Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [92]
“Cumparsi?” Meadows asked.
“A restaurant, man. You have to be Cuban to know about it.” Alonzo moved his hand in circles over his belly. “No place like it in Little Havana.”
Meadows needed an excuse to go back down the hall, and it took a few minutes to find it: Jill, standing by the bar with a Saab salesman. Emboldened by the cocaine and the bourbon, Meadows put an arm around her waist and led her away. “My, aren’t we friendly all of a sudden?” she said.
Meadows approached McRae’s den and craned his neck around the half-open door. The room was empty. He could hear the lawyer’s voice clear from the living room, bellowing the chorus of “Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude.”
“Good,” Meadows murmured. “A little privacy.” He closed the door and twisted the lock. Jill stood with her arms at her side, looking up at him with a puzzled expression.
“I don’t understand you,” she said in a sultry whisper.
Meadows kissed her hand. “Take off your top. We haven’t got much time.”
They undressed hurriedly and made love on the carpet. Meadows moved mechanically, regretfully. His thoughts caromed from Mono to Terry to Octavio Nelson and, painfully, to Sandy Tilden. It was over in ten minutes, and he and Jill lay together briefly, damp and panting and covered with fuzz from the thick shag.
“That was nice,” she said, too politely. “I’ve gotta get to a bathroom.”
By the time Meadows could pull his trousers on Jill had already slipped out the door. Still shirtless, he hurried to Rennie McRae’s desk. He found the cocaine in the same place, the top drawer on the left side. His hand already was on the plastic bag when he spotted the gun, hidden in the back of the drawer. Meadows recoiled as if it were a diamondback.
Meadows considered pocketing the chrome pistol but decided against it. The gun probably could be traced.
He lifted the bag of cocaine, twisted it shut and deftly tied off a half hitch in the neck. It was now a compact satchel roughly the size of a softball. Meadows was sure it was heavy enough to break glass if he threw it hard.
Meadows pawed through some drapes directly behind McRae’s desk to a glass door that opened onto a small balcony. He unlocked the door and carried the coke outside into the humid night air. Peering over the railing, he gauged a target area. Seventeen stories below, he could make out an ixora hedge and, beyond that, a small tract of sodded land. There was a palm tree near a bench, which faced Biscayne Bay.
If the bag landed too far from the building, anyone walking along the waterfront might notice it. Meadows decided that it was the hedge or nothing. If he missed, a quick exit from McRae’s party would be imperative so he could grab the dope before someone else did.
He scouted for pedestrians and saw no one. The only sounds were traffic from the boulevard and muffled music from the condominium. Meadows leaned over the railing and dropped the plastic bag of cocaine on a straight line with the ixora bushes. He heard them rustle when the bag landed, but he couldn’t see it.
Meadows turned and took one step toward the glass door before he was paralyzed by the sight of a silhouette through the curtains. The figure was moving around the desk, making no effort at stealth. Meadows heard a man’s voice, and his pulse hammered in his temples. It was McRae, looking for another fix.
The lawyer sagged into the chair at his desk and began foraging through the drawers. Through a crack in the drapes, Meadows had a clear view of the back of McRae’s head, the ruddy bald spot at the crown. He could also see his own shirt, shoes and socks crumpled in the corner, and he prayed that McRae didn’t.
“Goddammit!” the lawyer grunted.
Meadows held his breath. McRae fumbled through the top left drawer. He set the chrome-plated pistol on the desk with a crack. He was furious.
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” McRae roared, lurching to his feet. Any second now he was going to see the clothes, and then he was going to search the room.… Meadows’s nerves were strung tight as piano wire. His eyes swept the desktop and fixed on a paperweight,