Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [9]
“Su casa,” Meadows replied.
“Coño, chico, hablas español. Qué bueno.”
“Sí, hablo,” Meadows responded, and switched back to English. “Just now I’d rather not bother.”
“No problem, amigo, I only want to ask one question. English is fine.”
“Answer one first: Have you caught them?”
“No.”
“Will you catch them?”
“We’re trying,” said Pincus, “trying hard.”
“That means ‘No, we won’t,’ doesn’t it?”
“Probably,” Nelson said with a shrug. “Maybe you can help. Can you describe the man who shot you?”
“Not very well. It’s still a blur,” Meadows said, looking away. “I remember he was a big guy, and he wore aviator glasses. And he had a very prominent brow…it was so fast. Mostly I was thinking about the girl and her mother.”
“Rest on it then. If enough of it comes back that you want to try building a composite with a police artist, you call me.”
“Probably Homicide will take care of that,” Pincus remarked.
“I think he ought to call me,” Nelson said curtly. “The first name is Octavio.” He laid a business card on the table next to Meadows’s bed.
Meadows glanced at it, then took a sip from a glass of water. “Do you understand what it’s all about?” he asked.
“What’s there to understand? Two assholes broke somebody’s balls and they got killed. Bang-bang.”
“Tell me about it. I’d like to know.”
“Naw, you don’t want to get involved. It’s scum from top to bottom.”
“But I already am involved.”
“The hell you are. You’re not even an ‘innocent bystander’—like the two who were killed. You are just what the paper calls ‘a slightly injured passer-by.’ They didn’t even use your name.”
“The innocent bystanders”—Meadows controlled himself—“the woman and the girl, they were special people to me. Very close.”
Nelson seemed to admire the smoke spilling from the red edge of the cigar.
“Shit, amigo, I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t know that.”
Meadows knew anger then, ignited by loss and pain, exacerbated by the cavalier cop and his own feeling of helplessness on the hospital bed.
“The guy who shot me is also responsible for killing Sandy and Jessica. He ought to be in jail already, for Christ’s sake. It was broad daylight!”
“It is easier to identify the plague, amigo, than to kill all the rats.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Meadows snarled.
Pincus, who had silently watched the byplay, stepped smoothly into the ripening tension.
“Mr. Meadows, there is a drug war going on in this city, and the incident in which you were involved is one aspect of it. Eventually we will dominate the violence, but our resources are limited, and we can’t do it overnight.…”
It was a pat speech, Nelson thought. He had made it himself, less stilted, a dozen times. Now he listened in brooding silence. Dammit, he had walked into a minefield. He should have bothered to find out that there had been something between Meadows and the dead woman. No, Pincus should have found out. Pincus was the one who went by the book, wrote perfect reports and could conjure up a dozen conspiracies between home plate and first base.
Now, Nelson reflected, instead of a wounded victim who could possibly give him a glimpse of the killer, he had on his hands an outraged guy who looked mad enough to eat raw meat.
Meadows didn’t seem the vigilante or the I-am-going-to-the-newspapers-and-the-mayor type, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to cool him off just the same. Then maybe, once he had pulled his wits together, he would look through the mugs of dopers for the triggerman. If he was an architect, he should have a good eye.…
“Look, amigo, I don’t know how much you know about the drug business—” Nelson began.
“I don’t know anything about it. Why should I?”
“If you yell like that, you’ll probably start bleeding again. But if you listen for a few minutes, we’ll tell you enough about it so that you’ll understand why a mother and her little girl got killed in the street and you got shot.”
Meadows lapsed into glowering silence, but it