Suitable for Framing Read online

  How did he pull this off so fast? I checked my pocket, smearing yellow mustard on my white blouse in the process. I still had the keys.

  My beautiful new T-Bird, not even five hundred miles on it. I’d never hear the end of this in the newsroom. What would my insurance company say? Especially after what happened to my last car. What would the credit union say? I had just received the payment book in the mail.

  I loved that car. I left the hot dog and orange drinks on the seawall, my appetite gone, and stalked across the street to find a pay phone and call the cops. As I crossed, I scanned traffic, hoping to spot a police cruiser. Where the hell were they? Never around when you need them.

  I reached the other side as a motorist leaned on the horn. Dammit. It wasn’t even safe to be a pedestrian—which I was now.

  The horn blared again and I spun toward the sound with murder in my heart. My car! My gleaming T-Bird rolled up to the curb. Howie grinned from behind the wheel. He lowered the window.

  “Need a lift, pretty lady?”

  “You little son of a bitch!” I screamed, as startled passersby stared. I dove at the driver’s door, while Howie, laughing and raising his arms in mock defense, shifted over into the passenger seat.

  I slid behind the wheel. “I’m gonna put your nasty little ass in jail! You … you … how the hell could you?”

  His mouth opened in surprise, all wide-eyed innocence and righteous indignation. “You dissed me! That was a challenge! You was giving me the fish-eye like you didn’t believe I could. What’d you expect me to do?”

  “Look what you’ve done! This car is brand new!”

  “All you gotta do is replace that little plastic collar round the steering column.” Earnest and persuasive, he didn’t seem to understand what all the fuss was about. “That ain’t nothing.”

  I rested my forehead on the steering wheel, weak-kneed and shaky with relief.

  “I didn’t take it. I brought it back. It was jus’ a little spin round the block. Come on, Britt. You know I wouldn’t vic you. You challenged me.” He seemed astonished that I had taken offense.

  I lifted my head, resisting the urge to bang it on the dashboard over and over. “Want an orange drink?”

  “Sure.”

  We retrieved the drinks, pulled into the cool shadow of the Edgewater parking garage, and got serious. “The cops need you to testify about what happened with the Trans Am.”

  He looked grim. “You want me to be a rat.”

  “Right. Because nothing you can do will make you a bigger rat than FMJ and those guys. No bigger rat than somebody who hurts women and babies. You’re lucky the cops need you and are willing to make a deal.”

  “That AK?”

  “AK?”

  “Actual knowledge. You know they would?”

  “The detective on the case said so.”

  He half turned in the seat. “You told ’im about me?”

  I shook my head. “Not by name. Just asked a hypothetical question. You can straighten out, you can go to school. You wouldn’t have a record after you turn eighteen. You can become somebody.”

  “I could stay here?” he jerked his head toward the top of the building.

  “You know you can’t. That’s always been temporary at best. You’ve just been lucky so far.”

  “So where I stay while this all happens?”

  “You have any other relatives?”

  “Maybe an aunt some town in North Carolina. Never seen her.”

  “There are places here.”

  “Don’t want no foster home.”

  “There’s a place called the Crossing. Sort of a group home, a halfway house for teenagers, where you can stay while you finish school.”

  “I heard of it,” he said quietly, staring at his knees. He turned and faced me. “You wrong ’bout one thing,” he said gravely, as my heart sank. “You not my only friend.”

  I waited.

  “Me and Miz Mayberry, we had a long rap the other night. She say you’re right. I do wanna be somebody. Do somethin’ wit’ my life.” He stared out the window at the wedge of sky visible from our level of the garage. Clouds were stacked up over the bay. “I been thinking. Like, I heard my cousin died the other day. We was, like, the same age. We went to school together, man. Back when my grandma was alive.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Sniffing from an aerosol can, that stuff you spray on frying pans. Wanted a rush. Got a rush, all right. A rush to the emergency room.” He sighed, his smile bitter. “But not fast enough.”

  I nodded. “SSDS.”

  “Say what?”

  “Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome. I heard about two last week. Kids who got a killer buzz from sniffing household products. Which one was your cousin?”

  He looked down. “Fat Jaw his street name. Real name Tyrone Brown. Like a bro to me when we was little. Always say, ‘We here for a good time, not a lot of time.’ Like he knew. Damn! He was stupid, stupid, stupid! I don’ wanna be stupid anymore. I don’ want my kids to have it rough someday. I want an education. I wanna be like…” He made a small dismissive gesture. “Miz Mayberry thinks I could do it.”

  “So do I, Howie. You could have a helluva future. You’re smart, disciplined, self-reliant. You can do anything.”

  He looked almost eager.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “Whatever I gotta do.”

  “You’re making the right decision,” I said quickly. “You can trust Rakestraw. He’s good people. And you’ll have me and Miss Mayberry in your corner.”

  He nodded. “I’m in the car with you on this one. Won’t be easy, but like they say, ‘Nothing valuable comes easy.’”

  “Good man.”

  I drove Howie to police headquarters before he could change his mind. He fidgeted in his seat as we pulled into the parking lot. I could sense his reluctance.

  “You’re gonna like this detective,” I assured him.

  Howie said nothing, his face solemn.

  I was unwilling to leave him in the car while I found Rakestraw, fearing he might run—worse yet, with my car. He stuck close as we stepped inside. I plunked my purse onto the conveyor belt and stepped through the metal detector’s plastic archway. Howie looked wary. Any kid going to school in Miami is acquainted with metal detectors and drive-by-shooting drills, but Howie hadn’t been to school for nearly two years. The machine raised no alarm, and we proceeded into the lobby. Howie deliberately avoided the stares of cops who greeted me and eyed him curiously as they passed.

  The officer at the front desk called AIU and told us that Rakestraw was unavailable, in a training class.

  “It’s important,” I insisted.

  “We can come back later.” Howie glanced hopefully toward the double glass doors.

  The cop at the desk looked at Howie with idle interest.

  “Excuse me,” he said, diverting his attention to an irate citizen with a complaint about the manners of a traffic cop encountered downtown.

  Keeping Howie in tow, I wandered over to a conference room across the lobby. Training sessions—or large press conferences—were often conducted inside.

  A crowded class was in progress. Through the small glass panel I spotted Rakestraw in a back row. At first I thought it was an encounter session. Everybody was shouting at a hapless officer as a seated instructor watched.

  Then I realized they were all shouting in Spanish, or a reasonable facsimile.

  “¡El sospechoso! El tiene un sombrero. El es alto. El tiene un tatuaje.”

  Even I could manage a rough translation: The suspect! He has a hat. He is tall. He has a tattoo.

  The officer at the front of the room, brow furrowed in concentration, did not do as well.

  I opened the door a few inches. Howie gingerly backed off. A few uniforms inside glanced my way. I motioned at Rakestraw, mouthing his name. Somebody nudged him and he swiveled in his seat.

  I beckoned an
d he gave a slight annoyed shake of his head. I beckoned more insistently. Frowning impatiently, he got to his feet and came to the door, slipping through without opening it wide.

  “Britt, this damn thing is mandatory—” He saw Howie and studied him for a moment. “What the hell.” He closed the door behind him.

  “He with you?”

  I nodded and introduced them. “He wants to talk to you. About the Carey case.”

  Howie, all arms, legs, and frightened eyes, looked poised for flight.

  “Sure,” Rakestraw said, suddenly affable. “I’ve got all the time in the world. Let’s go get some coffee.”

  Behind us we heard class members shouting, “El es un muerto.”

  He is a dead man.

  We went to the third-floor cafeteria. There were few people there, but we said little as we fixed our coffee. Rakestraw asked Howie if he was hungry and offered a doughnut, which the boy declined with a small twitchy smile that said he saw a certain irony in being offered something by a cop. Rakestraw casually asked Howie’s age; then we followed him, carrying our cups back to a small pleasant office.

  Colorful posters brightened the walls, and a few paper flowers bloomed from a vase on a small table covered with a cheerful yellow-and-white plastic cloth. “I never saw this room before,” I said, following Howie inside.

  “The interrogation of juveniles must take place in a nonintimidating atmosphere,” Rakestraw said, sotto voce. “No police radios, a nice room with flowers and pictures on the wall. I’m doing this strictly by the book. He the backseat passenger?”

  I nodded.

  “Figured.”

  We took seats around the table and sipped coffee, watching one another warily.

  “Before we begin,” Rakestraw said, “I think we should notify your parents.”

  Howie explained about his only relative. “My mother is indisposed. In fact I don’t know where she stay at right now.”

  “An approximate address?” Rakestraw said, pulling out a pen and a small notebook.

  “Like a crack house, somewhere,” Howie said vaguely.

  “It’s not mandatory to have consent from your parent or guardian before we talk, but if you want, Howard, you can give us a last known address and we can send somebody out to try to locate her.”

  “Nah.” He shook his head, as though sure such efforts would be useless. “Don’t think she’d ’predate it. This is something I got to do on my own.”

  “Where do you want to start, Howard?” Rakestraw asked.

  Howie had regained some confidence, or at least tried to give that impression. “Well, my associate here, Miss Montero”—he glanced my way and I nodded—“gave me the expression that if I can assist you in a certain matter you might be able to assist me.”

  “What is it that you would like us to do for you?” Rakestraw asked, looking utterly relaxed. Knowing how much he wanted to close the case, I marveled at his calm. He had to be as thrilled as I am when zeroing in on an important story.

  Howie leaned forward, boyish sincerity breaking through. “I wanna go back to school, finish high school, turn eighteen with no record. I wanna be … I wanna start over. And I need a place to stay while I go to school. No foster homes.” He glanced at me.

  “A place like the Crossing,” I interjected.

  “And protection,” he added, his dark eyes troubled. “You know how it is: snitches get stitches—or worse.”

  “Depends on what the whole story is here, but I don’t see where any of that would be outside the realm of possibility,” Rakestraw said.

  I listened, fascinated, though I knew most of it, as Rakestraw led the boy through an accounting of what led up to those terrible moments at the shopping mall. FMJ had an order for a Trans Am the year, make, and model of Arturo’s. FMJ, a crew chief of sorts, had a shopping list of three cars that afternoon. The Trans Am was their third. It was only the second time, Howie claimed, that he had accompanied them. FMJ wanted him along because of his speed and expertise. I could vouch for that.

  The thieves were not cruising in a random search for the right model. FMJ already had Arturo’s car listed. In the old days, Rakestraw said, nodding, car thieves carried little spiral notebooks. FMJ used a laptop computer to keep an inventory. They had driven by Belle Court, an apartment complex where a suitable Trans Am was usually parked, but it was not there. The man who had ordered the car wanted it right away. FMJ didn’t like waiting and moved to the next prospect on his list. Arturo worked out regularly at the center, and FMJ had seen the car there before.

  They were in luck. Jennifer Carey’s luck was about to run out.

  A teen named Skank dropped the trio off at the center. Then things went awry. After the tragedy, it was J-Boy who had jumped out and pulled the stroller from under the car. They had fled west on the Palmetto. FMJ dropped the boys off at a Burger King and went to deliver the car himself, as usual.

  He was to return with $100 each for Howie and J-Boy and $50 for Skank.

  Howie didn’t wait. Horrified at what FMJ had done, he left, catching a bus back to downtown Miami and the Edgewater.

  “Was FMJ upset about what happened?” Rakestraw asked.

  “Yeah,” Howie said. “Not because we hit the lady or the kids. He was steamed, in a big hurry to go drop off the car and get paid. The Man always say don’t do nothing with the car, no drive-bys, no robberies, no nothing. He wants to get it and chop it before the owner even know it’s gone. He don’t want no heat. Say it’s bad for business. So FMJ, he wanna get there and get paid before the Man seen the TV news. He figures, the lady and the kids hadda be on the news. It was.”

  Howie didn’t know the address of the buyer, only that the chop shop was west of Miami and east of the Everglades. FMJ usually delivered the cars personally after dropping off his accomplices. He didn’t want them becoming entrepreneurs. Howie said he thought the cars sold for $400 to $500.

  Sounds cheap for a $20,000 car, but as Rakestraw later reminded me, “The guy is buying it from a seventeen-year-old with thirty minutes invested. The kid is happy as hell to get that much for it.

  “Kids steal ’em, adults deal ’em. Juveniles work cheap,” he said. “If they get caught they face no penalty and they don’t flip on you. No reason to.” True. Facing a prison term, an adult might well be persuaded to turn on his partners in crime. Juveniles are far tougher for cops to deal with.

  Auto theft, like any other business, is conducted for maximum profit at minimum risk. Car theft and stripping is an $8 billion industry.

  “They even chop up brand-new cars?” Rakestraw nodded. “The parts are worth more than the whole.”

  I shuddered. Maybe I should invest in a Lojack, I thought. This auto security system is like the devices used to track panthers in the wild. It operates like a beeper in reverse. When a theft is reported, the stolen car is beeped with a special code, activating the tracker, a tiny chip hidden in the car. Police can zero in on it almost immediately by following the beep, beep, beep, like tracking a big cat.

  “Why did they want that particular Trans Am?” I asked.

  “Let me put it like this,” Rakestraw said. “Your car needs a new front end, you take it to a body shop. They ask if you want used or new factory parts. When you hear the prices, you want used. The body shop calls a salvage yard. The operator says, ‘Let me see if I can find it.’ He calls another salvage yard and is told, ‘Yeah, I think I can get my hands on a front end for a ’91 Chevrolet Caprice.’ And he puts out an order for one. It’s billed through the salvage yards, with the paperwork easily convertible into legitimate channels.

  “It’s so prevalent that Allstate won’t even authorize repairs with used parts. Factory parts cost more, but it’s cheaper in the long run for the insurance company not to encourage the resale of used parts.”

  “So that’s why more than forty thousand cars were stolen in Dade County last year,” I said. Howie did a double take at the figure.


  “In part,” Rakestraw said. “But our biggest problem is the big surge in illegal exports.”

  Howie nodded. “Like, I know some dudes who drive stolen cars to the port. They got phony papers.”

  “We’ll want to talk about that later,” the detective said, “but right now we’ve got more pressing business.”

  He left briefly, returning with a photo lineup and another detective. He spread out seven or eight photos like playing cards on the pretty checkered tablecloth. The immature faces of kids who should have been posing for high school yearbooks instead of police mug shots stared up at us. Howie unhesitatingly identified FMJ and J-Boy, pointing them out as the other occupants in the car that hit Jennifer Carey and her children. They wrote the date, the case number, and Rakestraw’s name on the back of the photos and had Howie initial them.

  Two more detectives, from robbery and auto theft, joined us. The room was growing crowded. Howie steadfastly denied involvement in any of the carjackings, shootings, or smash-and-grabs. I believed him. They seemed to.

  “I have to advise you of your rights, Howard. It’s a formality,” Rakestraw said. “Do you know your rights? Let me read them to you.” He took the small laminated card from his billfold and read Howie his Miranda rights, then had him sign a paper stating that he understood. As he signed, Howie shot me a glance that said, Look what you got me into.

  They brought in a court reporter, put Howie under oath, and interviewed him again in more detail.

  Some of the other detectives appeared annoyed at my presence even though I wasn’t taking notes, so I told Howie I’d be back and wandered over to public information to call the office. Howie was in good hands, I told myself; only good things would happen to him from now on.

  When I went back, Howie was chowing down on a burger with fries and giving the cops a list of locations frequented by FMJ and his crew.

  I asked Rakestraw about the arrangements to place Howie at the Crossing. “I’ll go see what I can do,” he said, and left the interrogation room to talk to his captain. He reminded me of a car salesman saying he has to run a proposed deal by his manager for approval, except that Howie had already signed the contract.