Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [21]
“I went to school and studied to be a pilot. Never has anyone studied so hard. And then I borrowed the money for a plane—an old Convair. I found a copilot, and I flew that plane anywhere there was cargo.
“Río Gallegos. Puerto Montt. Cuiabá in the Mato Grosso. Potosí, in Bolivia, where the mountains are cruel and the runway is short. My company is called Cargas Aereas Nacionales, CAN. I fly where I say I will fly, and I charge what I say I will charge. CAN do! Now I have four planes, and the money I spend is my own. My father is proud of me; my mother dares not criticize. Tonight I flew race horses to New York from Venezuela. Before that it was Brazilian tractor tires to Tegucigalpa. In a few days, who knows?”
SHE’D TRANSFIXED HIM. Beside her Meadows felt earthbound, pedestrian.
“I don’t know why you hang around with me,” Meadows teased one day after a joy ride across the state in a rented single-engine plane had left him green.
Terry had laughed deeply and bitten his ear.
“Pobrecito. I should have told you it would be bumpy. I’m sorry. That was a terrible thing to do to my protector.”
“My protector.” It was a private joke, a shard of that first night in New York. They’d left the restaurant three hours later and wandered aimlessly through the streets of Chinatown, talking.
The mugger had found them near the river. Meadows gave him what money he had, almost with a shrug, as though it were a form of taxation people who walk at night must be prepared to pay. But the mugger had wanted more than money.
“You go for a walk, big boy. The girl stays.”
That had been too much. When the man advanced, waving a chain, Meadows charged blindly and seized him in a bear hug. For endless minutes the two men grunted in a clumsy wrestling match until their momentum carried them crashing into a steel trash bin, and it was the mugger’s skull that caught the corner. The chain clattered to the pavement.
Terry had tugged at Meadows’s elbow, but still enraged, he’d stooped down and methodically stripped the man of his clothes, mugging the mugger, leaving him in underwear and socks and moaning half-consciously. He’d thrown the clothes into a sewer, then bought himself two Irish coffees to stop the trembling. That night he and Terry had made love for the first time.
MEADOWS’S REVERIE CARRIED him onto I-95, through the long elevated curve that skirted downtown Miami, past the blackened sentinels of despair that the riots of 1980 had posted in the Liberty City ghetto. The dog track was only two blocks off the 125th Street exit, and the matinee was in high gear by the time Meadows arrived. The clubhouse seemed to rattle like an airplane hangar as the crowd cheered another skinny hound to the finish. Meadows rehearsed what he would tell Terry about the shooting.
She was hard to miss in the tawdry bar, tall and bronzed, hair like pitch and eyes to match. To Meadows’s surprise, Terry seemed to be studying a race program. As he moved toward her, though, first his gaze, then his path were blocked. Was the couple in front of him dancing? No, they were wrestling.
“Gimme the ten!” snarled a tall black man in a Panama hat. “You tol’ me to bet that dog. It’s your fault I lost.”
He clutched a belligerent woman by the elbows. In one hand she deftly balanced a plastic cup full of beer; in the other she kept a death grip on a crumpled ten-dollar bill.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off me!” she shouted. “You touch me and I’ll run to your goddamn wife.”
They twirled in a woozy minuet until a fat security guard waddled up and collared them both. Meadows slid onto the barstool next to Terry’s and sneaked an arm around her waist.
“Nice place you have here,” he whispered, “but welcome home anyway.”
“¡Por fin!” The embrace took Meadows’s breath away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Meadows said into the great black mane. “I have lots to tell you.”
Terry surveyed him hungrily. “Ten minutes, one race. I have made a bet.”
“I thought you hated dogs.”
“I do when they shit all over my airplane. But not this one. Look.” She gestured to the program.