Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [96]
Wilbur Pincus was not one of them.
Over the months he added a few details and thoughts to what already was in that blue notebook:
Kel-Lite brand police flashlight. Wt. 6.5 pounds.
Cruz medical charts, signed by Drs. Jacobsen and Krew, UM neurology, cites traumatic head injuries caused by rptd. blows.
12-18-80. Resisting w/violence charges vs. Cruz dropped by Dade State Attorney Office per OK of Nelson.
2-10-81. Cruz coke trial pstpd. due to hospitalization of def.
4-7-81. Cruz enters negotiated plea of poss. of controlled substance in exchange for two-year max.
9-8-81. Cruz out w/time served.
Long after the Cruz case was closed, Pincus continued to puzzle over why Octavio Nelson needed his flashlight to search that van on a day when the afternoon sun was like a torch.
One day, as he flipped again through his notes at home, Pincus decided it was time to unpack the little Smith-Corona portable his folks had given him when he had graduated from the academy. He typed straight from the notebook, adding more details when they came to his mind, correcting all mistakes with a patch of Eraso type.
A file was no good unless it was neat.
OCTAVIO NELSON GLARED at his brother. “It’s broken,” he said.
“It’s ninety degrees, Octavio.”
“The air-conditioning has been shot for three years in this car. I don’t mind it anymore,” Octavio Nelson said. “You want to get out and call a limousine?”
Roberto Nelson shook his head. He scanned Biscayne Bay, admiring the peacock sails of a small regatta tacking north. He did not look directly at his brother; he knew there was going to be another argument.
“Where is Suzanne?” Octavio Nelson demanded.
“New York,” Roberto replied. “Maybe Montreal.”
“Does she know you’re leaving?”
“I left her a note. I’ll be back by the weekend.”
“Where are you going?”
“On business.” Inwardly Roberto Nelson groaned. In front of them the drawbridge rose on the MacArthur Causeway. A mammoth barge nuzzled by three smoky tugs waited in Miami Harbor to cross through. Roberto Nelson would be trapped for at least fifteen minutes with his own brother, and he knew what was coming.
“Have you seen Mami lately?”
“No.”
“She’s looking better.”
“Good.” Roberto reached for the dial to the dashboard AM radio, but his brother seized him by the wrist.
“No,” Octavio Nelson said disapprovingly. “If we listen to anything, we listen to that.” He nodded at the General Electric police-band receiver. It was turned off. “You’re in trouble, hermano, no?”
“Sí, un poquito.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not running away if that’s what you think. Is that your theory? Cops got to have a theory, am I right?”
Octavio Nelson laughed contemptuously. Such an indignant fellow, his brother. So proud. And such a private person, so secretive.
“Mami asks about you all the time.” He let it go until it settled in Roberto’s eyes.
“What do you tell her?”
“I lie.”
Roberto Nelson turned sharply and fixed on his brother for the first time.
“What do you tell her?” he repeated.
“That you’re quite the entrepreneur, quite the import-export wizard.”
Roberto turned away, flushed.
“She wondered, you know how Mami does sometimes, how her little boy could afford such a house. I told her you sell a billion dollars’ worth of rattan furniture every year. I told her you’re the best in Miami.”
The bridge was down. Octavio Nelson punched the accelerator, and mercifully the car cooled with the breeze of its movement. They made the rest of the trip in silence.
As Octavio Nelson banked the old Dodge through the big curve into Miami International, he saw the five ungainly parking towers and thought of Christopher Meadows. Damn it, where was he? If he was walking around with a gun…Yesterday, out of desperation, Nelson had tried calling the girlfriend’s place on Key Biscayne and then, on a wild chance, the architect’s house in Coconut Grove. He’d gotten no answers. Meadows was underground, and Nelson was more than a little concerned about how and when he would come up for air.
His mind turned