Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [49]
Meadows snorted. “A couple of sketches.”
“There’s more,” Nelson said quickly. “I think the man I call el Jefe will also be there, somewhere in the crowd. He will surely make contact with Mono’s associates. He needs them now, badly. Watch and listen very closely. Get him for me, Meadows. Bring me a sketch of el Jefe, and Mono is forgotten. My word of honor.”
“How can you be sure he will be there?”
“I know my people.”
“Then why don’t you put one of your bushy-tailed narcs in there with a camera? Pincus would blend in about as smoothly as I would.”
Nelson raised a hand. “Let’s just say this is my investigation, OK? Where I am sending you tonight, I could never go myself. Why? Because I’ve probably arrested relatives of half the people there and shared dinner with the rest. Now I’m getting tired of this conversation. Let’s go.”
A hundred questions sprang into Meadows’s mind. What setting, how many people, what kind of light, how much freedom of movement—the kinds of questions an architect might ask a client before he sat down to draw.
“What kind of place is this?” Meadows said.
“You’ll see.”
Two other questions, both vital.
One was whether Nelson would keep his word. There was no sense asking that, so Meadows asked the other.
“Suppose I’m wrong? Suppose Mono’s goons do recognize me. What then?”
Nelson shrugged.
“Que sera, sera,” he said.
Chapter 13
WILBUR PINCUS did not show up at the Dade Community College for Police Management 202. Instead, he left his two-bedroom apartment about nine and drove his well-polished 1977 Mustang coupe toward Miami Beach. With Nelson out picking up the architect, there was something Pincus had to do.
As he crossed the MacArthur Causeway heading west, the young detective surveyed Biscayne Bay, glass calm under a brilliant summer night’s sky. The sight left him breathless; he wanted to stop just to watch the ivory white yachts rumble south in the Intracoastal.
A group of fishermen clustered on one of the bridges. As Pincus drove past, he noticed one of the rods bent double under the silver muscle of a terrific game fish. He fought the urge to pull over and enjoy the battle.
Pincus came to the turnoff for Hibiscus Island, an exclusive dollop of real estate halfway between the Miami mainland and the beach. A heavy-lidded security guard scuttled from a wooden gatehouse and waved him down.
“I’m going to see Mr. Nelson,” Pincus said.
The guard peered into the car and nodded. “Need your name,” he said, lifting a clipboard.
“Wilson. Gregory Wilson.”
The gate opened, and the Mustang cruised through.
Pincus already knew the address by heart. It was an easy one: 77 North Hibiscus. A quick call to a friendly clerk at the tax appraiser’s office had bought him more: five bedrooms, four and a half baths, a swimming pool on two acres, waterfront, of course. Purchased eighteen months ago for $195,500.
Pincus found it all very interesting, but nothing so much as the curious fact that Roberto Nelson was able to put down $100,000 on the house. Octavio Nelson never talked about his brother, and Wilbur Pincus was beginning to understand why.
The house at 77 North Hibiscus was ringed with an eight-foot sandstone wall. A red phone hung by the wrought-iron gate—nothing out of the ordinary for the sort of people who lived on these islands, but damn unusual, Pincus ruminated, for a cop’s brother.
Pincus eased off the accelerator as he passed the gate. A pair of headlights emerging from Nelson’s driveway caught him squarely in the eyes. Pincus sped off.
In the rear view he saw a car pull out. It was not a beige Mercedes, but a small sports car. Pincus pulled into another driveway and turned around. By the time he reached the gatehouse the other car was halfway across the bridge, heading for MacArthur. Pincus broke a few traffic laws catching up. He fumbled in the