Powder Burn (29 page)

“Buenos días,”
Nelson greeted the driver.

“Buenos días.”

Nelson flashed his badge. “I want to talk to you.”

“Sure,” the driver said. He was only nineteen or twenty. He wore a cranberry Dior tennis shirt and a pair of blue jeans. His sideburns were cut very high, and the modest shadow of a new mustache darkened his upper lip.

“Can I see a driver’s license?” Nelson asked.

“I’m sorry, man. Don’t have it with me.” The kid shrugged and gave a forced laugh.

“I’m sorry, too,” Nelson said. “What is your name?”

“Aristidio Cruz.”

“Wilbur, start checking around the stores. Find out who owns the blue Malibu,” Nelson said. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Cruz some more.”

Pincus thought it would make more sense just to sit on the Malibu and wait for the owner, but he didn’t say so. He pulled out his notebook and went into the shopping mall.

He wrote:

Interviewed D. Petri, W/M, DOB 4-3-50. Owns Danny’s Pizza Shack. Says he doesn’t know anything about Chevrolet in parking lot.

Interviewed Susan Lesser, B/F, DOB 3-21-48. Stylist at Pep’s Poodle Emporium, ph. 555-4457. Ms. Lesser says blue Malibu has been parked outside for at least two days. Doesn’t know who it belongs to.

Interviewed Joy Burns, W/F, DOB 8-8-52, ph. unk. Works as silkscreen operator at custom T-shirt booth. Says the blue Chevrolet in quest. has been parked at mall at least two days. Ms. Burns says she is sure because her boyfriend noticed it one day when he picked her up from wk.

Pincus walked out of the mall to tell his partner what he had learned. He saw a figure lying on the pavement near the burgundy van and broke into a run.

He later wrote:

Found subject, Aristidio Cruz, W/M, DOB unk., address unk., lying in parking lot bleeding profusely from head. He was unconscious and showed rapid breathing.

Capt. Nelson stated that when he asked subject for identification, subj. suddenly opened the door to the van, which struck Capt. Nelson in chest and arms. Capt. Nelson stated that he ordered subj. Cruz to get out of the van and put his hands up, but that subj. Cruz attacked him with fists.

Capt. Nelson further stated he struck subj. Cruz several times with his fists, which failed to subdue him. Capt. Nelson stated he then got his Kel-Lite and was forced to strike subj. Cruz numerous times before he could put the handcuffs on.

Capt. Nelson asked me to call Metro Fire Rescue. A search of subj. van, Fl tag JOG-737, produced: one Head tennis racket, three Wilson tennis balls, two towels, three (3) marijuana cigarettes and one Adidas athletic bag containing 8.7 pounds of white powder substance in plastic bags. (Substance later tested out as mixture of cocaine and lidocaine.)

Subj. Cruz transported to Flagler Med. Center. Charged with resisting arrest w/violence and possession of controlled subst. w/intent to distribute.

That’s what Pincus meticulously wrote in the blue notebook. That is not precisely what found its way into the official arrest report or what the internal review board heard.

“Do me a favor,” Nelson said that afternoon after the ambulance had left. “The headhunters are going to want to know if this was excessive force. Tell ’em you saw the guy come at me.”

“But I didn’t.”

“Look, we just made the biggest coke bust this month. That Cruz guy is a scum. I got a file this big I can show you—”

“He can’t be more than twenty years old,” Pincus protested.

“Means nothing,” Nelson said. “I got lots of work to do and I don’t have the time to waste in all these goddamn ‘use of force’ hearings. I’m asking you to do me this one favor.”

They had not been partners long enough to read each other’s minds, or long enough to enjoy that peculiar we’re-all-in-this-together bond. Pincus was wary, but he was also green.

“It’s no big deal,” Nelson said, “and someday you’ll need me to do the same thing. That’s just the way it works.”

“OK,” Pincus said after a few moments. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand. If this Cruz guy was so wild, where’d you get the time to run back to the car and grab the Kel-Lite?”

“Well,” Nelson said, chewing on the end of his cigar, “that happened right after you went into the mall. Before he went nuts on me. I asked him if I could have a look in the van, and he said sure. That’s when I got the flashlight.”

“Then he came at you?”

“Right.”

So Pincus hedged on the report, hedged even more when one of the internal review guys asked him what he saw and downright lied on his affidavit: “Subj. Cruz then attacked Capt. Nelson and began striking him as this officer approached scene.…”

Cruz himself gave a remarkably different version, but no one in the department seemed to pay much attention. Cruz was unable to give his statement for three months, until he was out of the hospital and the speech therapy had sufficiently progressed, and by that time almost everybody had forgotten about the case.

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 to other business: that Señora Lara who had called twice the past two days, both messages urgent, but neither leaving a return phone number. Something he’d want to know, she’d said. Well, there was plenty he wanted to know, starting with…

“This is fine.”

“What?”

“You can drop me here,” Roberto said.

Nelson eased the car to the curb under the orange and white Avianca Airlines sign. Roberto got out and struggled with the sticky back door until it squeaked open. He carefully lifted his suit bag and smoothed out the wrinkles. He closed the door and leaned over through the passenger window so abruptly that his sunglasses nearly slipped off.

“Thanks for the ride,” Roberto said.

“Sure,” said Octavio Nelson.

“I’ll call you when I get back.”

“Call a cab instead,” growled the detective. “A cab with air-conditioning.”

The two men parted, Roberto for the ticket counter and his brother for home.

The time was exactly 11:28
A.M
.

This was meticulously recorded in a blue notebook by Detective Wilbur Pincus, sitting in his own car near the Eastern Airlines baggage stand, his mouth as dry as plywood as he watched the send-off.

Chapter 24

“I’LL TRY
him again,” Terry said. She slipped on a pair of clogs and snowshoed through the hot sand to where the public phone stood in the lee of the old brick lighthouse. A tender breeze off the sea rustled the coconut palms. The tide was high; the water, sparkling and fresh. It was an idyllic scene. Terry was not feeling idyllic.

“Con el Capitán Nelson, por favor.”

“Es el que habla.”

Terry switched to English.

“You are a hard man to locate, Captain. This is Señora Lara.”

“Ah, yes. I got your messages,
señora,
but I have been very busy, in and out, and you didn’t leave a number. How can I help you?”

“I have some information for you.”

“Oh.”

“About someone you’re looking for.”

“Yes.” Nelson’s response was flat, emotionless.

“In the
barrio,
people call him
el Jefe.”

“Oh, a businessman, perhaps?”

“Don’t play games, Captain. We both know what kind of business.”

“Bueno.
Tell me more.”

“Not on the phone.”

“How?”

Terry allowed a hint of impatience to creep into her voice. “If I give you this information, it must be in complete confidence.”

“Of course.”

“We must meet.”

“All right.”

“At Southland. Tonight at eight o’clock, in the main mall. Come alone.”

“Very well. How will I know you?”

“You won’t know me. I will know you.”

“Bueno.”

“One more thing, Captain.”

“Yes?”

“El Jefe
killed my brother. I want you to get him for me.”

CHRIS MEADOWS LAY
on his back, chin high, toasting in the afternoon sun. Terry slipped off the light shirt that covered the top of her white bikini and gazed at him with affection. The longer hair made a difference, and the resolved set of the face. Meadows had changed. The gentle, intellectual architect was there still, perhaps, but it was sunken into something leaner, tougher, something that tasted of recklessness and danger. With a delicious shiver Terry lay down beside him.

“He took the bait,” she announced.

“Good.” Meadows did not open his eyes. He might have been drowsing, but Terry knew better. Meadows was weighing angles, checking distances, building, demolishing and rebuilding a tower of deceit.

“I rehearsed so hard that I might have been a trifle theatric at the end,” Terry ventured, “but I think it went well.”

“Um.”

“I am sure he’ll come, and alone.”

“Fine.”

“He sounded very exotic, your Captain Nelson, very exciting; like someone I could really fall for.”

“Yeah, right.”

Terry sat up in exasperation. “Chris!” she rebuked. “I am not a rock or a grain of sand.”

Meadows opened one baleful eye.

“Terry,” he said in a way that made plain that was all he was going to say.

“You have never been ignored until you have been ignored by a lion.” Terry snorted more in jealousy than petulance. “I am going for a swim.”

THE PIECES WERE FALLING
together nicely. It would not be the most beautiful structure he had ever designed, but it might be his most inspired, Meadows decided. Nothing of soaring beauty, but not a house of cards either. It did not have to be permanent, simply strong enough to endure one man-made storm.

There was still one vital arch missing, of course, but he would find that in time. One last arch should not be beyond the reach of T. Christopher Meadows, AIA, tempest maker.

It was only two days since he had fled the lawyer’s party for Terry’s apartment, stinking of sweat and excitement and gingerly carrying the satchel of stolen cocaine. Terry had been waiting, fresh and fetching in one of those long-sleeved dress shirts. And angry.