Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [26]
“Oscar, you are having no more gambling problems, I hope?”
“Oh, no. I have given up. I don’t even play la bolita anymore. Not even for one peso.”
“That is good,” Mono said avuncularly. “If only you could talk some sense to these baboons. They dropped a fortune at the dog track today.”
Southwest Eighth Street, Calle Ocho, glowed a hazy orange beneath the sodium crime lights. The streets were deserted, save for an occasional speeding taxi on its way back to the boulevard. Mono stood for a moment outside El Hogar. His heart raced slightly. He did not feel like driving home; he felt wide awake.
His three companions slid into the gold Continental. Domingo Sosa did not follow. Instead, he walked briskly across Eighth Street and climbed into a gun-blue BMW parked in a space marked Handicapped Only.
“Adios, Mono,” shouted one of the men in the Lincoln as it raced away. Drunken idiots, fumed Sosa, mashing the accelerator three times to warm the engine. Then he slipped the BMW into first and drove off in the opposite direction.
Octavio Nelson and Wilbur Pincus scrunched low in the front seat of the old blue Dodge. They stayed that way until the Continental passed them. Cramped together almost flush under the dashboard, Nelson could smell some kind of mint on his partner’s breath.
“Let’s go,” Pincus whispered eagerly.
“Be still.”
Nelson waited until the Lincoln’s engine was but a hum in the distance. When he sat up, he noticed bleakly that the BMW had vanished, too.
“Shit,” said Nelson, gunning the engine. The Dodge protested with a stall. “Oh, shit.” He turned the key again and drove off as fast as he dared, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mono’s taillights and afraid to look over at his partner.
Chapter 7
THEY MIGHT have gone to Rio. Meadows later wished with all his heart that they had. It would have changed almost everything.
From the dog track, Meadows and Terry had driven to a small condominium Terry owned on Key Biscayne, an island twenty minutes south of the city. Along the way Meadows had recounted, as rationally as he could, what had happened in Coconut Grove and what he had seen at the track.
“I should have called the cops right then. They’d have caught the killer.”
“Probably not, querido,” soothed Terry. “If he recognized you, then he and his friends probably left as quickly as we did. Besides, it is better not to take chances with people like that.”
“I suppose so,” said Meadows, unconvinced.
“Dios, how I wish I had been here. You have been through hell, mi amor. Look, suppose we go away someplace for a couple of weeks? I will make your wounded leg better and your middle leg sore. I promise.”
“Can CAN do without you, Capitán?”
“It will struggle along. I have hired a new pilot, and Pancho can break him in as well as I.”
“Sold,” said Meadows. “How about Brazil? I’ve always wanted to go to Bahia.”
“Vamos. I know it well, and I promise not to introduce you to any of my boyfriends there.…”
They had gone no farther, though, than Key Biscayne, for the next night Terry had been summoned. One of CAN’s Convairs had broken down in Costa Rica with no hydraulic system and no way to move its cargo. Terry would have to go herself, with another plane: condoms to Peru, lumber to El Salvador and color televisions for traders in São Paulo.
“I will be back in ten days,” she promised Meadows on the way to the airport.
“Oh? How do you plan to do that? Rent a Concorde maybe?”
Terry leaned across the front seat and gave him a kiss. “We need more time together,” she said. “No more long trips for a while, I promise.”
His idea had been to go back home and amuse himself with the Ecuadorian project, but he found he’d lost his appetite for it. His house would be empty; there was too much cluttering his mind. No sense wasting drafting paper on thin ideas.
He was distracted, first by Terry and now by the sketch of the killer, which felt like cold lead in his pocket. When Meadows left the airport, he guided the Karmann Ghia onto the expressway and headed east, toward the meager downtown skyline of