Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [63]
Meadows riffled through the clippings. On Cuban holidays—and who could keep track of them all?—Bermúdez seemed to be everywhere: the street dances in Little Havana; the domino park on Eighth Street; the Torch of Freedom on the boulevard, listening fervently to heated speeches.
It simply made no sense. Bermúdez was a man who did not need the drug business. He had a six-bedroom house in Coral Gables (featured once in the Journal’s fawning home style section), three clonelike children and a stunning wife. His name did not appear in Miami newspapers without the prefix “prominent Cuban businessman” or “noted Miami banker” or “exile leader.”
Meadows paced. No wonder Clara Jackson did not believe him. José Bermúdez was dead wrong for the part.
And he was perfect.
Could there be a better camouflage? Meadows mused. He envisioned a cop, say Wilbur Pincus, plodding about Little Havana, asking rude questions about Señor Bermúdez. The reply would be scalding stares, curses at such umbrageous suggestions. “Do you have nothing better to do, bastard, then harass honorable men? Get out! You are insane to bother Señor Bermúdez.”
The thought of such futility made Chris Meadows very tired. On Eighth Street they would laugh at his theory of José Bermúdez, cocaine broker. They would laugh, too, in the offices of Octavio Nelson.
Meadows stripped off his clothes and rummaged through Terry’s closet for a pair of old cutoffs he had left there. He permitted himself a peek through the curtains. The pool was churning with children and teenagers; sunning mothers sprawled nearby on canary patio furniture. Beyond was the Atlantic, indigo in the distant Gulf Stream and a radiant aquamarine where it lapped against the key.
Meadows struggled against desperation. “A prisoner in paradise,” he said with a sour laugh to no one. He could never go home. Home? They’d damn near fried him in his own swimming pool, then savaged his house. He grew sick, thinking of the wreckage and the filth. The message of their actions was horrifying.
What would Terry counsel? Call the police, Chris. The police who’d abandoned him at the funeral parlor, tossed him fat and high like a frigging clay pigeon. The police, Octavio Nelson and friends, were as much the enemy as the dopers. And perhaps more deadly.
Meadows was resolved to get out of Terry’s condominium as soon as possible, for her safety as much as his own. If Meadows was being watched, he could lead the killers far away from her at least. If they had not yet found his hideaway, he might still be able to disappear. That was a possibility, Meadows thought coldly. It would take them time, the killers, to track them down. Probably a full day of sifting through whatever they’d stolen from the house. There were many names, many phone numbers.
Meadows thought of Terry, of Arthur, of all his friends, and shivered.
And he thought of Octavio Nelson. When the rogue detective set his mind to the task, it would not take long—maybe twelve hours?—to find the frightened architect at an exotic girlfriend’s apartment. Meadows glanced at the door, half expecting to hear a cop’s perfunctory knock.
He gathered the material about José Bermúdez and stuffed it back in the envelope. Hastily Meadows leafed through the other mail, showing no interest until he came upon a Mailgram from Quito, Ecuador. He used a kitchen knife to slit the envelope:
SEÑOR T. CHRISTOPHER MEADOWS: BY THE TERMS OF YOUR CONTRACT, YOU WERE TO PRESENT TO THE ECUADOREAN OIL MINISTRY