Powder Burn (21 page)

“There’s nothing deader than an old divorce case,” Redbirt joked weakly. “Everything’s in there under ‘List of Witnesses.’ Names, dates, amounts, the whole thing.”

Redbirt slumped back into his chair as Bermúdez rifled the file. God, he needed another snort.

“Excellent. I am glad to see my instincts about you were well founded. I will study these over the weekend. Let us meet again Monday. Would the same time be convenient for you?”

“Uh, sure, Mr. Bermúdez.”

“José.”

Bermúdez slipped the DeFalco file and the loan agreement into his briefcase. “Now I must go. There’s only one more thing: Now that you know who I am, you must never, under any circumstances, contact me directly. Just wait for ‘Morgan Jones’ to call. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly. I will never call you, Mr. Bermu—José.”

“I know you won’t, Lane.”

It was over in a second. Bermúdez slipped a silenced Beretta from the attaché case and fired once. The bullet took Redbirt between the eyes.

Bermúdez replaced the gun, brushed an imaginary speck of dust from his lapel and rose to leave. He was halfway to the door before he realized his mistake.

Wiping his hand in a clean white handkerchief, he rummaged swiftly through Redbirt’s desk. The tape recorder was still spinning. Bermúdez flushed. He took both spools and glowered with scorn at Redbirt. Then he shot the corpse twice more, once for each ball.

“Gringo de mierda,”
said José Bermúdez, mayor-to-be.

The wall clock said 5:40.

LATER THAT NIGHT
Bermúdez let himself into the darkened cigar factory in
el barrio.
Once more he had two calls to make.

The man Chris Meadows knew as the Peasant answered on the first ring.

“We are ready now. You may begin,” said Bermúdez.

“Muy bien.”

“I will be sending you some more names.”

“It is no problem.”

“You have two weeks. Work quickly and well,
hermano.”

“In Mono’s memory,” promised the Peasant.

The old man in Bogotá was slower to the phone, but no less obliging.

“Things are moving nicely here,” said Bermúdez.

“I am very pleased, Ignacio. Here as well.”

“Will you be coming for dinner?”

“Whenever you say.”

“Two weeks from tonight.”

“It will be my pleasure. But not spicy food, please. My stomach rebels.”

Chapter 17

WHEN HARRY APPEL
called Monday morning to say he had an interesting new homicide victim, Captain Octavio Nelson wanted to retch. It was no way to start a week.

“This one’s special, for a drug murder. White, young, affluent,” Appel reported. “Shot late Friday, by the looks of it. You’d better come see for yourself.”

“Shit.” Nelson sighed. The architect, had to be. And it was Nelson’s fault, deserting the poor bastard like that. What seat-of-the-pants insanity, sending him into Hidalgo’s to eyeball those pukes! Jesus, what if Pincus ever found out about that little brainstorm?

Nelson was morose by the time he got to the medical examiner’s office. Appel led him directly to the morgue, where a bare pale corpse gleamed on an autopsy table.

“I’ll be damned,” Nelson said.

“You were expecting somebody else?” Appel said.

“Yeah. Who is this asshole?”

Appel lifted a clipboard and read aloud: “Dale Lane Redbirt, attorney at law. Age: thirty-four. He lives at—”

Nelson waved an arm. “Who? Who? I said.”

Appel shrugged. “You’re the detective.”

“Harry! Tell me what you know.”

“It’s a small firm, even smaller now, Smith, Turner, Redbirt and Feldman. They do mostly criminal defense work. Redbirt here specialized in hookers and two-bit possession cases. In either event he often accepted fees in services rendered, if you know what I mean. His law partners say he was doing OK, no F. Lee Bailey, but pulling in maybe thirty thou a year. Has a wife, two kids and a secretary who screws anything that walks, him mostly.”

“Sounds like the all-American dream.”

“Right,” Appel said. “Except for the new Porsche and a refinished thirty-eight-foot Bertram. And how about a condo in Vail? And, oh, yeah, there’s this.” Carefully Appel opened a small brown envelope and turned it upside down in his hand. A heavy gold bracelet slid into his palm like a small glittering viper.

“Solid gold, of course. Cost about five grand,” Nelson mused. “You think he was freelancing, right?”

“Nelson, that is only an opinion.” Appel grinned. “I’m just a coroner.”

Nelson studied the body. He counted three wounds, one in the face, two in the scrotum.

“Not nice,” Nelson said. “No more screwing around for you.”

“He got shot in his office over near the river. The weapon was a Beretta, not the usual Cuban doper’s choice. A Colombian preference.”

Nelson asked, “And his wife?”

“Truly bereaved.”

“His partners?”

“In shock.”

“His friends?”

“Catatonic. Total disbelief.”

“Any drugs in the blood?”

“Some coke, a touch of speed,” Appel said. “Nothing lethal.”

Nelson and Appel walked out of the dank morgue. “Can I have some coffee?” the detective asked. “It’s been a lousy morning.”

“Captain?” It was a thin red-haired secretary in one of the office cubicles. “You partner phoned. He wants you to call him…some report you forgot to sign.”

Nelson groaned. “See what I mean?”

He and Appel drank in silence for several minutes. Appel scribbled some notes on an autopsy report, stopping only to hit the intercom button and fire directions to scattered employees.

“It was not robbery,” he said finally.

“The gold chain?”

Appel nodded. “They would have snatched the bracelet.”

“Anything else?”

“They didn’t touch the office, and they didn’t take the cash.”

“How much cash?”

“Two grand, and change.”

“Dopers for sure,” Nelson concluded.

“Yup,” said Harry Appel.

TWO HOURS LATER
Nelson slouched in a phone booth in Coral Gables, sweating like a pig. He was almost out of quarters.

“¿Oye, gusano, qúe tu sabes?”

“Hey,
Capitán, cómo estás, chico?”

The punk’s Spanish was atrocious. Nelson switched to English.

“Know a lawyer named Redbirt?”

“Used to. I heard he bought it over the weekend.”

“Word gets around, don’t it?
¿Qué pasa?”

“I’m broke, Captain, that’s what’s happening. Help me, and maybe I can help you.”

“Fifty is all I got,” Nelson said.

“Tu madre!”
the worm sneered.

“A hundred.
No tengo más.”

“Bueno.”
The worm blew his nose. Nelson held the receiver away from his ear. He flicked the soggy stump of his cigar into the traffic of LeJeune Road.

“Your lawyer friend is the first of many,” said the
gusano.
“The snow is going to melt for a while.”

“Says who?”

“Los Cubanos.”

“Oh yeah? And our friends from Bogotá and Cartagena? They all retired all of a sudden?”

“Believe it or not, it’s all been settled. No more fighting in the family.
Hay paz.”

“I don’t believe it,” Nelson grunted.

“It’s what I hear, is all,” the worm whined. “Things are going to be very tight for a while, is what I hear. Where do I get my money?”

“What about Redbirt?”

“He had good connections, dealt a lot of coke. He was working his way up. A lot of the downtown crowd bought from him because he was, you know…”

“Gringo.”

“Sí, gringo.”

“Your money will be in the usual place,” Nelson said coldly.

“¿Cuando?”

“Tonight; six o’clock. You got anything else for me?”

“Nada.”

“Still pulling those b-and-e’s around the river?”

“Not me,
chico.”

Nelson hung up and fished in his pockets for more change. All he came up with was three pennies; Wilbur Pincus would damn well have to wait.

WILBUR PINCUS
thought about what he had: He had caught his partner in two lies.

Captain Nelson had lied about the Mercedes-Benz to cover up for his brother, a brother who obviously was into cocaine. At precisely what level of enterprise, Pincus was not sure, but it was lucrative, if judged by the price of Bobby Nelson’s house.

Pincus was deeply troubled. Octavio Nelson surely knew about his brother. But how much? For how long?

The second lie was equally disturbing, maybe more so because it could never be explained away as family loyalty.

The missing architect was nobody’s wayward brother.

Pincus knew Meadows had been hiding out in the Buckingham Hotel when Nelson arrived. Witnesses had seen both men leave together, yet Nelson had told him that the architect had spooked off before he got there.

It was a total lie, and it angered the young detective.

Now Meadows was missing, and Pincus couldn’t shake the gut feeling that he was gone for good, that hunks and snippets of his lean flesh would be feeding the pinfish in Biscayne Bay for a long time.

These thoughts clogged his mind as he sat in his Mustang, parked in the grass under the mossy arms of a ficus tree. Pincus squinted toward a bench on the other side of a city park. Every few minutes he would lift a small pair of Nikon binoculars to see better the face of Roberto Nelson as he tossed popcorn to a flock of brazen pigeons. This was the sort of idle nonsense at which men like Bobby Nelson would not be caught dead unless an important moment was at hand.

Pincus was distracted by a muffled voice behind him. Instinctively his eyes went to the rear-view mirror and his right hand crawled down his leg to an ankle holster that cuddled a small pistol. He saw two men on the ground behind his car.

“Come on, Johnny, let’s go into the toilet,” one said in a shy, low voice.

“Just do it here and get it over with,” said the other.

Pincus straightened up in the driver’s seat. He fiddled with the mirror until both men were in clear view, embracing clumsily under the shade tree.

“Fuck,” Pincus said. From where they reclined the men obviously could not see him in the car. Pincus was surprised they had not tried to break in and use the back seat. His first impulse was to storm out of the car and bust both of them for lewd-and-lascivious, but of course they would scream and fuss, and Roberto Nelson would get very curious about the racket across the park. Likewise if Pincus were to honk or start his engine. He decided he couldn’t afford to burn the surveillance, so he would be silent. He tried to tune out the sloppy moans and lifted his Nikon again.

He noticed that Roberto Nelson now had company on the bench. Pincus braced his elbows on the steering wheel to steady the binoculars. The other man was a skinny Latin with long, wavy hair and sunglasses; he waved his arms wildly at Roberto Nelson, as if agitated. Nelson appeared to respond coolly, touching his friend gently on the arm as if to calm him.

The two men rose and walked toward a parking lot where Pincus earlier had watched Nelson park the beige Mercedes-Benz. Halfway there, Skinny Friend stopped walking while Nelson continued to the car.

“Not too rough, Johnny. Easy! I’m getting blisters on these fuckin’ roots.”

Pincus winced at the noise behind him as Johnny’s friend started grunting. He could no longer see the two writhing lovers in the mirror and supposed their passion had carried them under his wheels.

Roberto Nelson and his friend were walking together again. Pincus saw that Skinny was carrying a denim beach bag now and that Roberto was toting a thin brown briefcase. They stopped in front of the bench, where Roberto grinned, slapped his customer amiably on the shoulder and walked way. Pincus lowered the binoculars. He had seen all he needed.

As soon as both men were gone, Pincus shoved the key into the ignition and stomped on the gas pedal. The Mustang growled and belched a faceful of blue fumes from the exhaust.

“Hey! Christ, watch out! Don’t back up, man,” the man named Johnny yelled from the ground.

Pincus slipped the transmission into reverse and eased off the clutch.

“I said no, fuckhead!”

Suddenly Johnny was on his feet, glaring through Seconal eyes into Pincus’s face. His friend, leaf-covered and sheepishly disheveled, scrambled behind the trunk of the big tree to zip up.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Johnny screamed. “You coulda killed us.”

Pincus put the car in neutral and took his foot off the accelerator. He reached up to the sun visor and pulled out a laminated police identification card. Johnny leaned forward tentatively to read the name.

“You boys shouldn’t fuck in the park,” Wilber Pincus said.

“Officer, we didn’t know there was anybody here, I swear.”

“What if this was a car full of Girl Scouts?” Pincus asked sternly. “What if I was your mother? Come to the park to feed the pigeons only to find my son boffing a wino under the ficus tree.”

“Jesus,” Johnny muttered.

Pincus replaced his ID in the visor. “Do you know what it sounds like? All the moaning and groaning and howling, I mean, how the hell am I supposed to enjoy my lunch with that kind of shit going on? I don’t ever want to see you here again.”

“Right,” Johnny said, backing away. “Yes, Officer. I’ve got to go now.”

“Good idea,” Pincus said sharply. “And find another place to fall in love. I’ll be back here tomorrow, me and the Girl Scouts.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chapter 18

MONEY WAS
a big problem.

Christopher Meadows reasoned that Octavio Nelson or the Cuban goons were watching the bank and monitoring his checking account. He took no chances. On the day he decided to go underground Meadows visited four small shopping centers and, using his plastic bank card, collected a hundred dollars from each of the mindless automatic banking machines in the parking lot. It would take Nelson weeks to trace the withdrawals, and success would bring him no closer than a mall that was fifteen miles from Terry’s apartment. Meadows never visited the same machine twice.