think he was very pleased, for we both knew I was more like him