Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [64]
The notice was signed by a deputy minister of development. Meadows paid no attention to the name. He crumpled the Mailgram and threw it in the general direction of a wastebasket.
To hell with them. His studio was a shambles. He was afraid to show his face at the downtown office; Nelson certainly had the place staked out by now. No, the project was impossible. It hit Meadows like a foul wind: He might never work as an architect again. He grieved for his career, for his own spirit.
His universe, Meadows recognized with despair, had dwindled to two stark choices: to run or to retaliate. Running made more sense. Meadows could disappear anywhere: Chicago, New York or—more ambitiously—Europe. He had a few good friends in Brussels. Good friends would ask few questions and smooth the way. But then what? Tend bar, drive a taxi, sell encyclopedias for the rest of his life? Say it was only a few years until Mono was forgotten, until Nelson was gone, or dead, or in jail himself. Returning to Miami would be difficult. Getting back into architecture would be impossible. A career loses momentum and fades. Meadows had seen it happen to friends. Five years out of the mainstream, and they ended up designing elementary schools and post offices.
To run was sensible, but it was not appealing.
Meadows stood before a wall mirror in Terry’s bedroom. His sandy hair was ragged around the ears. His eyes were like radishes. The facial lines, incipient and vaguely distinguished in the best of circumstances, seemed now like sharp cracks in cement. He looked like hell.
The telephone rang. Meadows eyed it nervously. It seemed to quiver on the nightstand. He grabbed the receiver on the fifth ring.
“If you are sleeping in my bed, it had better be alone, querido.”
“Terry!” Meadows fought back tears. He wanted to tell her everything, beg her to fly home so he could curl up in her arms and sleep for a month until the nightmare ended.
“I miss you,” he whispered.
“Good,” she said, “but speak louder—this is a terrible connection.”
“Where are you, and when are you coming back?”
“I am in Honduras, in San Pedro Sula. And I have bad news. The mechanics have made a stew of the Convair. There is cargo stranded everywhere. I am afraid it will be at least two weeks before I can get back.”
“Oh.” Some of the disappointment was counterfeit. He needed time to get away, and he wanted her safely out of the line of fire.
“Please hurry,” he said softly.
“I will,” she said. A burst of static came over the line. “Listen, I must go. Take care of yourself. I’ll call again if I can. OK?”
“OK”
“Bye.”
God, he missed her, Meadows thought, prowling the empty apartment.
He settled down to reread the Bermúdez clippings. Meadows’s life was in shreds and this man, one greedy son of a bitch, was to blame. A slick politician with a politician’s perfect smile. The chamber of commerce, sweet Jesus, the Statesman’s Award.
He was the one.
Meadows replayed the scene in the funeral home.
The Peasant, Cauliflower Ear. And him. What had he said? “That business down in the Grove was stupid.”
Stupid.
Christopher Meadows decided he would end it himself. How, he didn’t know. It would be done in his own way and, God willing, in his own time. It would not make things right again, he knew, but it would make things just.
He moved swiftly through Terry’s apartment, searching, making a special effort at stealth as if someone could ever have heard his spongy footsteps on the carpet. He checked the double mattress, the cluttered and sweet-smelling drawers of her mahogany bedroom chest, even the glass bookcase. Finally he opened the nightstand and there it was, right next to her goddamned birth control pills: the gun.
Meadows lifted it as if it were nitroglycerine.