Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [50]
The driver was a man. Pincus noticed the cut of the hair, the size of the head, the way the fingers drummed on the dash; the guy was playing his stereo. He wasn’t paying attention. The driver ran a red light at Bayshore Drive, and a Metro bus driver flicked him the finger.
Pincus got stuck behind the bus and lost the Alfa Romeo. At Biscayne Boulevard the young detective made a right turn and started hunting.
ROBERTO NELSON had been sitting at the bar of the Royal Palm Club for twenty minutes when the stranger came in. He was tall and muscular, and his radically short blond hair was damp with sweat. He wore small round glasses with tortoise-shell frames and he sat alone at the end of the bar farthest from the band.
“New talent, Joanie,” one of the barmaids said to her partner. “I’ll see what he wants to drink.”
Roberto Nelson paid no attention. He drummed on the bar, glancing occasionally at the pudgy lead singer with the gelatin breasts.
Soon a thin dark man sat next to him. Roberto grinned and leaned over to whisper. The two men rose together and threaded through the tables toward the rest room. When they came out, a full five minutes later, they were met by the stranger with blond hair.
“’Scuse me,” Wilbur Pincus said shyly, stepping aside to let the men by.
“It’s OK, bubba.” Roberto Nelson smiled.
Inside the rest room, Pincus entered the toilet stall and locked it behind him. He waited for half a minute, but no one else came. Then he crouched on one knee to examine the tile floor. Flecks of dried urine near the toilet bowl. Some hairs. Scuff marks. And there…
Pincus pressed the palm of his right hand to the tile. It came up spangled with tiny ivory crystals.
THE BATTERED DODGE swept across the MacArthur Causeway and threaded Douglas Road toward Little Havana. Meadows and Nelson rode in heavy silence. To Meadows, there seemed nothing to say. Nelson seemed preoccupied. Once the police radio squawked, and Nelson spoke briefly.
“Five-six-one-five,” summoned a metal voice.
“Five-six-one-five.”
“There’s suddenly a lot of movement on that Morningside surveillance. Can you come?”
“Negative. Can’t you handle it?”
“Yeah, I think so, except that I can’t seem to raise one-one-seven-eight.”
“Stern and Garcia,” Nelson muttered to himself. “That’s not like them.” He addressed the microphone again.
Meadows listened with half an ear, his head filled more with roller coaster reflection than radio traffic.
Nelson wheeled into a cluttered parking lot underneath a flickering red neon sign that said Guayabera Grocery. From the parking-lot side of what looked to Meadows like a cluttered general store, an off-balance, belt-high counter yawned drunkenly. A waitress with bottled red hair swayed in the window to the sounds of the born-in-Miami beat called salsa.
“Dos cafecitos, querida,” Nelson ordered. “Y bájame el radio. Tengo que usar el teléfono.”
The music shrank inside its green plastic box as Nelson went to the phone, and Meadows licked tentatively at the scalding brew. He felt resigned, as though all emotion had been purged from him. Nelson would not tell him where they were going; all he would say was that it was a public place that would allow Meadows to wander freely and inconspicuously and to leave quickly if necessary.
“How can you be sure all of them will be there?” Meadows had repeated.
“Because I am Cuban and they are Cuban. That’s how I know,” Nelson had replied enigmatically. “Relax. No one has ever had a softer chance to walk away from a murder charge.”
Nelson’s face was drawn when he returned to the counter, his lips a thin, tight line. He swallowed the coffee with a gulp and headed for the car behind a taut “¡Vamos!”
They drove deep into el Barrio, past a noisy bar that promised Chicas Topless; past a municipal ball field where wiry kids with olive skin backed up paunchy father-shortstops; past a vest-pocket