Powder Burn (16 page)

“Five-six-one-five.”

“There’s suddenly a lot of movement on that Morningside surveillance. Can you come?”

“Negative. Can’t you handle it?”

“Yeah, I think so, except that I can’t seem to raise one-one-seven-eight.”

“Stern and Garcia,” Nelson muttered to himself. “That’s not like them.” He addressed the microphone again.

Meadows listened with half an ear, his head filled more with roller coaster reflection than radio traffic.

Nelson wheeled into a cluttered parking lot underneath a flickering red neon sign that said Guayabera Grocery. From the parking-lot side of what looked to Meadows like a cluttered general store, an off-balance, belt-high counter yawned drunkenly. A waitress with bottled red hair swayed in the window to the sounds of the born-in-Miami beat called
salsa.

“Dos cafecitos, querida,”
Nelson ordered.
“Y
bájame el radio. Tengo que usar el teléfono.”

The music shrank inside its green plastic box as Nelson went to the phone, and Meadows licked tentatively at the scalding brew. He felt resigned, as though all emotion had been purged from him. Nelson would not tell him where they were going; all he would say was that it was a public place that would allow Meadows to wander freely and inconspicuously and to leave quickly if necessary.

“How can you be sure all of them will be there?” Meadows had repeated.

“Because I am Cuban and they are Cuban. That’s how I know,” Nelson had replied enigmatically. “Relax. No one has ever had a softer chance to walk away from a murder charge.”

Nelson’s face was drawn when he returned to the counter, his lips a thin, tight line. He swallowed the coffee with a gulp and headed for the car behind a taut
“¡Vamos!”

They drove deep into
el Barrio,
past a noisy bar that promised
Chicas Topless;
past a municipal ball field where wiry kids with olive skin backed up paunchy father-shortstops; past a vest-pocket park where keyed-up old men slapped dominoes on the smooth tops of square white tables. An old-fashioned butcher shop flashed by; a factory for hand-rolled cigars and a
botánica,
whose spotless display window offered prayerful saints and wizened cock claws, both guaranteed to ward off evil.

They stopped, finally, on the darkened apron of a gas station that obviously had been abandoned for a long time. Regular 52.9, said the twisted sign atop a rusting pump.

“This is the place,” said Nelson, gesturing to a well-lit one-story brick building across the street.

Meadows squinted to make out the lettering on the discreet black and white sign: Hidalgo & Sons.

“Jesus Christ!” Meadows said. “It’s a funeral parlor!”

“That’s right. Open all night. Best sandwiches in Little Havana.”

“I’m not walking into any damned funeral parlor.”

Nelson’s fist tapped impatiently on the steering wheel.

“We already played that scene,
amigo.
Either you walk into that place and do a little favor for me or somebody carries you into a place just like that much sooner than you would like. Think it through.”

Meadows did not have to ask whose corpse the Hidalgos were cosseting that night. He knew. He knew, too, that Nelson had maneuvered him with exquisite planning and logic.

“We gave back the body this afternoon. They’ll bury him tomorrow. Tonight is the
velorio.
The family will stay all night—it’s an old Cuban custom. Everybody who knew him will be here between now and about eleven o’clock. It would be an unforgivable insult not to come. Honor is foremost with these people. Remember that.”

“And will they be grieving and asking for the forgiveness of sins?” Meadows snapped.

“The grief will be genuine,” Nelson said. “Among both men and women. Latin men are not afraid to cry.”

“Then I’ll stand out like a sore thumb among all those sniffling
machos,
won’t I?”

“I worried about that, but it will not be too bad. That’s a big place. There are four bodies in there tonight. Four
velorios.
One of them is for an old Anglo-Cuban. Some of the mourners will look more
gringo
than Cuban. No one will pay any attention to you.”

“Christ!” said Meadows.

“I have two people inside; that’s standard procedure for scumbag
velorios.
They’re looking for the same thing you are, but they’re looking blind. That phone call I made was to tell them to keep an eye on you. Don’t try to find them. Don’t be obvious. Look around thoroughly, and get out. I’ll be waiting. I won’t move.
Buena suerte.”

“Thanks a lot,” Meadows said. He wiped his hands on the soft fabric of his pants and walked around the car.

“Oye, amigo,”
Nelson called. “If I knew who they were, I wouldn’t need you. And if I didn’t need you, you’d be in jail.”

Meadows’s first impression was that he had stumbled into the intermission of an off-Broadway play. A gust of chill air greeted him behind two gold metal doors that sighed open as he approached. In a hallway about thirty feet long and fifteen wide stood about a hundred well-dressed people. They all seemed to be speaking at once, and there was no mistaking them for Americans. They spoke with their eyes, their hands, their whole bodies. Mourners’ knots formed and dissolved in an almost stylized pattern of
abrazo, besito
and gossip.

If there was reverence, it certainly was not hushed. In one corner, next to a gold papier-mâché fountain in the shape of a leaping dolphin, a woman of extraordinary beauty held court. Five, six, seven dark-suited young men swirled around her, knights beseeching favor. She was charming, imperious, untouchable.

From a doorway with marbled Formica lintels a dowager mourner emerged like a battleship under steam: broad of beam, black-clothed, white-haired, makeup streaked with tears, chattering nieces and nephews her darting escorts.

A child of about six, pigtails restrained by pink ribbons, wandered anxiously underfoot.
“Mami, Mami!
” she wailed. Two middle-aged men stood spread-legged, cigar to cigar, arguing loudly. Politics, Meadows’s rusty Spanish told him. The men’s wives turned away, as though on cue, to amuse one another with midwives’ tales they had recounted a thousand times.

A strikingly handsome man, elegant in a three-piece black suit, yellow rose at his lapel, an establishment mustache curried till it squealed, preened in
macho
counterpart to the beautiful dolphin girl. He bussed four cheeks, shared six
abrazos
and shook three hands with stiff formality in the minute Meadows spared him.

The smell of death assailed Meadows. Calla lilies, gladiolas, carnations, chrysanthemums peeked from the four rooms that opened off the hallway. Their aromas mingled with the scents of perfume, sweat, cigars and formaldehyde.

Meadows felt light-headed. Before him, through the haze, the smell and the noise, lay the centerpiece of the room: a white-robed plaster Virgin Mary with two lambs at her feet, praying above an electric candle. Two flags, one Cuban, one American, flanked the Virgin in drooping salute.

Meadows stood irresolute. Where to go? How to begin? He had to go in, but every fiber screamed at him to get out. Finally he turned left and headed for the first of the four body rooms.

It was a mistake. About twenty people sat in metal folding chairs with red plastic seats facing the coffin in a niche at the far wall. The mourners sat in quiet dignity, silent reproof to the cocktail chatter that followed Meadows through the door. No head turned when he entered. The flower stench was overwhelming.

Meadows took four paces into the room and stopped. Wrong one, dammit. The coffin sat in lonely eminence, two spotlights illuminating its closed lid. It was tiny, toylike. It could have belonged only to a child. Meadows fled.

Heart pounding, head resting lightly against the thin white plasterboard wall, Meadows weighed his next move. He studied the people entering and leaving the other three rooms, his vision constantly intercepted by the swirling mob of mourners in the hall. He had to hurry; Nelson would be worried. He must have been here nearly twenty minutes already. He looked at his black-faced Rolex—a perfect mourner’s watch. Four minutes had passed.

“You don’t look Cuban,” she said.

Meadows turned quickly, startled by the intrusion. “I’m not,” he blurted.

“I know. I can always tell; something about the eyes and the set of the head.”

Frank black eyes stared appraisingly at Meadows. She was even more beautiful than the dolphin lady. She wore a dark blue suit of superb cut and a white silk shirt, knotted in a loose bow at the neck. Her taste identified her to Meadows as an outcast.

“Pretty awful, isn’t it.” It was not a question.

“Yes,” said Meadows. “Oh, yes.”

“They’re ‘doing’ my aunt’s friend in there.” The shiny black hair tossed at the room Meadows had assigned number four.

“A rosary. I couldn’t stand it—the hypocrisy. My aunt hadn’t spoken to the woman in ten years, except to say nasty things. Now she’s in there weeping over her Ave Marias.”

Meadows nodded. The child in number one, the aunt’s friend in number four. Two down, two to go.

“My name is Sofia,” the girl said.

Meadows mumbled something sibilant.

“Steven?” the girl asked.

“No, no,” Meadows said quickly, casting frantically for a name. “Sean,” he said in desperation.

“Where do you come from?”

Oh, Christ.

“Akron,” said Meadows. “Akron, Ohio, heart of the Midwest.” Why doesn’t she go away and leave me alone? he thought.

“That’s nice,” the girl said uncertainly.

Meadows could see she didn’t think it was nice at all. He was delighted—he had never been to Akron.

“What do you do for a living, Sean?”

Why doesn’t she let up? Another time, another place,
señorita.

“I’m in floor covering.”

“Is that interesting?”

“Oh, yes,” Meadows said in desperation. “Fascinating. People don’t realize just how important the choice of a floor covering can be. Color, texture, resiliency. Things like that make the environment and can influence one’s view of oneself and society.”

It was a speech he had heard once from a gay decorator, but it worked. Meadows had her now. He watched the smile fade, the eyes glaze.

“Yes, well, I have to go,” she said. “
Hasta luego.”
And she was lost in the crowd, fleeing not only the rosary now but also asbestos tile and wall-to-wall carpeting.

Meadows pushed off the wall and headed for room number two. He didn’t have to go in, and he cursed his stupidity. A black-bordered plastic wallboard, the kind in which skinny white letters were inserted one at a time, bore the name Don Richard Lorenzo Edwards de Gutierrez. This had to be the Anglo-Cuban Nelson had told him about. A nameplate would be outside all the rooms; he should have looked.

Meadows took a deep breath and pushed open the door to room number three. Mono’s room.

Mono lay in a rich brown casket draped with a banner that said
Brigada 2506,
a tribute from the Cuban exile brigade whose invasion had failed at the Bay of Pigs.

The casket was open. Mono wore a white suit. His eyes were closed; his mouth was composed, his hair, neatly combed and lacquered in place. To Chris Meadows, Mono looked cruel even in death.

There were fewer people in this room, perhaps a dozen in all.

Meadows wondered which two worked for Octavio Nelson. There was no sign of the thugs Meadows sought.

He should have left then. But as his eyes cast about the room they fastened suddenly on three young boys, the eldest about ten, who fidgeted on hard-backed chairs in the row closest the coffin.

Three children. Sweet Jesus! Why did Mono have to have three children? Meadows grabbed at the moan, but some of it escaped into the quiet room. It might have been a sigh, a cough, a clearing of the throat, a calculated permission-to-enter? I-have-come-to-mourn-him-too.

Heads turned. Meadows felt himself go pale. Mono’s widow— who else could it be?—rose stiffly from her chair and turned to face Meadows. Ten years ago she might have been pretty. Traces of insouciance lingered in a face traced now by tears. She had grown dumpy, afflicted by the sagging breasts and rice-and-beans ass that are trademarks of Cuban women over thirty.

“Ay, ay, ay,” the widow keened as she approached Meadows.

“No, no,” Meadows gasped.

It must have sounded to the widow like a murmur of sympathy. She embraced Meadows, crushing him tightly against her. Meadows could hear the dress fabric groan as she smothered him. He could feel her girdle and her thick thighs. He could taste her tears. It was like being hugged by a bear. Meadows dared not tear himself away. He stood perfectly still, unwitting and unwilling comfort to the new widow.

Over her shoulder the sewn-shut eyes of the dead killer vowed retribution.

Later Meadows would never be able to recall how he had extracted himself from the widow’s cloying embrace. His last memory as he rushed from the body room was the image of the three young boys, staring wordlessly at him.

Meadows bolted into a neutral passageway to collect himself. He heard the sounds of plates, the whoosh of an espresso machine. Nelson’s words returned to him: “…best sandwiches in Little Havana.” Why not, if people mourned all night? Why not food in a funeral parlor?

The lounge was bright and airy: a half dozen wood veneer tables, a display case with cold drinks, a coffee machine and a cash register, its ring discreetly muffled. One Cuban waiter in a tuxedo stood behind a counter, gracefully carving a thick leg of pork. At the espresso machine a second waiter argued with a mourner.

”
¿
Cómo que no hay cerveza?”
the mourner demanded.

“Lo siento, señor, pero no tenemos aquì.”

Beer. The thought of a sparkling cold glass of beer tugged at Meadows’s throat. How nice it would be. He shared the mourner’s disappointment. If there were sandwiches, there also ought to be beer.

Then Meadows’s thirst vanished, and his heat leaped into his parched throat at a vision from the dog track.