Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [51]
They stopped, finally, on the darkened apron of a gas station that obviously had been abandoned for a long time. Regular 52.9, said the twisted sign atop a rusting pump.
“This is the place,” said Nelson, gesturing to a well-lit one-story brick building across the street.
Meadows squinted to make out the lettering on the discreet black and white sign: Hidalgo & Sons.
“Jesus Christ!” Meadows said. “It’s a funeral parlor!”
“That’s right. Open all night. Best sandwiches in Little Havana.”
“I’m not walking into any damned funeral parlor.”
Nelson’s fist tapped impatiently on the steering wheel.
“We already played that scene, amigo. Either you walk into that place and do a little favor for me or somebody carries you into a place just like that much sooner than you would like. Think it through.”
Meadows did not have to ask whose corpse the Hidalgos were cosseting that night. He knew. He knew, too, that Nelson had maneuvered him with exquisite planning and logic.
“We gave back the body this afternoon. They’ll bury him tomorrow. Tonight is the velorio. The family will stay all night—it’s an old Cuban custom. Everybody who knew him will be here between now and about eleven o’clock. It would be an unforgivable insult not to come. Honor is foremost with these people. Remember that.”
“And will they be grieving and asking for the forgiveness of sins?” Meadows snapped.
“The grief will be genuine,” Nelson said. “Among both men and women. Latin men are not afraid to cry.”
“Then I’ll stand out like a sore thumb among all those sniffling machos, won’t I?”
“I worried about that, but it will not be too bad. That’s a big place. There are four bodies in there tonight. Four velorios. One of them is for an old Anglo-Cuban. Some of the mourners will look more gringo than Cuban. No one will pay any attention to you.”
“Christ!” said Meadows.
“I have two people inside; that’s standard procedure for scumbag velorios. They’re looking for the same thing you are, but they’re looking blind. That phone call I made was to tell them to keep an eye on you. Don’t try to find them. Don’t be obvious. Look around thoroughly, and get out. I’ll be waiting. I won’t move. Buena suerte.”
“Thanks a lot,” Meadows said. He wiped his hands on the soft fabric of his pants and walked around the car.
“Oye, amigo,” Nelson called. “If I knew who they were, I wouldn’t need you. And if I didn’t need you, you’d be in jail.”
Meadows’s first impression was that he had stumbled into the intermission of an off-Broadway play. A gust of chill air greeted him behind two gold metal doors that sighed open as he approached. In a hallway about thirty feet long and fifteen wide stood about a hundred well-dressed people. They all seemed to be speaking at once, and there was no mistaking them for Americans. They spoke with their eyes, their hands, their whole bodies. Mourners’ knots formed and dissolved in an almost stylized pattern of abrazo, besito and gossip.
If there was reverence, it certainly was not hushed. In one corner, next to a gold papier-mâché fountain in the shape of a leaping dolphin, a woman of extraordinary beauty held court. Five, six, seven dark-suited young men swirled around her, knights beseeching favor. She was charming, imperious, untouchable.
From a doorway with marbled Formica lintels a dowager mourner emerged like a battleship under steam: broad of beam, black-clothed, white-haired, makeup streaked with tears, chattering nieces and nephews her darting escorts.
A child of about six, pigtails restrained by pink ribbons, wandered anxiously underfoot. “Mami, Mami!” she wailed. Two middle-aged men stood spread-legged, cigar to cigar, arguing loudly. Politics, Meadows’s rusty Spanish told him. The men’s wives turned away, as though on cue, to amuse one another with