Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [82]
“It’s getting nasty out there,” Nelson said, tossing the files on Wilbur Pincus’s desk.
“One Cuban, one Colombian—”
“Don’t forget Redbirt.”
“Right, and one Anglo.”
“And coke is getting scarce,” Nelson said, rising from his desk. “What’s your mechanical mind tell you about all this?”
“That nobody big is getting hurt.”
“Bravo,” Nelson cheered.
“And that somebody big is sitting on a lot of cocaine—”
“A whole shitload,” Nelson agreed.
”—and they will sell it,” Pincus continued, “when the time and the market are just right.”
Nelson grabbed a handful of cigars from a drawer. “Come on, sport, we’ve got work to do.”
Chapter 21
ALL THREE sat up front in the van. Manny drove. Moe sat on the passenger side, elbow out the window and a can of Budweiser on his lap. Chris Meadows sat directly behind them in a swiveling vinyl jump seat. The van was empty, except for a layer of cheap plastic taped to the floor and side panels. “Residue,” Manny had explained tersely. “I don’t want a single goddamn seed in this truck when we’re through.”
They headed west for nearly ninety minutes, Manny steering away from the interstate highway, the Palmetto Expressway and the Florida Turnpike. “You’re a paranoid sumbitch—” Moe laughed.
“Every time I been stopped has been on a four-lane,” Manny said. “Cops see me driving and something goes off in their heads.”
“But we’re clean now,” Meadows ventured.
Manny glanced over at his partner.
“So all those rules were meant just for me,” Meadows said dryly.
“You really think I’d come out here with no gun?” Manny sat forward, took one hand off the steering wheel and groped into the waistband of his pants. He withdrew a small, flat automatic and held it up for Meadows to see.
Moe burped, and Meadows got a faceful of hot, beery breath. “How about grabbing me another beer?” Moe crushed the empty can in one hand and heaved it out of the van. Meadows saw it bounce off a parked Cadillac.
“Ten points,” Manny said.
The van turned west on the Tamiami Trail, a treacherous and ancient two-lane highway that bisected the steamy Florida Everglades. Only ten miles out of Miami, and nothing but darkness stretched ahead. Manny flicked on the brights and goosed the van up to seventy. Moe lit a joint.
Meadows fidgeted. He had agonized all day about making the trip, but as he had lain in bed with Patti, waiting for his midnight ride, he had acknowledged something to himself: He’d never been more excited. It was one sort of gratification to see a building born, story by story, until it filled a skyline with one man’s vision. That was a pleasure, but it was meticulous, faultless, too damn well planned.
For what Meadows was doing now, there were no blueprints, no textbooks, no exactitude. Running the blockade was a project that demanded guile, skill and blind luck.
The architect’s nerves were haywire.
“Tell me about Atlanta,” Manny said.
“Muggy in the summer, wet in the winter,” Meadows replied.
“He doesn’t want a goddamn weather report,” Moe said.
“Tell me about business. How was business?”
“Good, for a while. The cops up there are much different. They’re—”
“Meaner,” Moe interjected.
“Yeah.”
Manny took the joint from Moe and sucked noisily. “How do you know about the Atlanta cops?” he asked Meadows. “Did you get popped up there?”
“No,” Meadows said quickly. “Some friends did.”
“Ha! Atlanta’s nuthin. They got damn Nazi cops in Mississippi.” Moe was blasting off.
“Tell Chris about the jail in Hattiesburg. With the dog.”
“That was Meridian,” Moe corrected.
Meadows leaned forward. Moe was beginning to mumble, and he could barely hear him over the engine. “What happened?”
“Aw, I got busted—this was three, four years back—I got busted for possession at an Allman Brothers concert.”
“He was scared shitless,” Manny said, handing the soggy last shred of the joint to Meadows, who