Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [46]
The bathroom door. Lock the door. Knock out the screen. Go through the window.
Meadows’s hands reached for the open door.
“If it’s the window you’re thinking about, amigo, I already checked,” came the mocking voice. “There’s only one way you can run in the alley outside. I’ll be waiting.”
Meadows’s outstretched hand wilted lifelessly to his side. He leaned back against the cool tile wall. He could not run. He could not even fight. Senseless, so senseless.
Nelson sarcastically recorded Meadows’s return. “Well, there he is, dressed to kill.”
Meadows glowered silently.
“You sure surprised me, amigo. I figured you were mad enough to kill Mono, but I never dreamed you could do it. Killed by some architect who doesn’t know coke from sugar. Jesus, that’s a laugh. Wait’ll his friends find out.”
Meadows began to speak, to protest.
“No, don’t say anything. You’d only make it worse. I’m supposed to tell you that you shouldn’t say anything without a lawyer. Get a good lawyer.”
Nelson toyed with his cigar, rolling it in his fingers, watching the thick smoke dart in and out of the circle of light from a floor lamp. The silence grew. Finally Nelson sighed.
“Shit, amigo, don’t think I like doing this. I know you got caught up in something you never wanted and don’t even understand. But facts are facts, carajo. Mono’s dead, you killed him and you left a trail so easy to follow that Pincus will probably write his dissertation about it.”
Meadows silently gauged the distance to the door. He couldn’t make it in a straight shot, not with Nelson half in his path. Could he take Nelson? Probably, but it would have to be fast. But Nelson was a cop, and therefore, he had a gun. If Meadows sprang, would he have time to get it? Probably. Would he shoot? Yes, he would shoot. No way out.
When Nelson spoke again, it was in a low monotone, as though he were reading from a telephone book or reciting from a macabre rosary.
“You made a lot of mistakes. Mono would have done it better if he had killed you. Mono at least was a pro.”
Meadows listened, disbelieving. He stared at a spot in the Buckingham ceiling where water had cracked and discolored the plaster. He said nothing, fascinated in spite of himself by Nelson’s recital.
“A milkman found Mono in the car over by Lejeune. A milkman! I didn’t even know there were any milkmen left. Anyway, you remember those nice white seats in the Trans Am? Mono had a thing about white, I guess. The seats looked like they had been dipped in red paint. The cops who found him said they had never seen so much blood. Of course, it was dried. It looked like somebody spilled a can of red talcum powder, they said. Jesus, they’ll never get those seats clean.
“Anyway, it’s pretty clear to us right off the bat that Mono wasn’t killed in the car: no sign of a struggle, and nobody could have stabbed Mono like that without a fight. The ME says he’d been dead about two days.
“So he was stabbed someplace else and drove to where he died. About three blocks away there’s a Cuban clinic that never asks questions, so we know where Mono was going.
“But where did he get stuck? That’s the first question, amigo, and it’s not hard to figure out. See, Mono’s a pro, and when he left that parking lot at the airport, he didn’t race away from the toll. He paid what he owed, and he took a little paper receipt that says, ‘Thank you. Have a nice day.’
“Once we find that little piece of paper we call the airport cops, and they say, ‘Funny you should call because something strange must have happened in the parking garage the other night. We found a puddle of blood in a parking space, and we followed the trail into a stairwell, and lo and behold, there’s a whole lake of blood on the landing.’
“We know Mono got it at the airport, so the next question is: Who else was at the airport that night? About a million people, that’s who.
“But it’s not really as hard as that because I turn Pincus loose, and he’s a tiger on things like that.
“Only one of the million people at the airport that night pays twenty bucks