Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [38]
The impact nearly knocked Meadows out. It stunned Mono. Meadows lay for a moment atop the killer in an obscene embrace. Then he rolled away, and something pricked his good leg. Meadows reached down and picked up the knife.
Mono lay unmoving. Meadows’s only thought was to escape.
He could not go up the stairs—Mono blocked the way—so he started down at a shambling pace, leg flaming, arm bleeding, head aching. His right hand grasped the banister; his left held the knife.
Meadows had nearly reached the third level when Mono was on him.
Savagely the killer tore at Meadows’s neck. Meadows turned, elbows bent, and Mono’s momentum carried him into the knife. Meadows felt the knife slash through something soft. Mono lurched back, away from the pain that suddenly enveloped him.
The knife came free, still in Meadows’s nerveless hand. A gush of warm blood sprouted from Mono’s chest and drenched his white silk shirt.
Meadows ran again. He jerked open the stairway door and burst into the garage. It was deserted, a graveyard of cars. Still clutching the knife, Meadows started down the ramp. He was drained, exhausted. He felt unclean, and he needed help.
He had gone only a few paces when a wave of nausea engulfed him. Meadows tottered between two parked cars and fell to the pavement.
It seemed as though he lay there for a long time. Finally he pulled himself to a sitting position, leaned against the ramp wall and breathed deeply. He tried to cry for help. All that emerged was a hoarse croak.
Gradually Meadows’s brain began functioning again. Mono was badly hurt or dead. There was no longer any urgency. He could pull himself together and seek help at his leisure. The nightmare was over. All he needed was to find a policeman and explain his story. Mono would haunt him no more. If he was not dead, he would go to jail.
Meadows had only to sit somewhere visible and to wait until a motorist or the cop on the Cushman drove past. It was over. Meadows laughed a bit hysterically at the prospect and prized himself forward to sprawl against the back of a car.
Five minutes passed. Another five. Then Meadows heard the sweet sound of the sewing machine engine that could only mean the cop who patrolled the garages. The machine was just entering the garage. It would come up slowly, a level at a time. Meadows willed the cop to hurry.
He would have to call Dana to say he wasn’t coming. Too bad, but it wouldn’t hurt her to sleep alone for once. There was no reason he couldn’t go right home to the Grove. A hot shower, a couple of drinks, and in the morning he would decide whether to see a doctor. He was hurt, but he was functional.
And that—by Jesus—was more than anybody could say for that motherfucker Cuban in the stairwell. The cocaine mob would have to find another killer.
Meadows heard the Cushman clearly now. It was on the second level and climbing. The cop made Meadows think of Nelson. Wouldn’t Nelson be pleased to know that Mono had gone out in the same violence by which he had lived. One less scumbag for the Orange Bowl, eh, amigo? Meadows felt lightheaded.
But there was something. Nelson…Meadows shook his head to clear it. Mental alarms sounded. A thought formed, dissolved, formed again. Pickpocket Luis…enough firepower to retake Havana…hanging beams…
Then Meadows had it, and he groaned aloud with despair.
Nothing had changed.
Meadows, wide-eyed, naïve, an innocent bystander, had come to the airport because he was literally running for his life. And now he had even more reason to run. He had killed the killer. In the cocaine jungle Nelson had sketched so powerfully there could be no greater insult, no greater crime, no more surpassing summons to vengeance.
If Meadows reported the body in the stairwell to the police, there was no way on earth he could avoid being publicly identified as the killer of