Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [83]
“That’s it for this one,” he said, flicking the roach out the window. “Anyway, I got this ace lawyer who got me off all the charges. I bet I didn’t even pull a week, but while I was in there, the cops raided a farm where this old geezer was growing grass as high as alfalfa.
“So the cops chop it down, except for a couple real small plants, which they bring into the station for a display.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Yeah,” Moe roared, “for the school kids. They gave a tour so that the kids could see what real marijuana looked like. It was terrific. They brought a whole line of ’em just past my cell and pointed me out as some kind of fuckin’ criminal—”
“Which he is,” Manny said.
“But that night,” Moe went on, “the police chief’s dog—he was a beagle—got up on the sill and ate the goddamn grass right off the planters. Chewed it right down to the stem.”
Manny tapped the brakes as a behemoth tractor-trailer rig heading eastbound weaved briefly across the center line in front of them. “Shit,” Manny said, punching the horn. “He’s falling asleep.”
Moe didn’t notice. “Anyway, the chief comes in the next day and finds the pot plants all chewed to hell, and he knows what done it. So what does he do? He locks up the dog in one of the empty cells.”
“What for?”
“He was afraid the thing was going to go crazy, berserk he said, from eating the grass. So he locked the dog up, pulled up a chair, got hisself some fried chicken…and waited.”
“And?”
“And…nuthin!” Moe said. “The dog puked his guts out for about two hours, and that was that. The chief finally let him out after a couple of days.”
Manny, still smiling at the story, turned right down an unmarked gravel road. “So what kind of action you looking for?” Moe asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Meadows chewed nervously at his lower lip. Now, without benefit of any passing headlights, he could see nothing but darkness on Moe’s face.
Manny gave an impatient sigh. The van bounced over washboard ruts, and Meadows shifted his legs to brace himself.
“Man, you know what I’m talking about,” Moe said. “What is it you’re looking for?”
“I want to buy some coke,” Meadows said, laboring for a matter-of-fact tone.
“Who doesn’t?”
“I need a couple of pounds.”
“What?” Manny hooted. “Your timing is fucking hilarious, man.” He guided the van around a manhole-sized pock in the road. Hundreds of insects swirled about the headlights, casting a rush of dot-sized shadows before them.
“I don’t get it,” Meadows said.
“There ain’t no coke to be had, at least not in those kinds of packages. The last couple of weeks has been as bad as I ever seen it. Wouldn’t you say so?”
Manny nodded. “Some guys been in the business four years can’t get any more than a couple ounces. It is fucking amazing.”
“But why?” Meadows asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I got a theory,” Manny said authoritatively. “It’s the heat and the publicity. Too much goddamn violence down here. The governor and the DEA have been screaming about it at press conferences, all these crazy killings…I just think the wholesalers are laying low.”
Moe groaned. “There’s got to be a hundred warehouses full of paste down Colombia way.”
Meadows’s mind raced. “Then how do I get some?”
“You don’t,” Manny said coldly. “When things loosen up—and they will—the regulars will get first crack at the merchandise. The demand will be so great that the price will go up—”
“Naturally,” Moe said laconically.
”—and there won’t be much left for anyone else.”
“I can pay for it. With cash,” Meadows declared.
Manny tossed his head back and laughed without a trace of a smile. “Christ man, I can show you eighteen-year-old kids in Gucci Cadillacs who can pay for it in cash. That’s nothing down here.”
He pulled the van to the side of the dirt road and cut the engine abruptly. Meadows waited for the men to get out, but they did not move. From a few miles away drifted the diesel whine of a big semi on the Tamiami Trail. Around the van the night hummed with insects; ravenous clouds of Everglades mosquitoes bounced off the tinted windshield.