Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [69]
“Know a lawyer named Redbirt?”
“Used to. I heard he bought it over the weekend.”
“Word gets around, don’t it? ¿Qué pasa?”
“I’m broke, Captain, that’s what’s happening. Help me, and maybe I can help you.”
“Fifty is all I got,” Nelson said.
“Tu madre!” the worm sneered.
“A hundred. No tengo más.”
“Bueno.” The worm blew his nose. Nelson held the receiver away from his ear. He flicked the soggy stump of his cigar into the traffic of LeJeune Road.
“Your lawyer friend is the first of many,” said the gusano. “The snow is going to melt for a while.”
“Says who?”
“Los Cubanos.”
“Oh yeah? And our friends from Bogotá and Cartagena? They all retired all of a sudden?”
“Believe it or not, it’s all been settled. No more fighting in the family. Hay paz.”
“I don’t believe it,” Nelson grunted.
“It’s what I hear, is all,” the worm whined. “Things are going to be very tight for a while, is what I hear. Where do I get my money?”
“What about Redbirt?”
“He had good connections, dealt a lot of coke. He was working his way up. A lot of the downtown crowd bought from him because he was, you know…”
“Gringo.”
“Sí, gringo.”
“Your money will be in the usual place,” Nelson said coldly.
“¿Cuando?”
“Tonight; six o’clock. You got anything else for me?”
“Nada.”
“Still pulling those b-and-e’s around the river?”
“Not me, chico.”
Nelson hung up and fished in his pockets for more change. All he came up with was three pennies; Wilbur Pincus would damn well have to wait.
WILBUR PINCUS thought about what he had: He had caught his partner in two lies.
Captain Nelson had lied about the Mercedes-Benz to cover up for his brother, a brother who obviously was into cocaine. At precisely what level of enterprise, Pincus was not sure, but it was lucrative, if judged by the price of Bobby Nelson’s house.
Pincus was deeply troubled. Octavio Nelson surely knew about his brother. But how much? For how long?
The second lie was equally disturbing, maybe more so because it could never be explained away as family loyalty.
The missing architect was nobody’s wayward brother.
Pincus knew Meadows had been hiding out in the Buckingham Hotel when Nelson arrived. Witnesses had seen both men leave together, yet Nelson had told him that the architect had spooked off before he got there.
It was a total lie, and it angered the young detective.
Now Meadows was missing, and Pincus couldn’t shake the gut feeling that he was gone for good, that hunks and snippets of his lean flesh would be feeding the pinfish in Biscayne Bay for a long time.
These thoughts clogged his mind as he sat in his Mustang, parked in the grass under the mossy arms of a ficus tree. Pincus squinted toward a bench on the other side of a city park. Every few minutes he would lift a small pair of Nikon binoculars to see better the face of Roberto Nelson as he tossed popcorn to a flock of brazen pigeons. This was the sort of idle nonsense at which men like Bobby Nelson would not be caught dead unless an important moment was at hand.
Pincus was distracted by a muffled voice behind him. Instinctively his eyes went to the rear-view mirror and his right hand crawled down his leg to an ankle holster that cuddled a small pistol. He saw two men on the ground behind his car.
“Come on, Johnny, let’s go into the toilet,” one said in a shy, low voice.
“Just do it here and get it over with,” said the other.
Pincus straightened up in the driver’s seat. He fiddled with the mirror until both men were in clear view, embracing clumsily under the shade tree.
“Fuck,” Pincus said. From where they reclined the men obviously could not see him in the car. Pincus was surprised they had not tried to break in and use the back seat. His first impulse was to storm out of the car and bust both of them for lewd-and-lascivious, but of course they would scream and fuss, and Roberto Nelson would get very curious about the racket across the park. Likewise if Pincus were to honk or start his engine. He decided he couldn’t afford to burn the surveillance, so he would be silent. He tried to tune