Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [74]
“I’m sorry.”
“Aren’t you even going to ask what he got busted for?”
“OK What?”
“Dope,” Patti said.
“Grass?”
“Mostly, but he was getting into coke and ludes, too. We lived the grand life, all right. Big home on the Intracoastal, matching Corvettes…too bad he was such a greedy shithead.”
Meadows got the feeling Patti wasn’t losing much sleep over poor Larry.
“Know what he did? He and three buddies went out one night on a big Bertram sportfisher docked up at Hillsborough. The Margie Doll or Maggie Doll, something like that. The guy at the fuel dock asks where they’re going, and Larry, the dumb shit, says they’re going out all night swordfishing. This dockmaster is no idiot, so he mentions to this friend of his in the Marine Patrol that a bunch of young hotshots are taking out a big Bertram for a night of long-lining. And the Marine Patrol officer thinks this is hysterical because there isn’t a fisherman in his right mind who goes swordfishing in January off Hillsborough. It isn’t even swordfish season. So the Marine Patrol mentions this to a buddy of his in Customs, and to make a long story short, when the Maggie Doll comes back into the inlet at four A.M., eight jillion drug agents are waiting for her. And there’s my Larry, bless his dumb heart, snoring away on top of five thousand pounds of Colombian weed. He’s up at Lowell now, doing two years. He’s very mad at me because I won’t visit him, but I made up my mind. I’m through with him. There’s a good chance he’ll be disbarred because of this.”
“Sounds likely,” Meadows said.
Patti lit a cigarette and looked around. “I wonder where Manny ran off to.” Meadows spotted the stocky dark man at a table with two women. Patti saw him at the same instant.
Meadows steered the conversation back to drugs. “You didn’t mind that your husband was smuggling dope?”
Patti looked up from her soda water. “Jesus, it wasn’t heroin or anything. He was selling to doctors, accountants, lawyers like himself. The year before he got popped, his income from the law practice was only twenty-three thousand dollars. He made another hundred and thirty-five thousand selling grass. I went from a shitty two-bedroom apartment in Pompano to a seven-bedroom house on the Intracoastal. Did I mind? No. Don’t tell me you don’t toot a little yourself.”
“When I can afford it,” Meadows said.
Patti smiled. “What about if it’s free?”
“Absolutely.” My mother would despair, Meadows thought bleakly, and Terry would bust a gut.
“Well, I’ve got a little coke at my place if you want to share it,” Patti said expectantly.
“What about Manny?”
“Manny’s busy with his new friends,” she said sardonically. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
Meadows paid the tab. They rode to Patti’s place in her car, a black Firebird that had seen better days. The sand-colored house was handsome in floodlights, and Meadows quickly assessed the design: a one-story Mediterranean layout with heavy emphasis on dark tropical woods. He guessed the price at $200,000.
“It’s beautiful,” he told Patti as she walked him through the front door.
“You’ll get a tour later,” she said huskily, leading him into a bathroom of alabaster tile and deep wine-colored shag. The powder was stashed in the hollow plastic handle of a man’s razor. Patti handed him a pinch that topped off a small gold spoon. This time Meadows did not resist, and it had nothing to do with being drunk. The coke kicked in instantly.
Patti took Meadows to her bedroom and opened the curtains on a spectacular view of the Intracoastal Waterway, slick under a clear tropical sky. A channel marker winked a dim red eye from a distant bend in the dark waterway.
Meadows stood for several moments at the window, wide awake and excited. His heart hammered in his ears. He willed himself the concentration of a diamond cutter; tonight there could be no confessions.
“That’s very good dope,” he said awkwardly. He thought it seemed the gracious thing to do.
“The best,” Patti answered as she sat on the bed. “It’s getting late, Chris. Take off your clothes.”
Chapter 19
SHE WAS awake early. Meadows held