Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [47]
“That’s really all Pincus needs, amigo. He cranks up the computers, and in about fifteen minutes he knows that the car belongs to one Meadows, Thaddeus Christopher. No wonder you call yourself Chris.
“But where is Thaddeus Christopher Meadows? Well, that’s easy, too. He’s in New York. He must be in New York. He calls me up and says he’s in New York, doesn’t he?”
“That might fool me, amigo, but it doesn’t fool Pincus. He calls up Eastern Airlines and talks to its computers. They say a Mr. Meadows, initial C, was a no-show on the last flight to New York the night Mono got killed.”
Meadows knew what came next: the phone call.
“We do a routine trace,” Nelson says. “Shocking! Meadows, initial C, is not calling from Manhattan. He’s calling from some fleabag hotel on Miami Beach.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Meadows cried, tossing his head back and forth the way a quadriplegic might try to dislodge a leech.
Nelson sucked on the dead cigar. “You’re not a totally stupid man,” he said after a moment. “I won’t tell you we’ve got a first-degree murder case against you, because we don’t.”
“Why the hell would I buy an airline ticket if I was trying to set the guy up?” Meadows protested. “Why would I hand that lady a twenty? And why would I come here, for Chrissakes?”
Nelson nodded. “Good points. Self-defense is what I suppose your big shot mouthpiece is going to argue. Then the prosecutor will ask: Why didn’t he call the cops? Why did he hide the knife? Why did he pretend he was in New York?” Nelson shrugged amiably. “We don’t have a first-degree murder case, amigo, but we do have a case.”
Meadows stifled a moan.
“Suppose we go for second-degree or, assuming we get a pussy prosecutor, manslaughter. What does a trial like that do for an architect’s career? Real lousy publicity, no? You might spend the rest of your life dreaming up pretty gymnasiums or bait-and-tackle shops.”
Meadows closed his eyes and swallowed hard. Nelson spoke slowly, hammering every word.
“That’s not the worst of it, my friend. The best lawyer in Miami can snow a jury, but he will never convince Mono’s friends that you were merely an innocent victim. Or that their brave compadre deserved such a death. So it boils down to this: Guilty, you go to jail, a very nasty place. Innocent, and you’re dead two days after you’re back on the streets.”
Meadows was beyond shock. Heads you win, tails I lose. He wished his mother had taught him better how to pray.
“As far as I’m concerned, the worst thing,” said Nelson, “is not that Mono is dead—who cares about that dirtbag?—but that you made him die at precisely the wrong time. I tried to tell you at your place the other night: Mono was never important as Mono. He was a fucking drone, Meadows. He interested me only because he worked directly for el Jefe, the ringmaster of the whole fucking cocaine circus.”
“And that’s your prize? Your big promotion?” Meadows sneered.
“I want him badly. Domingo Sosa would have led me to him eventually. It had to happen.”
“Who was Sosa?”
“A killer,” Nelson replied. “He moved down from Union City. He had steady work. You were just a little overtime. It must have been quite a fight.”
Nelson watched Meadows’s eyes for an admission. The architect stared back, saying nothing. Nelson could see the fear. Intuition alerted him to the fury that underlay it.
“Mono brought some helpers,” the detective said. “Charming fellows; like lobotomized linebackers. I almost eyeballed them myself a couple nights ago on a surveillance in Little Havana. I’d love to know who they are because I’ll bet they’re about to become el Jefe’s new enforcers now that Mono is dead.”
“Newly promoted killers.”
“Sure.” Nelson tapped ashes onto the threadbare carpet. “They stick together. In their line of work it’s not easy finding people you can trust. They are here, that